Round two of the NBA playoffs are in the tank. One of the best teams in NBA history is going home early. Or are they? Let's look at what we'd have expected the outcome of each playoff to be based on regular season performances.

Here's a rundown of the second round of the playoffs, and which team we'd expect to win. The "Expected Points over Par" is how much we'd expect each team to beat an "average team" by in a given game based on the performance of their players in the NBA regular season playing the same minute allocation they've been playing in the playoffs.

The big shock to me was that the Thunder weren't really underdogs. Big thanks to BPS for pointing this out in the comments section and inspiring this whole post. Based on their regular season numbers, the Thunder were, in fact, the slight favorites (keep in mind I haven't made any home court adjustment.) Of course, their margin was slight too. The Thunder won two very close games with some iffy calls at the end. So it's not like the Thunder were obvious picks. The Thunder are much more top heavy than the Spurs with two MVP candidates in Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant (see Arturo's Playoff Production Post.) The Thunder played their horrible bench less, gave some more minutes to their bigs, including Most Improved Candidate Enes Kanter, and let their stars shine. This was enough to move them to the Spurs level.

The Warriors, even missing Steph Curry for most of the series were still a dominant force. The question will be if Curry is fully back to keep them on the level that the Thunder are currently playing. We have to give a lot of love to the Blazers for playing much better lineups than their regular season and performing quite well. Sadly, this is the West and the second round is no place for +7.7 PoP teams.

The Cavaliers are carving up the East and should easily be expected to handle the Raptors. The Raptors took seven games to beat a Miami Heat that ended up starting rookie Justise Winslow at Center (Magic Johnson he ain't!) It is worth noting that the Heat, thus far, are really the only team to "outperform" their regular season performance. The Cavaliers are still not as strong as the remaining teams out West. Of course, just ask the Blazers how long it takes to jump on an edge over a much better squad.

We'll see how the Conference Finals go. If it follows the current path, the West will be a knockout brawl and the East will be a quick round for the Cavs. Of course, predictions in the playoffs are just a good way to look silly in a few weeks.

-Dre