Mavs over... Hornets?

Thinking about the second round this morning, I came to the conclusion that the Mavericks were in a pretty good place and could be able to take down the Lakers. This would be exciting of course, because nobody likes the Lakers. I eventually realized however that I don't have to count on Dallas, New Orleans could pull the feat off! If both the Mavs and Hornets win in the first round it would soon become objectively known as "the best thing ever" (you know this is objective, I would've said something about Bulls success if I made the decision). Suddenly, "the best thing ever" is within reach.

Well, kind of.

Dallas has upped their odds of winning from 73% at the beginning to 84.5% now. Meanwhile NO has raised it's chances from 19.5% to 25.3%. That means "the best thing ever" currently has a 21.4% chance of happening, up from 14.2% at the start of the playoffs.

Those odds are still pretty low, but it turns out that all of that swings tonight. If Chris Paul and co. drop the game tonight the odds of both victories occurring drop below what they were when the playoffs commenced. If the Hornets can pull off another upset though, the odds of TBTE will jump above 50%. The hopes of the world now rest on the shoulders of Aaron Gray (uh oh).