FiveThirtyEight says the Mavericks are playoff-bound

Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesThe Dallas Mavericks will make the playoffs. That bold claim, three months prior to the start of the 2019-20 season, comes from the data and metric wonks over at FiveThirtyEight. According to their projections, the Mavs will be the seventh seed in the Western Conference with a 44-38 record.

FiveThirtyEight based its prediction for the Mavericks, and the rest of the NBA, on 50,000 simulations of the coming season. They also use an in-house forecast system cleverly called CARMELO to predict the career arc of players “based on the trajectory of similar NBA players.” These projections are then combined to generate possible talent estimates for…