April 2011
2 posts
Best and Worst on Offense
The stat I like to use most to determine how effective a players offensive production has been (individually) is points per possession or ppp.
ppp basically tells us how many points per possession your team scored when you were the offensive player who ended the possession. Baskets are positive, misses, and turnovers are negative.
The one thing you’ll notice with ppp numbers is that by...
High Stakes Poker
I got an email a little while back from Mori of PokerProductions asking if I’d like to take part in the upcoming season of High Stakes Poker. For those unfamiliar with High Stakes Poker here is the wiki link. I used to play quite a bit of poker from 2005-2007 some would even say I actually played it quite well.
In the last few years I have been preoccupied with other things, so I...
March 2011
2 posts
Defensive Philosophies
After an extremely long blogging hiatus, I have decided to see if I can’t return to blogging some.
I found it interesting that the Lakers one of the few Western Conference team (i think) to not send a representative to SSAC .
And then I read an article that Kevin Ding has written detailing how the Lakers have tweaked their defense to adjust to the modern game.
“The concession is...
November 2010
1 post
Research Assistant Position
I am currently looking to bring on at least one research assistant here are the details of the job;
1. The pay is crap / non-existent to start, but if you prove to me your worth we will work something out.
2. You can work from home
3. You will be collecting tidbits of newspaper articles and information and emailing them to me, a good example would be finding links to video of coaches post game...
September 2010
1 post
NBA wants players on their best behavior
The NBA has announced that they would like to renew a sense of “Respect for the Game and will likely increase the number or technical fouls called as a result of complaining. The goal of which is to reduce the amount of complaining and (I am assuming) gesticulating from players and coaches alike.
You can read all about it here;
and
Cut the Complaining
etc etc.
The interesting thing in...
July 2010
2 posts
I hope its not over, but it likely is...
Miami has apparently filled out one if its vacant spots with the signing of Mike Miller and as much as I hate to say it, its over for the rest of the league. I had the Heat winning ~64 games with the “trinity” and 9 scrubs. The addition of Mike Miller is a perfect complement to that roster.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that Miami does not need a starting PG, in fact...
The new Big Three wins 64 games
I have read varying reports in terms of how many games the Miami heat expect to win next year with Bosh, James and Wade and have decided to post the results of our season simulator.
Because the rest of the roster is unknown we filled out the roster with what we term scrubbish players. WIthout going into detail on how we arrive at a number for these players lets just call them below avg or...
June 2010
14 posts
Celtics Defense vs Kobe
Much was made of Kobe Bryants breakout performance in the 3q of yesterdays game. Doc Rivers called him the games best shot maker and I would have to agree with that assessment. It is also quite clear however that in the last 3 playoff seasons no team has defended Kobe Bryant better than the Celtics.
An offensive metric that I really like to use is points per possession - this is much better than...
Finals Defensive Numbers Updated;
After game 5 there has been quite the change in some of the numbers I posted the other day. Here then are the updated numbers through 5 games.
With Bynum in;
Boston is scoring;
Total Unique Possessions: 227 Total PPP: 1.066
Bynum out;
Total Unique Possessions: 219 Total PPP: 1.013
Looking at the Celtics offensive numbers in the paint we see the following;
With Bynum in;
Total Unique...
Attacking Artest
The Celts like to use Pierce in ISO sets, but this is not the matchup to be doing this - they should focus more on bringing him off of screens and cuts to the basket. They can also use him as the ball handler in Pick and Roll sets. Artest struggles mightily moving laterally but is a great postup and ISO defender -
Here are some examples that illustrate how poorly he moves off of cuts and...
NBA Finals advanced defensive numbers
Much has been made of the status of Andrew Bynum, lets start of by taking a look at some per possession number involving Bynum.
Starting with the most basic,
With Bynum In;
Total Plays: 260 Total Unique Possessions: 170 Total PPP: 1.011
This means the Celtics are scoring at a rate of 1.01 per possession with Bynum on the court.
Bynum out;
Total Plays: 310 Total Unique Possessions: 187...
If his lips are moving...
So this blog is quickly becoming all Tim Donaghy all the time and I assure you this was never my intention. Unfortunately the Tim Donaghy publicity tour continues, and I really want to set the record straight on some of his claims.
Consider the following excerpt from Donaghy’s work of fiction “Personal Foul”.;
Minnesota at Charlotte
This was a New Year’s Day game and I...
Regular Season vs Playoff Officiating
Officiating always seems to come under the microscope during the NBA Playoffs. There are some truisms spouted about in the media about how playoff basketball is a much more rough and tumble brand of basketball and further the Refs let them play more. Is this accurate?
Looking at Historical call rates (all types of calls fouls+infractions and violations) in theregular season vs the playoffs here...
Tim Donaghy vs Derrick Stafford
I have mentioned in previous posts how some of Tim Donaghy’s alleged betting methods were debunked over at True Hoop.
One of the games that Donaghy and his crew bet was a February 26th 2007 game withMIA @ NYK.
In his book Donaghy explains why he decided to bet on NYK -3
Madison Square Garden was the place to be for a marquee matchup between the Miami Heat and New York Knicks. I...
A failed Fix.
I’ll be looking specifically at the following game;
February 25th 2007 HOU@ORL
Tick by tick line history for this game from Pinnacle;
This game has very sharp and pronounced line movement. The line opens with Houston a 2 point favorite, and closes with Orlando a 1.5 point favorite.
Looking over archived injury alerts for this day there were no urgent messages or late messages that would...
Donaghy Call rates
In my last post I linked to a rather benign possession on a play that may or may not have been a marginal call by Tim Donaghy. One could argue that if Donaghy really wanted to fix games he could have called been even more blatant and called an offensive foul on Shaquille. In general this isn’t how Donaghy operated, what Donaghy actually did do was to try and avoid the really blatantly bad...
Ev illustration
One of the things I talked about in my previous post was how altering around 6 points per game will get you to around 70% likelihood of covering the spread. I also talked about how each possession has a rough expected value or “ev”.
You can actually get quite detailed in your assessments of what a given possession means in terms of ev for a particular team. For instance the ev of an...
How much influence is needed?
Tim Donaghy officiated 69 Regular season games in the 2006-2007 NBA Season. It is my belief that he bet nearly all of them. Assuming he actually biased his officiating based on the team he wagered on, why then have the NBA or others found it so difficult to assert that he actually fixed games?
One thing to note;
Donaghy wagered exclusively on sides. I am not sure why this is the case and I think...
May 2010
3 posts
2007 Donaghy Games
In my last post I alluded to the fact that Tim Donaghy only had a vested interest in the games he officiated. Remember that Donaghy claimed that he didn’t actually bet on the games. Instead he claimed that he would receive payment from his co-consiparators James Battista and Thomas Martino if the team he selected won.
This is not unusual in the gambling business, its known as working on a...
Did Tim Donaghy Fix Games?
I mentioned last week that I’d be sharing some of my thoughts on whether or not Tim Donaghy fixed games. As a primer I highly recommend you read the following two articles posted by Henry Abbott of True Hoop.
Tim Donaghy’s Claims on Trial
Tim Donaghy Addresses the Research
The cliffs on the above two articles go like this;
Tim Donaghy goes through great lengths to explain how he...
April 2010
4 posts
Utah @ Denver Game 2 Foul Detail
Who made the call?
There were 65 *calls made in Game 2 of the Utah and Denver series last night, here is the breakdown of which referee made which call (click on ref name to get details for each ref).
Leon Wood
31 Calls
Ken Mauer
18 Calls
Bill Spooner
16 Calls
Here is a summary of each referee grouped by the type of call and who the called favored.
* calls being actual whistles for...
Some people on 2+2 and facebook have asked me for...
2010 All Non Defensive Team
Recently a few people have posted their 2010 All Defensive teams on that note I present to a list of players who have play *significant minutes and are the worst defenders at their positions.
1st Team;
PG Johnny Flynn
Normally I’d be loathe to include a rookie on any list, especially one that plays the PG one of the more difficult positions to play as a rookie. But Johnny Flynn really set...
True Hoop Smackdown Picks
This year I am taking part in the True Hoop Stat Geek Smackdown. In addition to providing the series winner as well as a projected number of games, we were asked to provide some brief analysis.
Here then are my selections;
Eastern Conference
The only real chance Chicago has of sneaking a game or two in this series is if Cleveland struggles some trying to get Shaq back into the rotation. If I...
