Around the league- some quick comments

[Crow]

Only one title winner in 30 years has been worse than 12th on defensive efficiency in the regular season and only other worse than 9th. Will that change this time? It very well could. But if it doesn't, then the Knicks, Heat, Lakers and Mavs don't look like the title winner with their current defensive marks. Thunder right at 12th now. Griz, Spurs and Clips are all currently fine on this and in top 7.

BRef's playoff odds had the Celtics at 1 chance in a thousand to win the finals a few days ago. Now it is 250-1 despite back to back double digit losses. I guess the odds are fairly volatile throughout the league right now. I am sure the Celtics coach, players and management think they have a better than 250-1 shot at the title. Either BR or the Celtics or maybe both are way off in expectations. Current BR odds suggest that the title winner is twice as likely to come from the west as the east.

Tyler Hansbrough's usage has gone from near 26% as a rookie to 18% now. Terrible eFG% (41%) but decent TS% (52%). Should the usage go down even further? I'd say yes. Below 30% FG on his jumpers and over half his shots are jumpers. Only hitting 54% FG% inside.

Is Orlando going to make the playoffs? Should they really be trying to this season? I don't know on the first but lean against on the latter.

Will the Griz make any significant changes before the trade deadline? I am guessing they won't. I'd try. But if they come up short of expectations in the playoffs, I'd think they'd be wise to make change at SG and / or SF in the offseason.

What are folks expecting from Rubio? I have been on the pessimistic side in the past and remain so on his shooting /scoring efficiency.

Any revised guesses on the final win total for the Nuggets? I think it remain about the same rather than getting significantly better. Probably touch n go on just making the playoffs until near the very end.

What players do you think GMs should be most aggressive in trying to trade away? I'll probably name a few later after giving others first crack at it.

[v-zero]

The free market that is Betfair has the top ten title contenders and their probabilities looking like this:

1. MIA 31%
2. OKC 19%
3. LAL 11%
4. SAS 9%
5. NYK 6%
6. LAC 6%
7. CHI 4%
8. MEM 4%
9. BOS 2%
10. BRK 2%

Obvious things: Lakers too high, Clippers, Knicks, Spurs, Grizzlies, Bulls too low. It's interesting though that the overall perception is so strongly tied to preconceived beliefs even at this point in the season.

[Crow]

BR list http://www.basketball-reference.com/fri ... f_prob.cgi

Only teams in Betfair's top 10 where BR and Betfair are close at all are OKC and Brooklyn.

[v-zero]

BR list http://www.basketball-reference.com/fri ... f_prob.cgi

Only teams in Betfair's top 10 where BR and Betfair are close at all are OKC and Brooklyn.

Begging the question: are the betting markets wrong (Betfair), or the geeks?

[DSMok1]

BR list http://www.basketball-reference.com/fri ... f_prob.cgi

Only teams in Betfair's top 10 where BR and Betfair are close at all are OKC and Brooklyn.

Begging the question: are the betting markets wrong (Betfair), or the geeks?

The books are very hard to beat. Is betfair a normal book? Things like Intrade are not as reliable (as evidenced by the election).

[v-zero]

Betfair is not a conventional book, but is a non-corrupt European betting exchange, so it doesn't suffer the same issues as US based sites like Intrade. It will have lines in line with (but often fairer than) those of the bookies. And yes, whilst Republican money kept the make believe dream alive stateside at Intrade, Betfair showed Obama as dominant basically throughout the last year.

[talkingpractice]

BR list http://www.basketball-reference.com/fri ... f_prob.cgi

Only teams in Betfair's top 10 where BR and Betfair are close at all are OKC and Brooklyn.

Begging the question: are the betting markets wrong (Betfair), or the geeks?

The books are very hard to beat. Is betfair a normal book? Things like Intrade are not as reliable (as evidenced by the election).

NBA Futures on Betfair are an extremely illiquid market (ie small float). They're inefficient as heck.

[v-zero]

Whilst liquidity is quite low I struggle to see that they can be considered particularly inefficient. The probabilities sum to close to one in all, and if they're inefficient there should be some possibility of arbitrage, and I don't know of any such opportunity.

If you merely mean that at the lower-likelihood odds there is more of a spread between buying price and selling price then yes, there is, but it isn't so huge as to be completely damning, and for most realistic teams it is much better.

[talkingpractice]

Whilst liquidity is quite low I struggle to see that they can be considered particularly inefficient. The probabilities sum to close to one in all, and if they're inefficient there should be some possibility of arbitrage, and I don't know of any such opportunity.

If you merely mean that at the lower-likelihood odds there is more of a spread between buying price and selling price then yes, there is, but it isn't so huge as to be completely damning, and for most realistic teams it is much better.

There's not much arbitrage because not many other outs are offering it now.

More importantly though, arbs in these markets (with low limits) bring the prices from Book A to Book B in line with each other, but they don't always bring the prices from Book A and Book B in line with reality. In the higher limit markets, these things are the same. But in things like this, sometimes the lines are just way off of reality. 2-3 of the 10 lines in the list you posted would get hammered in 3 minutes if they went up on Pinnacle with a $28k maximum wager (their max bet for regular season games).

[v-zero]

Fair enough. I still think they are interesting. Do you have another set of more efficient numbers?

[talkingpractice]

Fair enough. I still think they are interesting. Do you have another set of more efficient numbers?

Pinnacle will probably post them for 2 days or so around the All-Star break with about 1k-3k max bet. That's not enough to move them tons, but they'll move in the right direction a bit after that.

[talkingpractice]

fwiw, Hollinger has the Clippers as the runaway favorite (30%), with OKC and SAS at about 20% each.

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds

He has the Lakers at about the same as Minnesota and Orlando (all about 0.5% each).

[Eternal]

My current power ratings, sorted by defensive strength.

Code: Select all

 rk |          team          |  str  |  ofs  |  dfs  |  sos  
---+------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------
 1  | Memphis Grizzlies      | 1.064 | 0.992 | 0.933 | 1.003
 2  | Indiana Pacers         | 1.002 | 0.948 | 0.946 | 0.995
 3  | Chicago Bulls          | 1.012 | 0.968 | 0.956 | 0.999
 4  | Los Angeles Clippers   | 1.080 | 1.043 | 0.966 | 1.001
 5  | Brooklyn Nets          | 1.022 | 0.987 | 0.966 | 1.002
 6  | Atlanta Hawks          | 1.018 | 0.998 | 0.980 | 0.998
 7  | Minnesota Timberwolves | 1.009 | 0.992 | 0.983 | 0.995
 8  | Orlando Magic          | 0.980 | 0.966 | 0.986 | 1.000
 9  | San Antonio Spurs      | 1.071 | 1.056 | 0.986 | 1.002
 10 | Philadelphia 76ers     | 0.964 | 0.957 | 0.992 | 0.997
 11 | Washington Wizards     | 0.935 | 0.931 | 0.997 | 1.000
 12 | Detroit Pistons        | 0.970 | 0.967 | 0.997 | 1.001
 13 | New York Knicks        | 1.057 | 1.053 | 0.997 | 0.998
 14 | Oklahoma City Thunder  | 1.071 | 1.070 | 0.999 | 0.998
 15 | New Orleans Hornets    | 0.952 | 0.954 | 1.002 | 1.006
 16 | Boston Celtics         | 0.991 | 0.995 | 1.004 | 0.998
 17 | Golden State Warriors  | 1.020 | 1.025 | 1.005 | 1.002
 18 | Miami Heat             | 1.045 | 1.050 | 1.005 | 1.003
 19 | Utah Jazz              | 1.009 | 1.015 | 1.006 | 1.000
 20 | Portland Trail Blazers | 0.973 | 0.986 | 1.013 | 0.998
 21 | Milwaukee Bucks        | 0.984 | 0.999 | 1.015 | 0.997
 22 | Denver Nuggets         | 1.031 | 1.048 | 1.017 | 1.003
 23 | Los Angeles Lakers     | 1.023 | 1.044 | 1.020 | 1.000
 24 | Toronto Raptors        | 0.960 | 0.981 | 1.021 | 1.000
 25 | Cleveland Cavaliers    | 0.955 | 0.981 | 1.027 | 1.001
 26 | Dallas Mavericks       | 0.978 | 1.006 | 1.029 | 0.996
 27 | Phoenix Suns           | 0.969 | 0.997 | 1.030 | 0.999
 28 | Sacramento Kings       | 0.948 | 0.980 | 1.033 | 1.003
 29 | Houston Rockets        | 1.004 | 1.047 | 1.043 | 1.004
 30 | Charlotte Bobcats      | 0.928 | 0.982 | 1.058 | 1.000

-Chris

[v-zero]

fwiw, Hollinger has the Clippers as the runaway favorite (30%), with OKC and SAS at about 20% each.

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/playoffodds

He has the Lakers at about the same as Minnesota and Orlando (all about 0.5% each).

Those are a little on the other end of nutty for me... I may build some code to run a full season to post season simulation using my model at some point, accounting for the change in minute allocation in the playoffs etc. It can go on the list.

[Eternal]

If there's interest I could write code to compute playoff probabilities. No need to run simulations, as it's easy enough to compute exact probabilities under the model assumptions.

-Chris