Floored? Can you explain why?

Thanks for the well. Love it.

I thought I heard or read somewhere that you were a writer? Screenplays or something, possibly involved in writing project with Paul Phillips?

If so, would love to read anything.

Thanks

Bob, How riduculous do you think the amount people are chopping out of live poker games is? I'm sure your aware of games that chop very high like 5-10%. 25/50 -200/400.... Are beating some of these live home games almost the equivilant to beating a vig now? The games sometimes have very bad players in them but what are your thoughts on this... Thanks

LOL donkaments. Bob, ur appearance on the WPT as a 'playwright' in that oversized suit was epic. Ur hilarious, good luck with the NBA.

Διαβαζεις, μιλας καθολου ελληνικα?

Païdakia?

One other question: it seems to me that, just about every time a coach takes a player out due to foul trouble, he's making a mistake. Unless the player is playing in such a way that you think he needs to cool off and are thus reducing the chance he picks up more fouls, it doesn't make any sense to me to avoid the risk of having your player unavailable by *guaranteeing* that he's unavailable. Points count as much in the third quarter as they do in the last two minutes don't they? So why do coaches limit their players' minutes to make sure they're available at the end?

If you agree with me that sitting someone for foul trouble is a mistake, do you know of any coaches that generally avoid doing this?

phil jackson. and the announcers always go crazy when he does it.

note: when phil "leaves" his superstars in i have a felling they are leaving themselves in.

Do you watch all the games with sound on? Who are you favorite announcers ?

Do you think your life/ career path would have been the same if you won the LAPC instead of coming in second?

thanks for doing this, interesting read

I'm English and don't really understand basketball all that well, but this has always confused the hell out of me.

Why are NBA teams interested in hiring you? Granted, you clearly seem awesome at sports betting, but I don't understand how you used that to get their attention.

Anyway, really interesting thread.

Do you believe in momentum in basketball the way it's commonly used by commentators and fans? Like, Team A hits a few shots in a row, or draws an offensive foul, etc., and the announcers state things like "the momentum has shifted away from Team B" which implies the team with the momentum now is more likely to score in the future. To me it seems like a cognitive bias, and maybe there's something to it psychologically but it seems way overused.

I'm interested in his response to this, in general I disagree with your point of view for a few reasons. First, I think all possessions are not created equal and a basket in the 1st quarter is not the same as one in the 4th. So if you believe someone in foul trouble playing 32 minutes wherever is the same as playing 32 minutes during key points (last half of 4th quarter), I doubt that is the case, but like I said I'm interested in Haralabos' thoughts on the matter.

I think if you looked at something like avg fouls/game for someone and said "well he only avgs 4/game and he's got 3 in 2nd quarter he'll be fine," that would be a mistake too. For some reason he's being whistled at a higher frequency, maybe the ref sucks, maybe the player is hacking too much, maybe he's playing someone that creates a lot of contact (Maggette/Durant type people). Then once he is known to be in foul trouble he's at risk for being "attacked" by the opposing team more and might not help as quick/with tenacity, whereas he becomes a liability.

And also, it's probably highly dependent on the player who has the fouls and what he can do to prevent getting future ones. If you are covering Dwight Howard, you gotta come out, if you are covering Redick or Kidd or someone like that it's pretty easy to avoid future fouls.

this has always bugged me as well...eagerly awaiting response

He hasn't been comparable this season due to injuries and me being an avid Lakers fan might even prefer to have someone like Dirk for this post season given Kobes fingers, but Kobe is definitely a top 5 player in the league next year and LBJ probably won't have as illustrious as a career when it's all said and done. LBJ is good, but he's an arrogant douche and hasn't won a finals game yet, let's wait until we crown the king.

Okay so you have essentially two arguments, Foxwood Friends and Tskillz, if you only were able to pick one of the two FF viewpoint imo is much more correct.

I definitely don't agree with the assessment that a basket in the 1st quarter is not worth as much as a basket in the 4q. It may be easier to score (and this is also dubious) in the 1q than in the 4q but last I checked 2 points was worth 2 points no matter when it was scored.

In general you are always better off leaving a player in or briefly taking them out and then bringing them back in vs having them sit for substantial
minutes to avoid them fouling out.

What tskillz is saying regarding playing 32 mins with crunch time included vs playing 32 mins of non-crunch time mins being not equal may be correct. However this is not usually the way it works, in general you have teams sacrificing 8-12 mins of non crunch time to insure there players are available in the ~5 mins of crunch time.

This is what FF is referring to by stating they are guaranteeing a player sits out. Which I wholeheartedly agree with.

There are a few exceptions;

When a player's role is generally to play defense and especially to protect the paint. Its very hard for these players to play optimally if they are in foul trouble, this is also true if a guy has the role of stopper someone like Bruce Bowen in his prime etc.

I also disagree with the notion that we should ignore past performance on how likely a player is to foul, players do have historical foul rates and yes you should always consider context but it would be foolish to completely ignore these rates.

A player like LeBron James has a very very low foul rate, I can remember two occasions this year where he picked up 2 quick fouls and played reduced minutes. In both games he ended the game with 3 fouls, I blogged about one of these games when CLE played at LAC.

Another issue that is kind of glossed over in all of this but is actually VERY REAL is that refs are less likely to call a foul on a player who is in foul trouble than they are when he is not in foul trouble. At the MIT sloan Sports Analytics Conference someone presented a paper on omission bias that clearly outlined this

Here is a link

http://celticshub.com/2010/03/06/bias-in-officiating/

In one of your above posts, you wrote you make something like 8-9% yearly ROI. This is comparable to the return of several index funds over a long term sample. Do you do this for a living due to your love of the NBA? Because if it's strictly for profit, it would seem a hell of a lot easier to just put your money in an index fund, close your eyes, and see the same returns. Am I missing something?

I guess another legitimate reason for subbing out a player in foul trouble would be the difference in possession and clock management in the end game. It is very valuable to have a player who can create fouls and shoot high ft% late in games. I could even see this argument being used for a big man like Dwight Howard who would lower his team's need to foul on defense with his dominating post presence. valid at all?

Yes, the turnaround in sportsbetting occurs daily. If I have $50k roll, and am wagering $5k a day on sports bets then my yearly wagering is 365*5k = 1.825 mill or w/e. ROI is calculated on that 1.825 mill so thats like 160k a year compared to 9k a year from the index

Compounded/transaction, sure it's worth it. But he said yearly (below) Just wanted to confirm if it was a typo or not.:

great well, thanks

What do you think about Allen Iverson. His demise, the Sixers picking him up and his place in NBA history?

Will Elton Brand ever be worth his contract or do you think his best days are behind him?

Who do you think the Sixers should pursue as a coach? Should Stefanski be allowed to select the next head coach, or do you see him on his way out? Any chance Larry Brown comes back as Coach/GM and how good or bad would that be?

In regards to the corner 3 what do you make of Phil Jackson's comment about how often a missed corner 3 results in a fast break for the other team?

ah I see what you mean. My bad.

or is the ROI in sports betting based on the gross number of bets? I don't bet sports so I really have no idea.

Let’s get Haralabos on Bill Simmons' Podcast. I think it would raise his profile considerably and help him get a better front-office NBA job offer. After all, this is the podcast that David Stern does, not to mention Rocket’s GM Daryl Morey as well as a bunch of NBA players and broadcasters.

I think the best way is to contact Simmons and point out: this very thread, the fact that Haralabos is participating in ESPN’s own “TrueHoop's Stat Geek Smackdown 2010” panel and thus is already under the ESPN umbrella, and the fact that Haralabos is one of the most successful NBA gamblers of the past decade. Simmons is HUGE on gambling right now, he has gambling discussion as a regular feature on the NFL and NCAA BB (but doesn’t really have an NBA gambling expert), and is fascinated by sports gambling donks like Fezzik, whom I think Bob could crush.

One might also point out Bob’s aloneinthecorner.com blog, except it’s pretty sparse right now. It wouldn’t hurt if Haralabos does post a sick picture of his NBA-watching cave, though, if it’s sick enough it might be another selling point.

Haralabos might have an “in” with Simmons if presented as The NBA Gambling Guy as the hook, but once they get into the NBA and its mechanics and Haralabos flexes his muscles there, I’m sure he can easily transition to just simply the NBA Guy who needs to be hired pretty quickly, or at least needs to be featured on Simmon’s podcast as a regular until he does. It’s not some trick either, we all know Bob is hilarious, has extensive podcasting experience (Big Poker Sundays), and would truly appeal to Simmons regular podcast listeners because of his NBA insight and humor. This helps Simmons as much as it helps Bob.

All you silent lurkers out there, if you are enjoying this well, think how cool it would be to hear Haralabos on a podcast once a month or so during the NBA season.

So use this link to write an email to Simmons:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...back/sportsguy

Simmons’ Twitter is “sportsguy33” , so you can also tweet him about this thread.

Takes 2 minutes, so do it.

8-9% would be my ROI on each bet I placed that year. It was not unusual for me to have 1000's of bets placed in a year. The last year or so I was betting my ROI on each bet was around 8-9%. If my average bet was 100x I'd rate to make 8.9x per bet.