How good of an NBA player do you think John Wall will be? better than Derrick Rose?
I bet OKC at 75-1 to win the NBA title halfway thru the season? is this a good bet? will the NBA ever let the Lakers lose in round one?
Great well BTW, thanks for taking the time

thanks for doing this, bob. i remember reading an interview with you (about a year ago) and was fascinated by how well you knew your stuff.

which, in your opinion, offers a better lifestyle, being a professional poker or being a professional sportsbetter? would your answer change if you weren't a huge sports fan?

as a complete novice, how difficult do you think it would be to develop a winning strategy betting on a sport like golf? could you outline the steps you would take if it was your goal to ultimately make a living betting on golf?

What is your poker history? How did you start, what stakes did you grind at, when did you start playing seriously, etc

this!

I don't know why I get so bent out of shape over this, but my god the average fan overrates Kobe. As I said earlier, hes not even a top 5 player any more, and you can make a very legit case that Gasol is the best current player on the Lakers.

Just go look at the stats of the two players...its not even close really.

Would you ever bet against a big TV market team in the playoffs if Dick Bavetta was officiating?

I think it depends. If I could crush online cash like Durrr or Phil Ivey that would be a pretty tough lifestyle to beat.

Playing live poker or traveling to tournaments is a pretty brutal lifestyle in my opinion. That is something I definitely would not enjoy doing.

As for your golf questions, I'd probably try and access some historic golf mathup odds. Then I'd search around for as much golf data as I could get organize it and try and see if I could come up with something predictive out of the data.

Thank you for doing this.

I'm a fan of Bill Simmons and wonder if you read him or what you think about him. One of my favorite things he talked about doing with an NBA team was stocking the end of the bench with a couple super freak low priced athletes to come off the bench when other teams had their backup PG in and pressing them. So my question would be do you think there is any merit to trying that? I personally would love to see it then again my team employs Brian Cardinal and Darko so anything would be better than that.

Aside from a layup or dunk, no other shot has a higher ev (points per attempt) than a corner 3 point shot.

Its the shortest distance of any of the 3 point shot and you get 3 points for it if it goes in. There are 2 point shots that are further (tougher) that net you around .80 points per attempt and the corner 3 point shots are ~1.5x as efficient.

So its the most effective shot aside from a close in paint shot, AND a team game planning around the corner 3 is a good crude indicator of effective game planing.

In a perfect world all you would want to do is take layups or corner 3 point shots. Of course basketball doesn't work like this - and if the other team knows that is all you are trying to attempt they would just go out of their way to protect these areas so you have to balance it.

A good example of this was evident when Seattle played San Antonio in the 2005 playoffs. The Spurs really closed out on Seattle's 3 point shooters and Seattle had to resort to a midrange game.

It actually worked out "okay" for Seattle because they had some really good midrange shooters (Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis for instance) they ran above historic EV on the mid range shots because they were better more open looks, but still lost the series 4 games to 2.

I personally haven't thought this through in great detail, but I'd mess around with the idea of not having a salary cap, but also not having any guaranteed contracts.

I talked about this some in the interview that is linked earlier in this thread as well as in the NVG thread.

The Lakers are overrated in my opinion this year for a couple of reasons.

For one people just think they are as good as CLE and I don't think this is remotely the case. So its not that they are brutal, its just that they are the wests #1 seed and they are the defending champs and they aren't as good as people think they are. There post All Star Break record vs winning teams has been really bad (even if you toss out the last week of the season when they basically tanked / rested good players).

Specifically what makes them really bad is their lack of depth, and their terrible guard play. Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown are really bad defenders. Brown is good at one thing on defense, thats recovering and blocking shots. He gets a lot of practice at this because he is near the league lead in blow bys.

I can't imagine being an NBA head coach and actually getting respect from the players. Can you imagine talking to someone and trying to get them to follow your lead, and oh by the way you are craning your neck looking up at him the whole time. I imagine its tough getting respect from someone you are constantly looking up at.

I think Bill Simmons is entertaining and a good writer, I think he is a good example of how having a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I don't know if he is serious when he says he could make a good GM or if its all an act. I don't think Bill Simmons is particularly sharp when it comes to the NBA.

I wasn't a fan of him signing Elton Brand to that big contract. I didn't like the Eddie Jordan hire. Those two things stick out immediately as pretty poor. I'd have to go back and differentiate between his timeline and the previous GM's timeline to make a better assessment (which I won't sorry).

Yes in the next 5-7 years a team without Dwight or LeBron would win a title, this seems like a no brainer. If LeBron signs in the West then maybe you could make the argument but even that seems dubious.

I like OKC to win a title in the next 7 years thats for sure.

A lot of the variance in a 7 game series has to do with HCA. The variance is reduced some, but there is still quite a bit of variance in my opinion in a 7 game series. There are several examples of this in recent years.

I do think John Wall will be better than Derrick Rose, but its based on some very small samples and my gut instinct.

OKC at 75-1 was a good bet in that you beat the number by a good margin, but a bad bet in that you have like zero shot of cashing

I think all this talk about the NBA rigging outcomes isn't really relevant any more, I am not sure if it was ever relevant. But its especially not relevant nowadays.

In general how good are coaches in allocating usage among their players To use an obvious example of a team that is doing a bad job of it Monta Ellis is leading GS in FGA when basically everyone else on the team is a more efficient scorer. This doesn't account shot creation; opening lanes for other players, etc. He is still a very good scorer, but is clearly getting overused to you think one big edge that good teams have is that they are closer to equilibrium on offense.

why dont you feel celtics have a legitimate shot at winning the east? i understand theyve played really ****ty in the 2nd half of the season, especially vs other good teams., but theyre goal going into the year was to get to the playoffs with a healthy roster. in the playoffs, there is minimal travelling and 1 to 2 off-days between games, it seems like theyre a team thats built really well for playoff basketball.

Why is Dwayne Wade hardly ever compared to LBJ and Kobe? He's won a title with relatively weak supporting cast (something LBJ can't say he has done and Kobe has had very good supporting casts obv in his title runs) and is still considered significantly below the other two for some reason.....

Chances when Cleveland and Orlando meet, Shaq and D Howard fight? I love Dwight (and think Shaq is kinda ******ed for constantly making fun of Dwight) but seems like Patrick Ewing needs to step up his coaching of Dwight's inside moves? I feel like they are still very raw and non existant at times...


Cool well btw and gives good insight on why its next to impossible to beat sportsbetting if you dont treat it like a FULL time job...

Thanks for doing this.

I'm a huge advocate of a hard cap, partially-guaranteed contracts (NFL signing bonus style), and elimination of the individual max.

How do you think eliminating guaranteed contracts would influence the importance of coaching (both in a general sense and on an in-game basis)?

Or is talent level so much more important than coaching that even when presenting players with a strong incentive to obey coaching, it won't noticeably affect outcomes (however you care to define that)?

I won't explain it but here ;


The X axis is age,

The Y axis is a metric I use to determine worth.

thanks for doing this. not sure we've ever crossed paths but we played a lot together back in 2004-2005 in the ub games (miss those days).

-have you sent resume/CL's to all the NBA teams? With your knowledge and background I'd be shocked if you couldn't get a job if you really wanted it, gl with it. Maybe the NBA itself would want to hire you, something to consider too.

-Where do you stand on Chris Paul/Deron Williams and where do they rank overall?

-Assuming the Bulls can't sign LeBron, would you go after Bosh or Wade first? What do you think about Joe Johnson on the Bulls?

This is foolish thinking, teams that win titles don't just turn it on and off come playoff time. Teams that are built well for playoff basketball are also built well for the regular season and are built well for closing out the 2nd half of the season.

They also have to win 2 series on the road vs CLE next round and vs ORL the following round. Thats tough to do.

thanks for the explanation on the corner 3, interesting

can you give us any advice on negotiating to buy paintings in ceasars palace? especially limited editions ones?

was coletraindog your stars name? FISH CAKES!!!!!!!!!!!!

tied for 2nd best road record in the nba, we'll see.

In the GM draft linked earlier, I got the 4th pick. With a high pick I also received a low cap of $57,600,000. The first 3 picks were obv LBJ, Howard and Durant. Who do you go with as the 4th pick and why? It seems like there are several ways to go after first 3.