did you have any idea you were so loved on 2p2? does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

where do you stand on clutch? what about team chemistry?

if you were given ultimate power for an organization is there a specific type of team and coaching philosophy you would build? to be more specific, do you believe in cobbling together the "best" players you can get or building around a specific player (like finding a center, surround him with jump shooters or find PF and PG combo and surround them with great defenders, etc)? is there a basketball philosophy that you believe is the best or most efficient?

is there any way that working for the new Nets owner is not the best possible job on the market now? can you imagine your life being even more awesome?

thanks for all the responses, really interesting read.

Hey Taylor I think we have nodded heads in the hallways at the Rio or bellagio.

I am beyond the resume stage, i have had meetings and made contacts with several teams and or people affiliated with the league etc. If I wanted a job tomorrow I could have one. I feel like I am better of waiting for the right / perfect opportunity vs taking a job just to get my foot in the door.

That may be a mistake but I am not desperate and I am not doing this for the money so if it never happens I am okay with that.

I love both Chris Paul and Deron Williams, I don't think you can go wrong with either of them. My subjective instinct tells me that CP3 is the better of the two and when I simulate Utah with CP3 and NOR with DW it agrees.

I'd take Wade over Bosh and its not even close in my opinion. I like Joe Johnson but he isn't in the same league as the other max players imo.

Nuggets vs Jazz tonight - 212.5 O/U?

The only advice I'd give you would be if you make your offer and the guy jumps at it in a split second, you might not have made the best deal.

Yes I am a huge poker fish especially on the internet, I think I am one of the few guys who has played High stakes poker live who actually admits to losing on the internet.

Hey Jumanji this is a tough one, I'd probably go with CP3 or Dwade.

Hey Bob,

Thanks for doing this. Two questions:

1) What do you think of Wages of Wins? I don't feel qualified to judge their system of evaluating talent as opposed to something like adjusted +/-, but my assumption is that when some smart people w/a strong background in statistical analysis put a lot of thought into basketball analysis, I should probably defer to them

2) Looking back at your "all-in on the Lakers" bet, knowing what you know know about money management and variance, would you still make the bet? Why do you think nobody else saw the awesome potential of Kobe and Shaq with Phil Jackson such that the price you got on the Lakers was as good as it was?

Besides MySQL, what other technology was used in your database and toolset?

Did you use any other open source software?

Did you do any of the development yourself or was it all hired out?

Do you have any interaction with Jim Makos? Any thoughts on him? I bring it up because he's another Greek poker player/sports bettor that has a popular blog.

What do you think your strengths as a poker player are?

If you could steal 3 traits from three different poker players to enhance your own game what would they be and from whom?

Hey-

Really interesting well so far. Had a few questions about variance.

Describe some of the "downswings" you've had/that are possible/probable. If your average bet is 5k, and losing 100k is a 20 bet downswing, what is the biggest downswing you've had (in number of bets), and what are some standard swings like?

(This might all just be binomial distribution stuff since the results are generally dichotomous [win/lose] but I'm curious what it's like in practice)

This is a tough question -

There are several different ways to approach this and it really depends on who your dominant player is (assuming you are lucky enough to have one).

On Offense, the ideal situation would be to have a dominant big who commands a double team and surround him with players who can score on the perimeter. If you can add a penetrating pg then you are pretty much set.

This is what the spurs did with Duncan, and this is what Orlando is doing with Howard (minus the penetrating PG). Its also a good example of how when Nelson is actually clicking for ORL they are very tough to beat because now you can get wide open looks from penetration, or from dumping it in to Dwight.

Unfortunately there are very few dominant bigs so this strategy is pretty tough to employ. I think the real x factor in team building is building around what you have or what you can get.

For the NBA you are really just biding your time until you have a great opportunity, be it luckboxing the lottery or making a great free agent acquisition or trade.

And then when you do luckbox, you have to make sure you make the right decisions afterwards.

The two best teams in the league right now are CLE and ORL - they both double luckboxed the lottery (getting the #1 pick and also having a dominant player available at #1). Orlando actually had a decision as a lot of pundits were predicting that Okafor should have gone number 1.

If you don't have a star player, or someone to really build around then you really want to just build an exciting competitive team while spending the least amount of money doing so.

The nets job sounds kind of fun.

Rbk, can you please stop clogging HSNL threads with your habitual ass-kissing?

Boom shakalaka!

If you believe this, then why do you advise taking CP3 or DWade and not Bosh?

I have read the wages of wins, and their new book Stumbling on Wins, as well as have religiously read their blogs. I guess its kind of like Reality TV where I end up watching Reality tv shows more when I strongly dislike the people on the shows.

To put it bluntly, these guys are clueless. Whats worse is they are extremely arrogant which is a rare combination. Their method for estimating wins produced would have zero shot of actually being successful either in team building (which is tough to prove).

It also fails miserably at predicting outcomes of games against the spread. (which is very easy to prove).

The Laker bet was actually quite dumb, I probably could have gotten a similar price by parlaying their respective series odds once the playoffs started or picking and choosing my spots. I would have been able to avoid disaster (shaq injury during the regular season) plus had my bankroll to work with for the whole year instead of tying it up.

I was young, impetuous and probably not too bright back then.

Just to give you some perspective I made a similar bet for about the same amount of money the following year with ~20 days left in the season and got a better price at 7-1 on the same Laker team.

This was a much better bet because Fisher had just came back from injury and they had been playing outstanding going into the playoff run. They were also proven winners much more experienced .

In general future bets are pretty poor bets, the vig on these future bets is quite high.

When I speak of dominant big man, I mean dominant.

Duncan
Dwight
Shaq
Hakeem
Yao

etc etc

Bosh is closest to Duncan in that they are both 4s (although Duncan is more of a 5 than a 4) and he is nowhere near as good as Duncan. Especially on defense where its not even close.

Where do you think the big name free agents will end up? Mostly Labron, Bosh, Wade, Amare, Antoine Wright and Joe Johnson?

People asked about the database - the database is MYSQL. The database is probably 10% of the overall technological operation.

I have employees who do pretty much all of the tech stuff although I am constantly learning.

Never heard of Jim Makos.

I think my greatest strength as a poker player was that I rarely if ever tilted. I have pretty good composition and am not too emotional at the table. Its also one of the reasons why I suck at internet poker - I quit playing internet poker because I found it tilted the *** out of me.

The traits I'd most like to have nowadays would probably be the fearlessness that some of these guys have. Someone like Durrr who can bluff off 800k in real money (and do so with purpose not because he is steaming) is pretty special in my eyes.

I'd also like to be as attentive as someone like Kenny Tran who basically never misses anything, whether its a misdeal or a missed ante of a dealer shorting the pot from time etc. The same applies to him picking up tells mannerisms.

Phil Ivey is the same obviously just a lot more low key about it (I don't think I remember Phil Ivey calling himself a genius). That comes from his confidence, he knows he is the **** and he could care less if others know. So I'd probably want to have Phil's confidence and all the things that lead him to being as confident as he is.

I have spent countless hours trying to figure out where Antoine Wright will go, unfortunately I know as much as you do.

wtf

I posted this earlier, but I guess you skipped over it.

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. Do you think one big edge that good teams have is that they are closer to equilibrium on offense.

hey bob,

how many games per night did you bet on?
did you watch all those games? could you bet xx(x?)k and just leave the house to do random recreational stuff like going to the movies?

interesting stuff so far. the vanishing is a good call...

Who is the best perimeter defender in the league?

Is Don Nelson actually hurting the growth and development of the overall game of Steph Curry and Monta Ellis with their style of play?

What is Durant's ceiling given that he is only turning 22 this year?

Is there a team that isn't efficiently getting the most out of their players given the talent that they have? which could be due to the coach or system?

Thanks.

I am unclear on the protocol when doing Wells but if it means that I have to answer every question then count me out.

That being said since you are persistent -

Some coaches are good, some coaches are bad, and some coaches don't care. I'd put Nelly in the don't care camp.

I think the big edge that good coaches have is that they understand what it takes to win, and that includes different things vs different teams. Some nights you want to have balanced scoring, and other nights when a matchup is favorable and the other team isn't adjusting then overusing a specific player is the way to go.

CLE played at UTA this year and for whatever reason Sloan elected to never double LeBron and take the ball out of his hands. LeBron down the stretch either got fouled or scored (and got fouled some of the time) each time he tried he went to the bucket. I don't think optimal strategy would be to try and seek balance. Same thing with Game 5 of the 2007 ECFinals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LHe...eature=related

Unfortunately for GSW Monta Ellis isn't LeBron James.

I think a good coach has to probably have the same 3 traits I mentioned about poker (fearlessness, attentiveness, and confidence).

Especially confidence, I think you have to be willing to try something that is a little different that might make you look stupid.

The coach who first fouled when up 3 with <5 seconds left probably looked stupid. Its now pretty much accepted as the proper strategy by most people in the know (save for Nate McMillan of the Blazers).

bob,
Thanks for the answer. You don't need to answer every question, just what you want.

I've been asking this indirectly and getting unsatisfactory answers for myself, so I guess I'll try a direct approach.

I am 24 with no attachments, a computer science degree and about 100k in savings. What would you do in my position? What would be the best route to get rich? I am burnt out from poker. Assume I am fairly intelligent. Please don't say "start a business" without any more elaboration. If I knew what kind of business to start, I would.

I would probably have had a bet on around 30% of the games most of these games would likely involve a 1h bet a 2h bet and a FG bet so the number of bets would be much higher than the number of games bet.

I watched every game, I was and probably still am a sicko when it comes to NBA basketball. I''ll take a picture of my setup tonight and upload it to the well but no - I didn't leave the house.

In fact from 2002-2009 I rarely if ever would not be firmly planted in front of my televisions and watching NBA basketball.

The lone exception would be once I got the tourney poker bug I'd make a few trips a year to play tournaments during the season. I'd usually go to Vegas for the December Bellagio tourney and usually play the LAPC in LA. Aside from that unless it was a Thursday night, you could expect me at home watching basketball.

Maybe I need more of a life but I just really enjoy watching NBA basketball.

Great thread so far. Thanks a lot for doing this.

A few more questions if you don't mind.

What do you think of NBA2k10 as a tool? Do you ever use it? It's an advanced, accurate basketball simulation and intuitively I think it could be helpful.

What do you think the role of the 6th man should be? A lot of good teams bring their 3rd or 4th best player off the bench, presumably because they are more valuable in that role than starting. Do you think spreading out the talent this way is better than starting the best 5 man unit? (If its too player dependent don't worry about it).

Advanced defensive statistics are notoriously unreliable.The best one have ordinal rankings that conform to reality but they don't measure the worth of good defense accurately. Because of this (and a variety of other reasons) I feel that defense is extremely undervalued and it shows when you look at salaries. I guess this isn't a question.... but thoughts?