+1

top 10 nba players in order for 2010-2011 season

How often do you play fantasy bball and how often do you win?

If you were a mediator what would you change about player contracts?

I personally don't have a problem with guaranteed contracts. But I think if you have a player that's injured for a long period of time then that money shouldn't count against the salary cap. It just seems if you sign a player to a long term contract and he gets hurt that kills the franchise. (I'm thinking about Big Country Reeves). Not that I think that's what kept the Grizzlies from being good.

what do you think about the nba's current "feeder system(s)"?

the year out of college rule, the college game in general, brandon jennings (and others to follow) decision to play a year overseas, etc.

could you/ could you have used your data and sim to predict division 1 college games or is the variance too high and the data pool too large and the sample size too small?

did you play basketball yourself at all?

I probably would make an all in type of bet (or series of bets) but probably not that specific bet. I think people when young should take considerable risks, I wouldn't make the same bet if I was 27 or older, but at 25 years of age i think its a no brainer.

I talk about it some on the circuit interview that I did, I linked this interview here;

http://aloneinthecorner.com

Take a look at the Mavs record before Cuban became the owner, and take a look at the record since he became the owner. Its pretty clear he has been one of if not the best NBA owners during that time.

I am not a big fan of these lineup or player x vs player y questions, especially if they aren't current players. Sorry.

The biggest pots I ever won and lost happened (I think) the same night in the same game. I am positive about the biggest pot won, but not sure about the biggest pot lost (its close).

The pot I won was a 3 way all in on flop hand in PLO where I had ~55% equity. The total pot was around ~700k or so.

The pot I lost was with a pair of Aces vs an A high flush draw in NLH all in on flop, I lost around 300k in that pot.

I am pretty careful about my bankroll nowadays, I am too old to go broke and I find it much harder to find super +ev spots in poker or other forms of gambling/investing.

The next car I buy would probably be an electric car or a car that has the least impact on the environment. My current car is a Range Rover and I feel somewhat guilty.

How connected are you with your Greek heritage? Do you go there often/speak the language? Any guesses about the future of the country after all that's happened?

A fellow Greek from Greece

You are an NBA GM and land the #1 pick in this years draft, who do you take? John Wall or Evan Turner?

These are good very detailed questions.

I think steals are valuable only because the resulting possession has a much higher EV than a possession that starts off off a DREB or a made shot etc.

Offensive Rebounds also have a higher ppp than regular possession.

Yes I think teams underrate both offensive rebounders, if you are trying to evaluate how good a rebounder a player is you can pretty much ignore defensive rebounding and focus on orebounding. Orebounding is much more indicative of true rebounding ability.

Help Defense when the main defender is already engaged is damn near useless. Help defense when you are forced to close out due to rotation or because of a blow by is valuable.

I don't post in the threadzilla too much but I do read it quite often.

I don't think Gasol has changed so much defensively. I think the lakers have done a better job overloading the strong side, this is due to them having another year of experience in this system. It is very tough especially defensively to separate an individual in a teams defensive system. You can't discount the impact of having Artest essentially lockdown on the perimeter, it makes guarding on the interior much easier.

I definitely don't agree with the Dirk statement, if you do in fact pull away the other teams PF or C and you can have an advantage rebounding at the SF position (as the mavs likely do with Marion) this is a tactical advantage. Same thing if the PG is now in the paint w/ Kidd.

Dirk is also uber efficient in the halfcourt I would deem him to be in the top group of players in terms of value.

I think if you are a player who stands in the corner and hits wide open 3s then its a huge factor. Durant plays on a team that stresses ball movement and shares the ball very well he shouldn't be punished for this. He is definitely not overrated -

In fantasyland terms, If I could pick any player (age is a factor) to build a team around starting next year, I'd likely only pick LeBron and Dwight Howard before KD.

My favorite team to watch by a significant margin is OKC, they have a bunch of good young players who seem to all be of high character and play the game with passion. They are far and away my favorite team if I had to pick one.

As for players I love watching LeBron and Durant play.

I think a team that plays at an above average pace can definitely win a championship if they had the right personnel. I am not a fan of D'Antoni as an ingame coach but he came extremely close to winning a championship. The year Joe Johnson got injured they were likely the best team in the league. They got eliminated by the actual champions (spurs) twice and those series were hotly contested and could have gone in a different direction if a few things changed.

No clue where LeBron will play, I hope he stays in Cle.

I think Mike Brown is a great defensive coach, and a horrible offensive coach and tactician.

I play some basketball, I used to play in a rec league when I lived in Montreal not so much of late.

Its possible to do anything, I think if you have the strong background you are describing you are better off getting involved in finance.

what do you think of john hollinger? is your approach to analyzing the game at all comparable to his?

playoff predictions this year? (sorry if this one has been asked already)

I had a math teacher (thank you Mr Shepherd) for the, 8th and 9th grades who didn't teach us anything, never gave us tests and had us watch movies or sit around and shoot the **** for hours. We must have watched Cool Hand Luke 30 times over the course of 2 years.

When I got to high school I was so far behind in Math it was criminal (yes he got fired). I tried taking 00 level math classes in grade 10 but I had honestly never heard of 80% of the things they were talking about.

I instead took 01 (they were called O dumb) math classes in high schools where I learned such things as how to write a check and make a budget.

About 7 years ago I started learning statistics on my own, over the last 4 years I have attempted to do the same with regression analysis. Most of the software platforms R or Stata for instance will do all of the math work for you so its more understanding the theories behind the math that I think I have tried to learn.

The key to my success I think was that I had an above average ability to recognize what was happening on the court and why. I have also hired some really great people to do work for me over the years, most of the heavy math stuff that I have done recently has been done by others.

I would say when I was betting it was 70% half totals and 30% FG totals.

As for what keeps me occupied, I bought a house in 2007 and tore it down and built a new one, much of my time in the past 2 years has been working on that.

I did all of the programming and organizing of the media room / brains behind the house (all the electronic/media equipment for instance is located in one area and is run to all the different locations throughout the house).

I have also been transferring / translating much of my nba work from betting to player evaluation and team building and team strategizing. The end goal being to be able to have our simulator structured in such a way that someone with very little cpu knowledge would be able to login and run simulations and understand what he is seeing / doing.

I am not much of a poster here or elsewhere, I do read APBR but thats about it.

Cleveland or Orlando.

I don't think the gambling plays that much of a role to be honest. I think for the most part the toughest thing is just being a complete outsider and when I started I had very few if any contacts.

I am not sure what if anything I am looking for, I feel like if something comes up that feels good, I'll accept it. So far that hasn't happened. Sorry for being vague but I don't think talking too much about this will help me get a job.

Right now I am just kind of doing the work because I enjoy doing it, to be honest looking for a team job was a good excuse to take a break from gambling. I was a bit burned out as it was - I had been doing it non stop for 10 years or so.

I am definitely not at a point where I'd take whatever I can get, I could have taken a fairly decent position 3 years ago (should have for sure) but it was my first offer and one of the first times I had met with a team. I thought the offer was too low but in retrospect it was a pretty good offer.

One day I'd like to buy one, its definitely not a priority or anything though. I also think the league has really regressed over the last few years, I am not as big into the CFL nowadays as I was in years past.

Bah I knew that clown posting that trash below me would make you skip. If it's not too much trouble, I'm genuinely interested in your answers to my qs..thanks and gl

top 5 online sportsbooks/ exchanges

Prime Shane Battier, whats his league rank?

How bad is Derek Fisher?

Just want to say thanks for doing this hbob, probably tailed your steam often in the past especially with 1h totals at pinny last year....

I think Hollinger is kind of clueless in some ways to be honest. He definitely does a lot of work and some it is quite good but for the most part I think anyone that is analyzing basketball and hasn't tested their theories against the spread is wasting my and your time.

You can be anti gambling or opposed to gambling but its silly to ignore the resource that is the opening line and the closing line. Its very similar to trying to figure out what company X is worth but ignoring its share price or the stock market altogether.

Now lets say you did want to test your theories, models or rating systems against the lines - people underestimate how difficult this is to do properly.

For instance the easiest thing is just getting a reliable set of opening and closing lines.

Once you have the lines now how do you know which players were available to play that day and which players weren't. Any NBA system has to be player centric to a certain extent. You have to make sure you not only have the opening lines but also the available knowledge that went into creating that line / market.

If you don't have a database of available information (player scratches injury information etc) its nearly impossible to accurately test your system historically.

And finally lets assume that you are able to collect all of the above, do you do a proper job of building and testing your model?

This will probably come off as arrogant but if you aren't doing the above its pretty hard for me to care about your rankings or models.

In what ways did your life/career change after doubling up in 2000?

I don't think that arbitrage in finance relates much to sportsbetting - this is mainly due to their being very little opportunities or liquidity for live betting.

For the most part you are usually betting on two separate events, there are correlations but for the most part these have been discovered and eliminated by the books.

I haven't really spent any time doing any live betting or even looking at it, but there have been instances of correlated events in the past.

I remember during the SLC Winter Olympics books were offering sides and totals on the hockey games. A few books were allowing you to parlay this was fun times.

You could bet Sweden -3.5 and over 6.5 for instance (or the reverse). The same can be said for NCAA football half sides and totals. You used to be able to parlay Team X -15.5 and over 26.5 in the 1st half. I realize that this is not exactly what you are referring to but its probably somewhat similar.

A lot of the work I have done or am currently doing involves regression.

As for fixed events I don't really know of any that haven't already been reported in the press ASU basketball for instance. The lone exceptions would be the few Donaghy games I spoke of in that truehoop.com interview.

I went from betting 300 to 500 a game to betting 5k or more a game. I moved out of my brothers basement in Winnipeg sold my skycap business and followed a girl to Montreal. Other than that nothing really changed.

Missed this one earlier,

I have posted my playoff predictions for True Hoop as well as here