Timex, any update on this bet and when it is going to happen?

If he's an 80% shooter then on avg he'll get it in 176 attempts, which is free money given an entire year of unlimited attempts.

If he's 75% he'll need 7294 attempts or a median of 5056, which is still doable. 7294 is 20 attempts per day. 20 attempts probably isn't a ton of time, esp since he gets to restart whenever he wants.

He might be in trouble if he's worse than that. If he's 70% the avg is 642,853 attempts! However, I would think that when you're practicing only FT's every day, it shouldn't be hard to improve to 75%? The key is he'd need there to be enough time left in the year by the time he improved to that point.

He's posted two recent updates:

June 12:
Haven't taken a shot in 3 weeks!

And in reference to him accidentally taking a grandmother home from the club one night:

If my free throw bet has taught me anything- it's that granny is always the way to go

He has until the end of the year right? So we may have to wait a bit longer.

If you're restarting optimally it's a lot more attempts than that.

If he’s 75% and misses the first 7293 attempts is it more likely he completes 90% on 7294 or needs another 7294?

The main thing is that restarting optimally would allow him to squeeze in more attempts per day and devote the majority of his time to the more promising attempts. You're right that it would also increase the avg # of attempts before a success, when counting each early quit as an attempt.

One way to look at it is that all of his earnest attempts will have a head start, so instead of Binomial(100, .75) it's more like Binomial(95, .75) or whatever. Eg his chance of success after starting 5-0 is 1 in 2892. Really he'll need fewer lengthy attempts than that since he'll also quit if he misses the next few, and so on. So the raw 7294 gets significantly filtered down.

I feel like any half-competent male ought to be a favorite with the right strategy and a lot of time on their hands. Of course, coming up with the optimal strategy is part of the skill too.

ETA: a better way of saying all that is, his avg attempts-til-success will increase but his avg shots til success will decrease.

My simple calculation ignored the possibility of him improving, so it implied that each attempt was equally likely (like flipping a weighted coin). IRL by the time he gets to the 5000th attempt he might have improved his shooting % by a bit, making the next attempts more likely to succeed.

I also ignored the psychological time pressure factor. His attempts on Dec 31 might not be the same as his attempts in June.

More maths in NVG please

the importance of being earnest

He is attempting the 20 in a row today. It's on Twitch.

I bet under 18 so I have a sweat. His longest streak of the day is 14.

https://www.twitch.tv/mikemcdonaldpoker

Every time this thread gets bumped, I always hope something is underway. Not disappointed.

Mike's form definitely has improved. I like how well he is heeding the coaching thus far: the way he positions his feet, the way he loads the ball, and the way he grips the ball. He's still clearly deliberate with each step but in time, all of those parts will get more comfortable.

From there, his overall shot still looks awkward because he is still clearly developing the muscle memory from the point he loads the ball to his follow through. But I give him time, and he's conscious of things many people don't even think about.

One thing that is immediately noticeable: he is quite inconsistent in the timing between his legs and his release. Sometimes the ball leaves his hand shortly before his heels come off the floor, other times they happen simultaneously. This affects to transfer of power to his upper body, which means sometimes he's pretty much relying on his arms to shove the ball rather than move through it*. (Speaking of which, this is where the oft-mentioned leg strength will help.) Again, this will develop with practice.

I'm a little surprised he isn't being instructed to bounce the ball before shooting. Usually, this gets the shooter into a rhythm, which in turn helps in timing the coordination between the lower and upper body. But I'm sure that varies from person to person, and perhaps the fear is that he'll become inconsistent at his grip on the ball.

Anyway, I'll be interested in seeing how well the second half of his shooting motion develops in the weeks to come. As is, he has already developed a foundation that many of us in this thread don't have and wouldn't even think about. Rooting for him! (No offense to those betting against him.)




*Note: if there is one major reason why I'm a terrible shooter, this is it. Perhaps out of laziness, I don't use my legs well at all, which is odd because they've always been disproportionately strong. It's also why I'm wildly inconsistent at throwing a baseball/softball, why I don't swim well, while I'm slower than your average tortoise.

So.... Are you good at anything?

This challenge is getting very interesting



He is now analyzing his shots with an infrared camera and some tracking software called RSPCT. As you can see it's measuring the angle and location of each shot. Locations are scored on a 100-point scale. 100 is dead center, and 50 is landing dead on the rim.

Apparently Timex is the first retail customer to buy this setup, as it's generally used by professional teams LOL

Timex is the best

Glad you've been enjoying it! RSPCT has been interesting for a few reasons
- its nice getting the immediate feedback on your shots and its much less noisy than tracking makes/misses. Works kind of like an allin EV graph or something
- I'm generally more motivated by things with lots of data associated with them. I often prefer simulator golf to real golf etc
- since they work with most NBA teams they're quite connected in the industry. The way I got in touch with my coach was after I mentioned my location they just knew an NBA shooting coach was only a 1hr drive from me

Their background comes from competitive rifle shooting where the ~whole sport it about optimizing precision while analyzing data to optimize performance and I think they just viewed basketball as a much "bigger" sport that isn't as data-driven as they felt it should be and wanted to build hardware/software to allow teams to better assess their shooting.

I'm loving the system- if anyone has kids that are serious enough about basketball to be attempting to get basketball scholarships I'd 100% recommend them.

ban HUDs from basketball

How much did RSPCT cost?

He mad 84/100 the last stream. Pretty impressive, I would say?

Scored 40/50 and after a little break 44/50

Didn´t expect him to be that near the winning line so quickly...

What I have found it costs only $500

Haha sports-wise, pretty much no.

The incremental approach was what I brought up earlier. This wasn't about shooting 100 shots in a row. It was about getting good at 50 shots in a row (or 25 shots in a row as I suggested) then taking a little break before the next increment.

That HUD is awesome. Super smart investment, imo.

Its a good bit more. I googled and found an article mentioning $500 -> I think long-term they want some lighter version that can be purchased in bulk and be in that price range but for now its quite a bit more.

I know they don't list pricing on their site and that a reasonable amount of guys working in the NBA are around these forums so its probably not really reasonable for me to say what I paid in case they overcharged me or overcharged someone else etc. I'd say its quite expensive but especially when my baseline for expected costs was comparing to golf simulators I felt it was quite reasonable.

This rim is much softer. I now have an 88, and 87, and an 86 but none of them felt particularly "clean" and strongly doubt any were the equivalent of an 82 or higher on a proper rim (and potentially none were above a 78-79).

Hopefully the next few weeks I start getting more access to a real rim and can put up a "proper" PB across 100

I have an idea
combine the camera + more data => more betting

Imagine that the data from the camera were available. Now we have timeseries data which is something like

Date, time, attempt #, angle, location, success/failure
Date, time, attempt #, angle, location, success/failure
Date, time, attempt #, angle, location, success/failure
...


If all of this data were made public, we could estimate how well Timex improves as well. This would improve the primary betting market because more information about Timex' likely success would be available. Additionally, we could also bet on other things along the way, such as his average number of attempts, successes, etc.

I guess there are not that many great bets that immediately come to mind but providing this data does unlock information which can be use for gambling and/or analysis purposes.