if you want to go into more details feel free. what % of nba 1q lines were deeming beatable by your calculations?

playing only 82 games a year, how do you account for the varibles in teams changing, players ability changing, etc on a year to year basis? and then how do you account for the other million varibles like amount of rest, importance of game, opponent has weak center, strong defensive guards, etc, etc?

when you add varibles like, we are up by 15 going into the fourth, then i think you have a clear pattern to a coaching style - he will play slow, he will give our starters this many minutes, that you can analyze.

when you are looking at the game from the very beginning, i dont get how you can make an educated guess at the total?

and since he said there are 5 guys who make their living this way who are the other 3?

lol he had all those stats in his head or he had notes?

was 80k... I remember it on an old interview when Gavin Smith and Joe Sebok did their show on Cardplayer.

Does this mean you met Henry Abbott? 'Cause frankly, he's the most awesome person in this story anyway. True Hoop is such an awesome blog.

im really just taking some stabs in the dark because im not a sports bettor and ive thought about this for only a few minutes, but..

i would guess that you come up with a totals distribution using efficiency and pace and then apply a subjectively derived modifier based on 'softer' variables like travel time (although i think you could find some statistical proxy for fatigue by looking at pace over preceding games and deriving some 'decay rate' based on # of days rest/travel..w/e.. basically come up w/a statistical relationship for pace over successive periods). i dont really know. interesting subject. probably similar in some ways to what differentiates good players from great players even though they both have access to the same set of hard data.

while we're talking nba, can someone please explain to me why i could get 5.2:1 pre-vig on the celts for game three? the celtics had the second highest efficiency differential in the history of the nba (something like that). there is no way they were worse than 40% (45%??) to win on the road in game three. what's the deal?

if you bet the over/under I'd assume knowing who is guarding who and their effiency against/ fouling avg is paramount. Match ups aren't always PG vs PG, SF vs SF. etc.

nlfool: i really like that. knowing match-up likelihoods and foul rates for each match-up would def help you predict totals.

pretty much

yeah, thank god there are no gamblers who might own an NBA team:

I think it'd be so easy to affect the over/under by calling just a few extra fouls to get a team into the bonus a couple of minutes early. It seems to change the way the game is played once a team reaches the bonus. I see so much of those calls 25+ft away from the basket when the guy isn't in danger of losing the ball I'm tempted to think a lot more refs might indulge in this. What's the avg nba ref salary? It must be real tempting making so much less and seeing all these young players/coaches/owners/stars courtside etc balling

The Lakers post-Gasol trade had a higher differential than the Celts. Plus they were at home for game 3. If Bynum had recovered in time, this year's Lakers team post-Gasol trade would've been the best team ever in the NBA.* But 5.2 to 1 does seem a bit high, even though the Celts have sucked on the road this playoffs.

i don't think you understand how the league works.

officiating is a big part of it. everyone in the world knew the lakers would shoot a lot more free throws than the celtics after game 2 was called pretty horribly (10 laker fts 38 celtic fts). i got better than 5:1, but the officiating situation was probably about 70% of the reason i bet the game.

1. with your team down several points w/ a few minutes remaining you really want LeBron over Kobe? Are you guys leveling that LeBron > Kobe, or wat?

2. harlbob is awesome
3. decent article though a bit boring at times
4. lol Doc Rivers

http://www.82games.com/CSORT11.HTM

Assuming all Haralabobs claims about his success betting the NBA are true (no reason not to believe...plays 200/400 for fun) he would be worth many millions / 10's of mills to an NBA team. His situation is quite similar to that written about in the book Moneyball where stats analysis is used by the Oakland A's management to be one of the better teams in the MLB with one of the lowest payrolls (this is what the book claims but I don't know much about baseball though).
He will probably never get his chance though due to the ignorance and arrogance of people towards Haralabobs type of analysis. Persistant underperfomance by so many hundred million dollar franchises is baffling when there is such a strong salary cap and draft system. They could probably go a long way to fixing this by hiring Haralabos for a mill or two a year rather than paying the same to some bench warming stiff.

Interview shows how interesting Haralabos can be. PLEASE TRANSFER THIS TO BIG POKER SUNDAYS. That show has gone from brilliant to pathetic almost overnight. Need more about Haralabob and less repetitivness about boring internet poker scandals.

That show was the first time I had ever heard of him. He was hilarious. In particular the 'big hands' was awesome. Also, I wonder if the offer he made on that show to give Scott Huff the bracelet if he won a WSOP tourney still stands.

Oh Snap!

The first time I saw or heard of him was the WPT final table on the Travel Channel in a suit and he seemed like a complete douche nozzle. Then he was hilarious on that show and of course big poker sundays too. They said they were going to dedicate the last part of Big Poker Sundays to sports betting but they haven't really done so.... Give Bob His Own A Show!.. they couldn't pay him enough to do it.

A number if factors. 1) He mentions how seldom there is a foul shooting disparity of 20+. It had just happened in Bostons favor the previous game thus the expectation that the refs would lean in LA's favor in game 3. 2) Also Bostons record was garnered in what is easily the weakest of the 2 conferences.3) Boston has underperformed on the road the entire playoffs 4) the back against the wall factor that LA was facing

i actually would have put the celtics chance of an outright win much lower than 40%...that said they played the game quite close and could have won

These number guys are already being used in the NBA as consultants. For example, Jeffrey Ma, the basis for the main character of the book Bring down the house and the movie 21 works as a consultant with the Portland Trailblazers.

Some teams employ them, but do they listen to them?

Bob's stats are all well and good, but has he ever actually played the game? Does he have a stat that measures hustle or grittiness?

I would think that's heavily correlated with defensive stats. That's basically the ingredients needed for a good defensive player.

I opened the link and who do I see as the 3rd most clutch player in the nba? Dirk Nowitzki!? is there a bigger choke artist than this guy? he does all these amazing things in the regular season and then completely bombs in the playoffs.

the list is pretty misleading because it's measuring clutchness by only showing regular season stats.

Good article. If I was an owner I would definetly give him a job.

Lol at Doc Rivers.