Go Watch Role Models. That Is All.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

All of my friends say they support me without me even asking. Some of them are two-faced and think I'm lighting money on fire. On the other side of the spectrum, I have a friend who just recently invested a sum of money with me and has been returned with a 15% ROI in the first 2 days. Unsustainable, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if I doubled that money by the end of March Madness. Granted, that bankroll is only mid 4-figures which makes it an easy job, but I'm less concerned with the monetary aspects of the act, and more with what it says about their belief in me.

Which friend are you?

My Favorite Time of Year

College Basketball is Here. Can't wait for March!

Some people have complained that there isn't enough analysis/strategy on this blog, I can oblige:

The following is a graph of all D-1 college basketball games played in the last 3 years:



The X-axis represents the difference in points each Home Team is supposed to beat the Away Team by. This is predicted using data on pace(# of possessions/game) and efficiency(points/per possession) - putting the two together you get points/game for each team.
The Y-axis represents how the Away Team actually performed in comparison to these expectations.

Without knowing shit about CBB, you can see a couple of things:
1. This model has all data points spread around in a pretty even circle. ie, it is accurate and will be contributing highly to my sundance steak/new wardrobe/we still need a surround sound system in the house/thai hooker fund.

2. The circle is off-centered, to the right, showing the worth of Home Court Advantage. In this case, the circle is shifted ~5.1 points. Should Coach Dawkins offer to play all his home games at somewhere random in exchange for being spotted 5 pts? It doesn't matter. They are equal. Stanford would be pretty pissed off it couldn't sell tickets though.

Credit to Keith for helping me make graph.

Edit: To clarify, when people try to predict things in sports they are trying to come up with the fair line, where the distribution is even on all sides.(ie. When I say "The Blazers should win by 11 tonight", I am really saying, ~50% of the time they will win by <11, ~50% the will win >11, in a roughly symmetric distribution on both sides). This is why the circle is important, because it does just that. In contrast, here is an example of a model that is not predictive:

Overdue trip report from Warriors/Hornets opener

I’m going through my normal morning routine(online poker session, having lunch with a friend, booking sports bets) when my roommate calls from work. He asks if I want to go the Warriors opener tonight. Im like “wtf hell yes!” I finish booking my bets which includes 1 unit of Warriors +6 and go to take a nap. Apparently, the managing director at Lehman VC has had season tickets for 4 in the 8^th row for several years now and gives them to his underlings when he doesn’t go. One of the guys I went with said he went to 10+ games last year.

I get up at just as my roommate is getting home and get ready to go. Just as we’re about to leave, I see that the widely available line has moved to +7 making my +6 terrible, but one of my books has 7.5, so I tack on another unit. We pick up some friends and head to Oracle Arena. We get there just in time to get some of the last few warriors season opener t-shirts.

I generally think that viewing a sport in not the best way to learn about how good a team is, what wins, what a team needs to do to improve, etc. Without a large sample, it’s very difficult to pick out a sizeable difference in play and even then, people who blabber about having watched every game usually aren’t as quality of a source as you think they’d be. However, when the stat heads point out stuff, I look for them so here a few basketball related thoughts you should take with many dashes of salt:

Warriors: According to Basketball Prospectus, the Warriors project to be a much better team than what the ESPN-esque talking heads/public predicts, though there are a bunch of a considerations at play. They bring up a whole bunch of salient points that I watched for tonight.

BP: Baron Davis’ loss will be felt in the ways that people don’t really think about. Maggette is actually a more efficient player on the offensive end, despite a higher usage rate. Rather, it’s Davis’ defense and passing/running the point that will be missed and admittedly by them, not accounted for in their projections.

• What I saw: Checking now, the Warriors only had a true point guard on the floor for 13 minutes the whole game, which leads to the void led by Davis on the offensive end. Oftentimes, the ball would be brought up by Jackson and this definitely led to him not setting up for good shots and to turnovers. I’m not sure if the plan is to do this until Monta Ellis gets back - I highly don’t recommend it(BP also projects Marcus Williams relatively well if he ever gets a shot).

BP: A strong year for the Warriors relies on more of the offense running through Maggette(& Ellis when he gets back) and less from the inefficient Stephen Jackson.

• What I saw: Jackson hit a lot of tough shots tonight. A couple of 3s where he was well guarded and even a buzzer beater at the end of the third quarter to pull the Warriors within 1. However, his 26 points came at the expense of many missed shots(9-24 FGs) and 5 turnovers. Oftentimes, there didn’t seem to be a design for plays other than Stephen Jackson isolating and putting up a shot(sometimes a high % one, oftentimes not) In contrast, Maggette put up 27 points in a highly efficient manner(on 8-11 FGs and getting to the line frequently) However, a bulk of the points came in the 4^th quarter, which meant that for 3 quarters he wasn’t the focus of the offense.

BP: Contributions from Ronny Turiaf and Kellen Azubuike off the bench are critical to the Warriors success this year.

• Azubuike: If you don’t count Lamar Odom and if Nelson sticks with a short rotation, Kellen could be a nice candidate for Sixth Man of the Year. Despite missing some open jumpers, he played well – got to the basket, played well on defense, forced several turnovers on top of his own steals. Don’t have much to say on Turiaf based on what I saw today. Surprised the box score says he played 24 minutes. He was quite funny bumping up the crowd and doing funny dunk animations before free throws though. Would also like to add Biedrins to this group who played well today, smashing the offensive boards and playing reasonably well against Chandler.

Hornets: Basketball Prospectus has them regressing some this year despite the fact that Chris Paul’s performance is supposed to repeat his MVP-worthy season of 07-08. The problem is that all of his sidekicks - Peja, West, and Chandler are expected to regress some in the coming season.

BP: Their projections are particularly unkind to Stojakovic who is expected to downgrade from go-to scorer to shooting specialist this year.

• What I saw: In only watching this game, BP really hit the bulls-eye. Peja was pretty much only relegated to open jumpers after the ball was in West or Paul’s hands, and he didn’t even make the most out of them. Two of his 4 missed 3’s (1-5) were wide open, one on a break where Chris Paul gave him all day.

BP: In their research, Chris Paul’s performance last season was unprecedented. The most comparable seasons to Paul’s most recent one where he was 3 standard deviations above league average (in per minute win %) are Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson’s early seasons(though differences in style and height make the comparison not perfect).

• What I saw: Every fastbreak Chris Paul was involved in was money in the bank. However, despite this and good numbers tonight, practically nothing in the half-court was run through CP3, despite the fact that a well-set pick often led him to be matched up against Biedrins or Harrington tonight with open lanes. This seemed to be partly a personnel issue as the Warriors often went with a “bigger” lineup, an efficiency I’m surprised the Hornets didn’t exploit more tonight.

Remember, 1 game – limited sample size.

The game was pretty awesome. It was a close game from buzzer to buzzer and went down to the wire though there was a disappointing climax(thats not what she said). I covered both the +6 and +7.5 bets, though that was in pretty good shape for most of the game so the final score(Hornets 108, Warriors 103) was quite disappointing. They had a bunch of kids dressed up as zombies and performed Thriller in one of the timeouts and its sad that the kid who was MJ probably has better moves than me. Supreme Soul performed during another timeout which was a pleasant surprise for me. One of the girls with them is actually one of my acquaintances at this bboy practice I go to which was surprising. Disappointed by the crowd after hearing all the stories about the Warriors/Mavs series. Lastly, I’m convinced that Isela the warrior girl wants me to do nasty things to her. Can’t wait to go again!(that’s whats she said)