Wagering...I Mean Clairvoyance Update

As I think I have said before, I am working on a system that predicts NBA games against the spread. I am still waiting for a big enough sample size to be completely confident in my system, but I have had some limited success recently.

In its simplest form, my system tracks every possession of every team and measures how the team performs per possession against what the average NBA team does (on both offense and defense). I was unhappy with how the initial system worked, so I tweaked the system to have four different variations -- my original version, a recent performace (last 10 games) version, a weighted version (that weighs more heavily recent performance), and a version that is weighted and incorporates some regression to the mean.

Once I have reached my threshold sample size, I will begin posting picks for recording purposes. For right now, my best performing system is the weighted one with regression to the mean, which has gone 30-18-1 since I have started tracking it.

I have two concerns that I have yet to effectively address. I am trying to incorporate something that accounts for back-to-backs since it seems that teams play worse on the second half of them. Also, when I expect a team to win in a blowout, I have not found an effective way to account for garbage time.

I expect to begin posting picks early in the new year (once all teams have played 30 games).

New Rankings

Here are the most updated rankings (through games played on 12/20)...

CLE...........214.24
BOS...........211.49
LAL...........207.36
NOH...........205.39
ORL...........205.16
POR...........205.11
DEN...........203.99
HOU...........203.33
ATL...........203.36
SAS...........202.88
DAL...........202.07
PHO...........201.89
UTA...........201.40
CHI...........199.87
IND...........199.31
DET...........199.06
MIA...........198.63
TOR...........198.12
CHA...........197.60
PHI...........197.59
MIL...........197.35
NJN...........197.33
NYK...........196.98
MEM...........195.50
LAC...........195.05
GSW...........194.37
WAS...........193.47
SAC...........191.85
MIN...........191.72
OKC...........190.36

Given their most recent performances, it is remarkable that the Nuggets are still 7th. This can probably be atrributed to the fact that there are only about five teams playing well so far (with Utah and San Antonio to join them soon). The bad news is that they play a really good Portland team twice next. They will be lucky to win one of those games.

Boston projects to be better than they were last year. The crazy thing is that it appears that Cleveland is significantly better than the defending champs. It looks like we are headed for one heck of an Eastern Conference Finals. I don't expect Cleveland's performance to continue, but if it does, they will be the best team in NBA history (numbers-wise). So, the Nuggets shouldn't be too embarassed by their home defeat the other night.

The Lakers have lost their defense. In their first few games, they were the best defensive team in the NBA, but in their last ten games they are playing at 97% of the level of an NBA average team. That is not the stuff of the juggernaut people (including myself) were making them out to be. The Lakers numbers for the last ten games give them a rating of 200.43, making them an NBA average team. Since they are immensely talented, I do not expect this to continue.

I was not the biggest AI or Camby fan when they were on the Nuggets. Camby because he brought nothing to the table offensively and AI because he was bad on defense and was incredibly inefficient on offense. Well, the Nuggets got rid of both of them and seem to be better, while both the Clippers and the Pistons (AI and Camby's new teams) are worse than expected.

I will post a wagering update later today...