As always, keep an eye on injuries and COVID Issues. All stats pulled are TEAM stats from the Last 8 games (L8) and don’t account for individual players. So be aware of new absences and players returning from an absence that could skew the L8 Team stats.
I will regularly post updates throughout the day and annotate with a “*”.
Records
Here is how the models have been performing.
ATS Record

O/U Record

Top Performing Models
Based on Average Win % between ATS and O/U.
- Random Forest – 57%
- kNN – 56%
- Neural Net – 55%
- Ada Boost – 53%
- Basic Model – 52%
- Linear Regression – 51%
- SVM – 49%
- SGD – 47%
Summary of Projections

ATS Projections

O/U Projections

Player and Team News
Teams on a back to back: Pacers (Bkn to Det) & Raptors (Was to Bos).
Tor/Bos: Toronto on a back to back, Celtics are still without Smart. Smart has been out 5 of the last 8 so his impact will be mostly accounted for in the stats. Boston has been a different team with Jaylen Brown on the court but he only missed 2 of the last 8 games so his impact should be accounted for in the stats.
Heat/Rockets: Rockets have struggled offensively without Wood who is missing his 4th straight game. His absence will be somewhat reflected in the stats. John Wall and Oladipo will both be playing tonight after alternating days off on back to backs.
Magic/Warriors: Evan Fournier and Aaron Gordon are out today and have been for the last 2 and 4 games respectively. Magic have struggled to score with Fournier off the floor scoring 92 and 97 points in the last 2 games against poor defensive teams. Warriors are still without their big man, Wiseman, missing his 6th straight. His impact should be mostly reflected in the stats.
*Evan Fournier has been upgraded to a game time decision. if he can go thats a huge bost to the magic offense.
Philly/Blazers: Nurkic and McCollum remain out, but they have been out for more than 8 games, so the stats have accounted for their absence.
Sharp Report
Early Money
Not a lot of betting data is available yet this morning.
ATS – Sharp money has come in on the Pistons (+5.5).
O/U – Some Sharp money has come in on the 76ers/Blazers Over (228.5).
Afternoon
Sorry everybody, I missed the mid day update, got busy with work.
ATS – Sharp money has come in on the Raptors (+4.5) & Rockets (+3).
O/U – Some Sharp money has come in on the Raptors/Celtics Under (222.5).
Model Projections
1. Random Forest (R.F.)
[Nerd Talk] Best performance is capped at about 50 trees, anything more than that and the processing time/power required for a very minor improvement increases exponentially.
Record
Record: 53% ATS, 61% O/U.
ATS

O/U

Model Projections

How to read the projections: The model type is at the very top. Matchups are denoted by the alternating white/green pairings, away teams are on top, home teams on bottom. The model analyzes the matchup and projects the home and away teams score (Proj Score). The difference between the home teams score and the away teams score give us what the model says the line should be (Proj Line). The “Line” column is what the Vegas line is at the time I run the model. The “Line Diff” is the difference in the projected line and the Vegas line. A positive line diff means the projected line is in the away teams favor compared to the Vegas line, negative means the projected line is in the home teams favor. The “Cover Prob” uses a normal distribution and the teams variance to project each teams probability to cover the listed Vegas line. Same thing for totals, “Proj Total” is the sum of the projected scores, “Line Total” is the listed Vegas total for the game, the difference between the two, and the probability to go over or stay under denoted by “O” and “U”.
Betting Edge

If you don’t understand what you are looking at, I recommend reading my post about betting tips. The percentages show the betting Edge, which is the cover prob (from above) minus the implied probability (-110 odds implied prob is 52.4%). If a team has a 92.4% chance to win and a 52.4% implied probability (or -110 odds), the Edge is 40%. The Edge alone doesn’t mean you should blindly bet it. To quantify, >35% is great value, 20-35% is really good, 10-20% is decent, <10 is ok value, blanks are negative value. ML is moneyline.
2. k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN)
The lazy learner (That’s what my grad school prof called it). Nearest Neighbor has performed best with 30 Neighbors.
Record
Record: 55% ATS, 58% O/U.
ATS

O/U

Model Projections

How to read the projections: The model type is at the very top. Matchups are denoted by the alternating white/green pairings, away teams are on top, home teams on bottom. The model analyzes the matchup and projects the home and away teams score (Proj Score). The difference between the home teams score and the away teams score give us what the model says the line should be (Proj Line). The “Line” column is what the Vegas line is at the time I run the model. The “Line Diff” is the difference in the projected line and the Vegas line. A positive line diff means the projected line is in the away teams favor compared to the Vegas line, negative means the projected line is in the home teams favor. The “Cover Prob” uses a normal distribution and the teams variance to project each teams probability to cover the listed Vegas line. Same thing for totals, “Proj Total” is the sum of the projected scores, “Line Total” is the listed Vegas total for the game, the difference between the two, and the probability to go over or stay under denoted by “O” and “U”.
Betting Edge

If you don’t understand what you are looking at, I recommend reading my post about betting tips. The percentages show the betting Edge, which is the cover prob (from above) minus the implied probability (-110 odds implied prob is 52.4%). If a team has a 92.4% chance to win and a 52.4% implied probability (or -110 odds), the Edge is 40%. The Edge alone doesn’t mean you should blindly bet it. To quantify, >35% is great value, 20-35% is really good, 10-20% is decent, <10 is ok value, blanks are negative value. ML is moneyline.
3. Neural Network (NN)
[Nerd Talk] The activation function for this 100 layer NN is a linear function. The solver is an SGD.
Record
Record: 51% ATS, 59% O/U.
ATS

O/U

Model Projections

How to read the projections: The model type is at the very top. Matchups are denoted by the alternating white/green pairings, away teams are on top, home teams on bottom. The model analyzes the matchup and projects the home and away teams score (Proj Score). The difference between the home teams score and the away teams score give us what the model says the line should be (Proj Line). The “Line” column is what the Vegas line is at the time I run the model. The “Line Diff” is the difference in the projected line and the Vegas line. A positive line diff means the projected line is in the away teams favor compared to the Vegas line, negative means the projected line is in the home teams favor. The “Cover Prob” uses a normal distribution and the teams variance to project each teams probability to cover the listed Vegas line. Same thing for totals, “Proj Total” is the sum of the projected scores, “Line Total” is the listed Vegas total for the game, the difference between the two, and the probability to go over or stay under denoted by “O” and “U”.
Betting Edge

If you don’t understand what you are looking at, I recommend reading my post about betting tips. The percentages show the betting Edge, which is the cover prob (from above) minus the implied probability (-110 odds implied prob is 52.4%). If a team has a 92.4% chance to win and a 52.4% implied probability (or -110 odds), the Edge is 40%. The Edge alone doesn’t mean you should blindly bet it. To quantify, >35% is great value, 20-35% is really good, 10-20% is decent, <10 is ok value, blanks are negative value. ML is moneyline.