As always, keep an eye on injuries, back to backs, COVID Issues, and players returning from injury. 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 “*”.
ATS has been absolutely TERRIBLE the last 3-4 days. O/U is still performing well. I am going to make tweaks to the models and track them over the next few days to see if it improves ATS performance.
*Added Pace of play and a couple other stats to the models. Posted the updated projections for Random Forrest at the bottom. All projections tomorrow will have this data incorporated, but the records will reflect todays initial projections. If the new stats skew the models and negatively effect the performance over the course of the next week, I will revert back to the old model (today’s original projection).
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%
- Neural Net – 55%
- kNN – 54%
- Ada Boost – 52%
- Basic Model – 52%
- Linear Regression – 50%
- SVM – 48%
- SGD – 47%
Team Consistency Update
What this chart is showing is each teams Variance, Standard Deviation (Std Dev), Ave Score for the season, average score over the last 8 games, and a Trending value. The list is ordered from lowest team variance to most team variance. The variance is how wide spread the data is, a team that scores between 100 and 102 points every night will have very low variance, whereas a team that scores anywhere from 75 to 145 on a given night will have very high variance. The Std Dev is the square root of the variance and is a good measure for how consistent a team is… NOT how good or bad a team is, but how consistent they are. Std Dev shows the amount a teams score typically deviates from the average on a given night. The Hornets score (typically) will deviate about 6.42 points from there average on a given night (Last 8), where the Wizards score (typically) will deviate 20.95 points from their average on a given night (Last 8). Obviously the lower the Std Dev the easier it is for my models to project the score and provide higher probabilities. The Trending value is an indication of if a team is scoring more points over the last 8 game than there season average. If they are averaging more points over the last 8 than their season average, the trending value will be positive, if the are averaging less than their season average, the trending value will be negative.
Summary of Projections
ATS Projections
O/U Projections
Player and Team News
Teams on a back to back: Hawks (Home), Knicks (Was to NY), & Jazz (Home).
Rockets/Knicks: Oladipo and Wood are both out, Wall and Tucker are game time decisions, although it looks likely Wall will play. The rockets have struggled offensively without Wood who has missed the last 4 games. Rockets have lost all 4, scoring just 106, 94, 101, & 94 in those 4 games. Woods absence will be somewhat reflected in the stats. With Oladipo out the Rockets offense who will have to rely on John Wall & Eric Gordon to carry the load. Mitchell Robinson appears to be doubtful for the game for the Knicks, his impact will not be reflected in the stats.
Nets/Warriors: Warriors are still without big men Wiseman and Looney who have missed 6 and 5 games respectively. Their impacts will be mostly reflected in the stats. Good news for the Warriors, Nets Big man DeAndre Jordan is out today as well so there won’t be a huge disadvantage down low. His absence wont be reflected in the stats. Bad news for the Warriors, Kevin Durant appears to be returning for the Nets. Durant has missed the last 3 games, so his impact will be somewhat reflected in the stats.
Heat/Jazz: This one should be exciting! Heat have won 4 straight and appear to be back on track after a rough start and all the COVID issues. But the Jazz have been the best team in basketball over the last 10 games, going 9-1 straight up and 8-2 ATS. Jazz are on a back to back, but the Heat may be without Tyler Herro who was a late scratch last game to to COVID protocols. Mike Conley is also a game time decision for the Jazz. He has missed the last 3 and his impact will be somewhat reflected in the stats if he plays or not.
*Mike Conley is now officially out.
Sharp Report
Early Money
Not a lot of betting data is available.
O/U – Some Sharp money has come in on the Pacers/Hawks Under (226.5).
Mid Day
No noticeable Sharp action on ATS. Some money has come in on the Knicks, but its likely tied to the Oladipo news.
O/U – A lot of Sharp money has come in on the 76ers/Suns Under (228). Some Sharp money has also come in on Rockets/Knicks Over (209.5) & Heat/Jazz Under (218.5).
Late Afternoon
No late report today.
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: 51% ATS, 62% 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. Neural Network (NN)
[Nerd Talk] The activation function for this 100 layer NN is a linear function. The solver is an SGD.
Record
Record: 50% ATS, 60% 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. 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: 52% ATS, 56% 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.
New Stats Incorporated 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.
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.