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 “*”.

Added Pace of play and a couple other stats to the models. All projections have this data incorporated, but the records will reflect the old model 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 – 56%
Neural Net – 56%
kNN – 54%
Ada Boost – 54%
Basic Model – 52%
SVM – 48%
Linear Regression – 48%
SGD – 47%

Summary of Projections

ATS Projections

O/U Projections

Player and Team News

Teams on a back to back: Wizards (Home), Kings (Home), Clippers (Home), Cavs (LA to SF).

Bulls/Pacers: Lauri Markannen will miss his 5th straight game for the Bulls. His absence will be partially reflected in the stats.

Rockets/Wizards: Oladipo is out for the Rockets, his absence will not be reflected in the stats. Wood will miss his 6th straight for the Rockets, his absence will be partially reflected in the stats. Rockets offense has really struggled with Wood out, scoring over 101 points just once in the 5 games he has missed. Westbrook may get a rest day on the second day of the back to back, the Wizards offense has scored 106, 103, & 105 in the last 3 games Westbrook has missed.

Hawks/Knicks: Mitchell Robinson will miss his second straight game for the Knicks. his basence will not be reflected in the stats.

76ers/Jazz: Joel Embiid is considered a game time decision with back spasms. Mike Conley has missed 4 straight for the Jazz, his absence will be partially reflected in the stats. Jazz are 9-1 straight up and 8-2 ATS in the last 10.

Cavs/Warriors: Wiseman has missed the last 7 games, his absence should be mostly reflected in the stats.

Heat/Clippers: Paul George has missed the last 5 games and Kahwi Leonard missed yesterdays game. Both are considered a game time decision for todays game.

Nets/Kings: Kevin Durant has been ruled out of the next 2 games due to a hamstring strain. His absence wont be reflected in the stats.

*Kawhi Leonard now officially out.

*Andre Drummond is now out for the Cavs.

Sharp Report

Early Money

ATS – Some Sharp money has come in on the Bulls (+6.5), Jazz (-7.5), & Heat (+5.5).

O/U – Some Sharp money has come in on the Bulls/Pacers Under (225.5).

Mid Day

ATS – Some Sharp money has come in on the Rockets (+1.5),.

O/U – Some Sharp money has come in on the 76ers/Jazz Under (227).

Late Afternoon

No noticeable late Sharp action.

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: 50% 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.