The Jerry West Clutch Player of the Year Tracker January 15, 2023 The NBA recently announced the addition of a new performance award for the 2022-23 season: the Jerry West Trophy, to recognize the NBA Clut...
An Elam Ending Win Probability Calculator March 07, 2021 Despite the muted enthusiasm (and questionable judgment) surrounding this year's NBA All Star game, most would agree that bringing back ...
An update to the Tension Index, with an assist from Claude Shannon April 11, 2020 The Tension Index, first launched 4 years ago on this site, has now been updated with a more solid mathematical underpinning. The purpose o...
New NBA feature: Dopplegamers November 17, 2019 A new feature has been added to the site's NBA Win Probability Box Scores , borne largely out of my own idle curiosity. Click the ...
The Hackulator: A Win Probability Based Guide for When to Foul April 22, 2019 In which we use advanced analytics to ruin basketball (as foretold by prophecy). What good is a sports win probability model? For one, it...
Judging Win Probability Models January 14, 2018 February 11, 2018 update: The Brier score chart at the bottom of this post had an incorrect value for the ESPN "Start of Game" sco...
20 Years of WNBA Win Probability Graphs September 06, 2016 The NBA season is still some two months away, but the WNBA season is in full swing. Regular season play has now resumed following the Olympi...
Inspired by last night's game 7, a new metric: The Tension Index June 20, 2016 Prior to Sunday night's game 7, I lamented the lack of in-game drama in this year's NBA finals. The average excitement index of tho...
Exciting Finals, Boring Games June 19, 2016 Regardless the outcome in tonight's game 7, we are guaranteed a compelling story. Either the " jump shooting " Warriors put a ...
Endgame strategy in the NBA May 08, 2016 Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the #quick2 (sometimes). When a team is trailing by three late in a game (e.g. less than 30 s...
New box score feature: Pace and Efficiency Report April 24, 2016 I have added a new feature to my NBA Win Probability Graphs and Box Scores . If you click the "pace" tab, you will see a table tha...
The 2015-16 NBA Regular Season Review April 16, 2016 Using the various NBA tools I have built for this site over the years (see the sidebar on the top right), here are the top performers, top p...
Steph Curry is the MVP even if he doesn't play another game this season March 13, 2016 MVP debates across all sports tend to devolve into tiresome semantics. What does "most valuable" mean? Is it the best player? The ...
Hero Ball follow up - Inequality and Efficiency March 06, 2016 As a follow up on last week's hero ball post , here is how inequality correlates with shooting efficiency. In that original post, I used...
The Hero Ball Index February 27, 2016 In last year's conference semis, Lebron James, with just 1.5 seconds left and the game tied, hit a 21 foot shot from the corner ...
Heroes, Goats and Garbage Men : New Clutch Shooting Reports January 03, 2016 Clutch shooting isn't easy , and neither is defining it. The NBA defines clutch shooting as any shot taken in the last five minutes of t...
Stephen Curry is No Stat-Padder December 12, 2015 It's been kind of under the radar , but Stephen Curry is having quite the season. He leads the league in a variety of box score s...
New Live Feature: The "SO" calculator October 31, 2015 You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think whether you should. Depending on your perspective, ...
New article at FiveThirtyEight: A Win Probability Guide to US vs. Australia June 08, 2015 I have a new article up at FiveThirtyEight: A Win Probability Guide to US vs. Australia . Continuing my rather unhealthy obsession with...
Heavy Favorites Usually Don't Surrender Big Leads (usually) May 15, 2015 The Houston Rockets pulled off the second most improbable comeback of this year's playoffs last night. Down by 19 with 2 minutes left i...