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The 50 Biggest Playoff Upsets, 1991-2009

Posted by Neil Paine on December 4, 2009

Back in the spring, I used Statistical Plus/Minus to predict individual playoff series outcomes (and to pretty decent effect, too -- I mean, yes, it did miss on Cleveland-Orlando, but then again so did just about everyone, including the bigwigs at Nike). Anyway, today I'm going to use a similar method to look back on […]

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Posted in Analysis, Data Dump, History, Statgeekery, Statistical +/- | 9 Comments »

’10 Nets vs. ’99 Clippers vs. ’89 Heat

Posted by Neil Paine on November 30, 2009

Longtime readers of the BBR blog will know that, going into the 2009-10 campaign, two teams had opened the NBA season with 17 consecutive losses: the 1988-89 Miami Heat (an expansion team) and the 1998-99 L.A. Clippers (whose ignominious streak came in February and early March, thanks to the lockout). Well, move over guys, because […]

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Posted in Analysis, History | 5 Comments »

How Good Would Bias Have Been?

Posted by Neil Paine on November 23, 2009

As you might imagine, Len Bias' name comes up quite a bit in Bill Simmons' new Book of Basketball. As a lifelong Celtics fan, I understand the emotions that surround the very mention of Bias' name -- for instance, my father was convinced Bias was going to be almost as good as Bird, and take […]

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Posted in History, NBA Draft | 21 Comments »

Layups: Can “The Book of Basketball” Stop a Bullet?

Posted by Neil Paine on October 30, 2009

Bill Simmons' new 700-page tome (and I just got it in the mail today, it's a legit 700 pages, there are no typeface shenanigans going on here) is called "The Book of Basketball", and the amount of work he put into it certainly lives up to the title's lofty aspirations. But for as many trees […]

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Posted in Just For Fun, Layups | 4 Comments »

2009-10 Minutes Played Projections

Posted by Neil Paine on October 27, 2009

In the comments section of our Eastern Conference Preview, a reader asked for the minutes played distribution that was used for our projections. Please see the complete table after the jump.

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Posted in Projections, Season Preview | Comments Off on 2009-10 Minutes Played Projections

2009-10 Eastern Conference Preview

Posted by Neil Paine on October 26, 2009

Click here for the Western Conference Preview After many months of projections, it's finally time to unveil our official preseason forecast. They're based on our Win Shares projection system, with rosters/depth charts current as of Sunday, October 25, 2009. We used Win Shares to establish a base team strength rating for each squad, and then […]

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Posted in Projections, Season Preview | 13 Comments »

2009-10 Win Share Rates, Updated

Posted by Neil Paine on October 22, 2009

Following up on the work we did here about a month ago, here are the final versions of our projected Win Shares per minute, broken down into offensive and defensive WS/mp. The biggest change here is that I used the new Win Shares formula for past seasons, the new Simple Projection System to create the […]

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Posted in Season Preview, Win Shares | 10 Comments »

Your Obligatory Preseason Data Dump

Posted by Neil Paine on October 19, 2009

Courtesy of Doug Steele's terrific preseason stats page, here's a big ol' data dump of advanced numbers so far for the games that don't count:

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Posted in Data Dump | 2 Comments »

Early Win Shares-Projected 2009-10 Standings

Posted by Neil Paine on September 21, 2009

So, after a long week of programming, here's the first pass at a Win Shares-based projection system... The calculation is structured the same as the Simple Projection System, except that this method is used. Playing time was estimated based on Ed Kupfer's formula for game missed due to injury, a minutes per game formula (MPG […]

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Posted in Projections, Season Preview, Win Shares | 13 Comments »

2008-09 NBA Scouting Reports: Central

Posted by Neil Paine on September 17, 2009

Burning Question: Will Detroit see more playoff success under Michael Curry than they did under Flip Saunders? Point Guard: Detroit has the luxury of one of the best point guard situations in the Eastern Conference, just as long as Joe Dumars doesn't trade from that strength to bolster the Pistons' frontcourt. It all starts with […]

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