Comments on: Ten Thousand 2010s

By: DSMok1

DSMok1 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:51:35 +0000

"Anyways, it's funny how there are so many 82-0 and 0-82 seasons in the simulations! Perhaps the sims can't properly take into account teams not giving it their all every time out?" It's because real life SRS does not follow a normal distribution. When they used "a mean of 2010_SRS and a standard deviation of 3.082", that was inaccurate--the standard deviation is correct, but the distribution should be unsymmetrical. There should be a much longer and thicker tail toward the mean of NBA teams, and a steeper decline toward the other side... in other words, a distribution skewed towards the mean....

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:36:18 +0000

If a team knows that their seeded at the top before the regular season ends, the tendency of teams and coaches/staff is to rest their starters to be ready for the playoffs. So an 82-0 team is really unlikely to happen. It would be nice if it did though.

By: Jared Ras

Jared Ras — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:10:18 +0000

Look at Phoenix. They lost their 2 games to the Cavs in the regular season (only 2 losses), then beat them in the Finals!

Really interesting stuff here. I think that besides the 180 anomalies in 10,000 seasons (the undefeated and the fully defeated), the numbers work out like one might expect. It's strange, though, that there are so many zeros in the rank-order draws. In fact, double-digit champs were divided at the 16-mark, the number of teams in the playoffs per year, and the triple-digit champs were divided at the 9-mark, pretty close to the number of higher seeds in the playoffs each year (8).

By: Tsunami

Tsunami — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:42:50 +0000

Yeah, that's my guess too, Jeremiah. This is really interesting.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:48:24 +0000

Nitpicking here, but just because 2008 SRS wasn't statistically significant doesn't necessarily mean it should be thrown out. Statistical significance is important, but I think if you throw out 2008 SRS, you should have a theory as to why your intuition might be wrong. I'm guessing it doesn't make a big impact on the regression though. Anyways, it's funny how there are so many 82-0 and 0-82 seasons in the simulations! Perhaps the sims can't properly take into account teams not giving it their all every time out?