Henry Abbott has arranged for all the great minds in news age basketball statistics to put there respective formulas to the test. Here's the lineup:
David Berri is Associate Professor of Economics at California State University-Bakersfield and lead author of "The Wages of Wins."
John Hollinger writes for ESPN.com. He created the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and several other statistical measures.
Justin Kubatko runs the popular web site Basketball-Reference.com. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University.
Jeff Ma co-founded PROTRADE in 2004. He was the protagonist, under the name Kevin Lewis, in the bestseller "Bringing Down the House," the story of the MIT blackjack team.
Kevin Pelton is the interactive marketing coordinator for the Seattle SuperSonics and a writer for the team's site. He runs the APBRMetrics Forum for basketball analysis.
Mike Kurylo is a writer and founder of KnickerBlogger.Net. In 2006 he developed OTTER, a unique non-biased team ranking system.
Abbott's mom: Henry's mom hasn't watched all that much NBA since "JeRomeo" Kersey retired.
They'll all be making series predictions throughout the playoffs and they all like Dallas in the first round.
John Hollinger writes for ESPN.com. He created the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and several other statistical measures.
Justin Kubatko runs the popular web site Basketball-Reference.com. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University.
Jeff Ma co-founded PROTRADE in 2004. He was the protagonist, under the name Kevin Lewis, in the bestseller "Bringing Down the House," the story of the MIT blackjack team.
Kevin Pelton is the interactive marketing coordinator for the Seattle SuperSonics and a writer for the team's site. He runs the APBRMetrics Forum for basketball analysis.
Mike Kurylo is a writer and founder of KnickerBlogger.Net. In 2006 he developed OTTER, a unique non-biased team ranking system.
Abbott's mom: Henry's mom hasn't watched all that much NBA since "JeRomeo" Kersey retired.
Kevin Pelton says "the harsh reality of the playoffs has a tendency to expose weaknesses and head-to-head success doesn't usually carry over."
John Hollinger says the "Warriors looked good enough down the stretch ... but Dallas is too good for Golden State to beat them when it counts, especially since Golden State has no answer for Dirk."
Jeffrey Ma points out that "the Warriors' free-throw shooting is a concern as they rank just 26th in the NBA in FT% (the Mavs are second in the NBA). Missing freebies will hurt the Warriors."
Mike Kurylo is expecting a Dallas sweep: "The Warriors have 2 main strengths: forcing turnovers and good shooting. Unfortunately for them, those strengths don't match up well against the Mavericks. Dallas is good at keeping the ball and holding their opponents to a low field goal percentage. Nellie's poor rebounding team will be their undoing, as the Mavs are the most well rounded rebounding playoff team in the West."
--------------------John Hollinger says the "Warriors looked good enough down the stretch ... but Dallas is too good for Golden State to beat them when it counts, especially since Golden State has no answer for Dirk."
Jeffrey Ma points out that "the Warriors' free-throw shooting is a concern as they rank just 26th in the NBA in FT% (the Mavs are second in the NBA). Missing freebies will hurt the Warriors."
Mike Kurylo is expecting a Dallas sweep: "The Warriors have 2 main strengths: forcing turnovers and good shooting. Unfortunately for them, those strengths don't match up well against the Mavericks. Dallas is good at keeping the ball and holding their opponents to a low field goal percentage. Nellie's poor rebounding team will be their undoing, as the Mavs are the most well rounded rebounding playoff team in the West."
Hollinger has also developed a probability model that gives Dallas a 95.4% chance of winning the first round and a 25.5% chance of winning it all. His formula, not surprisingly based on his power rankings, likes San Antonio the most.