So let this post mark the beginning of my efforts to try and gamble successfully on the NBA.
One of the first things I want to test is whether the complacency metric I developed to analyze NFL games also applies to NBA games. In assessing its predictive potential, I first need to gather a whole bunch of information about games and spreads and then look at the data from a 30,000-foot view to get a sense of the degrees to which a team can be favored to win a contest. It took me a good minute, but I was finally able to generate the bell curve chart to help me quantify this.
Surprisingly enough, basketball isn't all that different from football. Looking at the chart and the way it's divided into quintiles (by virtue of the vertical dotted lines), I think it's reasonable to state the following:
- Any spread from 3 to 5.5 points qualifies the favored team as a minor favorite
- Any spread from 6 to 9.5 points qualifies the favored team as a comfortable favorite
- Any spread greater than or equal to 10 points qualifies the favored team as a heavy favorite
Another thing that my research yielded is that games played on short rest might not matter much, given that teams play consecutive games no less than one or two days apart from one another. So let's not factor in time between games just yet into our complacency equation.
