In response to a reader’s question (info on how I handicap)

I am going to post the correspondence in the reply section of a post on this blog, just to bring to the home page because I think it is useful for those of you that want to create your own models for handicapping.

Reader’s Q:

Would you be able to point me towards some good resources to start learning how to handicap NBA games? I want to try to start designing my own models to cap games and look into/learn about the basics in terms of doing it for NBA games which I hope will help me start out and then allow me to make adaptations as I see fit.

Bill’s A:

Yeah. You can start off by establishing what you deem as statistically important in relation to overall performance. The four factors that influence performance most are commonly accepted as: Effective FG%, offensive rebounds per possession, turnovers per possession, and free throws per FG attempt. I agree with these four factors, but you must also account for home/road advantage (not all teams play better at home, although many do).

Home/away advantage are not uniform, you have make power rankings based on how well each team plays at home AND on the road. You can most stats you are looking for at various places on the web. Another thing to keep in mind are injuries, but I have a different take on injuries. I think that Vegas over-adjusts for injuries because the public freaks out if a star player is out. I like to bet on teams MORE when they have a star player out. Take the Bulls (without Rose), Heat (without Wade), Clippers (without Chris Paul).. those teams are a combined (12-5) or 70.5% ATS without those star players.

Another important aspect of handicapping is progression/regression. The NBA is a game of runs and a game of streaks. The longer a team is on a cold streak the more likely they are to progress to a statistical norm and vice-versa when they are in a hot streak. I implore you to base progression according to the spread and not just W/L. You are basically accounting for Vegas progression/regression in their odds making.

I appreciate your question. Please, ask as many as you please while you are trying to establish yourself as an independent handicapper.

This is only scratching the surface of how I do things, but a lot of what I do comes as second nature so most of the time I need an on-topic question to evoke my explanation of the most routine aspects of my system.  I warmly welcome and encourage readers to ask any question they may have.