Monday, May 5, 2008

NBA Playoffs May 5-7 Picks

Lady G fancies:

DETROIT -6 over Orlando
NEW ORLEANS -2.5 over San Antonio
Cleveland +10 over BOSTON
LA LAKERS -7 over Utah

My results so far against the spread:

All my picks 22 wins 24 losses 1 tie
My overdog picks 22-19-1
My underdog picks 0-5
Spread a factor: 0-4-1

A plain-vanilla, "homer rules" strategy decisively leads the way at 28-18-1.

It's interesting that my approach of picking "heavy" underdogs is performing so poorly so far, when historical data show that this has been a winning strategy. Sample size of 5 too small to draw any conclusions, but the record so far is consistent with NCAA March madness results this year. In the NFL, there is an unproven (to my knowledge) hypothesis that playoff patterns deviate from regular season patterns. I would be very interested if anyone out there has any historical data on NCAA and/or NBA playoff results against the point spread.

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