Ex-Godiva toy boy Reginald organizes non-profit National Basketball Association (NBA) pools picking winners against the point spread (ATS) in his abundant spare time. My only advice to current Godiva toy boy and official Godiva fiance Archibald, who gets on so well with Reginald that he plays in all Reginald's pools, is to follow academic studies showing that "heavy" underdogs with more than 12 points have a statistically significant winning record over a long run of years. (While this is true of regular season matches, I am less certain that the same result can be found in playoff matches.)
Heavy underdogs finished 54-47-4 or 53% ATS over the 2014-15 regular season -- right in line with the long-term average.
I am 1st in Reginald's heart and memory, but last in his playoff poll at 33-48 or just over 40% ATS picking all overdog favourites so far. (It's interesting to note that there were no heavy underdogs receiving more than 12 points throughout the 2015 playoffs.) I lost 21 overdog picks on points in the playoffs.
Over the last 8 years, I am 51.6% picking playoff games ATS, which is actually a touch below the 51.8% record of a plain-vanilla all-favourites approach.
Interesting to note that the western representative has now won 12 of the last 17 NBA Finals. Over the last 32 years going back to 1984, only 9 teams have won NBA championships.
For Archibald the highlight of 2015 so far was seeing his beloved RAPTORS defeat his almost as beloved T-wolves. Archibald predicted that Minnesota with 2 No. 1 picks in Wiggins and Bennett will win a NBA championship before Cleveland with Lebron, K Love and Kyrie. Dearest Arch believes that as a general manager, Lebron is a great player. Note that Arch made his prediction before K Love and Kyrie went down for the year. However, even Archibald questions the wisdom of Minnie`s Young for Garnett trade and believes Minnie took a step back with that move. And, with Canada's own Tristan Thompson a better fit with King James than KLove, Cleveland has a better team for the NBA Finals at least defensively thanks to the good luck of KLove's injury. If Lebron is as smart as he thinks he is, he will focus his efforts on resigning Thompson and kiss KLove good-bye regardless of whether he wins the championship this year and proves Archibald wrong.
Dearest deluded Archibald also thinks his Raptors will be better next year after being swept in the 1st round by Washington. He can't see that after starting the year 24-7, the Raptors finished 25-30. The Raptor team that finished the 2015 playoffs will struggle to make the playoffs next year without personnel changes and a Lowry recovery from his back issues.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Sportsenfreude in Toronto
Now that the baseball season is over, I must bring to your attention the most ridiculous comment in the history of sports talk radio. After Oakland lost the wild card match to KC, Toronto FAN 590 morning blowhards Brady and Walker were chortling that Oakland is riding a 1-15 streak in playoff matches in which the Athletics had a chance to advance to the next round. One of Brady or Walker (who can tell them apart?) had the audacity to say that he would rather be a Toronto Blue Jay fan and miss the playoffs for two decades than be an Oakland fan. Really? This would be like my English relatives saying that they are much happier as England football fans than Dutch fans who have had to suffer through all those World Cup and European Cup close calls over the years. More on this subject if and when I have time.
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