NBA Playoff and Inter-league MLB Picks

Lady G fancies:

UTAH -4 over LA
CLEVELAND -2.5 over Boston
NO over SA with whatever the USA Today point spread is.

My results so far against the spread:

All my picks 36 wins 28 losses 1 tie
My overdog picks 35-23-1
My underdog picks 1-5
Spread a factor: 1-7-1

A plain-vanilla, "homer rules" strategy leads the way at 41-23-1 followed closely by all-overdogs at 40-24-1.

In this post, I also look ahead to the dog days of summer after the conclusion of the NBA finals and the start of the NFL regular season -- the 2nd dullest period for North American sports fans, 2nd in tedium only to the weeks in February and March after the Super Bowl and before the NCAA basketball tourney.

Yes, there’s major-league baseball (MLB) during July and August. But, be honest. Is there anyone out there who can really enjoy an entire mid-season baseball game?

To my English eyes, the only good thing about baseball is that it doesn’t last as long as cricket.
But, during the summer MLB is the only game going for participants in friendly, non-profit office pools. If you are in a pool based on picking the winners of each game with points awarded based on odds posted for those fools who wager on sports, I propose conducting the following experiment.

Continue following your own head-or-heart approach for picking intra-league games. But, for inter-league games between American League (AL) and National League (NL) teams, use your head and always pick the AL team. Over the past 3 seasons, AL teams have won a significant majority of all inter-league games.

What I am interested in knowing is whether oddsmakers and their customers correctly value AL dominance. For the rest of the baseball season, I will report my simulated running total for a strategy placing $1 on an AL team to win more than $1 on those rare occasions when an AL underdog is facing a NL overdog and placing more than $1 to win $1 in the more common case when an AL overdog meets a NL underdog. Logic says the commission built into odds should result in a small net loss for any strategy. But, let’s see whether this is really true for a full season of inter-league play.

I will report my results next week.

In the meantime, keep taking the overdogs in the NBA playoffs.

Sunday Weekend 1 Update

I'm off to a 2-2 start having lost one game -- Spurs vs. Sun -- on points yesterday and another in an outright upset -- Jazz vs. Rockets, although a victory by a 1-point road underdog barely qualifies as an upset).

I hope you saw the end of Spurs vs. Sun game 1. Toy boy Archibald and I arrived home from our Saturday shopping and turned on the telly with one minute left in regulation just in time to see Finley drain a 3-pointer to send it to overtime. Tim Duncan swished a line-drive trey for another tie at the end of the 1st overtime and then Canada's own Steve Nash tied it for Phoenix with another long bomb with 15 seconds left in the 2nd overtime.

Ginobli drove to the basket to win it with 2 seconds left.

This morning over coffee we heard ESPN radio's idiot Sunday morning talk jock blame the loss on Coach D'Antoni for not having anyone on the floor at the end of overtime 2 to stop a lay-up. Stoudamire had fouled out and D'Antoni removed Shaq because he needed three to tie the game and he feared the hack-a-Shaq. After Nash tied it, Coach Popovich opted against calling time-out precisely to keep Shaq off the floor. As a result, Phoenix had no good big men on the floor.

But, first things first -- D'Antoni had to tie the game with his best offensive formation and didn't have the luxury of worrying about defending when he was three points behind with one possession left. Former Coach Jeff Van Gundy explained all of this on the ABC broadcast. Perhaps there's a reason why ESPN radio's idiot Sunday morning talk jock is working one of the lowest-rated time slots, rather than coaching in the NBA.

In any case, I have to say that Spurs vs. Sun game 1 offered one of the best end-of-game excitement packages that I've ever seen.