Will Andrew Bynum Surpass Dwight Howard? | TR on ESPN
- 0 comments - NBA - posted by David Hess on 05.18.12
If the LA Lakers want to have any shot at coming back from a 2-0 deficit to knock off the Oklahoma City Thunder, they’ll need Andrew Bynum to step up and carry the load.
Bynum has developed into one of the game’s top young centers, but does his performance stack up to the truly elite NBA big men? And if not, will he ever get there? Austin Link reads the tea leaves and tells us what he sees in the young Laker center’s future.
We Now Have Box Scores | Site Update
- 4 comments - College Football, MLB, NBA, NCAA Basketball, NFL, Site Updates - posted by David Hess on 05.15.12
Last week we added a feature that’s been on our to-do list for a long time: box scores for all the sports we cover. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a small step toward exposing as much information as possible.
For the most part, these box scores should look similar to those you see on other major sport sites or in your daily newspaper. (Those still exist, right?) All the basics are there. However, we have added a few pieces of valuable info to each sport’s box score that you won’t be able to get from your typical ESPN report.
Is LeBron James The Best Since Michael Jordan? More Data & ESPN Reaction
- 2 comments - NBA - posted by David Hess on 05.09.12
In an ESPN Insider article published Tuesday, our Austin Link laid out evidence in support of the claim that LeBron James is the best NBA player since Michael Jordan, despite LeBron’s big fat zero in the most important statistic of all: championship rings.
Reactions from commenters were mixed, but those of Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless weren’t.
Has The Compacted NBA Season Resulted In More Injuries?
- 2 comments - NBA - posted by Doug VanDerwerken on 05.01.12
This is a guest post by Doug VanDerwerken, a PhD student in Statistics at Duke University and a lifelong basketball fan. If you’re interesting in writing a guest post, please email us at support@teamrankings.com.
A few months ago I wrote an article about the effects of the 2011 NBA lockout on league-wide injury rates. The tentative conclusion was that while injuries per week had increased due to the compacted schedule, injuries per game had not. I predicted that the number of injuries which would be incurred by the end of this season would be approximately equal to the number of injuries incurred by Game 66 in the previous two seasons.
In light of the tragic playoff injuries to young stars Derrick Rose and Iman Shumpert, the question of the lockout’s effect on injuries has again come to the forefront of basketball commentary.
Commissioner David Stern weighed in on this issue as recently as Monday, explaining that while it was certainly something to study in the off-season, he didn’t think the compressed season had increased the number of injuries. According to ESPN.com, Stern argued, “In most years we average about five [torn] ACLs [in the league], and prior to this year’s playoffs we had three.”
Do the numbers agree with him?
How Derrick Rose’s Injury Affects The NBA Playoffs
- 2 comments - NBA - posted by Austin Link on 05.01.12
Usually the most important game of the NBA playoffs is the last one, but in 2012 it was the very first.
With one bad landing, reigning MVP Derrick Rose is now out until next year, leaving the overall #1 seed Bulls without their greatest offensive weapon.
Going in to the playoffs there were four serious contenders: Miami, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Chicago. Without their only true star, the Bulls no longer seem to belong in that group. The debate has shifted from whether they could be champions to whether they can make it out of the first couple rounds.
2012 NFL Predicted Standings & Super Bowl Win Odds Version 2.0 | 2012 NFL Draft
- 18 comments - NFL - posted by Austin Link on 04.30.12
Two weeks ago we published the first version of our 2012 NFL projected records. Now that the NFL Draft is over, we’ve added some info about projected starting quarterbacks (including Andrew Luck and RG3), and made a few general optimizations to our pre-season ratings, which means the second version is ready for perusal.
We’ve simulated the schedule thousands of times in order to predict win totals and playoff odds every NFL team. The 2011 version of these projections had good results, and this model should be even a little better.
The big picture generally looks the same as our first round of estimates, but there was a bit of movement. Here are a few notable teams whose projections have shifted the most.
2012 NBA Playoff Predictions | Our Champ May Surprise You
- 7 comments - NBA - posted by David Hess on 04.27.12
The NBA Playoff seeding was set last night, with the Chicago Bulls clinching home court advantage throughout the playoffs, even in a potential Bulls-Spurs series, and both Memphis and Atlanta securing a home playoff series in round one.
Today is the only day of rest, and the playoffs get underway Saturday afternoon with the Sixers taking on the Bulls in Chicago. That means it’s time to get our official 2012 NBA playoff predictions recorded here on the blog for posterity.
2012 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs Second Round Predictions
- 2 comments - Random - posted by David Hess on 04.27.12
As the Stanley Cup Playoffs rolled around, we made first round NHL playoff predictions based on a slightly modified version of the power ratings we use for other sports.
Those predictions did fairly well. We disagreed with Vegas on two series, and went 1 for 2 on those picks, which means if you had simply bet on both of the underdogs that we favored, it would have been a profitable first round.
We pegged #3 Phoenix over #6 Chicago while Vegas favored the lower-seeded Blackhawks, but we were incorrect in predicting a #5 Detroit win over #4 Nashville. We — and Vegas — also correctly favored the #6 New Jersey Devils to top the #3 Florida Panthers in the first round, though we thought the series would be over a bit sooner.
Now that the second round is set, we’ve re-calculated the ratings. Here are our forecasts for the upcoming series.
NBA Playoffs: Series Win Odds & Matchup Pages For Every Projected Possible Pairing
- 3 comments - NBA - posted by David Hess on 04.20.12
We added a new section to the site today that’s designed to be an automatically updating and very comprehensive NBA Playoffs preview.
There are a lot of new pages, but the basic idea is that we’re using our projected NBA standings to seed the NBA playoffs, then creating detailed forecasts and matchup pages for not only every first round series, but every possible future series (given the projected final standings).
2012 NFL Predicted Standings & Super Bowl Win Odds | 2012 NFL Schedule Released
- 12 comments - NFL - posted by Austin Link on 04.18.12
*UPDATE* The projections below are old. Please see our latest 2012 NFL predicted standings, which include adjustments for the NFL Draft and the addition of starting QB info.*
It seems like just a few weeks ago that Eli Manning led the Giants to their second Super Bowl title in five years. On Tuesday, though, the NFL released the 2012 schedule, prompting fans across the nation to speculate about their own team’s chances to win Super Bowl XLVII.
We’ve taken that NFL schedule, run an early version of our preseason ratings, and simulated the entire season 5,000 times. The result is projected records and standings for all teams and divisions, plus every team’s chances of winning the Super Bowl, and their preseason power rating and strength of schedule ranks.
