Author: Howard Song

I’m a data practitioner by day, a web developer by night, a semi-competent swimmer, an active basketball player, a collector of cool ideas, an aspiring entrepreneur, a college dropout but a lifelong learner, and a self-professed nice guy. I love all things basketball, data, programming, and entrepreneurship.

Distribution of Point Margins: Winning at Home vs. Away

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This is my third post about point margins. At the risk of boring my readers with the same, seemingly mundane topic, I decided to write about it because I believe understanding point margins is of vital importance to formulating…

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Predict winning teams in the Playoffs

This post is a sequel to my last post: Using Regular Season Matchup Records to Predict Winning Teams in the Playoffs. In that post, we used regular-season matchup records to predict which team will advance to the next round…

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Using regular-season matchup records to predict winning teams in the Playoffs

Question: “Can I reliably predict which team will advance to the next round of the Playoffs by leveraging teams’ regular-season matchup records?” Before entering the Playoffs, each team has opportunities play against every other team in the league (3…

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Point Margins Distribution: Regular Season vs. Playoffs

Yesterday, I started participating in a point spread betting competition with a few project collaborators for fun. Trying to be methodical, I wanted to get as much information as possible about each matchup and about the games themselves instead…

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Rankings that best predict NBA playoffs championship winners

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The 2017-18 NBA playoffs season has begun, and I figured it might be fitting to write a post related to NBA playoffs championships. I was looking at NBA teams’ regular-season rankings yesterday, provided via NBA Stats, and I was…

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Using All-Star games to predict which conference will take the Championship title

For some readers, this post may no longer be relevant due to the fact that, since the 2017-18 season, the All-Star games will no longer feature East versus West matchups. Instead, in the new format, two captains create their…

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Riddle #1: What is the relationship between Average Team Possessions and Average Team Field Goal Percentage?

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This is a riddle/challenge that I’m posting for the readers. I cannot figure this out on my own and I’m requesting your help. I plotted these three charts when I was analyzing some basketball trends over the years:…

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Are Teams Shooting More 3-Point Shots than Before?

Stephen Curry’s all-time record of 402 3-point shots made in the 2015-16 season was simply amazing. At the time of this writing, Curry holds the record for having made the most number of 3-point shots in a single…

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Predicting Teams’ Points against Opponents (Part 2)

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This post is a sequel to Predicting Teams’ Points against Opponents. To summarize, in the previous post, we found that taking an average of teams’ offensive strength and opponents’ defensive strength performed best at predicting points scored against…

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Predicting Teams’ Points against Opponents

Let’s think of a scenario. Team A is a great offensive team and has averaged 110 points against its opponents. But Team B is a great defensive team and has allowed only 90 points on average to its opponents. Given…

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