I’ve heard from some fans that the NBA Cup games are more entertaining because they have been played with “more intensity” and teams “don’t give up”. Perhaps that could be detected or not via an increase in hustle stats (deflections, etc) and average margin of victory.
its a good question. i regret not adding it to the table, but Inpredictable also measures a game's "tension," which is a measure of how close the win probability remained at 50/50 -- basically was the game close and competitive throughout.
Average Tension of Cup Games: 70.65
Average Tension of non-Cup games: 70.88
In other words, i'm not sure Cup games are any more intense than non-Cup games
Great post. Seems like it would be worth seeing if the standard deviation between NBA Cup and non-Cup games differs. I would expect the non-Cup games to be pretty high variance but the Cup games to be less so which maybe makes for a more reliable product. Or put differently, the Wizards might sneak a win over a decent team on a random October night but my prior is that surprise W wouldn’t come in a Cup game (setting aside the obvious, actual state of the Wiz at the moment).
Such a great look into all in one metrics, thank you for doing this interview series!
Love how this casually drops BBall-Index/Fanspo merger news out of nowhere also lol
Excellent interview. His intelligence and creativity shines throughout the piece.
I love the series of interviews!
I’ve heard from some fans that the NBA Cup games are more entertaining because they have been played with “more intensity” and teams “don’t give up”. Perhaps that could be detected or not via an increase in hustle stats (deflections, etc) and average margin of victory.
its a good question. i regret not adding it to the table, but Inpredictable also measures a game's "tension," which is a measure of how close the win probability remained at 50/50 -- basically was the game close and competitive throughout.
Average Tension of Cup Games: 70.65
Average Tension of non-Cup games: 70.88
In other words, i'm not sure Cup games are any more intense than non-Cup games
Great post. Seems like it would be worth seeing if the standard deviation between NBA Cup and non-Cup games differs. I would expect the non-Cup games to be pretty high variance but the Cup games to be less so which maybe makes for a more reliable product. Or put differently, the Wizards might sneak a win over a decent team on a random October night but my prior is that surprise W wouldn’t come in a Cup game (setting aside the obvious, actual state of the Wiz at the moment).