Advanced Stats Are Betting Against These Five NBA Teams — Here’s Why
The market is too optimistic about these rosters — this is why I think they'll fall short of their win forecasts
In 2019, famous ex-sports bettor Haralabob introduced our Dallas Mavericks analytics department to an interesting friendly challenge: Predict each team's performance relative to the Las Vegas over/under lines published before each season — those lines serve as a forecast of how many games each NBA team will win.
While we weren’t allowed to put any money down, per our contracts, it became a fun little annual exercise that helped sharpen our senses when it came to predicting where franchises were heading, and which new arrivals would have positive or negative impact.
I continued the practice after leaving the Mavs in 2022, and built a six-year winning streak — I’ve always won more “bets” than I’ve lost, even if I don’t actually wager. In some years, I’ve ended up correct on more than 76% of my predictions.
With Vegas sportsbooks releasing their lines in recent days,1 let's take an early look at the over/under lines for 10 NBA teams, including both Los Angeles franchises.
We’ll start with the five teams I’m most pessimistic about, relative to Vegas. My next piece will cover five teams that I think are underrated.
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