With the first round of the playoffs set to begin Monday, the NBA will soon announce the winners of this year’s regular-season awards, based on pre-bubble performance. This year’s finalists for the MVP have already been announced, with only Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James expected to receive first-place votes. This fits a pattern that has […]
After beating the Philadelphia 76ers 112-101 on Thursday night, the Milwaukee Bucks’ historic season keeps on rolling. Last year’s Bucks were already great, going 60-22 with the league’s best point differential. But this year’s version has been even more dominant. Right now, Milwaukee is 44-7, on pace to win 71 games, with a scoring differential […]
ROOOAAARRRRR! (Do raptors roar?) In case you missed it, we recently launched our new metric for evaluating NBA players, which we’re calling RAPTOR: Robust Algorithm (using) Player Tracking (and) On/Off Ratings. Since we have this nifty new stat, we can finally tackle, and hopefully help settle, some oft-debated player rankings. Is Kemba Walker really an […]
With 2:18 left in the third quarter of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, Milwaukee Bucks forward Ersan Ilyasova trudged to the free-throw line. After he made his first shot to put the Bucks up 14, Mike Budenholzer subbed Giannis Antetokounmpo out of the game, hoping to grab his superstar a quick breather while […]
In many ways, Thursday’s pivotal Game 5 between the Raptors and Bucks embodied the topsy-turvy nature of this Eastern Conference finals series as a whole. Milwaukee, the winner of the first two games, dominated the early portion of the contest, only for Toronto, which took Games 3 and 4, to come storming back. But down […]