Hot Takedown recorded a live show last week at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver joined Neil and Sara on stage to discuss how our player rating metric, RAPTOR, has performed so far this NBA season. Our Rabbit Hole of the Week is inspired by an oddity in NBA rosters. What […]
Despite a short-handed loss to Denver on Monday night — their fourth defeat in their last five games — the full-strength Milwaukee Bucks still look a whole lot like the best team in basketball. That might sound bold, but the team’s resume is pretty unimpeachable: The Bucks’ 53-12 record is better than that of any […]
Get the data on GitHub A few weeks ago, Chris Herring wrote about just how historically dominant the 2019-20 Milwaukee Bucks have been on defense, a fact that has gone somewhat unnoticed as Giannis Antetokounmpo and his sharpshooting friends have cruised through the league this year. But the Bucks aren’t the only team having a […]
sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): There’s a little more than a month left in the NBA season, and there is movement afoot in the FiveThirtyEight projections. Let’s start today’s chat by looking at the top of the heap — which teams are looking strong and which teams should be worried. The Los Angeles Clippers are […]
Houston Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni knows that his team is unique. “It’s not like everybody can do this,” he said this week. The “this” to which D’Antoni refers is the gambit that is dominating the post–trade deadline conversation in the NBA. Houston has gone all-in on small ball, and since the team acquired Robert […]