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We’ve Made A Slight Correction To Our NBA Model. (Sorry, Luka!)

Going into the playoffs, our NBA model wasn’t particularly high on the Dallas Mavericks’ chances of making a deep run. We gave Dallas only a 37 percent chance of beating the Utah Jazz in the first round and a 12 percent chance of making the Western Conference finals. But that was before Luka Dončić returned […]

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Nikola Jokić Bolstered His MVP Case With … His Defense?

Nikola Jokić’s case to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award for a second-straight season is quite compelling.   The Joker finished in the top 10 in points (27.1), assists (7.9) and rebounds (13.8) per game while shooting an astonishing 58.3 percent from the field. As FiveThirtyEight’s Robert O’Connell wrote recently, no high-scoring big man has […]

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The 3 Kinds Of Defensive Players Now Running The NBA

For much of NBA history, building an elite defensive team came down to simply employing one of the league’s handful of generational defensive bigs. Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics regularly lapped the field defensively. David Robinson instantly made San Antonio a top-three defense during his rookie season in 1989-90; the Spurs wouldn’t dip below the top […]

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