End-of-year NBA awards are a good lens through which to evaluate the league’s best performances, but the framing isn’t always quite right. Certain seasons are so exemplary that viewing them only in the context of same-year contemporaries sells them badly short. The 2020-21 Defensive Player of the Year Award serves as one such instance. While […]
2021 WNBA PredictionsUpdated after every game. More WNBA:[a][b][c][d] How this works STANDINGS GAMESAces Dream Fever Liberty Lynx Mercury Mystics Sky Sparks Storm Sun Wings REGULAR SEASON PLAYOFFS RANK ELO RATING 1-WEEK CHANGE TEAM PROJ. RECORD PROJ. POINT DIFF/G CHANCE OF MAKING PLAYOFFS CHANCE OF MAKING FINALS CHANCE OF WINNING FINALS 1 1621 — Storm0-0 21-11 […]
References Basketball-Reference.com / Elo ratings / Monte Carlo simulations The Details We kind of love Elo ratings at FiveThirtyEight — we’ve used them to forecast the NFL, NBA and MLB and to cover various other sports and tournaments over the years. We created Elo ratings for the WNBA in 2020, tracking team strength back to […]
When last we saw the WNBA’s best players on the court, the Seattle Storm were capping off their undefeated postseason with a championship sweep of the Las Vegas Aces in the league’s Bradenton, Florida-based bubble. The 2021 season, which tips off Friday, should be somewhat more normal than 2020 — the emotionally draining experience of […]
First, we talk about Albert Pujols’s release from the Los Angeles Angels, with just one year remaining on his 10-year deal. It’s the kind of contract for an older player that we’re not likely to see again in MLB, although long-term deals do pay off, especially for pitchers — just ask the Nationals about Max […]