All posts by Marc Richards

Similarity Score Tool

Select any 2016 drafted NBA player from the dropdown menu to view their top 10 most similar college basketball players historically. Similarity Scores provide insight into how a player will translate to the NBA based on how similar college basketball players in production, physical measurements and experience have performed in the NBA. For a background on the calculation of the similarity scores, see here.

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Similarity Score Methodology

Introduction

“Buddy Hield is the next Stephen Curry”
“Brandon Ingram is a poor man’s Kevin Durant”
“Andrew Wiggins’ upside is Carmelo Anthony, but his floor is James Posey”

So often when we talk about NBA players, we do it through comparisons to other players, and with good reason—comparisons are a good way to quickly convey lots of information about a player. For example, if I tell you that a player had a Box Plus/Minus of 7.8 last season, you might get a vague idea of how good he is. If I then tell you that player had 19.5 points per game, you might have a slightly better idea, but it’s still far from the full picture. But if I claim that this player is the next Chris Paul, it immediately brings to mind an idea of not only how good he is, but also his strengths, weaknesses, and overall playing style. Maybe your mind also queues up a mental highlight reel of Chris Paul-like plays, for good measure. Comparisons quickly give a complete picture of a player which would otherwise require taking the time to slowly digest each number in his stat line.

Also, they’re lots of fun!

We’ve created our own set of similarity scores to make comparisons using math for the purpose of prospecting players coming out of college. Our goal is to produce a useful complement to our PNSP model. Where our PNSP model answers the question, “How valuable will this player be?”, our similarity scores aim to answer the question, “Who will this player be like?”

For a glimpse of some player comparisons, you can check out Similarity Scores for 2016 NBA Draftees, here.
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The Methodology Behind our NFL Playoff Models

This article provides some background on the components of each NFL Playoff Model. By making use of multiple models that are comprised of different modeling techniques and variables, we can better assess each game. For example, if all the models are predicting the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Miami Dolphins, we can feel very confident in picking the Steelers to win. If the models are split, we can explore each model individually based on their predictors to identify areas where the model may be taking into account less than perfect information. For instance, if one model emphasizes defensive performance and Seattle is currently missing Earl Thomas, maybe that model does not represent Seattle as accurately as the others. Ultimately, by looking at multiple models we are able to reduce the noise inherent in all predictive models.

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2016 NFL Playoff Simulation

Using probabilities from our five NFL Playoff Models, we have run a number of simulations for the upcoming 2016 NFL Playoffs. This allows us to estimate how often each team makes the division round, conference championship, Super Bowl, and ultimately win the Super Bowl. In order to do this, we took each game and generated a random number between 0 and 1. If the random number is less than our predicted probability of the home team winning, then we advance the home team as the winner of that game (and vice versa if the random number is greater than our probability). For example, Model 1 has a probability of 0.85 that the Houston Texans will beat the Oakland Raiders. If the random number is 0.95, we would pick the Raiders to advance, and if the random number is 0.55, we would pick the Texans to advance. This methodology was applied to the entire NFL Playoff bracket, running 10,000 Playoff simulations for each of our five models (so, each model generates 10,000 brackets and 10,000 super bowl champions).
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2011 Peak NBA Statline Projection Model

Peak NBA Statline Projection (PNSP) is a model used to project NBA success for college basketball players based upon their individual and team college basketball statistics, physical measurements, high school scouting rankings, and college basketball experience. The Peak NBA Statline Projection model returns a single rating value from 0 to 100. A higher rating value indicates a “better” NBA prospect. We provide a more detailed article outlining how PNSP is formulated here. Below are a few highlights of PNSP’s ratings for the 2011 NBA Draft Class, as well as a full list of PNSP’s top 20 players of the class.

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2016 Peak NBA Statline Projection Model

Peak NBA Statline Projection (PNSP) is a model used to project NBA success for college basketball players based upon their individual and team college basketball statistics, physical measurements, high school scouting rankings, and college basketball experience. The Peak NBA Statline Projection model returns a single rating value from 0 to 100. A higher rating value indicates a “better” NBA prospect. We provide a more detailed article outlining how PNSP is formulated here. Below are a few highlights of PNSP’s ratings for the 2016 NBA Draft Class, as well as a full list of PNSP’s top 20 players of the class.

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Peak NBA Statline Projection Model Overview

Introduction

The following is a walk-through of our NBA Prospecting model called Peak NBA Statline Projection (PNSP). PNSP is a prospecting tool that synthesizes numerous variables for college basketball players to predict their NBA success. PNSP seeks to project peak potential success of a college basketball player in the NBA by returning a single rating value (ranging from 0 to 100) that is derived from all available information on a given player.

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