Is there a Dog of the NBA?

[HeeluvaGuy]

Let me start by saying that I am NOT an NBA guy. I enjoy it, I dabble in it, but I am very far from an expert. That said, a couple of weeks ago I got curious to see how the bottom teams against the spread one year fared ATS the next season. (My theory, loosely based on the Dogs of the Dow investment strategy, was that there might be some correction the following season for the 4 or 5 teams with the worst ATS records.)

What I found was largely inconclusive, with one exception - the worst team ATS. Going back 10 seasons, the worst team ATS in a given NBA has lost 53.64% of its games ATS the following season. That may not seem like a lot, but the sample size is a fairly substantial 820 games. Also using -105 lines, 7 of the 10 seasons were profitable. Here is the season-by-season breakdown:

2006-07	50		50
2007-08	48.10		51.9
2008-09	39.00		61
2009-10	43.20		56.8
2010-11	45.10		54.9
2011-12	44.60		55.4
2012-13	38.30		61.7
2013-14	57.80		42.2
2014-15	50.60		49.4
2015-16	46.90		53.1
Average	46.36		53.64

Last year, Houston was at the bottom of the NBA against the spread. At this point I don't plan on fading Houston every game, by I will try to track this on a regular basis in his thread.

Best of luck to all this season!

[crackerjack]

Good stuff...thanks for posting.

[gojetsgomoxies]

OP, i love stuff like this....... thank you

i do all kinds of things like this with lots of interesting results ........ not sure if i'm too demanding but i hate to see one prominent losing season and the last 3 seasons aggregate to break-even........... like i said, i'm probably too pessimistic or have unreasonable expectations.

[HeeluvaGuy]

OP, i love stuff like this....... thank you

i do all kinds of things like this with lots of interesting results ........ not sure if i'm too demanding but i hate to see one prominent losing season and the last 3 seasons aggregate to break-even........... like i said, i'm probably too pessimistic or have unreasonable expectations.

I don't think that's too demanding. It would certainly look better trending the other way.

One interesting item I didn't mention in the OP is that Houston had the highest ATS record of any of the "dogs" over the past 10 years. Also, in case anyone is curious, I haven't looked back further than 10 years because I haven't had time (IOW, I didn't rig the lookback to get a certain result.)

[Roscoe_Word]

Excellent info. Off the top of my head I remember PHI being at the bottom of the ATS chart last season. Lets see how they do. GL!

[IBetYou]

Well I'm an expert and I can tell you it's a poor strategy.

[gojetsgomoxies]

one thing i would like to be able to do but it's labour-intensive...... this strategy i would think would work much better first 20 games than last 20 games of next season. but game 50 i think people realize the team is still going to be disappointing.

[Git Lo]

'13-'14 the worst percentage was 57%? Interesting. That probably means there was a lot of ATS winning across the league.

[HeeluvaGuy]

'13-'14 the worst percentage was 57%? Interesting. That probably means there was a lot of ATS winning across the league.

No. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The table shows the results of fading the previous year's "dog." Here's a table showing who the "dogs" were each season and what their ATS % was:

Season	Win % ATS	Team
2005-06	41.20%	Portland
2006-07	41.20%	Minnesota
2007-08	40.20%	Clippers
2008-09	39.00%	Clippers
2009-10	40.70%	Brooklyn
2010-11	39.00%	Washington
2011-12	34.80%	Charlotte
2012-13	38.30%	Charlotte
2013-14	43.00%	Orlando
2014-15	41.20%	Sacramento
2015-16	43.70%	Houston

[Git Lo]

Makes sense as the Bobcats are way better than those years, now playoff bound. This year I can't think of another team that would be below 50% maybe Sac again

[HeeluvaGuy]

I'll try to update this weekly. Currently Houston's ATS record is:

3-2 (60%)

[gojetsgomoxies]

OP, i did some analysis on this and it did look interesting. alot of variability though as we'd communicated before... i also tried worst and best absolute team the season before.

i haven't kept up with the thread...... are you doing the best and worst ATS in the season so far? i think that would be interesting and i don't think it's easily backtestable..

[IBetYou]

No offense, but this is caveman analysis.

[HeeluvaGuy]

OP, i did some analysis on this and it did look interesting. alot of variability though as we'd communicated before... i also tried worst and best absolute team the season before.

i haven't kept up with the thread...... are you doing the best and worst ATS in the season so far? i think that would be interesting and i don't think it's easily backtestable..

I'm just tracking how last year's worst ATS team (Houston) is doing ATS this season. NBA isn't really my thing, but doing this requires minimal effort, which is kind of the point.

[Git Lo]

Makes sense as the Bobcats are way better than those years, now playoff bound. This year I can't think of another team that would be below 50% maybe Sac again

oh shit haha

[gojetsgomoxies]

i've done work on this both before and after this thread.

i found if anything works it's at the very extremes and it's like 0.7 teams per season or something like that.. so not that much.

one thing i would think of is that this strategy should work better earlier in the season i.e. people assume X horrible team improves but they don't.........

recently, we've seen quite a few poor teams improving but generally i think people are too expectant of teams improving... teams that habitually get top 10 to 15 draft picks don't seem to improve like you think they would. philly and sac-town come to mind very very quickly.