[Jay Edgar]

I can't put these up fast enough, so as to clean my hands of the NBA for a while. Getting to game 82 is turning into a chore.

After the long post last night I wanted to make sure to add one important note:

I'm confident that the ratings are always a solid indicator of how strong each team has been over their last 10 games. But that's all they know -- these ratings don't know about any other factors. And as the season winds down, those other factors come to dominate.

On any discrepancy between the rating and the real line, we have to ask whether it is because the ratings "know more" than the market knows about the 2 teams, or whether the market knows more than the ratings know.

I think it's a bit of an oversimplification, but in general, and particularly in the late season NBA, it's quite possible that the market knows more than the ratings know. By this point the market knows the strengths of the teams pretty well on its own, and it also has all kinds of knowledge and experience about the intangibles with each particular team -- and when teams are at vastly different levels of motivation and purpose, and playoff position factors into their thoughts on a given night, then stuff that cannot be factored into the ratings becomes even more important.

Early in the season, the opposite of all this is true -- that's when ratings like these have the best value as a predictor. Although even then, as I have tried to say, I don't recommend relying on them exclusively to make picks at any point.

This is a long way of saying that I am wide open to the idea that in late season good power ratings may be useful as a fade tool. At least that it is worth a thought in cases where it's clear that the market understands the strength of the teams, but has set the line in some odd place nevertheless. In late season, in any league, this may be happening not because the market knows less than the ratings, but because it knows more.

NBA Tuesday
BOS (#15) by 1.3 over TOR (#27)
WAS (#3) by 14.9 over NY (#29)
CLE (#5) by 9.7 over PHI (#28)
NJ (#1) by 12.8 over ATL (#25)
MIA (#6) by 4.9 over MIL (#12)
CHA (#26) by 0.5 over MIN (#20)
DET (#7) by 8.2 over NOK (#21)
MEM (#16) by 5.5 over GS (#23)
CHI (#17) by 4.4 over IND (#24)
DAL (#4) by 5.2 over SAC (#23)
SAN (#2) by 2.0 over UTH (#9)
SEA (#18) by 4.4 over HOU (#22)
LAC (#14) by 3.8 over DEN (#19)