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The Pace-and-Space Revolution: How the Three-Pointer Rewired the NBA, by the Numbers
In two decades the three-pointer went from a luxury to the center of gravity of NBA offense. Here's the rewiring, charted season by season.
On air · Numbers over noise · Est. 2026
The NBA, read through the data.
Original, data-driven NBA analysis — explainers, tutorials, and deep-dives built on public data I pull and chart myself. No invented stats, no hot takes without a table behind them.
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Latest articles
NBA Strength of Schedule: Why the Best Teams Get the Easiest Slates
Compute each 2023-24 team's schedule from who it actually played and the spread is 1.3 net-rating points a game — and it's backwards from intuition. Weak Western teams (Portland, San Antonio) had the hardest schedules; elite Eastern teams (Boston, Miami) the easiest. Why you never playing yourself rigs it.
8 min read
What 1,652 Shots Reveal About Luka Dončić's Shot Diet
Luka scores 1.15 points per shot (league: 1.09) while taking the shots analytics hates — 43% above-the-break threes, 18% mid-range, only 16% at the rim and 2% from the corners. Why a creator's 'inefficient' shot diet isn't inefficient, vs the league baseline.
8 min read
How Much of an NBA Game Is Luck? Decomposing the Final Margin
Knowing exactly how good both teams are (season net ratings + home court) explains only ~26% of the variation in 2023-24 final margins. The other ~74% is single-game noise — residual SD of 13.7 points. A game is a quarter signal, three-quarters luck.
8 min read
The Back-to-Back Penalty: What Tired Legs Cost in 2023-24
Reconstruct every team's schedule from the dates and the cost of a back-to-back is clean: a tired team vs a rested one won just 41.9% (margin -2.8); the rested side won 58.1%. But when both teams are tired it's back to 50/50 — rest is a differential, not a state.
8 min read
How Often Does the Better Team Win in the NBA?
The better team (by net rating) won 67.9% of 2023-24 games — but that hides a steep gradient: a near coin-flip (55%) in toss-ups, up to 81% in mismatches. How deterministic the NBA is depends entirely on the talent gap.
8 min read
Are NBA Win Streaks Real or Just Randomness?
Rebuild every team's 2023-24 win/loss sequence, count the streaks, and compare to a world with no momentum — just weighted coin flips. The real streaks land almost exactly on the random null: good teams streak because they're good, not because winning begets winning.
8 min read
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