Three Games in Four Nights: Does NBA Fatigue Actually Accumulate?
Teams on a 3-in-4 won 43.8% of 2023-24 games against normal rest, but stacking the third game on a back-to-back moved the margin 0.05 points. Fatigue doesn't stack.
8 min read
Category
Data Deep-Dives
Long-form investigations that start with a question and follow the numbers wherever they lead. No takes without a table behind them.
The Corner Three, Measured: What the Shortest Three Actually Pays
Corner threes hit 38.6% and pay 1.16 points per shot against 1.08 above the break. Fit accuracy to distance and the premium vanishes into geometry: 22 feet, priced.
8 min read
Is the NBA Left-Handed? What 25,000 Shots Say About Court Symmetry
Sided attempts split 50.3/49.7 and both sides shoot an identical 38.2%. The shooter's-corner myth, the one borderline signal, and why the floor has no grain.
7 min read
Do NBA Teams Bounce Back After a Blowout? The Response Game, Measured
Raw next-game win rates climb from 41% to 62% by previous margin — pure momentum, until you adjust for team quality and the effect collapses to r = +0.017.
8 min read
Do High-Scoring NBA Games Get Closer? What 1,231 Games Say
Across all 1,231 games of 2023-24, the correlation between total points and final margin is −0.02. Scoring volume simply doesn't predict competitiveness.
8 min read
Which NBA Teams Had the Biggest Home-Court Edge in 2023-24?
Measure each team's home win% minus road win% in 2023-24 and the spread runs from the Rockets at +32 to the Grizzlies at −22, around a +8.6 league average.
8 min read
How Many Wins Is a Net-Rating Point Worth?
Each point of net rating was worth 2.33 wins across 2023-24's 30 teams (r²=0.95), with the line through exactly 41 wins at zero. The margin is the standings.
8 min read
The Most and Least Consistent NBA Teams of 2023-24
The steadiest team of 2023-24 was Detroit (margin SD 12.0) — one of the worst; the wildest was Dallas (SD 18.0), which reached the Finals. Steady isn't good.
8 min read
The NBA Got More Efficient Without Shooting Much Better
Effective FG% jumped from 47.1% to 54.7% over 2004-2024 while raw accuracy crept from 43.9% to 47.4%. The efficiency boom came from the shot mix, not the aim.
8 min read
NBA Strength of Schedule: Why the Best Teams Get the Easiest Slates
Compute each 2023-24 team's schedule from who it played and the spread is 1.3 net-rating points a game — with weak West teams facing the hardest slates.
8 min read
How Much of an NBA Game Is Luck? Decomposing the Final Margin
Knowing exactly how good both teams are explains only ~26% of the variation in 2023-24 final margins. A game is a quarter signal, three-quarters noise.
8 min read
The Back-to-Back Penalty: What Tired Legs Cost in 2023-24
A tired team facing a rested one won just 41.9% of 2023-24 games (margin -2.8), but two tired teams are 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 — a near coin-flip (55%) in toss-ups, up to 81% in mismatches. It all hangs on the talent gap.
8 min read
Are NBA Win Streaks Real or Just Randomness?
Rebuild every 2023-24 win/loss sequence and compare it to weighted coin flips — the real streaks land almost exactly on the random null. Momentum isn't there.
8 min read
Does Offense or Defense Win in the NBA? What Net Rating's Two Halves Say
In 2023-24, offensive rating predicted wins better than defensive rating across all 30 teams (r 0.87 vs 0.75) — and net rating (r 0.98) settles the slogan.
8 min read
How Often Is an NBA Game Actually Close? The 2023-24 Margin Distribution
The most common NBA game of 2023-24 wasn't a nail-biter — it was a 20-point blowout. The real distribution of 1,231 final margins, and what it does say.
8 min read
Where the NBA Actually Shoots From: 25,000 Real Shots, Mapped by Zone
Drop 25,000 real shots onto the floor and 69% come from just two places — the rim and the arc — while the mid-range has collapsed to one shot in nine.
9 min read
Home-Court Advantage: What the 2023-24 Games Actually Show
Across 1,231 real 2023-24 games, home teams won 54% and outscored visitors by 2.2 points a night — an edge that hides almost entirely in the blowouts.
8 min read
Three-Point Defense: Can You Actually Defend the Three?
Teams obsess over guarding the arc, but opponent three-point percentage barely repeats. What defenses can control about the three, and what's just variance.
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Garbage Time: How It Quietly Distorts the Box Score
Stats keep counting after the game is decided. How garbage-time minutes inflate numbers and warp plus-minus — and how analysts filter them out.
8 min read
Lineup Data and the Five-Man Unit: Reading On/Off and Net Ratings
The box score stops at the player. Lineup data asks how five-man units actually perform — and why most lineup numbers are noisier than they look.
8 min read
The Three-Point Variance Problem: How Shooting Luck Swings Games
The same shots that win a title can lose a playoff series. Why a three-heavy league is a higher-variance league, and what that means for reading any single game.
8 min read
Clutch Time, Quantified: Do “Clutch Players” Actually Exist in the Data?
The NBA defines clutch time precisely: last five minutes, margin within five. So I pulled it — and tested whether “clutch” is a real, stable skill.
8 min read
Rest vs. Performance: What the Data Says About Back-to-Backs and Load Management
Does a night of rest actually move the needle? I split a full season of games by days of rest to measure the real cost of the second night.
8 min read