NBA Analytics Blog

Basketball is the sport where raw per-game numbers mislead most reliably. A team that scores 118 a night may simply play fast, and a defense that allows 105 may simply play slow. The guides in this category start by putting everything on a per-possession basis and then work through the handful of measures — efficiency, pace, the four factors, rest — that explain most of what the market prices.

Availability gets its own treatment because it is the dominant late mover in the NBA. Injury reports are confirmed close to tip-off, load management empties lineups on the second night of a back-to-back, and a single star’s absence can shift a spread by several points. The Sportslyx breakdown is pre-generated and cached, so the guides explain how to read the report alongside usage and minutes — and why the win probability on the card, derived from the current line, can move after the prose was written.

The eighty-two-game season gives the NBA the steadiest monthly record on the site, and also the emptiest summers. Each guide closes with how the concepts appear on the live board, how a moneyline read is graded on the final score including overtime, and why an NBA read is always on the game itself — player props are covered for MLB only.