30/06/22

52-64 -24.075

All smiles 

I would like to thank anyone who participated in my thread yesterday. Pho, StraightW, SpartanG... Might be forgetting some but to whoever, I hope your night was better than mine 

The point is to learn and I don't learn unless I lose money. Even then... 

I feel good though. The closer we got to game time the more I knew I was wrong about everything .

DREAM@LIBERTY

The Liberty are playing great right now and Atlanta really isn't. Liberty play a modern brand of basketball with tempo and 3 pt shooting and all of that. Atlanta still relies on 2pt mid range for a lot of their scoring. Not that I had the right side yesterday, but this looks like another case of young team just trying to figure it out travelling to face a veteran squad that needs wins and can't afford to take games off. 

The things that worry me about New York:

1. Incredible shooting in back to back wins. @CON (45% 31/69, 41% 13/32) and @ATL (47% 32/68, 46% 16/35)

^ I ran some queries and honestly this league is so young and changing so much of late that it's hard to find similar situations. I started with super high percentages and back to back games with more than a dozen threes and there were basically no instances but ATS favoured the Liberty. I slowly reduced various factors, beginning with 3pm down to 10+. In order to get a large enough sample size to really make a claim, I eventually had to bring the numbers down so far that I didn't feel they were super applicable to NY tonight but I will say that all the in between queries lean NY and so do I.

^^Unlikely to see NY shoot this well for a third straight game, especially against Atlanta but that doesn't mean they will necessarily lose or fail to cover (this is one place where I am trying to learn). People probably don't realize because their start to the season was so awful, but in ten June games the Liberty are allowing an average of 76.8 points per game. The Washington Mystics lead the league in this regard for the season at 76 a game. Seattle is in 2nd with 77 a game.  

INTERRUPTING WRITE UP TO GET PLAYS IN SINCE LINE HAS MOVED. I ALWAYS PLACE BETS BEFORE BEGINNING WRITE UP BUT WILL LIKELY CHANGE THAT ORDER TO CLEAN UP THE THREAD AND AVOID SITUATIONS LIKE THIS.

ATL Dream @ NY Liberty -5 (-110) 4U

ATL Dream @ NY Liberty UNDER 159.5 (-110) 1U

@LippyLeans

 You had me at “I ran some queries”. 

You use SDQL as well Lippy? 

@AussieDownUnder

 Yes indeed. I'm no wiz, but I like to play around and see what I see. The key is trying to make sense of the numbers in the real world. Like, okay teams don't usually perform well in this spot but can I figure out why that might be? There are so many factors on any given night and the through line is a combination of them all. 

some lineup and rotation changes to come tonight....

crystal dangerfield has been released. Her hardship contract expired and will likely sign back with the team after this game.  She started every game since June 1st which is when their 7-3 turnaround started.  I think they may start Sami which changes their rotation some.  Brondello said they have to make do being light at the guard position for now.

Tiffany Hayes is probable and could make her debut tonight.  More depth for the dream and she's a scorer in this league.

just passing the info along fellas if you didnt know...

I am confused cause rotowire has hayes out already and rotowire is really accurate.    

per Alexa Philippou's twitter writer for espn and covers all womens basketball

She has tiffany hayes off the injury report and probable.  She could make her debut tonight.

@SpartanG

 I was unaware of both and absolutely appreciate you sharing. The Dangerfield news would worry me IF NOT FOR MARINE JOHANNES. Crystal's greatest asset to this team is her ability to handle the ball and take pressure off of Ionescu in that regard. I won't downplay her contribution, especially before the arrival of Johannes as it allowed NY to start gaining some confidence in themselves and this system. The reality is that in a lot of ways, NY has already outgrown her. They are still really in need of ball handlers and finding ones you can trust halfway through a season is difficult so the news that they will re sign her does not come as a surprise but for one night with 5 nights off rest behind them, I really do not think this will hurt them much. She's only played 45 minutes over the last 3 games (since the return of DiDi). Richards is their best defensive matchup for Howard IMO. I could see keeping Sami on the bench to even out shooting/ball handling but either way I like this team's depth right now. 

Hayes coming back makes me like the Liberty more. I hope she plays. Whereas NY should be keeping a tighter rotation at least these ladies have all played several games together. Tiffany Hayes has yet to play a game this season and the jump shot is usually the last thing you get back after a long injury. Liberty are a cohesive unit and the difference between their chemistry and that of Atlanta should be drastic and on full display tonight. 

yeah i liked having dangerfield starting games to eat up minutes and to bring some sami scoring off the bench.  Brondello said she is gonna start Sami tonight and deal with not having much perimeters on the bench and just find a way to win (wished she said cover lol).  Didi and Onyenwere have to fill in and step up.  Starters are gonna have to play more minutes and juggle the rotation with the 9 players they have.  Least they had 6 days rest to figure it out.

I liked liberty like everybody else, but just looking at some contaminating factors being thrown into the mix.

DREAM@LIBERTY (cont.)

Also wanted to say that NY is 7-3 in June and if you look at their 7 wins, they are allowing an average of about 73.6 points per game. This defense is a lot better right now than the numbers would tell you, in part because of players that have been added as the season has gone on but also because of increased familiarity with each other and the system. The Dream just don't have any glue and their offense is so iso dependent. Still 16.6% of their 2pters come in the mid range. That's a full 3.5% more than the next closest team. This is the largest gap between any two teams beside each other in the standings by far. The next largest gap between any two teams beside each other is 0.6%. 51% of their made 2pt FGs are unassisted. A full 5% above the next highest. This is the second highest gap. The highest is actually on the other end of the spectrum where Chicago and Seattle set themselves apart from the league with less than 32% of 2pt fgs unassisted. The rest of the league is above 37%. 42% of all of Atlanta's made field goals are unassisted, highest in the league by 5.3% and yes the largest gap between any two teams beside each other in this category. That shit just isn't sustainable.

2. Liberty have had 5 nights off and sometimes when you are playing well, getting this kind of time off can throw off your momentum. 

Home favs with 5 or more nights of rest hosting a team with 1 night of rest or less:

SU:40-23 (4.4,63.5%) ATS:26-35-2 (-2.1,42.6%)-6.58OU:31-31-1 (2.3,50.0%)155.83

Not great for the Liberty but not awful either. I think there is a tendency for betters to favour the more rested team so I kind of expected to see the ATS numbers go slightly the other direction and they do. What I do find somewhat comforting are the SU numbers. 63.5% of the time, the team still wins and by an average of 4.4 points. This is a little under where we would like to see it with a 5 point line but it's close enough as far as I am concerned. 

Refine to a scenario where the visiting team is on exactly one night of rest (remove back to backs where the discrepancy in rest is huge)...

SU:35-20 (4.4,63.6%) ATS:24-29-2 (-2.0,45.3%)-6.39OU:26-28-1 (1.7,48.1%)155.48       so that 4+ vs. 0 rest scenario is 2-6 ATS

Refine to a scenario where the team in question won the last matchup between these two...

SU:24-9 (6.5,72.7%) ATS:15-16-2 (-0.6,48.4%)-7.11OU:15-18-0 (1.4,45.5%)155.17

I think there is a tendency amongst bettors to side with the more rested team. The larger the difference, the more likely they are to side this way and the more likely they are to encounter an exaggerated line and lose on ATS but the numbers do show that in general the rest is beneficial. A lot of these stats come back to the character of the team. At 8-10, I don't think NY just went on vacation. Like PHX yesterday, they have probably been very anxious to pick up another win against a team they know they can beat pretty easily. They have two games before they travel to Las Vegas on the 6th of July. Over the course of that month, NY will play 10 games. 3 of those will be against LV and 2 more will be against Chicago. They will visit Chicago as well as Connecticut. The easiest game appears at the beginning of the month in LA as the other two games remaining in July are against a rejuvenated Phoenix team. I'm confident NY will pick up some big wins in July but the important thing right now is to handle business. Win tonight and in a few days at LA and they can enter a crazy stretch at .500 (for the first time this season). Then they run the gauntlet; July 6th @ LV, July 7th @ PHX, July 12th vs. LV, July 14th vs. LV, July 19th @ CON, July 21st @ WAS, July 23rd vs. CHI, July 29th @ CHI, July 31st vs. PHX.

@SpartanG

 Probably gonna see a shorter rotation tonight but they've had plenty of rest so it shouldn't be an issue. 35 for Ionescu and Johannes each. Don't think we'll ever see NY take the floor without one of them. Sami is the vet and I totally understand the move. Start things off right and then just rotate 1 or 2 bench players in at a time.