By John Ezekowitz Of all the sports announcer’s tropes and standards, the concept of momentum may be the most often used and least well understood. Momentum is frequently cited as an important factor in deciding the outcome...
By Ben Blatt Before starting a pick-up basketball game the question usually arises: “Are we playing winners’ take or losers’ take?”. The difference in rules is that with winners’ take the team that...
By Will McMillan Mismanagement of the clock as the game or the half winds down seems to be a part of NFL culture; we all know that the way in which a team’s final possession is handled, right down to the second, can have a...
By Ben Blatt (You can also a version of this post in the Wall Street Journal here) For someone with so little basketball skill, I’ve been playing a lot of H-O-R-S-E in the basketball/squash court of Lowell House basement...
On December 3rd, Harvard Crimson writer Christina McClintock published ‘Pair of Students Get Jobs in Pros.’ The article focuses on HSAC and basketball analytics. Read it here. Share this: Click to share on X...
In today’s Wall Street Journal, David Biderman used our very own Ben Blatt’s probability-based H-O-R-S-E strategy to show how to win the game most of the time. If you go first against an opponent of the same...
By Ben Blatt In 1964, Mosteller and Wallace published Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist. The paper used statistical analysis to try to determine if James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or John Jay was the author of...
By Will McMillan In the middle of the 2002-2003 NBA season, the league made a decision to switch the first round of playoff series from a best-of-5 to best-of-7 format. This was a puzzling move at the time, with the most cited...
By John Ezekowitz and Alex Koenig Before the start of the latest NBA season, NBA superfan and ESPN columnist Bill Simmons wrote a column ranking all NBA teams in order of “must-see.” Simmons has his personal...
By David Roher These playoffs have been one for the road. In the Division Series, the home team went a combined 4-11, including a 1-7 showing in the ALDS. Why this happened isn’t that important — you can come up with...