When East Goes West, Road Dogs Are Best

There has been quite a lot of interest in my NBA post since it was posted earlier today. 

One Twitter user asked:

I wasn't aware that I'd ever revealed my strategy for Road Dogs in the NBA, but while working on improving the Road Favourites System, I did find that there is a profit to be found backing Eastern Conference teams playing at Western Conference teams. 

For anyone interested, the basic strategy for Eastern 'Dogs playing in the West over the past three seasons has an ROI of close to 10%:

Add in just one filter and the ROI more than doubles:

One thing I forgot to mention this morning when discussing the number of possessions per game is that one of the rule changes in the NBA season is that after an offensive rebound, the shot clock will reset to 14 seconds, rather than 24 seconds as was previously the case for all rebounds. 

The 14 second clock will also be set if a loose ball foul is called on the defensive team after a missed shot, or if the offensive team wins possession of the ball after it goes out of bounds following a missed shot. The idea is that this will speed the game up, but according to Nylon Calculus, this change will have little effect. Some for sure, but not too much. Most offensive rebounds result in a put back or a quickly taken three-point shot.

Only 6 percent of all offensive rebounds resulted in possessions that are 14 seconds or greater last year. Given that the league average for offensive rebounds was the lowest ever this past season at 9.7 per game, this rule would apply to roughly half a rebound per team per game last year.