How Do You Predict First Baskets? Part 1: High Level Overview

A map of our first-basket pipeline: clean and label play-by-play data, model the tipoff, team to score first and player to score first, then combine them into first-basket and exact-method odds.

Our first post outlined why we bet on first baskets, but doesn’t say anything at all about how we do it. These next posts will give some more context on our approach for predicting first basket outcomes. This first post will be a super high-level run through the process. Heck, I can even make a little diagram!

The pipeline in one diagram

I’ll walk through the boxes and arrows.

Step 1: Label the play-by-play data

First, we get a bunch of data from different sources, most importantly play-by-play records from the NBA and WNBA.

We use those data to flag the winning player for every jump ball, and who they beat, as well as which players and teams score first and how it happened.

Step 2: Model the tipoff and the team to score first

Once the data are labeled, we build models to predict the winner of a jump ball between players A and B. These models enable us to predict which team is going to possess the ball first, and knowing which team will possess the ball first is hugely predictive of which team will score first.

Step 3: Model the first scorer for each team

We could stop here, because “player to win the tipoff” and “team to score first” are popular prop markets in their own rights, but we keep going! Independent of first possession, we can also model which player will score first for their team given a specific lineup; this is also a very popular (and profitable) prop market. Even more, we model out the odds of a player scoring first for their team with a specific method, like a free throw or a three pointer.

Step 4: Combine them into first-basket odds

Finally, we can use the outputs of the team to score first and player to score first for their team models, to estimate the odds of a player scoring first for the entire game (and the method they use). Tada!

Now that you’ve got the high level view, we can start looking more specifically at different parts of the process. We can start with the data, in Part 2!

How Do You Predict First Baskets? Why First Baskets? · Part 1: High Level Overview · Part 2: The Data We Use · Part 3: So Many Models · Part 4: From Predictions To Edges · Part 5: Alert Alert · When To Bet First Baskets