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I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm

I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm

I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm

I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm

I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm

I got this email the other day about ProTrade.com:

PROTRADE is an athlete stock market powered by sports fans. Through an innovative combination of Moneyball-style player valuations and the collective wisdom of a predictive market, PROTRADE is changing the way fans interact with their favorite sports. You'll be able to buy and sell stocks of athletes from various sports and watch as their stock values change based on a combination of market pressure and on-field performance.

The market launches with the 2005-2006 NFL season. In anticipation of the "opening bell," PROTRADE is currently featuring exclusive breakdowns of professional sports through the lens of the company's research. We've also included background information on the company, the philosophy behind our analysis, and the values we espouse as an organization.

We encourage everyone to read the articles, check out co-founder Jeff Ma's blog on recent sports news, and feel free to comment and debate our methods and conclusions. The market thrives on the points of view of all of the Traders and we're here to create an open forum for sports fans everywhere.

Sounds like this site may be right up the alley of one or two of you. :-) I especially liked this passage from Jeff Ma's blog (emphasis is mine):

Lost on many who read Bringing Down the House is the fact that very little of what we did was gambling.

A gambler is someone who enters into a proposition where he knows the odds are against him, yet still feels he has an advantage. He still feels he will win.

Card counting is quite the opposite.

Card counters quantify their advantage each time they put a bet down on the table. They, in fact, know exactly how much money they expect to make each time the cards are dealt. (My note: Hmm, sounds like expectancy!)

If a trader working on Wall Street saw a stock that he knew without question was under-priced by 2% and he bought that stock to try and realize that inefficiency, would he be called a gambler? What if someone offered to buy your brand new car from you at 2% more than what you had just paid? Would it be a gamble to take the deal?

By taking advantage of an inefficient market, both you and the trader would be thought of as savvy. You wouldn't be called gamblers; which brings me to my work here at PROTRADE.

After reading Moneyball, I came to believe that sports was an inefficient market. I wanted to see if -- by analyzing data in a better way -- one could either exploit some of those inefficiencies or perhaps remove them.

Our goal at PROTRADE is to revolutionize the way that sports fans think about sports. We hope that by applying the same acumen that made me successful at the tables in Las Vegas, we will be able to do just that.

ProTrade is reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years back. He's a huge fantasy sports fan and runs a couple of fantasy sports leagues/sites. After looking at some of the statistics he tracked on his sites I told him that he could probably use (stock) technical analysis on certain statistics of the players. (How about plotting a moving average of scoring...) Maybe we should have discussed it more and started our own sports market... :-(

I have to give props to the Spurs for winning the NBA championship. Two things stand out to me from this series. First, it's great to see David Robinson go out as a champion. He's always been a class act, and I think he deserves such a perfect ending to his career. The second is that Tim Duncan is no joke! He's not flashy, but he sure gets the job done. I mean, he was only two blocked shots short of having a quadruple double!

Having said all of that, I'm a die hard Lakers fan, and I'm not happy! All indications are that Shaq is on a mission to reclaim his spot as Big Dog in the NBA. (The spot that Duncan clearly has snatched!) The Western Conference should be very competitive next year, with the Spurs, Kings, Mavericks, and Lakers doing battle.

I don't know if I've ever seen worse basketball than whats going on in the NBA finals this year. These teams are barely averaging 20 points per quarter. At one point in the game, the Nets missed 13 straight shots on their way to an 11-point third quarter. And the Spurs... they only shot 29% last night. 3-point shooting was horrendous with the Spurs shooting 22%, the Nets shooting 11%. That's fugly! Yet I keep watching. I guess I think that it can only get better. It is a nice to have a competitive series for a change though, but thank God I can speed through these games on my TiVo. Otherwise I'd be fast asleep by the end of the first quarter.

You've all probably heard about LeBron James' $90 million deal with Nike. Well as an encore, they signed 13 year old soccer player Freddy Adu to a million dollar deal. Well, no sooner than this article was written - Perhaps next, Nike will sponsor a newborn - Reebok is rumored to have signed 3 year old Mark Walker Jr., aka Lil' Mark. (I just heard that on Pardon the Interruption) I guess Reebok didn't want to risk losing another kid to Nike. Lil' Mark once made 18 consecutive shots on an 8-foot basket. I can understand the logic behind Nike's signings, especially for getting Adu for just $1 million. But a 3 year old? Me thinks there may be a bubble in the kid signing business.

So LeBron James just got a $90 million deal with Nike, and he hasn't even been drafted yet! There's little doubt that he'll be the number one pick, but this kid will be making more from Nike than he will from his future team. That has to be a first for a rookie. I just hope that LeBron can live up to all the hype.

Hmmm... I'd better get my 11-month old nephew a basketball for his birthday. Who knows, maybe he can skip high school and go straight to the pros. ;-) After all, he is named Jordan.

The LA TImes has a couple of interesting articles in today's edition (free registration required). The first is about Kobe's estrangement from his father -- over Kobe's choice of his wife. The second is about Kobe and Shaq refocusing to win their current series.

Tip-off in 30 minutes!

Looks like the TImes has archived off the Kobe estragement article. It's still available here as of May 22 - http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/sports/5766852.htm