WNBA Workshop: Updating Thoughts on Randomness, Misled Market
Two More Big Dogs Cover in Near Upsets
With the football schedule about to get super-busy, I’m afraid I’m going to lose touch with some of the themes we’ve been discussing in our WNBA coverage. No football Monday night. Just two basketball games (both with results consistent with our discussions!). Let’s take a few minutes tonight to play around with some theory.
First, subscribers will recall that Substack writer Ariel Calista helped put together “randomness” projections of what sports leagues that only consisted of “clones” playing “coin flip games” would look like. That was in a “Misled Market” theory article that ran recently. Randomness has such a big impact through samples of 17 games (NFL) or 162 games (MLB) that many “perceptions” of team quality are really just misunderstandings caused by the vagaries of randomness.
Because the WNBA continues to be so dog-heavy in our post ASB study (which we started because the WNBA was already so dog-heavy), I asked Ariel if she could replicate the same study for a 13-team, 44-game league. Here’s an example of what a purely random “clone team” version of the WNBA might look like…
Projected Records from Ariel Calista’s Monte Carlo Simulation of “Clones using Coin Flips”
28-16
27-17
26-18
25-19
24-20
24-20
23-21
23-21
21-23
19-25
19-25
17-27
15-29
Little things floor me. Like NOBODY in this particular 44-game sampling of clones using coin flips ends up with a 50/50 record…even though it’s the ultimate 50/50 construction. Math is amazing. (Of course, this is just one run-through…subsequent models would have some 50/50 teams…but would typically look like something close to this in range/distribution.)
Anyway, current WNBA records show that the 2025 league isn’t random. You see above that 28-16 was the clone peak. Current elites:
Minnesota 30-7
Atlanta 24-13
Las Vegas 25-14
Lynx…who everybody knew would be great…could lose out and still top 29 wins. Atlanta and Las Vegas have surged since the All-Star Break can top the second and third best records. Atlanta still has a shot to reach 30 wins.
Down at the bottom:
Chicago 9-28
Connecticut 9-28
Dallas 9-29
Target for worst is 15-29. These three teams would all have to win out to have a shot at that. Possible (likely) that all three will be worse than the worst clone.
I should also point out that Ariel’s study launched “random” teams to highs and lows. “Team #12” won the regular season at 29-15…barely ahead of “Team #2” at 28-16. “Team #11” finished last…two game behind “Team #7.” The 2025 WNBA season WASN’T like this. Minnesota was supposed to be good. Las Vegas was supposed to be good. New York was strongly tracking it’s “supposed to be good” projection until getting injury-riddled. Connecticut was supposed to be bad and was. Chicago and Dallas were both supposed to finish with less than 20 wins…just turned out to be even worse than expectations.
(Sure, not everything went as preseason markets expected. Golden State with a Regular Season Win Total of 8.5 wasn’t a doormat…Atlanta at 21.5 wasn’t .500 caliber)
Generally speaking, this WASN’T a year full of surprises. A few surprises. Only a couple non-injury related surprises. THE MARKET’S PRESEASON PERCEPTIONS WERE GENERALLY CORRECT.
It wasn’t a random league in execution…and it largely tracked known skill sets.
And yet…AND YET… it was a season where UNDERDOGS RULED because it seemed like anything could happen on any give night. Favorites have been priced too high from months ago through Monday’s twin bill. We started a study at the All-Star Break because things had been so obviously dog heavy already. You regulars know that tendency has stayed true to this point. Dogs are covering spread at a high clip. Dogs are winning outright often enough to make you question market sanity.
What should I make of this? I mean…the working base of “The Misled Market” theory is that professional teams are much closer together than market influences realize. Close to clones playing coin flips rather than a collection of have’s and have not’s. With a “parity pack” strategy, I’ve been hoping to steer clear on the edges (where the market can be slow to catch up with greatness and slow to catch down to dregs) and ask that bulky parity pack in the middle to split out ATS and on the money line to slowly compile a logical profit.
Ariel’s Monte Carlo simulation confirms that the WNBA is NOT a league of clones. Preseason win estimates show the market had a reasonably good fix on how teams were going go stack up. It STILL added up to underdog heaven!
Working theories for now (this is a workshop, after all).
*The “Misled Market Theory” may be most dramatic on a game-by-game basis…as day-to-day randomness is MUCH more volatile than market influences realize. Too many wrong assumptions in the heat of battle. (Mediocre teams get hot enough to cover and score occasional upsets but that’s not the same as being hot enough to rise from mediocrity to playoff caliber.)
*The market isn’t great at pricing in-season injuries, particularly the cumulative impact of multiple injuries as they relate to talent depth (or lack of talent depth). And, that happens in a way that hurts favorites’ ATS performances more than dogs because favorites are teams most likely to have high-impact players on the further right side of the bell curve.
*Meaningful money keeps overreacting to some things, underreacting to others in a churn that will favor underdogs more than favorites (more favorites disappoint than catch fire…more underdogs are pleasant surprises than catastrophes).
I’m probably going to need a better name than “Misled Market” theory because there seems to be more going on here than just market misreads. Maybe “Underdog Complexity Theory” or something. And, we also have to be careful because if we ARE onto something…the market would take steps to correct…to the degree it’s possible to do so. I mean…it can at least react to injuries differently…even if it can’t tell when a mediocre basketball team is going to hit 50% of its treys one game…or when a mediocre baseball team is going to hit 3-4 homers.
Wanted to get all this down on paper for you while the WNBA is still fresh on our minds and we’re not buried in football. Trust me…we’re about to be buried in football. In October, football and the MLB Playoffs (sharps reports and game recaps).
And, of course, many thanks to Ariel for her assistance with the modeling. Helped so much in the Misled Market article and this WNBA follow-up.
Here’s a quick look at Monday’s stat recaps. Won’t do the chart update because it was just two games. Only two games Tuesday (Indiana + won’t be a study qualifier because short-handed Indiana is on the dreg list…Los Angeles + will be a qualifier at home against Phoenix as long as its getting +2 and +110 or better). Only two games Wednesday too. I’ll update the WNBA charts when there are six new games to put in late Wednesday night.