Pricing Lebron 10+

Hello everyone, I’ll be writing a weekly newsletter for The Hammer. And I know what you’re thinking—awesome, I get to read Kirk shit on people in long form now.

Sadly, that won’t be the case. I think Twitter is great for trolling people (who deserve it), but that style doesn’t translate well to longer content.

I also know the second thing you’re thinking: I thought Rob was smart. He’s letting Kirk write a newsletter? Has he literally read any of his tweets?

And honestly, I agree. I might hold the record for the most spelling and grammar mistakes on Twitter. I have no idea what Rob was thinking, but I’m happy to be here. Let’s see how it goes.

Now, onto what this newsletter is actually about. Ferris had a tweet recently about how much educational content there is in the space right now. The goal of this newsletter isn’t to be strictly educational—though, ironically, this first edition kind of is, so I’m already screwing that up.

The general ethos here is simple: winning at betting is really cool. I think Gambling Twitter has become desensitized to how awesome it is to beat a casino or sportsbook with an edge. That’s what this newsletter will focus on.

For the last four years, I’ve dedicated most of my time to betting. I’ll be sharing stories—both mine and others’—about winning in unique ways, breaking down specific angles and edges I’ve taken, and giving insight into what life is like when betting is your main focus.

But today, we’re talking about the LeBron James 10+ points prop that has dominated Twitter for the last three months.

Two weeks ago, on an Elf space (or maybe 100 spaces ago), Elf, Brett Feinsod (@nbagreenbeens), and Foazn were debating with Chris Dierkes (@flupnolide) about the actual odds of LeBron scoring 10+ points in a game.

Elf, Brett, and Foazn have all been heavy bettors on LeBron 10+, so I was pretty stunned at how little thought they’d given to what the actual fair odds were. Brett casually threw out “it’s 99%” without much backing, and Foazn said something along the lines of, “It’s impossible to price—how do you factor in motivation?”

Technically, Foazn wasn’t wrong. It is impossible to get a true fair price on LeBron 10+, just like it’s impossible to get a perfectly accurate price on any bet—unless you’re God or some higher being. There are always unknowable factors in any sporting event or asset you’re trading.

But that’s not the game we play. The game is about finding a better fair price than the market and using that edge to win. This conversation got me thinking—how would I price LeBron 10+ for a given game, and would I be willing to bet either side?

First, I intentionally priced this the same way I would during a normal NBA day. I didn’t want to go too deep because an important part of pricing is managing time effectively. There’s no world where spending 50 hours pricing LeBron 10+ would be +EV for me, so I approached it in a way where I’d feel comfortable taking a side based on my process.

Second, there are plenty of ways to price this—or really, any market. If you think I’m an idiot, that’s great. That’s why markets exist in the first place.

Lastly, I’m pricing this with a heavy bias toward the yes. That’s because the no side is much more interesting to me as a potential bet. There’s a massive market for the yes, but most of it seems to lack real thought. And even if the true probability were 99.9% (it’s not), betting yes at -7000 odds would only generate about $120 of EV for every $10K wagered. On the flip side, if LeBron 10+ NO is actually 2%, every $1,000 risked would generate $420 of EV.

Since the no side is the one I’d actually consider betting, I’m biasing my pricing toward the yes to build in some cushion for my fair on the no side.

Now, onto actually pricing the market.

The part I agree with Elf, Brett, and Foazn on the most is that LeBron wants this streak to continue. Because of that, his point totals will disproportionately skew toward 10+, meaning a typical simulation won’t work here.

The real driver of this price is how likely LeBron is to get injured to the point where he can’t return—and, more specifically, how often that happens before he reaches 10 points.

To estimate this, I pulled every Underdog NBA tweet over the last two seasons containing the phrase “won’t return.” You could definitely criticize this method—I’m not 100% sure Underdog catches every instance of a player being ruled out, but they’re generally reliable, and any gaps in their data would only bias the numbers toward the yes side, which works for my purposes.

In total, 421 NBA players over the past two seasons left a game due to injury and didn’t return. To refine the sample, I filtered it down to just starters, which I think is more relevant here.

Out of the last 1,955 NBA games, 247 starters left and didn’t return. That means:

247 starters left and didn’t return/10 starters per game×1,955 games ​=1.26%

So, based on this dataset, there’s roughly a 1.26% chance that any given starter leaves a game and doesn’t return.

This is where we have to make an important assumption: Is LeBron more, less, or equally likely to get injured and leave a game compared to the average starter?

There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

Why LeBron might be less likely to leave due to injury:

• He’s one of the most durable athletes in the history of sports.

• He has significantly more motivation to score 10+ than any other player, meaning he’s more likely to play through a minor injury.

Why LeBron might be more likely to leave due to injury:

• He’s 40 years old and holds the record for most minutes played in NBA history.

• Over the past seven seasons, he’s been far more injury-prone than in his first 15.

• In the last two years, he’s been listed on the injury report 77.6% of the time—some of that is gamesmanship, but there’s no doubt he plays with more lingering injuries than most NBA players.

• He averages 34.5 minutes per game, more than the typical starter, increasing his exposure to injury risk.

Given all this, I estimate LeBron is roughly 15% more likely than an average starter to leave a game due to injury. That would put his probability of exiting and not returning at around 1.5%.

As mentioned earlier, the injury has to occur before LeBron reaches 10 points.

LeBron is averaging 24.3 PPG this season, and based on a normal distribution of points, we'd expect that 41.6% of the time he gets injured, he won’t have reached 10 points yet.

So, multiplying the 1.5% chance of him leaving a game and not returning by the 41.6% chance he hasn’t scored 10 points yet, we get:

1.5%×41.6%=0.6%

That means LeBron is roughly 99.4% to score 10+ in a game just based on injury risk.

I slightly adjusted that number down to 99.3% to account for the slight chance of Lebron not reaching 10+ in a non-injury game, and my final fair price for LeBron not scoring 10 points in an average game is -14186.

So all that and I probably wouldn’t take either side of the bet, though 99.3% would make the -7000 slightly +EV, I’m still probably passing due to my intentional bias on pricing the yes.