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The Spurs did their job, and in the process handed the Smackdown prize to Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference.com.

Interestingly, when I started this contest, I consulted with several stat experts to see if they would either join or make recommendations as to who should. When I talked to Dean Oliver (author of "Basketball on Paper," stat wizard to the Denver Nuggets, and the legend of the field) he regretted that he could not join because of his team affiliation, but made an off-hand comment that his money was on Kubatko to win.

Smart guy, that Dean Oliver.

The final standings and scores:

• 65 points for Justin Kubatko who runs the web site Basketball-Reference.com. He was, until recently, a lecturer in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University.
• 63 points for Kevin Pelton, the the interactive marketing coordinator for the Seattle SuperSonics and a writer for the team's site. He runs the APBRMetrics Forum for basketball analysis.
  
• 62 points for David Berri, Associate Professor of Economics at California State University-Bakersfield and lead author of "The Wages of Wins."
• 56 points for ESPN.com's John Hollinger. He created the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and several other statistical measures.
• 55 points for Jeff Ma, co-founder of PROTRADE. He was the protagonist, under the name Kevin Lewis, in the bestseller "Bringing Down the House," the story of the MIT blackjack team.
  
• 37 points for Mike Kurylo,writer and founder of KnickerBlogger.Net. In 2006 he developed OTTER, a unique non-biased team ranking system.
• 34 points for my mom who promises to spend the off-season refining her technique to make an impressive comeback next season.

(One thing I'd be interested to see: how do these picks stack up against the picks of regular old media experts? What about betting lines? If anyone wants to indulge in some post-game analysis, I welcome the input.)

Of course, Justin Kubatko will shortly be sporting a swanky new jacket. Kubatko describes the victory through the spray of victory champagne and cigar smoke:

What was your secret?
My secret wasn't really a secret: I went 100% with the numbers and ignored my gut instinct. If I had made my picks based on gut instinct, I definitely would have taken Miami over Chicago in round one, and I probably would have picked Golden State over Utah and Chicago over Detroit in the conference semifinals. Most people allow recent history to play a much larger role than it should when making choices. For example, Utah had shown over the course of an 82-game regular season that they were a stronger team than Golden State, yet my gut instinct was to pick Golden State based on a recent six-game series. That doesn't really make much sense, does it?

In the Eastern Conference Finals you picked the Detroit Pistons in seven, but said that the second most likely scenario you envisioned was Cleveland in six. That makes clear to me that you are not doing a straight team vs. team analysis, right? You are somehow measuring the relative likelihood of many different outcomes. Without giving away any trade secrets, can you sketch out how that works?
I did not do a straight team vs. team analysis to make my picks. Instead, I took into account the home court advantage and estimated the probability that Team A would win in four games, the probability that Team B would win in four games, and so on. In the Chicago-Detroit series I actually had Chicago as the higher rated team, but just by a nose. When the home court advantage was taken into account, Detroit in seven games was the most likely outcome. Of course, Detroit actually won in six games, but John Hollinger and myself were the only ones to pick Detroit to win the series, and in the end that proved to be the difference.

Now that you have etched your name in history as the winner of the first TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown, what's next? You're not going to get a big attitude and stop working hard, are you?
No, no ego here; I'll continue to work hard. It's funny you should ask that, because I recently left Ohio State and started working on my web site full time. Ohio State has lost a lot of talent this spring: Oden, Conley, Cook, Kubatko.

Well, maybe not that last one.

(Photo courtesy of Colony Sportswear)

The latest round of picks are in. Click over there for the full story, and you'll see that three different experts still have a shot at the winner's jacket.

Check the standings. Thanks to LeBron's performance last night, Justin Kubatko (who lives in Ohio) is now assured at least a share of first place, unless somebody can beat San Antonio in the Finals. Kubatko explains: 

Cleveland's win last night was huge for me. Besides the fact that it was an amazing game, I am now guaranteed to be in the lead in the Smackdown going into the Finals. Kevin Pelton picked the Pistons in 6, so he can no longer get the games bonus. The only way someone is going to be able to beat me is to pick against the Spurs, as that's who I'll be taking in the Finals. Pelton and I could could end up tied if (a) the Cavs win the series, (b) we both pick the Spurs in the Finals, and (c) Pelton gets the games bonus and I do not.

Everyone's updated picks will be published soon. I have seen them and can tell you that every single stat expert believes San Antonio and Detroit will be moving on.

Utah draws a lot of admiration, and everyone acknowledges that a special performance by LeBron James could change things in the East. But, amazingly, the picks are perfectly consistent (except for my mom, who is going against her gut in an attempt to differentiate herself from the field to make up some ground).

Also, Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference.com might want to consider his jacket size. The winner's blazer will be his unless something crazy happens in the Finals. (UPDATE: Not true! It's a horse race! See below.) After picking every team in the second round, Kubatko went from a tie for first to a seven-point lead on Kevin Pelton, who works for the official website of the SuperSonics.

UPDATE: I am, apparently, not gifted at basic arithmetic. Upon review, Kubatko and Pelton are in fact currently tied. So buckle your seatbelts. Nipping at their heels, just three points back and capable of making it to first are David Berri -- the lead author of "The Wages of Wins" -- and Jeffrey Ma of ProTrade.

In case you haven't been following along already, TrueHoop has a battle going on right now between some of the NBA's leading statistical minds (and my mom -- seriously).

It's the 2007 TrueHoop stat geek smackdown.

With the first round just about over, and the second round about to start, it's still anybody's game. Check here for an updated scoreboard and picks.

Each correctly picked series is worth five points. Correctly predicting the number of games is worth two additional points. Winner take all.

In the first round, the stat geeks did pretty well, all told. Everyone picked the correct winners in all of the more predictable series: Phoenix over the Lakers, Detroit over Orlando, Cleveland over Washington, San Antonio over Denver. Then there were the tougher series:

• Everyone except my mom and Kickerblogger Mike Kurylo picked Chicago over Miami, which is the one area where the stat geeks really creamed a lot of media experts, like myself.
• Only my mom and Jeff Ma picked the Nets over the Raptors, a sign that Toronto, in some fashion, betrayed their season-long numbers. This was also a measure of redemption for various media members, like myself, many of whom picked New Jersey.
• Nobody picked Golden State.
• If Utah can win tonight, Kevin Pelton, who works for the Sonics, will look really smart, and climb up near the top of the leaderboard. If Houston wins, Pelton will take a body blow, while "Wages of Wins" author David Berri, Mike Kurylo, and my mom will gain two points on the rest of the field thanks to calling the number of games correctly.

Until further notice, ProTrade's Jeff Ma (famous as a protagonist of that real-life gambling thriller "Bringing Down the House") is the king of this castle. Enjoy the view Jeff, my mom is coming to get you.

One concern we had before launching this contest was that the experts might all make very similar picks. The second round should fix that (thank you, Golden State). Not sure anyone knows exactly what to expect from the Warriors in the next round. That'll seperate the sheep from the goats a little, as, it appears, will New Jersey and Cleveland, as well as Detroit and Chicago. Almost everyone likes San Antonio against Phoenix, however -- except my mom.

While we're at it, here are my predictions for the second round so far:

Chicago over Detroit. I have a feeling that by the end of this series people will be saying that the Pistons look a little old. If the Pistons win? It'll be because Tayshaun Prince is amazing.

San Antonio over Phoenix. I'm rooting for Phoenix. But San Antonio is good.

New Jersey over Cleveland. Cleveland just seems pretty spotty. New Jersey sometimes has veteran poise, and if Richard Jefferson is really healthy, to me the Nets are better.

The smackdown is in full effect. Check out the new scoreboard, which at the moment shows a five-way tie for first. (UPDATE: Tuesday morning, that's a four-way tie instead.)

First of all, let's be honest, my mom (who is a genius, of course, but not, perhaps a basketball expert in the traditional sense) has the experts at least a little nervous.

Why is that? She picked New Jersey over Toronto and, except for ProTrade's Jeff Ma, they didn't.

In fact, assuming New Jersey goes on to win, she was pretty much guaranteed to be solo atop the leaderboard, as long as the defending champion Miami Heat could get it together against the upstart Bulls, a contest in which every expert except Knickerblogger Mike Kurylo picked Chicago.

Oops.

Smart people, those experts.

Of course, Golden State vs. Dallas has proved to be something of a riddle to everyone. No shame in that. David Berri, lead author of "Wages of Wins," explains that this is a classic example of a small sample size (four games so far) defying bigger trends -- which is a fancy way of saying that the more games you play the more likely the better team is to prevail:

I realize we want to watch Baron Davis play well for four games and declare him the greatest player ever, but he has already played 526 games in his career and although he is consistently above average, he is not the greatest player to ever play this game. And although Dallas is better than Golden State, it is not inconceivable that the lesser team can win three out of four. After all, the Memphis Grizzlies started the year without Pau Gasol (and hence were the worst team in the NBA), and still managed to win six times across their first 30. Bad teams can win. Good teams can win more often. And great teams still lose.

Berri says he still expects Dallas to win three straight to take the series, but he confesses to less faith than before.

If you had to pick a favorite among the experts so far, Ma would be a serious contender. Not only did he pick New Jersey, but he also has a hope of a miracle in the Dallas series. Everyone picked the Mavericks, but he is the only one who picked them in seven, which could still happen.

Kevin Pelton, who works for the Sonics, has an opportunity to separate himself from the field. Everyone, even my mom, picked Houston, except Pelton. "Utah has been my most dangerous pick the whole time," he says, "though I'm feeling better about it right now. Seems like with every Houston loss the focus on Tracy McGrady and his history of not getting out of the first round will intensify."

Points and rebounds are so 80s. These days it's all about efficiency ratings, point differential, and regression modeling. The world of Freakonomics, economics, and Moneyball has come to the NBA in a pretty major way, and it's exciting. The revolution is taking place right now, and it involves people like David Berri, John Hollinger, Justin Kubatko, Jeff Ma, Kevin Pelton, and Mike Kurylo. Remember those names.

NBA teams are listening to people like them. Roland Beech and the people at 82games are working for NBA teams. Visionary basketball statistician and author Dean Oliver has a job with the Denver Nuggets. Dan Rosenbaum takes time out from his work as a professor to advise the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Dallas Mavericks rely on Wayne Winston and Jeff Sagarin. Perhaps you have heard of my colleague John Hollinger?

I'm all for this, in theory. I have long been disappointed in regular old basketball statistics. And I am convinced that in a decade, the shorthand stats fans use to talk about the game will look very different than they do today. And the new stats that we'll all use? They're being tested and perfected at this very moment. We're all going to learn a lot more about this stuff whether we want to or not.

But I'm impatient. I want to see this knowledge at work in some fashion now.

So I dreamed up a super crude way to see what it is that these statistical gurus know: I invited the world's best and brightest stat experts (I use the term "geek" lovingly, and with respect) to use their wily ways to predict every series of these mighty 2007 playoffs in a winner-take-all competition. As you'll see, I also invited my mom, for reasons that are not entirely clear, other than that I really hope she wins.

It's TrueHoop's 2007 Stat Geek Smackdown, starting now and going on here all throughout the playoffs. Click around the various series: you'll see that the stat experts do not all agree on who will win Utah vs. Houston, New Jersey vs. Toronto, nor Chicago vs. Miami (although they mostly choose Chicago in that one, unlike a lot of non-statistical experts). More disagreements to come throughout the playoffs. Should be good. I'm excited to see what happens here. And they're also explaining themselves, so maybe we'll all learn a little something about these new statistics as the playoffs unfold. Stay tuned.