How it works

Every game, every day

Twice a day (10:00 AM and 4:00 PM ET) the model retrains on every completed NBA game since 2021 and gives each of the day's games an est. win chance for both teams. Our pick is the team above 50%. The last run before tip-off is the pick of record: it's stored with a time stamp and never edited.

After the final, the pick is graded Right or Wrong overnight and added to the Record, along with the Brier score and calibration, so you can check whether our chances mean what they say.

What goes into a pick

Team quality (opponent-adjusted ratings), recent form, rest and schedule, home court, and the expected lineup, rated from play-by-play: how much the score moves while each player is on the floor. The one-line "why" on each game shows the factors that moved the chance most, in percentage points.

What we don't do

No market prices, no betting tips, no links to betting sites. Win chances are estimates and never shown as zero or certain: the smallest we write is "<1%", the largest ">99%".

We don't cover games or write player stories. Other sites do that well; we find the story in the data.

How good is it?

In a three-season walk-forward test the current model (v2.3) picked 68.0% of winners. The full answer, with the baselines, is on How accurate?

niftiIQ is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by the NBA or any team. Model v2.3 · site 2.5.0.