I believe that I've found the missing piece to my system and will post my picks here with some simple writeups (stuff that I keep in my records anyway). I've gleaned the missing ingredient through other cappers' reasoning and I wanted to give back to the community. It will be completely up to you whether you tail my picks. Meaning, do not blame me for your losses if you decide to tail and lose. We're grown folk here. Nobody here stands to gain from your loss and I for certain am not forcing your hand.
With that being said, I'll explain how I have devised my strategy.
Every day, I update players stats into my database. These stats are available on NBAStuffer, CBS Sports, teamrankings, and basketball-reference (dot com). I take a look at the recent lineups for every team and the updated injury list from nba (dot) com to predict the most probable lineup for each match. Using stats, offense rating, defense rating, mpg, 2p%, 3p%, ft%, and cross-computing versus the opponent's stats, I am able to predict a normal game score prediction. The sweet sauce that I was missing was this: "Motivation". Who is motivated to win and by what factor/multiple?
Motivation is broken down into two parts.
Schedule. A team's schedule is important. If a team is rested, and doesn't have a game the next day, you can expect them to play at full capacity (or at least up to the predicted score). However, if the team is playing their 2nd game after a tough matchup where the coach probably allocated a majority of their star-power into their previous match, it will affect the result of the match. Another schedule factor is the next-day matchup. If there is a tough team to play for the 2nd match. Weaker players may be allocated to the first match to try and ensure a victory against the 2nd match. This type of allocation can affect the resulting "motivation" of the team and usually results in lower game scores. The circumstances are numerous, but being able to visually interpret this information was important for my understanding as to why certain games have high scores while others are unexpectedly lower.
Win Loss records. Based on my observation, a team's win loss record is important in determining motivation as much as their schedule. For my calculations, I only look at the last 6 games for each team. I believe that the most recent games have more weight than the ones before it and so, 6 games is plenty to make a fair assessment. Teams with a longer string of wins when facing a team with a string of losses tend to get cocky and sloppy. This isn't always the case, but it tends to happen more often when scheduling factors also play a part in the matchup.
Picks. I will post picks as I make them and will keep a tally with every post. However, I will not create a new thread everyday. I will keep posting to just one thread (this one).
Best of luck to me and any tailers