I met this guy a couple years ago and he is an interesting story. He has been betting on NBA since he was 15 years old (about 30 now) and from 2003 to 2007 was also a pro poker player winning more that 1.5mil in tournaments as his side gig while making his real money in sports betting. In 2007 he retired from poker. He claims to spend more money on analyzing, all sorts of non-tracked metrics, than any team in the NBA, and this has enabled him to make millions. He has several employees/partners that work full time to track every play of every game. Last year he took a year off betting to try and get a job for an NBA franchise and was on the short list for several teams, and even did some consultant work for at least one franchise, although I don't know which one. In an interview I heard recently, he said that he never watches games start to finish anymore, but watches in groupings of clips put together by his team. This might include all offensive sets, or all defensive sets, or some subset that he is studying. He uses all the collected metrics along with his human eye evaluations to figure out his bets. Of all the major sports, college or pro, NBA is supposed to be the hardest to win at and Haralabos wins consistently. He is one of, if not the biggest NBA sports better around now. Anyway, I have never really known any pro gamblers, and especially one that is brilliant like Haralabose, and thought it was interesting how methodical he is and how he views the game from a very different angle than almost any fan, player, coach, GM or solo-gambler. And I basically don't understand why someone of his caliber, who can show year after year results of having better analytical tools than anyone else was not snatched up by some NBA team and used to evaluate player tendencies in a far more thorough way than is currently done. It seems to me, that for a couple mil investment, some team like the Blazers could have a big time competitive advantage with Haralabose.
I don't mean to be snide, but does he have any connections to the guys that were after Donaghy? But yea, if Cho/PA (and KP) have invested so much into the Synergy and metrics, I'm guessing they would be interesting in having him consult with the team.
It makes sense. If you study a game enough and keep yourself emotionally detatched from teams, it probably would be a good money maker. The biggest mistake people make is betting with their heart instead of their mind.
I can't know for certain, but according to his interview it sounded like he was blindsided. In fact, in poker, there was a huge internet scandal with a company called Ultimate Bet, and Haralabos (Bob is his nickname) was refunded $400,000 from that scandal and was a huge outspoken voice against all sorts of cheating, and tried to use his pulpit as host of an old podcast called Big Poker Sundays on pokerroad.com. I met him once, but am not friends with him and can't claim to know any truth, but my feeling is that he is as honest as they come.
