drew881 wrote:crkone wrote:https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-great-regular-seasons-matter-anymore-in-the-nba-asking-for-a-friend-in-milwaukee/But as other NBA analysts such as Seth Partnow and Kostya Medvedovsky have pointed out, a team’s regular-season point differential can be distorted by blowout wins and generally feasting on bad opponents. Indeed, the Bucks have a much better per-game scoring margin against teams that are below-average in point differential (+16.3) than they do against teams with a positive net differential (+4.6), even after crushing the Sixers this week. Compared with other great scoring-margin teams through 51 games, that 11.7-PPG gap by the level of competition is extremely large … and that +4.6 differential against “good” teams is also quite low.
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Should we consider this team to be on the same level as, say, the 1996 Bulls, or even the 73-win Warriors from just a few seasons ago? In some ways, that will hinge on how far Milwaukee can go in the playoffs (and we give the Bucks an 18 percent chance of winning it all, behind the Clippers’ 22 percent and the Lakers’ 20 percent). Right or wrong, that is the way any team will ultimately be judged in 2020. But as a byproduct, it also downplays the greatness of all 82 games that came before the postseason, no matter how transcendent the brand of basketball Milwaukee has been playing all year long.
Well I guess if they can get the presidential election right then I know that I can trust them...
That year one team of the Warriors with Durant might be the best ever NBA team.
