RealGM

Well watching this team look like one of the worst in the league on the road and one of the best in the league at home I decided to dive deeper into the stats.

Rarely do you ever see such a stark contrast between home and road record, usually teams that can win 10 out of 11 games at home in the first 22 games of the season have at least a .500 or slightly above that road record.

Throughout the first 22 games here are the Blazers advanced stats at home:

OEF: 117.8 (1st in the West)
DEF: 105 (6th in the West)
EDIF: 12.8 (2nd in the West)
SOS: 5.58 (3rd hardest schedule at home when looking at the West so far.)
SAR: 18.38 (Evaluation of team based on record and strength of schedule 1st in the West)
PWIN%: 91.2 (2nd in the West)

So as we can see the stats overall back this up this team is nigh unbeatable at home and has taken most of their victories handily. Now some teams have come into Portland not at full strength and this has been part of it, but even on the road we have faced similar situations and not done as well. Sixers handled us in their home building without Embiid, but we they come into Portland and we easily take care of them for the most part.

Adding more fuel to this fire the Bulls come into Portland as one of the best teams in the East and at relatively full strength take a 20 point lead and proceed to lose the game.

Let's now analyze the Blazers advanced stats on the road:

OEF: 107.8 (7th in the West)
DEF: 120.1 (15th in the West)
EDIF: -12.3 (15th in the West)
SOS: 5.58 (3rd hardest schedule on the road when looking at the West so far.)
SAR: -6.72 (Evaluation of team based on record and strength of schedule 12th in the West)
PWIN%: 10.8 (14th in the West)

This difference is so striking it really boggles the mind, they are playing on the level of one of the worst teams in the West on the road. Outside of offense which translates to the road for them at least partially every other metric goes down the gutter, they look like they are one of the worst teams in the West on the road.

In fact the EDIF is so bad even teams with vastly worst records this year have at better differential between ratings on the road.

I really don't understand why the players and coaches haven't addressed this issue more directly. Even the eye test you can clearly see that things are not working on the road, and that this team should not have a night and day drop off between the two.

I used the following site (https://www.nbastuffer.com/2021-2022-nba-team-stats/) for these stats since many websites don't differentiate road vs. home stats.

I will likely be updating these stats 44 games in, I prefer to have an even number of road/home games so If it's not even at 44 I will wait for 46 or 48.

The disparity is indeed striking, and I would guess particularly unusual for a veteran team. I can't really explain it --- I don't think the coaching change alone would cause such a disparity. It could be just an outlier-ish start to the season, but it's certainly something to monitor.

Moonbeam wrote:The disparity is indeed striking, and I would guess particularly unusual for a veteran team. I can't really explain it --- I don't think the coaching change alone would cause such a disparity. It could be just an outlier-ish start to the season, but it's certainly something to monitor.

True, this is more than 25% of the season and obv does not count the beatdown the Spurs just gave us at home, which would obv reduce the stats a bit more at home. I didn't want to make this thread 10 games in because at that point it's a super small sample size.

I am eager to see what the stats look like 40ish games in if they still hold up to the metrics established in my 1st post.