Point Differential

Post #1 » by **Luv those Knicks** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 4:56 am

I remember reading an article a while back that something like 40% of the time, the team with the best point differential wins the finals. I don't know if that's true, but point differential is an important indicator of a team's skill.

http://espn.go.com/nba/standings

and while it's early - the top 4 teams in point differential this year are:

San Antoni: 10.0
Miami (boo) 9.8
Boston 9.7
and
LAL 7.8

Dallas is 5th with 5.7
Orlando 6th with 4.1
Utah 7th with 4.0
Chicago 8th with 3.3
Atlanta 9th with 2.7
Knicks 10th with 2.0
Denver 11th with 1.8
OKC & Indy tied for 12th with 1.3
New Orleans 14th with 1.2
and the surprise - Philly, 15th with 0.3

I realize that teams in the stronger west have a disadvantage, and obviously, strength of schedule is a big factor, especially this early in the season, but I think this is a pretty good ranking of which teams are elite and which are not.

Is Utah the 7th best team in the league? (perhaps 6th ahead of Orlando when you include strength of schedule?)

is Chicago on the rise cause they just got Boozer or are they a wanna be team that's not really up there with the big boys?

I know that there's an NBA ranking thread, but I thought this was kinda interesting / worth posting.

Speedlot · Post #2 » by **Speedlot** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:33 am

A win's a win. It's nice to see but meh not really that important.

Slax · Post #3 » by **Slax** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:52 am

Actually it turns out point differential does a better job of predicting how well a team will do in wins/losses for the rest of the season than wins/losses itself. :lol:

To some extent, Miami's high point differential early on means it shouldn't have been a big surprise when Miami started winning games. But it's unadjusted for strength of schedule, and it doesn't take into account potential changes in team performance over time (for example, due to injuries/recoveries). Not that that isn't a problem for wins/losses too. And I'm willing to bet that the team witht he most wins wins the NBA championship a huge chunk of the time as well.

stephanieg · Post #4 » by **stephanieg** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:00 am

Efficiency differential is the same concept, except even better (per 100 possession instead of raw points). It's old news and well known. Best bet if you want to predict games or a playoff series.

You can find it by going to a team's page on basketball reference and doing ORtg - Drtg. As of this post, for example, LA has a 113.1 ORtg and a DRtg of 104.8 -- their efficiency differential is 8.3. That's really good. Most years the title team and various contenders have around at least a 7 or more.

It's still a little early in the season to be looking at it, but it can be telling. I think at this point last year Boston had an ED of like 15, which would've been the best of all time by like 5 or 6 points. Didn't last, of course. Miami has the ED of the '96 Bulls right now but they're also blowing bad teams out of the water like crazy. It will probably come down when they play better teams. Although it was also high early because they were barely losing to good teams.

Over the last 30 years the ability to blow out inferior teams is a good indicator of post season success.

SimonFish · Post #5 » by **SimonFish** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:04 am

2011 is an odd year. SA will win.

Dekadez · Post #6 » by **Dekadez** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:15 am

It's too early to make any conclusions based on point differential, unless you pair it with a statistic that measures how strong the schedule has been up till now.

mysticbb · Post #7 » by **mysticbb** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:43 am

Dekadez wrote:It's too early to make any conclusions based on point differential, unless you pair it with a statistic that measures how strong the schedule has been up till now.

Yes. Use the SRS system on basketball-reference.com. That combines the scoring margin with the SOS. That gives the best indication of which teams are the best. And in fact this SOS makes a better job in predicting future success than the record.

Top5 teams so far:

Code: Select all

1. Miami Heat         9.33 
2. Boston Celtics     9.13 
3. San Antonio Spurs  9.03 
4. Dallas Mavericks   6.17 
5. Los Angeles Lakers 5.44

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2011.html

Chrome · Post #8 » by **Chrome** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:59 am

Speedlot wrote:A win's a win. It's nice to see but meh not really that important.

raleigh · Post #9 » by **raleigh** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 2:01 pm

Speedlot wrote:A win's a win. It's nice to see but meh not really that important.

What a waste of a post.

A win isn't a win if you're trying to predict with some reasonable amount of success.

droponov · Post #10 » by **droponov** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 2:55 pm

Speedlot wrote:A win's a win. It's nice to see but meh not really that important.

Point differential is a better predictor than W/L record.

The sample is still too small though.

Spurtatcus · Post #11 » by **Spurtatcus** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 3:01 pm

I'm telling you guys...

Lockout
Spurs
Lakers
Lakers
Lakers
Spurs
Pistons
Spurs
Heat
Spurs
Celtics
Lakers
Lakers
Spurs
Lockout

Deus · Post #12 » by **Deus** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 4:40 pm

The point differential is important. But so are injuries. And schedules. If a team has an easy starting schedule (like the Spurs) then that's why their point differential is so good.

I like looking at it myself, but I think its only important late in the season.

Spurtatcus · Post #13 » by **Spurtatcus** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:00 pm

Spurs are 9-2 against teams above .500. What are the Lakers, still under .500 I'm sure.