October 24, 2014 - by David Hess
With the NBA season kicking off Tuesday, here is our annual post outlining our NBA preseason ratings, with season projections added for good measure, for every NBA team in 2014-15. Below the data table is more information on how we rank and project teams.
When we make comparisons to “Vegas” below, we are comparing where a team ranks in our NBA championship probabilities with where they rank in the futures odds listed at Vegas Insider. Note that we are NOT comparing our probabilities with the payout odds, in order to find value. We are comparing the rankings, in order to illuminate which teams are ranked higher or lower than expected.
TR Rank | Atlantic | TR Rating | Wins | Losses | Playoffs | Division | 1 Seed | NBA Champs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | San Antonio | 6.3 | 57.3 | 24.7 | 93% | 53% | 27% | 16.1% |
2 | Cleveland | 6.0 | 57.6 | 24.4 | 97% | 62% | 40% | 17.8% |
3 | Okla City | 5.3 | 55.1 | 26.9 | 90% | 63% | 19% | 11.1% |
4 | LA Clippers | 5.1 | 54.3 | 27.7 | 88% | 53% | 18% | 10.4% |
5 | Chicago | 3.6 | 51.5 | 30.5 | 89% | 30% | 16% | 6.9% |
6 | Golden State | 3.5 | 50.1 | 31.9 | 79% | 33% | 9% | 5.3% |
7 | Houston | 3.0 | 48.5 | 33.5 | 74% | 17% | 7% | 4.1% |
8 | Toronto | 2.8 | 49.3 | 32.7 | 85% | 56% | 12% | 4.6% |
9 | Portland | 2.7 | 47.7 | 34.3 | 71% | 26% | 6% | 3.1% |
10 | Dallas | 2.6 | 47.2 | 34.8 | 69% | 13% | 5% | 3.1% |
11 | Washington | 2.3 | 47.8 | 34.2 | 80% | 35% | 9% | 3.8% |
12 | Memphis | 2.2 | 46.2 | 35.8 | 65% | 13% | 5% | 2.7% |
13 | Miami | 1.0 | 44.6 | 37.4 | 72% | 25% | 6% | 2.2% |
14 | Charlotte | 0.9 | 44.1 | 37.9 | 70% | 23% | 5% | 2.0% |
15 | Phoenix | 0.8 | 42.2 | 39.8 | 52% | 12% | 2% | 1.3% |
16 | Atlanta | 0.0 | 41.8 | 40.2 | 61% | 16% | 3% | 1.2% |
17 | Denver | -0.3 | 39.6 | 42.4 | 42% | 10% | 1% | 0.7% |
18 | New Orleans | -0.3 | 39.4 | 42.6 | 41% | 4% | 1% | 0.7% |
19 | New York | -0.4 | 41.1 | 40.9 | 59% | 22% | 3% | 0.9% |
20 | Brooklyn | -0.6 | 39.9 | 42.1 | 56% | 19% | 2% | 0.9% |
21 | Indiana | -1.4 | 37.7 | 44.3 | 47% | 4% | 2% | 0.6% |
22 | Detroit | -1.8 | 36.6 | 45.4 | 42% | 3% | 1% | 0.4% |
23 | Sacramento | -3.7 | 29.8 | 52.2 | 13% | 1% | 0% | 0.1% |
24 | Minnesota | -4.3 | 28.4 | 53.6 | 10% | 1% | 0% | 0.0% |
25 | Orlando | -4.7 | 28.5 | 53.5 | 17% | 2% | 0% | 0.1% |
26 | LA Lakers | -4.7 | 27.4 | 54.6 | 8% | 1% | 0% | 0.0% |
27 | Utah | -5.2 | 25.9 | 56.1 | 6% | 1% | 0% | 0.0% |
28 | Boston | -5.4 | 26.9 | 55.1 | 13% | 3% | 0% | 0.0% |
29 | Milwaukee | -5.8 | 25.9 | 56.1 | 11% | 1% | 0% | 0.0% |
30 | Philadelphia | -9.4 | 17.5 | 64.5 | 2% | 0% | 0% | 0.0% |
Our preseason process has two steps:
Thanks to randomness, every individual season simulation ends up looking differently. But once we run lots of simulations, the outcomes — such as the projected final win-loss record for each team — start to converge on the numbers that end up being our official 20142015 preseason projections. The simulator is sophisticated, accounting for the fact that our preseason rating for any given team may end up being wrong, and for the randomness and variance inherent in any given game.
Unlike the vast majority of pre-season rankers out there, we do very little subjective evaluation of teams. This approach generally serves us well. Inevitably some years turn out better than others (occasionally for factors out of our control, like mid-season injuries to key players), but we beat Vegas last season and haven’t changed the method since then.
Here are our previous preseason projections:
Before you make a comment about where we’ve ranked your favorite team and call us a bunch of no good bleepety-bleeps, please keep a couple things in mind:
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