NBA Team Rankings - March 3, 2012

Reggie Miller doing what he did best: Making New York miserable

Here are the NBA Team Rankings as of March 3, 2012. These rankings use the Vegas point spreads from recent games to derive an implied measure of team strength (Generic Points Favored, or GPF). By combining the point spread information with the betting over/unders, I can also decompose team strength into its offensive and defensive components (oGPF and dGPF). For more detail, see the Methodology page.

The photo accompanying this post has little to do with the rankings (although the Pacers did move up four spots to #10). Reggie Miller is a Hall of Fame finalist this year. As an Indiana native, there is no question in my mind he belongs there. Here's to it becoming official on April 2.

My favorite thing about that photo? Everybody pictured (including Spike) knows, without a doubt, that shot is going in. You can see it on their faces. This was from Game 4 of the 1998 Eastern Semis, several years after Reggie's 25 point fourth quarter in 1994 and 8 points in 8.9 seconds in 1995. New Yorkers knew what to expect by then. That three pointer sent the game to overtime, where the Pacers ultimately prevailed. Miller scored 38.

On to the rankings. There's still no dislodging the Heat, Thunder, and Bulls from the top 3. The Mavericks looked like they were going to make a run at it last week, but Dirk Nowitzki's injured back sidetracked them once again.

You can see it for yourself in the newest feature here, The Ticker (introduced in this post). Here is how the Mavs have progressed this season (you can hover over the graph for details):

The Mavericks peaked right before the All Star break on 2/21, with a GPF of 5 points. But with Nowitzki injuring his back on the 28th, they have slid back down by about two points. Something very similar happened earlier this season, when they reached a GPF of 4 around 1/20, but Nowitzki missed the next four games due to injury and Dallas lost a point and a half of GPF.

The Rankings (glossary below)

Rank	Team	LstWk	GPF	oGPF		dGPF		GOU		W-L		GWP
1	MIA	1	8.5	7.0	2	1.5	13	198	6	28-8	3	0.79
2	OKC	2	7.5	8.0	1	-0.5	17	201	3	29-7	1	0.77
3	CHI	3	6.5	2.0	9	4.5	3	189	21	30-8	2	0.74
4	LAC	5	4.0	1.0	11	3.0	8	190	20	21-13	7	0.65
5	ORL	7	4.0	-1.5	21	5.5	2	185	26	23-14	6	0.64
6	SAS	6	3.5	3.0	5	0.5	14	195	11	25-11	4	0.64
7	LAL	8	3.5	-1.0	19	4.5	4	186	24	22-14	8	0.63
8	PHI	10	3.0	-4.0	25	7.0	1	181	30	22-15	9	0.62
9	DAL	4	3.0	-1.5	22	4.5	6	186	25	21-16	12	0.61
10	IND	14	2.5	1.0	13	1.5	11	192	16	22-12	5	0.59
11	POR	9	2.0	0.0	16	2.0	10	191	19	18-18	16	0.57
12	NYK	13	1.5	3.0	6	-1.5	19	196	9	18-18	17	0.56
13	MEM	12	1.0	-1.0	20	2.0	9	189	22	21-15	11	0.55
14	DEN	15	1.0	6.0	3	-5.0	28	203	2	20-17	14	0.53
15	MIN	16	0.0	2.5	7	-2.5	22	198	7	18-19	18	0.50
16	BOS	17	0.0	-4.5	26	4.5	7	183	28	18-17	15	0.50
17	PHX	22	-0.5	1.0	12	-1.5	20	194	12	16-20	20	0.48
18	UTA	20	-0.5	-0.5	17	0.0	15	191	17	17-18	19	0.48
19	HOU	11	-0.5	0.5	14	-1.0	18	194	13	21-16	13	0.48
20	ATL	19	-1.0	-5.5	29	4.5	5	182	29	21-15	10	0.45
21	MIL	21	-2.5	1.5	10	-4.0	24	197	8	14-22	22	0.41
22	SAC	23	-2.5	4.5	4	-7.0	30	203	1	12-24	24	0.41
23	GSW	18	-2.5	2.0	8	-4.5	27	199	5	14-19	21	0.40
24	NJN	25	-3.5	-0.5	18	-3.0	23	195	10	11-26	27	0.36
25	TOR	29	-4.5	-4.5	27	0.0	16	188	23	11-25	26	0.33
26	NOH	27	-5.0	-6.5	30	1.5	12	184	27	9-27	28	0.31
27	DET	24	-5.5	-3.0	23	-2.5	21	192	15	12-25	25	0.30
28	WAS	28	-6.0	0.5	15	-6.5	29	199	4	7-28	29	0.28
29	CLE	26	-6.5	-3.0	24	-3.5	25	193	14	13-21	23	0.26
30	CHA	30	-10.0	-5.5	28	-4.5	26	191	18	4-30	30	0.18

GLOSSARY

LstWk - The BTM ranking from last week.

GPF - Stands for "Generic Points Favored". It's what you would expect the team to be favored by against a league average opponent at a neutral site.

oGPF - Stands for "Offensive Generic Points Favored". The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to score points (per game).

dGPF - Stands for "Defensive Generic Points Favored". The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to prevent the other team from scoring points (per game).

GOU - Stands for "Generic Over/Under". It's what you would expect the betting over/under to be for the given team when playing a league average opponent.

W-L - The team's win/loss record (and win percentage rank)

GWP - Stands for "Generic Win Probability". I converted the GPF into a win probability using the following formula: 1/(1 + exp(-GPF/6.5)).

Additional Key Factors:

League Average Points Scored (APS): 96.0 points
Home Court Advantage (HCA): 3.25 points
Back to Back Penalty (B2B): -0.75 points (see here)

How to Use This Table to Build Point Spreads and Over/Unders

Point Spread (in favor of home team) = HCA + (B2B_home - B2B_away) + (GPF_home - GPF_away)
Over/Under = 2*APS + (oGPF_home + oGPF_away - dGPF_home - dGPF_away)