APBRmetrics

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

Okay, so the regular season is over and the playoffs are finally upon us... And as promised, I ran the numbers on Pace and the Four Factors -- offensive and defensive -- for every team since 1973-74 (ABA included). Then I compared the differences in z-scores to find the ten most similar teams to this year's crop of playoff squads.

Like I said with the college teams, I'm not even sure if this has any value, but it's kind of cool, so here goes...

(BTW, you can download the sim score excel file here, in case you want to run your own scores. It's called "NBASimScore.xls", and to run the scores, you paste the target team's data from "Teams" to the 2nd row of "SimTeam".)

Eastern Conference

1. Boston

VS.
8. Atlanta

4. Cleveland

VS.
5. Washington

3. Orlando

VS.
6. Toronto

2. Detroit

VS.
7. Philadelphia

Western Conference

1. LA Lakers

VS.
8. Denver

4. Utah

VS.
5. Houston

3. San Antonio

VS.
6. Phoenix

2. New Orleans

VS.
7. Dallas

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

And here are this year's most similar teams to the "typical" NBA Champion since 1973-74:

Now, I'm really not sure about the validity of comparing to the average NBA champ, because Phoenix, Boston, and Utah rank 21st, 23rd, and 27th in the league respectively, while the Knicks rank 11th. Confused

anarcholis · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 19

If you're really trying to get similar teams, shouldn't you add margin of victory to your calculation also? One of the Celtics' comparables is the 96-97 Pacers who won 39 games....that doesn't seem very similar.

But it is interesting to see what teams the contenders match up with. It would be neat to see how the top teams in the playoffs (Celts, Pistons, and the West) match up with past finalists.

94by50 · Joined: 01 Jan 2006 Posts: 499 Location: Phoenix

My first question is: how are you getting your overall scores ("Diff")?

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

It's the total sum of their differences in z-scores for Pace and the 8 Factors, as outlined here (it's basically what KenPom did, except for teams instead of individuals). To paraphrase Ken:

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

Mountain · Joined: 13 Mar 2007 Posts: 1527

Pretty straightforward to use- I see that by copying the data of a particular team into the sim team page I see the similarity results for any team. Handy.

I am exploring the application of 4 factor and overall efficency weights. That fits my personal preference better.

gabefarkas · Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1313 Location: Durham, NC

Neil Paine · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

Well, that would put the 8 factors and pace on different scales, so I'd have to arbitrarily weight each category differently, which I wanted to get away from (what I'd call the "Bill James School" of analysis says to arbitrarily weight certain categories when doing sim scores, but I find that Ken's method reduces that arbitrariness).

Also, without z-scores the numbers wouldn't be normalized for league... Although that begs the question: All things being equal, is a team with an average pace in 2008 (92.4 poss/gm) more similar to the average-paced team in the eighties (100+ poss/gm) or a very slow team in the eighties?

AJax · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:11 pm Post subject:

Very very good stuff. Interesting to see that some teams are very similar to recent iterations of themselves (see Cavs, Pistons, Raptors and Nuggets) while others seem to have remade themselves completely (Magic, 76ers, Lakers).

Thanks for the spreadsheet, I'll definitely be looking at it. - Adam

Oh and LOL at Atlanta being extremely similar to the 2003 Clippers. Ouch.