Archive for the 'BBR Rankings' Category

Another week, and it's time again for the BBR Rankings, where we rate every NBA team from top to bottom. For the second straight week we have a new #1 squad, as the Orlando Magic's 3-0 record (with 2 wins coming on the road) propelled them to the top overall spot. The Lakers also went 3-0, moving up a spot to #2 in the rankings. The Hawks fell one slot to #3 but stayed pretty steady despite a loss at Detroit, while the Celtics make their first appearance of the season in the Top 5 thanks to a 4-0 record and 3 road wins. Rounding out the top 5 is Dallas, who holds that place for the 3rd consecutive week after going 3-1, with their lone loss coming on the road against #7 Cleveland. Last week's #1, the Phoenix Suns, started strong with 2 wins away from the US Airways Center, but closed out the 7-day period by losing twice on the road (including one defeat vs. the 28th-ranked Knicks). The other big faller of the week was Denver, who dropped from #6 to #11 despite going 3-1 because the one loss was at home vs. the lowly T-Wolves, #29 in this week's rankings. Another note on Denver: they're currently 14-5, but the gaudy record has come at the expense of the easiest schedule in the league, which also hurts them in these rankings. Finally, congrats to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who continue to hang tough at #9 in the rankings. They lost to #8 Houston last Sunday, but otherwise they continue to surprise and are on pace to make the playoffs for the first time in the Durant Era. You can see the rest of the rankings after the jump:

(Want to know how the rankings are calculated? Read this first.)

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Hopefully everyone had a fun, happy, and restful holiday yesterday, and maybe you were even able to ward off the tryptophan long enough take in the two games last night, including a showdown between #1 and #8 in last week's BBR Rankings. After that matchup, we have some changes at the top of the "poll", so let's dive right in and take a look at how the teams rank this week...

(If you want to know how the rankings are calculated, read this first.)

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Okay, it's time for the inaugural edition of the BBR Rankings, which will be coming to you every Friday from now until the end of the season. The idea behind these rankings is to rate a team's past accomplishments rather than predict what they'll do in the future -- sort of a retrodictive ranking rather than a predictive one. The Simple Rating System is the best predictor of future wins and losses because it focuses purely on point differential, filtering out the whims of lucky or unlucky performance in close games (which has been shown to have no bearing on future performance regardless of coach or players). However, it doesn't really give teams credit for wins and losses, which I feel like is the only real factor when you're looking at how impressive a team's season has been in the past.

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