Wins and Losses

Welcome to Basketistics!

Basketistics is the search for knowledge in the NBA through the use of statistics and other analytical data to help us understand the game we all love.

(basketball + statistics = basketistics)

In our search for the "best" team in the NBA, we will first look at statistics in regards to wins and losses from each team. We will definitely look at other variables that contribute to a basketball game, but we will start by looking at the wins and losses to help decipher which team in the NBA really is better than the other

If you go on a website like espn.com and you want to know the standing of your favorite team, you will notice a spreadsheet-like model that shows basic data anywhere from wins/losses at home vs. on the road to how many games the team has won in the last 10 games played.

For now let's just take a look at wins and losses for each team in the eastern division and the western division.

Looks pretty simple--and you'd be right. But there is a lot more information that these numbers can tell us than what meets the eye (had to throw in a Transformers reference).

Let's take the Boston Celtics for example and walk through what we can get from these numbers.

Up through February 21, 2014, these are the wins and losses that the Boston Celtics have had against every team they have played against thus far in the season. So let's take a look at what this means if we break up the wins and losses by division.

As of February 21, 2014, the Boston Celtics have won 19 games and lost 37 games. Broken up by division, the Boston Celtics have won 15 times against eastern teams and lost 17 times. On the other hand, the Boston Celtics have won 4 games against western teams but lost 20 times.

The winning percentage for each NBA team in the league can be easily calculated so that we can figure out which teams are above .500 and which ones are below .500. 

With this in place, and without going too much into the calculations it took to get these numbers, the Boston Celtics are currently ranked 12th from the list above (compared to other eastern teams) but ranked 26th if the Boston Celtics were to be compared to all the teams' winning percentages in the NBA.

Let's take this one step further. If we compare the wins that the Boston Celtics have had against teams that have a winning percentage above .500 or below .500, we could tell how well the Celtics really are playing against harder or easier teams.

If we look at the winning percentage for the Boston Celtics against teams that are currently below .500, the Boston Celtics are actually at .500. But we can break it up by division as well. How many of those 34 games that the Celtics played were against teams in the Eastern Conference or the Western Conference with a winning record below .500?

It might be obvious that an eastern team with a below .500 winning percentage this season would be struggling more against western teams than eastern teams, but if we apply this to all the teams in the NBA, there can be some interesting statistics that come about.

It is also interesting to look at the other side and see how well the Boston Celtics are doing against eastern and western teams with a winning percentage above .500. The Celtics have not won a single game this season against a western team over .500. Now that is an interesting topic to bring up at a dinner party. (Note: the only wins the Celtics have against teams above .500 are the Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors.)

As far as the rankings go below the winning percentages for both the sub-500 teams and above-500 teams, it is a rank against how well the Boston Celtics are doing against other teams in the East, West, and NBA. For example, look at the rankings below. The Boston Celtics are #8 on that list. This is a comparison of the winning percentage of all teams in the Eastern Conference against teams in the Eastern Conference only above .500. So the Boston Celtics have only won .286 of their games against eastern teams with a winning percentage above .500 (compare both picture above and below). 

Same thing with Eastern teams that played against Western teams with a winning percentage over .500. The Boston Celtics have not won any games against Western teams over .500, but the Heat for example have won .833 of their games against teams in the west over .500. (Again compare below picture with picture above.)

If we put these two numbers together (winning percentage from teams played against both the West and East over .500) then the Boston Celtics have only won .091 of their games against teams over .500 this season. (Last time, please compare below picture with above picture that shows 2 wins and 20 losses against teams above .500.)

Whew -- thanks for hanging in there with me. I know it can be a lot but I wanted to get the ground work in before I explain the really cool part.

So instead of doing the same thing for every single team I'm going to just show you how each team is ranked against each other in regards to wins against over .500 teams and under .500 teams and if certain teams play better against eastern teams or western teams.

First let's look at how well all the teams in the NBA are facing off against sub-500 teams. The teams go from highest winning percentage to lowest winning percentage in each division and then overall in the NBA. (Please see picture above to reference team and winning percentage.) 

It may come as no surprise that the Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, and Toronto Raptors basically have sole ownership of the 1, 2 and 3 spot against teams under .500. But look at the Chicago Bulls, who are currently 4th in the Eastern conference. The Chicago Bulls are ranked 11th compared to all the eastern teams that have played against sub-500 teams in the West. This may seem very strange that a team so far up could lose that many games to western opponents below 500, but taking a closer look will show that only 10 games out of the 35 played against sub-500 teams this year came from western teams.

Take a second to look at all the rankings from all the teams. The east seems to be fairly normal, but the west is kind of all over the place (at least the top eight teams in the west are all over the place). Are the San Antonio Spurs better than the Oklahoma City Thunder because they are #1 when they face off against western teams under .500 and the Thunder are #5? These and similar questions are good to ask but not always easy to answer.

Let's take a closer look at the NBA as a whole. Who is number 1? Not the Thunder, not the Pacers, definitely not the Heat...but its the Spurs. This may not tell us much, but one thing this can point out it that the Miami heat are struggling in their games against sub-500 teams (especially in the East). Do these numbers tell us that every team in the East (no matter how good they are) are playing their heart out against the Heat? Or maybe the Heat aren't putting forth as much effort against sub-5 teams? Something to think about.

Now we can do the same analysis but with teams over .500 in both the East and the West. The one anomaly is why the Brooklyn Nets are tied for 2nd place against every other eastern team that have played against western teams with a winning percentage over .500. But the Brooklyn Nets are currently in 6th place in the Eastern Conference. Can this be a "Cinderella" team in the NBA playoffs if they make it in this year?

The main takeaway from all of this is to look at some interesting numbers by just looking solely at the wins and losses of each team. There are certainly more things to look at than just wins and losses, but its a start. It can be interesting to know that the Miami Heat struggle against sub-500 teams but are number one in the NBA against teams that are above .500. What does this tell us? It may be too early to find out but it is always something to keep an eye on.

There are still plenty of games to go in the season (we just got done with the all-star break) and I will post another blog right before the start of the post season with some predictions on who will win the NBA playoffs based solely on wins and losses and see if it has any merit.

And just for fun (and for sticking it out all the way to the end) I included my mid-season playoff bracket prediction.

Thanks for reading!