in part 1 of 3 in a series on the upcoming nba season we gaze deeply into Sports Illustrated’s top 100 players lists in effort to predict the future…
A few weeks back, Sports Illustrated unveiled their annual Top 100 NBA players list and, boy it’s a doozy. Carefully curated by Ben Golliver and Rob Mahoney (two guys who salivate at the idea of staying up late for a mid-season Memphis/Utah tilt), the list really dives deep into the advanced metrics to mete out who the best of the best really are and therefore who you want, nay, need reppin’ your squad.
At a minimum, it is an intriguing read and fodder for heated, alcohol-fueled debates over who’s ranked too high or low, or whether Golliver and Mahoney thought it would be funny to place Dwight Howard where they did (Hint: He’s 69th).
But this week, after Monday’s media day (which brought straight gold like this), and with training camps open around the league, I began to ponder whether the list had more utility than just a time waster during the September dog days. I postulated that it could be used as a tool to predict the outcome of the soon to be tipped off NBA season.
Why?
Well, it all started with a revelation that came upon me years ago while watching one of the post-title Pistons squads flounder with the likes of Kyle Singler and a beyond washed-up Tracy McGrady garnering big minutes-
You need stars to win an NBA title.
I know. It’s a take so cold, it makes the Houston Rockets Western Conference Finals game 7 shooting performance look like a damn inferno. But just take a second to analyze that sentence a little further. Maybe focus on that second ‘s’. The second ‘s’ in ‘stars’. The one that changes it from the singular ‘star’ to the plural form of the word, representing more than one ‘star’. I guess I could have worded it this way:
You need more than one star to win an NBA title.
So, yeah. The idea floated by blowhards on the NBA subreddit or any number of blogs about how you could “put LeBron out there with me and three buddies and we’d get to the Finals” is just patently false. One Man Army might be a fantastic Our Lady Peace song, but it sure isn’t a recipe for success in the NBA. Just ask Anthony Davis. Or Giannis. Or even soon to be ex-Wolf Jimmy Butler.
Last time I checked, NBA basketball is still a team sport. Finals contenders tend to have at least one transcendent, surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer and a sidekick on the next tier down. In fact, the sidekicks usually have a sidekick of their own, if not more than one.
Just look at recent history. Everyone knows the Warriors were/are stacked (Cousins too? Seriously?), but go back a little further. Duncan had Parker, Ginobili, and Kawhi. Kobe had Pau. The Ubuntu Celtics were loaded with Garnett, Pierce, Allen and Rondo…you get the point. And while LeBron’s supporting casts have often caught a lot of flack (and even been the butt of an extremely entertaining, yet un-aired SNL skit) he’s still trotted out Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love among others in recent years and before them he had the Heatles.
You’d have to go back to ’04 and ’05 with our Goin’ To Work Pistons to find a team that reached a Finals without that indisputable, first-ballot Hall of Famer or two (and even still, my money is on Ben Wallace and possibly Chauncey getting in at some point).
So you see, if you don’t have at least a smattering of elite talent on your roster, doomed to the lottery you will be.
“SHUCKS! We Almost Had Okafor!” Credit: VICE
Armed with this knowledge that you need multiple ‘stars’ in order to win, coupled with this glorious list of who the ‘stars’ are- and not just the All-Stars, but that three and ‘D’ swingman that can hit you a couple corner bombs and lock down the opponents best ball-handler and that big that can hold down the paint, swat out the weak stuff and grab a few timely offensive boards- I theorize that we have enough info to get our Nostradamus on as it pertains to the next hoops season.
But, like any good scientitian, we must start with our questions before we can begin the journey to our answers. They are:
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can you predict regular season success by focusing on a team’s ‘deep six’, (concentrating on essentially your starters and a sixth man)? What about their ‘big 3’ (basically the top three guys)? Which is more predictive?
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how many good guys is enough to make the playoffs? The conference finals? and how good do these good guys need to be?
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when looking at the outliers, what are some other variables that may have come into play?
To be prudent (and to make sure this whole thing wasn’t a completely pointless exercise), I didn’t just look at Golliver and Mahoney’s interpretation of who the good players are from last year. I took the time to look at their top 100 lists dating back to the 2013-14 season to determine if within all that data there were actually any prognostic indicators.
No, seriously. I did. Yes, it took several hours. What of it?
My methods were as follows:
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Ascribe a number value to each player based on their position in the rankings. The 100th best player received a 1, the 99th a 2 and so on until the best player (LeBron) got a 100.
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Total up the values per team. For example if a team had the 98th best player (3pts) and the 42nd best player (59pts) they’d receive a 62.
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I then ranked the teams in order of their points accumulated to determine who had the ‘best’ roster and then compared that ranking to how the teams actually fared in the regular season. A standard deviation was then calculated to see how predictive the better part of a team’s roster was to their actual W/L outcome.
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I did the same standard deviation calculation to judge each team’s depth by calculating each teams mean score over six roster spots (Reiterating the idea that the starters and possibly a sixth man have the most impact on a team’s success). If a team landed fewer than six players in the top 100, each empty slot was given a standard score of descending value (Empty 1st and 2nd slots were graded as 0s, 3rd as -20, 4th as -40, 5 as -60 and 6th as -80).
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In order to determine the importance of a ‘big 3’, i then eliminated each teams lowest three roster scores and calculated the mean of the remaining top 3 ‘best’ players. Again, if a team landed fewer than three players in the rankings, they were given the same standard slot scores as above. a standard deviation was then calculated with this data, as well.
The 2013-14 calculations can be seen below. I emphasize they CAN be seen, not that I recommend you actually bother looking. I’m really just putting it up to prove the amount of unnecessary work I put into this.
mobile users scroll over to view all columns—————————————————————–>
| Team | Sum Rank | Dp6 Rank | Big3 Rank | Real Rank | Sum Acc | Dp6 Acc | Big3 Acc |
| ATL | 14 | 5 | 15 | 18 | 4 | 13 | 3 |
| BOS | 23 | 24 | 24 | 26 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| BRO | 1 | 1 | 5 | 14 | 13 | 13 | 9 |
| CHA | 25 | 25 | 25 | 16 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| CHI | 6 | 4 | 7 | 11 | 5 | 7 | 4 |
| CLE | 18 | 18 | 16 | 22 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
| DAL | 17 | 7 | 19 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 9 |
| DEN | 21 | 21 | 20 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| DET | 19 | 20 | 18 | 23 | 4 | 3 | 5 |
| GS | 8 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| HOU | 7 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| IND | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| LAC | 10 | 12 | 10 | 3 | 7 | 9 | 7 |
| LAL | 11 | 17 | 11 | 25 | 14 | 8 | 14 |
| MEM | 9 | 16 | 8 | 9 | 0 | 7 | 1 |
| MIA | 3 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| MIL | 20 | 11 | 21 | 30 | 10 | 19 | 9 |
| MIN | 16 | 15 | 14 | 17 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| NOP | 13 | 14 | 17 | 21 | 8 | 7 | 4 |
| NYK | 12 | 13 | 13 | 19 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| OKC | 5 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 0 |
| ORL | 30 | 30 | 30 | 28 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| PHI | 28 | 28 | 28 | 29 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| PHX | 29 | 29 | 29 | 13 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| POR | 15 | 19 | 12 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 5 |
| SAC | 26 | 26 | 26 | 24 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| SAS | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| TOR | 24 | 23 | 23 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 11 |
| UTA | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| WAS | 22 | 22 | 22 | 15 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 4.53137 | 5.023622 | 4.237761 |
2013-14 regular season analysis- Look Away, Lest its tediousness overcome you!
To explain, the first three columns represent the different indexes and their predictions of where each team would rank in the regular season, by record. For example, Sacramento was predicted to be the 26th best team by all three indexes.
Then comes the team’s actual rank in the standings and then the final three columns, the number represents how far off each index was, whether overshooting or undershooting each teams rank. For example, Sacramento finished 24th, so each index was off by 2 spots.
In the lowest row, you’ll find each index’s ‘score’, if you will. It is a standard deviation, which basically how far off each index was in predictive ability.
And what did I find? The scores and therefore SI’s top 100 lists had no predictive capability, my theory was busted and I’d wasted hours of my life. Thank you and good night.
At least Sheed thought that was funny. Credit- nbatitlechase.com
Actually…the data was ripe with fascinating conclusions. So many that I’ll have to split this column up into multiple parts. Questions #1 and #2 we’ll answer now with question #3 getting its own column.
Ready???
enough preamble! What’s more predictive of success- having depth (deep 6) or just a killer big 3?
Amazingly enough, outside of 2014-15, a better predictor of a team’s regular season success is the quality of their ‘Big 3.’ Each index was fairly accurate in predicting a team’s final rank among the 30, but the ‘Big 3’ (accurate to 4.07 spots either way) edged out the ‘Deep 6’ (4.26) by a smidge. Here’s how it played out.
Isn’t that a little disheartening if you’re a Pistons fan? Or a Hornets fan? Or a Kings fan? Or, Hell, a fan of probably fifteen other teams? It basically states that if you were predicted, say 17th just based on the caliber of your top 3 guys, you’re doomed to mediocrity. If things go well, you may sneak up to about the 13th best team. If they don’t…
one day the magic will get it right…right? credit: orlandomagicgreek.blogspot.com
There are exceptions to that rule, which we’ll dig into in the next column (that’s called a teaser) but for the most part, you are who the top of your roster says you are.
ok, so what about PLayoff teams? Conference Finalists?
Well, the most fascinating thing to come out of these calculations was the fact that the West was just sooooooo much better than the East. I know, I know. Another ice-cold take. Like an ‘axe-wielding Jack Nicholson lost in a frigid hedge maze’ kind of cold. There wouldn’t be legitimate discussions about abolishing conferences for playoff positioning if that weren’t the case. But to see it in a visual form, as you can below, really just made me wonder why more NBA superstars don’t just post up in the East (cough, Paul George, cough). The path to the Finals is significantly easier.
Best vs. Least, in excel chart form
From 2013-14 through last season, the average Eastern Conference playoff team had 3.65 of the NBA’s top 100 players on their roster. In the West, it was 4.275. That is more than half of a top 100 guy on the Western rosters. It’d be like giving each squad a bonus Muggsy Bogues!
And it’s not just that West had more good players, but the players they had were better as well. The average top 100 guy on an East Playoff team ranked 51.52 or about the 49th best in the league. In the West it was 58.82, or about the 42nd best player.
Imagine a pick-up game with 3.65 Eric Gordons (the 49th best player on the 2018-19 list) facing up against 4.275 Otto Porters (the 42nd)…or 3.65 Otto Porters and a Muggsy Bogues. You gotta go with the Porters, right?
And the disparity holds true in the Conference Finals, as well.
The East teams averaged 4.1 top 100 guys while the West was stuntin’ with 4.6 per. And, again, the West’s players (average rank 67.86, or about the 33rd best) were juuuust a little better than the East’s (63.58, or about 37th). It really is no surprise that the West has won four of the last five Finals when you see the numbers.
Conclusions
Well, it’s all right there in front of you. If your favorite team’s top 3 guys aren’t among the best in the league, you’re most likely not making the Playoffs. Not only that, if at least four of the top 100 guys in the league aren’t wearing your team’s jersey…suffice to say that the best you can hope for is maybe to host a round or two, sell some tickets to pad your owner’s wallet and then watch other teams’ fans have all the Finals fun. At least we can say with 100% confidence this year it won’t be Cleveland and Golden State.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Read on in Part 2 of Fishkorn’s 2018-19 NBA Preview to find out what it takes to become an outlier.