Real Team Ratings: Very Early in the Season: as of November 14, 2008

REAL TEAM RATINGS
As of November 14, 2008
The User Guide Follows the Ratings

1 Los Angeles Lakers 21.9
2 Atlanta Hawks 12.2
3 Boston Celtics 10.6
4 Orlando Magic 10.4
5 Utah Jazz 9.9
6 Cleveland Cavaliers 9.1
7 Indiana Pacers 8.1
8 Miami Heat 6.0
9 Detroit Pistons 5.6
10 Houston Rockets 4.6
11 New Orleans Hornets 4.1
12 Philadelphia 76ers 3.9
13 Phoenix Suns 2.4
14 Chicago Bulls 2.1
15 Denver Nuggets 1.4
16 New York Knicks 1.2
17 Milwaukee Bucks 0.8
18 Toronto Raptors -1.4
19 Golden State Warriors -4.0
20 Portland Trail Blazers -4.9
21 Dallas Mavericks -5.3
22 Memphis Grizzlies -5.6
23 San Antonio Spurs -6.3
24 Charlotte Bobcats -6.9
25 Minnesota Timberwolves -7.5
26 Oklahoma City Thunder -7.9
27 Sacramento Kings -8.7
28 New Jersey Nets -9.0
29 Washington Wizards -9.5
30 Los Angeles Clippers -16.0

USER GUIDE FOR REAL TEAM RATINGS
Last updated November 15, 2008

This is the most accurate ranking possible. The factors and the exact formulas used are a Nuggets 1 trade secret, like the recipe to Kentucky Fried Chicken. But I will give you a few hints. These rankings start with all-inclusive offensive and defensive efficiency statistics that are adjusted for pace. We then adjust for schedule difficulty.

We then carefully overweight a little for the quality of a team's defending, which is at a premium in the playoffs. Due to defending being overweighted, the overall team ratings are NOT simply a report on how well the teams have done this season. We are trying to make sure that our rating tells you exactly how well each team is projected to do in the playoffs.

THE LATER IN THE SEASON IT IS THE MORE ROCK SOLID THE RATINGS ARE
The earlier in the season it is, the less reliable the ratings are, because the schedule adjustment, which is not totally scientific, is a much larger factor earlier than it is later in the season. Real Team Ratings after January 1 and especially after February 1 are going to be substantially more rock solid than those coming before the end of the year.

PREDICT FOR KNOWLEDGE OR FUN BUT DO NOT GAMBLE ANY MONEY
Do not under any circumstances use these ratings to gamble with valuable money by betting on the outcome of games. The reasons this would be foolish are explained shortly.

You can predict games for fun but you are a fool if you think you can use these ratings or any other ratings to predict the outcome of games well enough to win money from betting money on outcomes. Do not bet any money on the outcome of basketball games. The remainder of this guide is for those who want to predict games for fun or for knowledge development.

The Real Team Rating differentials between teams can be used as crucial starting points for approximations of expected score difference when any two teams play. Though the ratings are a critical starting point, the outside factors below absolutely must be considered if you are seriously trying to predict the outcome of games in advance. Unfortunately, some of these factors are not only unavailable anywhere including here as of yet, they are difficult to estimate out of the blue, Therefore, to repeat, you should definitely not think that you can use this web site to make money by betting on basketball games. The injury, player slumps, and coaching differential factors, especially, because all of these are so hard to estimate, make it impossible to be truly accurate in predicting games.

OUTSIDE FACTORS THAT EFFECT GAMES
1. Home Court Advantage 4-6 points, depending on team.
2. Extra Rest Advantage 5-7 points
3. Injuries and Player Slumps 0-15 points, rarely more than 10 points. Player slumps are rare, and are defined as major slumps among the best 6 players on the team.
4. Coaching Quality Differential 0-9 points, rarely more than 7 points.
5. The "Human Nature Adjustment": Since it is human nature for basketball players to ease up a little bit if they have a big lead over the other team, you would be foolish to assume that large predicted differences (greater than 10 points) will actually play out in real life. A rough rule of thumb to use is to take only one half of all predicted margin of victory points above 10 as viable for the actual game. For example, suppose that after you have considered the ratings and all of the outside factors, you have an estimate that the Lakers will beat the Clippers by 40 points. You would be wise to take only 1/2 of the margin greater than 10, which would be one half of 40-10, or 1/2 of 30, which is 15, added to the 10, which yields an actual prediction of the Lakers beating the Clippers by 25 points.

FULL EXAMPLE ON PREDICTING
Team X has a Real Team Rating of 15 and Team Y has a Real Team Rating of -5. The starting point for predicting the outcome is that Team X will beat Team Y by 20. Now you estimate all the outside factors:

1. Team Y is home: the predicted team X margin of victory is reduced by 5, to 15.
2. Team Y is playing on back to back nights, while Team X is not: the predicted Team X margin of victory is increased by 6, to 21.
3. Neither team has any major player slumps. But Team X is badly banged up (-10 points) while Team Y has only one injury to a bench player (-1 point): the predicted Team X margin of victory decreases by 9, to 12.
4. The Coach of Team X is on point with hihs team better than the Coach of Team Y is with his team: the predicted Team X margin of victory increases by 3, to 15.
5. Human Nature Adjustment: the predicted margin of victory is reduced by one half of anything in excess of ten points. The predicted Team X margin of victory over Team Y is reduced from 15 to 12.5.

So in this example, the final result is that Team X is projected to beat Team Y by about 12.5 points.