Puffer wrote:
View Post
If you were to rank the east right now on this model, it's:
Toronto: .462
Boston: .298
Indiana: .285
Washington: .277
Milwaukee: .222
Philadelphia: .211
Cleveland: .203
Miami: .125
--
(Detroit: .222)
In addition to Toronto having a huge advantage, this also shows Indiana as being the most dangerous of the potential low seeds. Also, Miami is absolute trash by comparison. For the most part this reflects the point differential seedings, with the exception of Philly, who point differential would suggest as being in the same tier as Washington and Indiana, but NCW% suggests is in a lower tier. As well, it suggests a much closer grouping between Boston, Indiana, and Washington, rather than Boston ahead in a tier of its own. I'll be curious to see if Cleveland is able to improve their score through the rest of the season, because right now this metric gives them little chance of even getting to the conference finals (especially with the current standings of a matchup against Indiana). To be honest, I've only really looked so far at how this metric works for top seeds... I have no idea if it's got any meaning for lower seeds.
But when I've got some time I'd like to do a deeper analysis on this, I'm trying to figure out the most useful way of testing it. The most thorough way would be to take every playoff series of recent years and compare the W%, NCW%, and point differential, and see how they compare in their predictive abilities.
Comment