Sched Ahead -- 2010/11 Preseason Edition

The schedule is out, it is time for our annual preseason edition of schedule analysis.

Sched Ahead History

For those who are familiar with the Sched Ahead posts, you can ignore this section.  Actually, everyone can ignore it if they want.  Who cares?  This is the Internet, after all.  But for the nerds who care, here's the background.

The Sched Ahead threads arose out of a fanpost by upper left corner.  In it, he discussed four different categories of games.  I had always thought of a schedule in terms of these same kinds of games, and so I decided to work up a spreadsheet that would analyze the remaining games on our schedule (and the schedules of our rivals) accordingly.  Thus, began the "Sched Ahead" updates.  I used hurricane ratings (Cat 1, Cat 2, etc) just because I enjoy meteorology.

As an additional bonus, I threw in the "jscot Stupid Sched Projections."  Why are they called that?  Because they are Projections.  Because they are based on the Schedule.  Because they are Stupid.  Everyone liked the projections, and in the 08-09 season they were very accurate, if stupidly so.  Last year, they were not so accurate, but everyone liked them anyway.  Perhaps this is because of fond memories -- but past performance is no guarantee of future results.  Or perhaps people like them because the people themselves are stupid.  Since the same politicians get elected over and over again, this latter explanation may have some merit.

There are no preseason Stupid Sched Projections.  Stupid Sched Projections are stupidly based on the stupid assumption that you will continue to win each type of game at the same rate you have already won that type of game this season.  That means dividing by zero up until you have played a game in each category.  In certain mathematical models, dividing by zero is supposed to give you something meaningful.  This is not one of those models.  If you want to divide by zero, you do it.  I have better things to do.

First Sched Ahead fanpost.

If you want to read them all, click on my name, choose blog, and work your way through.  I doubt anyone likes to read their own writing as much as I like to read mine (narcissism rules), but even I am not going to do that.  Good luck if you are that nerdy.

Last season, due to health issues, jscotjr, BlazerFanSince2000ish, and to an extent douglast carried on the Sched Ahead tradition for the last part of the season.  Much thanks to them -- perhaps we'll coordinate sharing it out this year.

Summary Info

Four categories of games:

1. Home games against sub .500 teams.  Cat 1 Cream Puff Home.
2. Home games against winning teams (I'm including teams right at .500 in this category).  Cat 2 Jawbreaker Home.
3. Road games at losing teams.  Cat 3 Banana Peel Road.
4. Road games at winning teams.  Cat 4 Rocky Road.

A general formula for success in the NBA is to win almost all of Cat 1 (Cream Puff Home), a majority of Cat 2 (Jawbreaker Home) and Cat 3 (Banana Peel Road), and win some in Cat 4 (Rocky Road).  The top contenders may win more than half of their Cat 4 games.

Who is a Winning Team?

For purposes of this analysis, I'm going to use the final record of last season to determine who is a winning team.  A .500 team is considered to be a winning team.  I recognize this is imperfect, but there is no perfect way to go about this.  Even during the season, as teams move back and forth across the .500 threshold, this analysis changes the way it rates games against them.  But one cannot make an exact science out of what is, in effect, a prediction/projection tool, anyway.  We are dealing in probabilities here, and we have a relatively small sample with which to work.

Teams to watch (Eastern):  Toronto was 40-42 last year, and seems likely to be worse.  Chicago was 41-41 and seems likely to be better.  Charlotte and Milwaukee were two teams with winning records that might not do the same this year.  Cleveland might plummet all the way to a losing record.  Eastern Sycophantics Puke Network (ESPN) thinks so, they've only scheduled them once this year after drooling all over them for several years.  All in all, though, it seems likely that almost all of the teams in the East will finish on the same side of .500 as they did last year.

Teams to watch (Western):  Phoenix might take a drop, but I'll leave them as a winning team on the assumption that Nash is still highly effective.  The Clips might put together a winning season.  Houston was a borderline winning team last year, but I'm assuming they'll be better even if Yao isn't effective (Brad Miller means they'll have at least someone who can pretend to be a center).  Memphis and New Orleans were both losing teams last year that could be winning teams this year.  We could see more teams cross the .500 line, up and down, in the West than the East this year, but for now last year's +.500 teams are as good a guess as any as to this year's.

I'll be tracking the eleven teams we tracked for most of the second half of the season last year:  four NW teams (Portland, Denver, Utah, OKC), two Pacific teams (L@kers, Phoenix), and five SW teams (Dallas, S.A., Houston, Memphis, and New Orleans), with half an eye on the Clippers as well.  If Memphis stays healthy again, they should be better than last year.  If CP3 stays on the court, N.O. will be better than last year -- Ariza will be a nice pickup for them, a decent shooter who can feed off of open looks from Paul and West.  Ariza also fills another important role for N.O. -- since they lost Tyson Chandler, they haven't really had anyone who is a threat to lose his head, do something stupid, and get himself ejected.  Ariza should fill in nicely on that front. 

An Unbalanced Schedule

There are 30 teams in the league and 82 games on the schedule, so the schedule is not perfectly balanced.  Each team plays teams from the other conference twice and division rivals four times.  Each team has four intra-conference rivals that they only play three times, and the rest they will play four times.  Of the teams which they play three times, against two of them they will have two away and one home, with two home and one away against the remaining two.

PLEASE GET THIS POINT!!!

Before we go any further, remember this.  There will not be overwhelming differences between schedules.  A better team is going to finish ahead of a weaker team.  But playoff seeding may come down to a single game, so relatively small differences in schedule difficulty can have a disproportionate impact.

 (Do you like how I did that?  Bold large font and italics all inside a pretty box.  Someday I'll do pictures, too, and graphs, and all kinds of stuff.  Really.  Well, I'm impressed with myself, anyway.  The rest of you are rolling your eyes, but what do I care?  This is the Internet!)

Three Game Rivals

The following table shows which teams each of the eleven playoff rivals will play three times (as opposed to four), and whether they have only one home game or only one away game against those teams.

There is a disadvantage for us here.  We have to play four games against every single team that made the playoffs last year.  By contrast, Dallas and Denver only have to play once at the L@kers, and Houston gets to avoid a fourth game against Portland, LA, Phoenix, and Utah.  The schedulers were kind to Houston, LA, Memphis, OKC, and Utah, less kind to Portland and New Orleans.  We had an easier schedule in this regard last year -- the teams we only had to play three times were much tougher, and we had four games against all the Western bottom feeders.

Types of Differences in Schedule Difficulty

I will look at the following categories of differences:

1. Comparative difficulty of Road Games
2. Comparative difficulty of Home Games
3. Back to Back Games
4. Opponent Back to Backs (how often we play opponents when they are on the second of a back to back)

If anyone wants to look at 3 games in 4 nights, 4 games in 5, etc., you can research this on NBAStuffer.  I am not persuaded that these are significantly more difficult for experienced players than back to backs, and besides, I'm lazy.  Last year, we won three games on a brutal four in five nights in Florida and Texas, despite injuries. 

Comparative Difficulty of Road Games

On it's face, the table would indicate that Memphis and New Orleans have a much worse schedule, with more of their road games being against winning teams.  Fortunately, you do not need to take things at face value, because jscot is here to tell you not to.  Memphis and New Orleans have fewer road games against losing teams than we do because they themselves are losing teams, and Memphis doesn't get to play Memphis on the road, and New Orleans doesn't get to play the Hornets on the road, while we do.  On the other hand, we don't have to play Portland on the road.  Somehow, Charlotte gets to play the Hornets on the road, and New Orleans gets to play the Jazz on the road, which has never seemed right to me, but that's a side point.

Anyway, IF New Orleans and/or Memphis end up making a run at playoff contention this year, then they will end up being winning teams, and this disparity will go away -- our road games against them will be games against winning teams, in that case, so it will even out.  If they don't contend, and are losing teams again, then the disparity won't go away, but no one will care in that case, will they?

The real disparity here is a small one.  Phoenix has 24 road games against winning teams, and only 17 against losing teams, while L.A., Houston, and Utah have a 22/19 breakdown.  That is because Phoenix has to play 2 road games against every winning team in the West, while the other three teams each get to skip a road game against two of the winning teams.  Last year, Western playoff teams won well over 75% of their road games against losing teams, will winning less than half of their road games against winning teams.  This disparity therefore could mean a swing of 1-2 games against Phoenix relative to L.A., Houston, and Utah.  Last year, we were the biggest beneficiary of this disparity (I like long words that end in "y", don't you?), only having to play L.A., Phoenix, S.A., and N.O. three times each.  This year, it is L.A., Houston, and Utah that benefit.

Comparative Difficulty of Home Games

Again, New Orleans' and Memphis' schedule looks worse than it is.  Memphis, if they are going to contend, actually has one of the easiest home schedules.  New Orleans has a bad home schedule even if they contend.  So do Denver and Portland.  Houston, L.A., OKC, and Phoenix have the easiest home schedule.  Again, this is all due to the uneven schedule.  In general, playoff contenders will win most of their Cat 2 home games against winning teams, and almost all of their Cat 1 home games against losing teams.  So disparity here might not be as important as it is on the road games, but it could make a difference of a win, and at the end of the season, who knows how important that might be?

Combined home and away:

If we are going to win a high seed, we have to do it with a tougher schedule than some of our rivals, especially Houston and L.A.  The schedulers didn't do Portland, Denver, or New Orleans any favors.

Back to Back Games

This table shows how many back to back games each team plays this year, and the categories into which the second game of the back to back falls.  Reminder, Cat4 is Rocky Road, Cat3 is Banana Peel Road, Cat2 is Jawbreaker Home, and Cat1 is Cream Puff Home.

Pretty rough.  Not only do we have a tougher schedule than most of our rivals in terms of the unbalanced schedule, and not only do we have to travel more than most because of geographical location, but we have more back to backs than any other Western contender.  We have more road back to backs.  And we tied with Dallas for the most Cat 4 back to backs. 

L.A. and Phoenix, especially, have it easier.  However, L.A. has 14 of their back to backs on the road and only one at home, so their number of road back to backs is comparable to most of the Western teams.  Most of the time a team will win their home back to backs, anyway, so having only one home back to back is not as big an advantage for the L@kers as it might appear at first glance.  Don't get me wrong, it is an advantage, but not as significant as the Suns' advantage of only having eight road back to backs, and only four against winning teams.  It is the Suns that have the big advantage here -- we have twice as many road back to backs as they do, and three times as many against winning teams, the hardest games of all.

One other comment on this:  the schedulers were kind to Houston in regard to the teams that they only play three times, but not so kind on back to backs -- their schedule here, while not as difficult as ours, is certainly hard enough.

Dual back to backs

This is back to back games in which our opponent is also on a back to back.

They are tired, you are tired.  The home team might have a greater advantage than normal, but in general, if both teams are back to back, I think it makes sense to look at the schedule as if it weren't a back to back at all.  Removing the dual back to backs, we get the following:

That actually changes things quite a bit, doesn't it?  At face value, it looked like the schedulers had handed L.A. and Phoenix a cakewalk.  But when you realize that everyone else had quite a few of their back to backs in which their opponent was also on a back to back, suddenly it gives a different picture.  The team with the easiest schedule of back to backs is actually OKC, with N.O. close behind.  And Houston, Portland, and Denver have the worst schedules in this category, but not with as much disparity as it first appeared.

Opponent Back to Backs

These are the games where our opponent is on the second night of a back to back.  This is the one area where our schedule is not harder than last year -- last year, we only had 14 games where our opponent was on a back to back -- this year, there are 20.  Notice that the Western rivals are fairly balanced in this schedule aspect this year -- except for L.A.  The L@kers have it easier on several aspects, but this does a lot of balancing out. 

This is the second year that L.A. had the fewest number of opponent back to backs.  Last year, it was 9, this year 10.  Houston has 19 home games (almost half) where the oppopnent is on a back to back, reminiscent of Denver's home cakewalk last year.

The above includes games where both teams are on a back to back, so let's remove those from the table, and look at those games where the team is not on a back to back, but it's opponent is:

Once you filter it down to just those games where the opponent is on a back to back, you can see a big advantage here for Phoenix, and to a lesser extent Denver and Houston.  Disadvantage to LA and Memphis. 

Total Back to Backs vs. Opponent Back to Backs

In this table, I've filtered out games were both teams are on a back to back, and looked at the totals.  We have 16 games where we are on a back to back and our opponent isn't.  We have 14 games where our opponent is on a back to back and we aren't.  So back to backs, all things considered, are a marginal negative factor for us in this year's schedule.

Who has the best schedule in terms of back to backs?  Look at OKC and Phoenix -- they both have seven more games against tired opponents than they have games where they are on a back to back.  San Antonio also does well in this regard.

Who has the worst schedule in terms of back to backs?  Amazingly, despite the fact that they have fewer back to backs than anyone, it is L.A.  They aren't hurt much by back to backs, but they get almost no help from the schedulers in terms of tired opponents.

Note:  This table doesn't tell the whole story on back to backs.  There is another factor, besides whether you are tired in one particular game.  A lot of back to backs can wear a team down, bringing on injuries, etc.  That is true if you are on a back to back even if your opponent is as well.  I would rather have L.A.'s schedule than ours in this regard.  But it isn't accurate to say the schedule is hugely favorable to them, either.  The real advantage is probably with OKC in terms of back to backs.

Some Closing Thoughts

Well, there it is, the Sched Ahead preseason report.  They've not been very nice to us this year.  If we have even reasonable health, we're a top four team in the West.  In fact, I think only L.A. and Dallas have a chance to stay ahead of us if we stay reasonably healthy, and I think we can contend for the top seed.  But the schedule isn't kind.  If we win our division this year, we've earned it.  I suspect the schedule means we start with effectively a 1-2 game deficit on most of our rivals, maybe even more against OKC and possibly Houston.  Shouldn't matter, we're better than they are. 

But at the end of the season, no one will be able to claim that anything was given to us.  We probably, over all, have the toughest schedule of the Western contenders.

Nothing worth having comes easy.