The NBA regular season runs from October to April. Every team plays at least 82 games (and two lucky squads play 83 if they qualify for the in-season tournament finals). Every season there are those who loudly proclaim that is far too many games, and you may agree with them. But it is undeniable those games offer plenty of significant data points. Trends that occur over the course of a game or even a week’s worth of games can be mirages. But trends that exist over an 82-game sample size? Those are real. Those define what each team is good at and where their weak spots are. They separate the good players from the great ones.
Above all, those trends tell us ahead of time which team has the best chance to survive the NBA playoff gauntlet and emerge victorious in June. The obvious numbers (like wins, of course) make for a good surface-level gauge of each team’s quality and ability to beat their opponents. But the numbers that lay below the surface—more subtle trends from the lengthy season—are often just as indicative, if not more.
