The NBA Entering 2023: Crowded at the Top

January 13, 2023

The biggest storyline of the NBA season entering into the near year is its parity. The clarity at the top is unusually muddled: while the Boston Celtics lead the league in Simple Rating System (a measure of performance adjusted to opponent), their 5.6 points above average is not convincing. That would have been good for fourth best in 2021-22 as well as 2020-21, demonstrating no one is close to running away from the rest at the top.

Simple Rating System = a team rating that takes into account average point differential and strength of schedule. The rating is denominated in points above/below average, where zero is average.
Parenthesis shows difference to next 9 best teams.

There are quite a few trailing close behind. While also a result of no single runaway team (SRS is calculated relative to all other teams), the five closest trailing the Celtics – Memphis Grizzlies, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Pelicans, Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers – are all within 2 points in SRS of Boston. There was a more significant difference, for instance, between last year’s Celtics who lead the league and the 2021-22 Miami Heat, or the 2020-21 regular season leading Utah Jazz compared to sixth place Denver Nuggets.

The top is as clustered as it’s been, though we have more than half of the season left for one of these teams to make their mark. The closest recent historical precedent was 2010-11, when the Dallas Mavericks overcame having the seventh worst championship odds to take the title led by Dirk Nowitzki.

Tags:

Related Podcasts

No items found

Related Articles

finding-a-role-quarterly-check-in
December 9, 2024
Last season, I decided to express my interest in player development in writing at a scale I hadn’t reached before. It was difficult to fully explore how stars become stars,…
ty-jerome-late-bloomer
December 6, 2024
Prior to this season, Ty Jerome bounced around the league for five years as a fringe rotation player. Then finally at age 27, something clicked. This year he’s been one…
September 6, 2024
Getting back into the public NBA Draft sphere again, I thought it would be a good exercise (and an easier way to generate new content) to review some of my…
kristaps-porzingis-post-ups
February 26, 2024
The Boston Celtics are in a strange form of NBA purgatory. On pace to win 65 games, they are running laps around the Eastern Conference. They hold the best net…
Sam-Hauser-finding-role
December 13, 2023
If you know anything about the Boston Celtics’ Sam Hauser, you know what this article will be about. This will be a lot of shooting film, and I’m not talking…
finding-role-dyson-daniels
December 5, 2023
Aptronym (noun):  a person’s name that is regarded as amusingly appropriate to their occupation. Do you ever feel like names are a form of predestination? It’s astounding how often athletes with a…