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Bulls are better than their record; Cavs are worse
By John Hollinger
ESPN Insider
Archive
If there is one thing, above all else, that I would tell people to focus on during the first half of the season, it's this: You need to look at the process, not the results.
This is incredibly difficult because we're a results-oriented society and, like almost any sport, the NBA is a results-oriented business -- wins and losses are the only currency accepted here. But, although coaches will recoil in horror when I say this, if you're trying to gauge the quality of a team, win-loss record is terribly overrated.
David Liam Kyle/NBAE/Getty Images
King James' team may be far away from an NBA crown.
It's not the result -- the win or loss -- we should be focusing on but what those results tell us about the team's likely wins and losses in the future. And it turns out that using past win-loss records isn't necessarily as accurate as a few other tools.
I've started by talking in the abstract, so let me make it more real for you. Take a good look at the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers right now. If you focus on results, they look almost exactly the same -- the Bulls are 16-12, the Cavs 15-11. If you focus on the process, however, one is among the best teams in the league, and the other is merely average.
In this case, we can tell by looking at two important factors -- victory margin and schedule strength. Chicago has an average victory margin of 4.9 points per game -- it's the best in the East and fourth in the NBA. Eleven of the Bulls' 15 wins have been by double figures, and nine have come by 15 or more points. Already this year, they've won games by 42, 39, 27 and 25 points, a strong indicator of dominance. Believe it or not, victory margin is a stronger indicator of future win-loss record than a team's win-loss record, and normally a team with Chicago's victory margin would be 20-8, not 16-12.
Cleveland, meanwhile, hasn't been nearly as impressive. In this case, it isn't the victory margin that's the big deal, it's the strength of schedule, as the Cavs' 15-11 mark has come against a series of patsies. Of Cleveland's 26 games, 16 have been played against teams with losing records, and there's a huge disparity by conference, as well. Only seven of the Cavs' first 26 games have been against the vastly superior Western Conference, including only one against the five West teams with the best records. Additionally, 15 of the 26 contests have been at home.
Overall, the Cavs have played the second-easiest schedule in the league, according to USA Today's Jeff Sagarin. It won't get any harder tonight -- they visit an Atlanta team so wracked by injuries that it might need to suit up the mascot to field enough players -- but a seven-game West Coast swing in January could prove a huge reality check.
Looking back, you'd be correct in saying none of that matters. No matter how many points the Bulls won their games by and no matter how inferior the competition Cleveland has played, the fact is they're right next to each other in the standings as of this morning.
Looking ahead, however, is another matter. If the Bulls are playing like a 56-win team and the Cavs are playing more like a 41-win team, which one's odds do you like better the rest of the way? If the teams' quality of play remains the same, history tells us their records will start to diverge really fast.
This, in fact, is precisely what happened a year ago when two teams -- the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks -- hit the 25-game mark with identical 15-10 records. By the end of the season, the Suns had 54 wins, the Bucks only 40. It's easy to say in retrospect that of course the Suns were the better team, but look back at what was being written at the time and you'll see it wasn't a unanimous opinion.
Noah Graham/NBAE/Getty Images
Scott Skiles can take comfort in the fact that his team has shown flashes of dominance.
For another example of why it's better to focus on the process than the results, take a look at two of this year's biggest disappointments -- the New Jersey Nets and L.A. Clippers. Both teams let results from a year ago delude them into thinking they'd be contenders. Each would have been much more skeptical had it looked at any indicator other than the win-loss column and, perhaps, far more aggressive in the offseason as a result.
Instead the Nets went into the season with the idea that they won 49 games a year ago and had a better bench, so they were certain to improve on that total. If they had focused on the process, they would have seen how fortunate they were to win so many games -- not only did they win more games than their point differential would have predicted, as with the Cavs this season, but they also were insanely healthy. The Nets lost only two games to injury all season from their "big four" of Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Nenad Krstic.
Obviously, that piece of good fortune was unlikely to repeat itself, and it should have told the Nets they needed major improvements just to maintain the 49-win mark from a year earlier. Instead they largely stood pat and now have one foot in the grave after a season-ending injury to Krstic.
Similarly, the Clippers focused on their near miss in the second round of the playoffs and completely lost perspective on how they got there. They were a bit fortunate in the point differential department, like the Nets, but were even more fortunate in the playoff-seeding department -- the Clips had the West's fifth-best record but managed to draw the worst of the conference's eight playoff teams as a first-round opponent.
Had the Clippers been realistic, they would've known they were first-round cannon fodder but for an idiotic seeding system the league partially rectified in the offseason (I say "partially" because the Atlantic Division champ is still going to get a No. 4 seed). They also would have noted that a career year from Elton Brand and an unexpected bout of health for Sam Cassell were major contributors to their success, and that neither event was likely to repeat itself.
In each team's case, their problems have been magnified by other, unexpected developments -- Jefferson's ankle-related struggles for the Nets, the regression of Chris Kaman for the Clips, and surprisingly mediocre defense in both instances. This has magnified the extent of their decline, but anyone looking at what went into their win-loss records a year ago instead of just the final results could have seen the storm clouds gathering.
Of course, the Nets and Clippers of a year ago, or the Cavs and Bulls of this year, aren't the only examples. You can find them all over if you look hard enough. For instance, take a look at Memphis and Miami. The Grizzlies are 6-23, and the Heat are on the fringe of the playoffs at 13-14. Yet you'd have a hard time proving Memphis has played any worse than Miami -- the Grizz have just been shockingly unlucky in close games and the Heat have been extremely fortunate.
Victor Baldizon/NBAE/Getty Images
Pat Riley has reason to be concerned about his team.
Normally, a team with Memphis' victory margin would have a record of 10-19 and a team with Miami's victory margin would be 9-18. That's right -- if you're looking at the process, not the results, the Grizzlies actually have played better than the Heat. The signature play here, of course, is the blind 3-point buzzer heave by Miami's James Posey in Memphis on Dec. 2 that handed the Heat an unexpected 98-97 win and the Grizzlies one of their eighteen losses by nine or fewer points.
As I mentioned, none of this matters looking back -- the league won't be revising the standings based on my column. Where it does matter, however, is looking forward.
A lot of people think the Heat are going to be fine because they're back near .500 and shellacked the Lakers on national TV on Christmas Day. But the fact is they'll probably need to play much, much better in the next 27 games just to go 13-14 again, let alone improve on it -- and they'll be doing it against a much tougher schedule than their slate in the season's opening third.
Meanwhile, the Grizzlies' critics might want to back off Mike Fratello a bit. Even with a skeleton crew, his team has been in every game -- Memphis' worst loss this year was by 15 points -- and the returns of Pau Gasol and Eddie Jones should help the Grizz greatly. I'm not going to sit here and tell you the Grizzlies are a good team, mind you, but they're a heck of a lot better than their record.
So, if somebody bets you that the Cavs and Heat will win more games than the Grizzlies and the Bulls the rest of the way, take that money and run. Although wins and losses are ultimately what matters, the important thing to take away is that at this juncture of the season, a team's record is much less important than how indicative their play is of future wins and losses. That's why those clubs that focus on the process will have a far greater understanding of where they truly stand than those teams that care only for the result.
John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. To e-mail him, click here.
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"Tubby? Oh yes, Tubby."
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