NBA Team Rankings - February 9, 2012

Richard Moll mugs for the camera at the Governor's Ball held immediately after the 39th Annual Emmy Awards

Richard Moll ('Bull')

Here are the NBA Betting Market Power Rankings for February 9, 2012. These rankings use point spreads and over/unders from the past three weeks to derive an implied estimate of team strength. More at the Methodology page.

Summary

The top 3 reshuffled again, with the Bulls now on top with a Generic Points Favored of 7.0 points. This is my fifth week of doing the rankings, and the top 3 each week has been the Bulls, Heat, and Thunder.

Dallas and Portland are interesting cases. Dallas is ranked fourth, despite a 12th ranked Win/Loss record of 15-11. It appears that the market expects the Mavericks to improve, now that Dirk Nowitski has returned from injury (despite the fact that they have gone 3-3 since he's been back).

The Trailblazers appear to be a victim of bad luck. According to the Simple Rating System at Basketball-Reference, which factors in margin of victory and strength of schedule, Portland is ranked 5th, despite their mediocre 14-12 Win/Loss record. The Betting Market appears to be taking this into account as well.

The Bobcats (and Generalissimo Francisco Franco) are still dead.

The Rankings (glossary below):

Rank	Team	LstWk	GPF	oGPF		dGPF		GOU		W-L		GWP
1	CHI	3	7.0	2.5	7	4.5	2	187	19	22-6	2	0.75
2	MIA	2	6.5	6.0	3	0.5	13	196	4	19-7	3	0.73
3	OKC	1	6.5	7.5	2	-1.0	16	199	2	20-5	1	0.73
4	DAL	7	4.5	0.5	14	4.0	5	187	20	15-11	12	0.66
5	POR	5	4.0	1.5	11	2.5	8	189	18	14-12	16	0.65
6	SAS	11	4.0	1.5	9	2.5	10	189	17	18-9	6	0.65
7	LAC	12	3.0	4.5	5	-1.5	18	195	5	15-8	8	0.62
8	DEN	4	3.0	7.5	1	-4.5	28	202	1	15-11	13	0.62
9	LAL	6	3.0	-1.5	19	4.5	4	184	25	14-11	14	0.61
10	IND	10	3.0	1.5	10	1.5	12	190	16	17-8	5	0.60
11	PHI	8	2.5	-2.0	23	4.5	3	184	27	18-8	4	0.60
12	MEM	13	1.5	-2.0	22	3.5	6	185	24	13-13	18	0.56
13	BOS	17	1.5	-4.0	26	5.5	1	180	30	14-10	10	0.56
14	ATL	9	1.5	-1.0	18	2.5	9	186	21	17-9	7	0.55
15	HOU	14	1.0	3.0	6	-2.0	22	195	6	15-11	11	0.53
16	GSW	20	1.0	4.5	4	-3.5	27	198	3	8-14	23	0.53
17	ORL	15	1.0	-2.0	25	3.0	7	185	23	16-10	9	0.53
18	MIN	16	0.0	2.0	8	-2.0	21	194	7	13-13	17	0.50
19	UTA	18	0.0	1.0	12	-1.0	17	192	11	13-11	15	0.49
20	MIL	21	-1.0	0.0	16	-1.0	19	191	14	11-14	19	0.46
21	NYK	19	-1.5	0.5	15	-2.0	20	192	12	11-15	21	0.45
22	PHX	22	-2.5	0.5	13	-3.0	26	193	8	11-14	20	0.40
23	SAC	24	-3.0	-0.5	17	-2.5	23	192	13	9-16	24	0.39
24	CLE	25	-4.0	-1.5	20	-2.5	24	191	15	10-14	22	0.35
25	NOH	23	-5.0	-6.5	28	1.5	11	182	29	4-22	29	0.31
26	NJN	26	-6.0	-1.5	21	-4.5	29	193	10	8-19	25	0.28
27	TOR	27	-6.5	-6.0	27	-0.5	14	184	26	8-19	26	0.28
28	WAS	28	-7.0	-2.0	24	-5.0	30	193	9	5-21	28	0.25
29	DET	29	-7.0	-7.0	29	0.0	15	183	28	7-20	27	0.25
30	CHA	30	-10.0	-7.0	30	-3.0	25	185	22	3-22	30	0.18

GLOSSARY

LstWk - The BTM ranking from last week.

GPF - Stands for "Generic Points Favored". It's what you would expect the team to be favored by against a league average opponent at a neutral site.

oGPF - Stands for "Offensive Generic Points Favored". The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to score points (per game).

dGPF - Stands for "Defensive Generic Points Favored". The component of a team's total GPF attributable to its ability to prevent the other team from scoring points (per game).

GOU - Stands for "Generic Over/Under". It's what you would expect the betting over/under to be for the given team when playing a league average opponent.

W-L - The team's win/loss record (and win percentage rank)

GWP - Stands for "Generic Win Probability". I converted the GPF into a win probability using the following formula: 1/(1 + exp(-GPF/6.5)).

Additional Key Factors: