NBA Team Rankings - April 14, 2012

Derrick Rose

Here are the NBA Betting Market Team Rankings as of April 14, 2012. These rankings use the Vegas point spreads from recent games to derive an implied measure of team strength (Generic Points Favored, or GPF). By combining the point spread information with the betting over/unders, I can also decompose team strength into its offensive and defensive components (oGPF and dGPF). For more detail, see the Methodology page.

The Thunder retain the top spot this week. Both the Celtics and the Hawks moved up in the rankings significantly. The Hawks, in particular, are an interesting case. Despite having a top 10 Win/Loss record for most of the season, they were consistently ranked in the 15-20 range according to the point spreads. And then they jump 3 points in GPF in the course of a week (see for yourself on The Ticker). It's as if the market suddenly snapped to attention.

The Bulls have once again started climbing back up, improving from 4.5 GPF to 6.5. The Bulls' fortunes have risen and fallen in accordance with Derrick Rose's presence in the lineup. See below for a graph of how the their GPF ranking has varied with Derrick Rose in and out of the lineup.

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Source: <a href="http://bettingmarketanalytics.blogspot.com/">Betting Market Analytics</a>
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A pretty clear illustration of Derrick Rose's value to the Bulls (although I imagine looking at more standard metrics like winning percentage or average margin would tell a similar story). Just eyeballing the peaks and valleys of that graph, it appears that the market values Derrick Rose at about 3 points. Put another way, Derrick Rose would take a team that wins 50% of its games and turn them into a team that won 60% of the time.

The Rankings (glossary below)

Rank	Team	LstWk	GPF	oGPF		dGPF		GOU		W-L		GWP
1	OKC	1	8.0	6.0	2	2.0	10	199	8	43-16	2	0.78
2	CHI	4	6.5	-0.5	19	7.0	2	187	27	45-14	1	0.73
3	SAS	2	6.5	7.5	1	-1.0	18	203	4	41-16	3	0.72
4	MIA	3	6.0	3.0	7	3.0	7	194	17	41-17	4	0.72
5	LAC	6	4.0	-0.5	16	4.5	5	190	23	36-23	7	0.65
6	BOS	10	4.0	-3.5	24	7.5	1	184	30	34-25	10	0.64
7	MEM	7	3.5	-1.0	20	4.5	4	189	25	34-24	9	0.64
8	DAL	9	3.0	0.0	15	3.0	8	191	20	34-26	12	0.62
9	ATL	19	3.0	-0.5	18	3.5	6	190	22	35-24	8	0.61
10	LAL	5	2.5	1.0	10	1.5	12	194	16	38-22	5	0.60
11	PHI	13	2.0	-4.0	25	6.0	3	185	29	31-28	15	0.58
12	IND	8	2.0	1.0	11	1.0	14	194	15	37-22	6	0.57
13	PHX	15	2.0	4.0	6	-2.0	21	201	5	31-28	16	0.57
14	HOU	14	1.5	1.0	9	0.5	16	195	12	32-27	14	0.56
15	NYK	12	1.5	0.0	14	1.5	13	193	19	31-28	17	0.56
16	MIL	16	1.5	6.0	3	-4.5	25	205	2	29-30	19	0.56
17	DEN	11	1.5	5.5	4	-4.0	24	204	3	32-27	13	0.56
18	UTA	17	1.0	2.0	8	-1.0	20	198	9	31-29	18	0.53
19	ORL	18	-0.5	-2.5	22	2.0	9	190	24	34-25	11	0.49
20	POR	20	-1.5	-0.5	17	-1.0	19	195	13	28-32	20	0.44
21	SAC	22	-4.0	4.5	5	-8.5	30	208	1	19-41	27	0.35
22	DET	25	-4.0	-4.0	27	0.0	17	190	21	22-37	23	0.35
23	TOR	26	-4.5	-5.0	28	0.5	15	188	26	21-39	25	0.33
24	MIN	21	-4.5	0.5	12	-5.0	28	201	6	25-35	21	0.33
25	GSW	23	-5.0	0.5	13	-5.5	29	200	7	22-36	22	0.32
26	NOH	27	-5.0	-7.0	30	2.0	11	186	28	17-42	28	0.32
27	NJN	24	-5.0	-2.0	21	-3.0	22	196	11	22-38	24	0.31
28	WAS	28	-7.5	-3.0	23	-4.5	26	196	10	14-45	29	0.24
29	CLE	29	-8.0	-4.0	26	-4.0	23	194	14	19-38	26	0.23
30	CHA	30	-10.5	-5.5	29	-5.0	27	194	18	7-51	30	0.16

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:

League Average Points Scored (APS): 97.0 points
Home Court Advantage (HCA): 3.25 points
Back to Back Penalty (B2B): -1.25 points (see here)

How to Use This Table to Build Point Spreads and Over/Unders

Point Spread (in favor of home team) = HCA + (B2B_home - B2B_away) + (GPF_home - GPF_away)
Over/Under = 2*APS + (oGPF_home + oGPF_away - dGPF_home - dGPF_away)