the above article combines a healthy dose of common knowledge with an overreliance on numbers to produce a decidedly flawed conclusion, that San Antonio is quite a bit better than both Dallas and Phoenix. well, no, as we saw again soon after this was published. if you feel compelled to defend it because it’s on your site, fine, but that doesn’t make it a worthwhile piece.

Year after year the Spurs produce at an incredibly high level, with machine-like consistency, led by one of the greatest players of his generation, who also happens to have almost no marketable personality to speak of. In a very real sense, we take them completely for granted.

Yup the Spurs have been good for years now. They have a 2-time MVP on the roster. And it’s true that most people take the team for granted.

I don’t see anything in your statement that invalidates any of these points.

but I’ll stick with my contention that looking at point differential for the first 40 games of an NBA season will tell you nothing anyone paying attention to the league doesn’t know already. and in fact, it can lead to a decidedly flawed thesis like the one above.

my point is people need to look more at the specifics of situations.
Dallas has gone 27-3 since their 0-4 start, including two wins in SA, plus they knocked SA out of the playoffs last year. that one purely factual sentence renders the above article entirely pointless.

“no real title contender is trying their hardest for 48 minutes game in and game out in the first 40 games. margin of victory for those teams is irrelevant”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_expectation

1) San Antonio (my preseason pick, over the Cavs), Dallas and Phoenix are still all roughly equal. the only development here is that Amare is most of the way back, although still not quite the explosive leaper he was pre-surgery, he’s fit in very well with his new teammates. the #1 seed in the West is important, as it likely means that that team will only have to play one of the other two in the playoffs. the top seedings in the East are pretty irrelevant, the top teams there seem more focused on pacing themselves, especially Detroit and Cleveland.

2) Miami’s taking this coasting thing to a new level, and have their work cut out for them to even make the playoffs at this point. they have five games left on this current West Coast trip, and if they don’t win any of those, they need to go 30-15 to get to 43 wins. it’s still doable, but it’s getting harder.

3) Detroit doesn’t miss Ben Wallace much.

4) if Arenas keeps playing MVP-type ball, Washington is the team no one wants to see in the Eastern playoffs.

that’s about it, we’re still very early on, in terms of meaningful games for the top teams.

“The Spurs rank first the way Tiger Woods is ahead of Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els”

um, Dallas has won in San Antonio three times in a row now.

Not 1987?

Just checking, because when I see someone disputing point differential (which is one of the most fundamentally basic basketball statistics out there), I get confused.