On Schedule Difficulty

by Tom Ziller on Aug 6, 2009 1:01 PM PDT in Commentary

I haven't delved too much into scheduling matters, but Bradford Doolittle's Basketball Prospectus piece on strength of schedule got me thinking. Brad used his 2009-10 projections to assert the Kings will have the fifth most difficult schedule next season. I imagine the projections closely link to 2008-09 performance with adjustments made for the biggest personnel moves; for instance, Brad notes the Spurs are his system's current 2009-10 favorite, and I have no doubt replacing Bruce Bowen, Fabricio Oberto and Kurt Thomas with Richard Jefferson, Antonio McDyess and DeJuan Blair is a big part of that.

Zach at CK linked the BP article and questioned why bad teams (the Grizz, Clips, Wolves and Warriors have more difficult skeds than the Kings) have to be stuck with tougher schedules.

Well, it's because teams like the Kings don't get to play against ... the Kings. Replace four games against a .500 team with four games against .207 (or 17-win) team, and the preseason strength of schedule looks different. In fact, it looks drastically different: the actual .512 opponent winning percentage would become a .497 opponent winning percentage if the Kings were able to play against themselves four times instead of a .500 team (like Phoenix).

That's why you see a real stratification (with some outliers, like Denver and Charlotte) in Brad's list: bad West teams --> bad East teams and middling West teams --> good West teams and middling East teams --> good East teams. Cleveland's schedule looks weak in part because Cleveland doesn't have to play against Cleveland, et cetera.

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I solve problems. That's what I do.

Make each team play itself three times, and make sure the game counts. Tim Donaghy will be the referee, and I will be running the ammo concession for the ones the Kings are involved in.

Rocks are free, and slingshots easily stolen.

by andy sims on Aug 6, 2009 2:04 PM PDT reply actions 4 recs

Rec'd

I want to broadcast those games with you, cowboy.

SACTOWN ROYALTY - Try our thick creamy shakes!

by section214 on Aug 6, 2009 2:54 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

I just wanna watch live near where andy's sitting

And watch you two broadcast the game.

No mistakes in the tango, darling. Not like life. Simple. That's what makes the tango so great. If you make a mistake, and get all tangled up, you just tango on.....

by pookeyguru on Aug 6, 2009 5:12 PM PDT up reply actions

The NFL style discussion of strength of schedule in the NBA seems a bit silly to me.

Sure the good teams in the lesser conference will have an easier schedule, and sure there is some variation because of the 4 games/3 games rotation. But these things seem kind of minor to me.

If you want to really look at strength of schedule you have to find a way to quantify the difficulty of back to backs and 4 game in 5 night stretches and extended road trips.

Playing the Kings on the 2nd night of a back to back is easier than playing the Cavs there. It also matters what your opponents recent schedule looks like. Playing a schedule-weary Lakers team is easier than playing a rested Lakers team.

I’d like to see one of these stat-gurus try and quantify those effects of the NBA schedule.

Ball movement ... is like jogging for most people: They do it occasionally, and it makes them happy. Then they go back to not doing it. - Henry Abbott

by Kfan in Korea on Aug 6, 2009 2:22 PM PDT reply actions

All this would be alot easier

if there was publicly accessible database where you could run queries and run analysis to generate reports. Right now, physically searching through basketball-reference.com is straight painful. They need to create an API that lets you communicate with their information. With that, your above request could be pretty easily accomplished.

So, for as long as the information is readily available, take every teams back to back game and compare it to the other time they played that team, keeping track of the raw score tallies and making appropriate corrections (like subtracting three points for the home team, excluding situations with injuries to key players, etc.).

This should give you a nice table of how much a team scores and gives up to another team based on whether they are in a back to back. If you graph this data, maybe you’ll see a trend where the non-back-to-back team scores more and gives up less. Or maybe the back-to-back team scores the same but gives up more. Anyway, you can average all that information together to generate the scoring-difference-percentage between the two game-situations, and dividing the back-to-back over the regular games should tell you what effect (ie, change in percentage) back-to-backs have on win percentage. Then, just include this multiplier onto all the back-to-back game situations in the regular strength-of-schedule analysis and boom! – you have what you asked for.

Obviously that’s a simple way of treating the back-to-back situations, but the whole strength-of-schedule thing is pretty rough anyway, so this should work.

Victory is tasty.

by iashwash on Aug 6, 2009 4:14 PM PDT up reply actions

And yet I would say it should be easier to quantify

those effects than to figure out how many wins a single player is worth.

Ball movement ... is like jogging for most people: They do it occasionally, and it makes them happy. Then they go back to not doing it. - Henry Abbott

by Kfan in Korea on Aug 6, 2009 9:01 PM PDT up reply actions

Not to mention....

the fact that the Kings play in the West. Factor in the West foes and the fact that the Kings can’t play themselves and that pretty much answers my question.

by Zach H from Talk H on Aug 6, 2009 2:54 PM PDT reply actions

Factor in

Schedule differences:

1. Blazers: 4 times
2. Grizzlies: 3 times
3. Hornets: 3 times
4. Jazz visits just once.

BOOK IT!

by kingme18 on Aug 6, 2009 3:59 PM PDT reply actions

Yet the Jazz visited twice last year

So, there goes that.

No mistakes in the tango, darling. Not like life. Simple. That's what makes the tango so great. If you make a mistake, and get all tangled up, you just tango on.....

by pookeyguru on Aug 6, 2009 5:14 PM PDT up reply actions

I was making the argument

That the Jazz are a terrible road team compared to home team. You’d rather face the Jazz twice at Arco.

BOOK IT!

by kingme18 on Aug 6, 2009 6:08 PM PDT up reply actions

Unless you're the 2008-09 Kings

But, yes, I agree.

No mistakes in the tango, darling. Not like life. Simple. That's what makes the tango so great. If you make a mistake, and get all tangled up, you just tango on.....

by pookeyguru on Aug 6, 2009 10:19 PM PDT up reply actions

No, to make it fair we need a handicap system like golf.

If a .600 winning percentage team plays a .200 winning percentage team, the lesser team should get a handicap. Like the penalty box in hockey. To make it fair the lesser team can choose one of the players from the other team to sit out the game in the penalty box.

If the variance is more then .300, you can choose anyone on the team.
If the variance is between .200 & .300 the higher percentage team can protect 2 players.
If the variance is between .100 & .200 the player chosen can’t be a starter.
If the variance is .100 or less the team with the highest winning percentage has to play with K9 on their team..

"If you don't have anything good to say, LIE" - Mom

by HighTops on Aug 7, 2009 2:55 AM PDT reply actions

Nice

I had done some really basic statistical analysis of the Kings schedule for a story before I ended up scrapping it because it sucked and wasn’t interested. This is much better.

The only thing I gathered from my breakdown is that there’s a tough stretch right around Christmas (which anyone could gather simply by looking at the scheduled opponents) and that the Kings might look better than they actually are during February (a decent run of weaker than average opponents).

Never forget: I am a complete idiot

by Exhibit G on Aug 7, 2009 7:42 AM PDT reply actions