houston's ranking isn't really all that strange. check our their schedule and who they've played against.
4 of Houstons losses have been

2 pt loss to the Lakers.
11 pt loss to Denver.
8 pt loss to New Orleans.
3 pt loss to the San Antonio in OT.

It seems like Hollinger is saying not all 5-2s are created equal.

The Knicks are ranked ahead of the 5-2 warriors. I think it has something to with the fact that even though we're 3-3, 2 of our losses were by 4 pts to Boston and 5 pts to Portland, both quality teams.

might be some method to the madness.

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:it's not based on their w-l record. if you want that you can just go to the standings.

houston's ranking isn't really all that strange. check our their schedule and who they've played against.
4 of Houstons losses have been

2 pt loss to the Lakers.
11 pt loss to Denver.
8 pt loss to New Orleans.
3 pt loss to the San Antonio in OT.

It seems like Hollinger is saying not all 5-2s are created equal.

The Knicks are ranked ahead of the 5-2 warriors. I think it has something to with the fact that even though we're 3-3, 2 of our losses were by 4 pts to Boston and 5 pts to Portland, both quality teams.

might be some method to the madness.

got it. So Hollinger is a big fan of the moral victory.

Yes, the forumla gives credit to "moral victories" (close losses are much better than blowout losses in the formula) and, for that matter, running up the score gives you a better ranking, because it's based on cummulative point differential, not w-l. But it also takes into account strength of schedule and number of home games v road games.

So, in any event, this isn't another example of ESPN bias (guys, we're ranked in top half of NBA here, even though we've got a .500 team). You can argue whether this is truly predictive or not. It's not intuitive to me that point differential is a better predictor of success to me than w-l record, for example, but he says the data support it as a better predictor. I'll take him at face value. In any event, we're in the top 1/2 of the league. Woohoo.

If we didn't lay a total egg against Philly, we may have even been in the top 10.

ramtour420 wrote:Yep, statistics are important. One guy ate a whole chicken today. Other guy was fasting and ate nothing, only drank water. Statistically, today they both have had half-a-chicken.

My statistics teacher used a similar joke in college. She said there's two women: One is 9 months pregnant, the other is not pregnant. On average, they're both pregnant.

We are too high...