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NBA Power Rankings December 10, 2021

By Andrew Hales, Assistant CouchGM

CouchGM’s weekly NBA power rankings, in order of descending championship probability. Power rankings will be published weekly on Fridays with each week’s update to the model. Listed below is each team's current championship probability, change in ranking vs last week, and last week’s championship probability.

(CouchGM’s Note: This week we decided to make some adjustments to our model. The main reason for this is that we felt the model emphasized three-point shooting too strongly, so the effect of three-point shooting has been nerfed in V2. There were a handful of teams that were rising a little too high in the rankings based on their three-point shooting [looking at you, Charlotte]. To adjust for this, we replaced raw three-point shooting data in the model with straight field goal percentage and effective field goal percentage, which gives extra credit for three-point shooting. So we still give a bonus to teams that shoot the three well, but our focus has shifted away from threes on their own to high shot quality overall. This also removes the bias towards three-point heavy styles of play and instead allows for other-styled teams, like the Suns who are obviously really good but don’t shoot tons of threes, to shine. We found that these adjustments actually slightly improved the model’s record prediction ability. Looking back at recent history, we also found that FG% and eFG% tend to be more predictive of winning the championship than 3FG% and made threes.)

The Top-5

Rank	Team	Current Probability	Change	Last Week Probability
1	Utah Jazz	15.40%	+1	9.34%
2	Golden State Warriors	13.69%	-1	13.06%
3	Phoenix Suns	10.75%	+2	9.45%
4	Brooklyn Nets	6.67%	0	8.55%
5	Chicago Bulls	5.33%	+1	5.61%

Golden State and Phoenix continue to sit atop the NBA standings, but Utah is the new owner top seed in our rankings. Utah has even passed Brooklyn for the 3rd best record in the NBA. The gap in the overall league standings from Golden State (#1) to Brooklyn (#4) is 4 games. The gap from Brooklyn to Charlotte (#14) is also 4 games, so there is separation at the top but almost half the league is bunched together right behind them.

It’s not a significant change, but we’re all about analytics at CouchGM and the numbers don’t lie - Utah is top 3 in most major statistical categories. I don’t normally buy into the rhetoric of “[insert team name here] never wins and historically flops in the playoffs” because teams change so much from year to year, but Utah’s core has been the same for the last 3 or 4 years now and, while dangerous (#1 overall last year and looking like they’ll fight for #1 overall again this year) they definitely have pressure to be more than just a good regular season team. They have to get the conference finals monkey off their back or else there could be a shakeup coming.

As CouchGM himself, Zach, wrote about last week, through 20 games, or 25% of the season, normally the standings don’t have dramatic changes the rest of the way. This year may be an exception to that rule though because of how tight everyone is after Golden State, Phoenix and Utah. Technically seeds #1-8 are up for grabs in the East, only separated by 4 games so no one should be counting themselves out. In the West the top 3 are virtual locks at this point but seeds 4 through 11 are separated by only 4 games.

6-10

Rank	Team	Current Probability	Change	Last Week Probability
6	Atlanta Hawks	4.21%	+1	5.34%
7	Milwaukee Bucks	3.52%	+1	3.59%
8	Charlotte Hornets	3.26%	-3	6.35%
9	Miami Heat	3.17%	0	2.79%
10	Cleveland Cavaliers	2.61%	+1	2.54%

Milwaukee didn’t get the national attention they deserved over the last few weeks because of the Suns’ 18 game streak and the two Suns vs Warriors games, but Milwaukee is 10-2 in their last 12 and have come back from 6-8 and out of the playoff picture to 16-10 and in hot pursuit of Brooklyn and Chicago. These last couple weeks have been the first times the Bucks have been even partially healthy after being plagued by injuries pretty much the whole first month, so don’t be surprised if by Christmas they are on top of the East.

Just as we praise Charlotte they proceed to lose 5 of their next 6 games. At some point losing to good teams stops being “acceptable losses” if you have championship aspirations. Keep an eye out for an upcoming article on this, but they are 7-11 against teams that are 0.500 or better. They’ve had a tough schedule, but they need to be better if they want to win a playoff series (if they make the playoffs). They haven’t made the playoffs since 2016 so maybe that’s a win for them, but they have enough players that their goal should be higher than just making the playoffs.

Possible Play-in Participants

Rank	Team	Current Probability	Change	Last Week Probability
11	Memphis Grizzlies	2.38%	+1	2.53%
12	Los Angeles Clippers	2.20%	+2	2.18%
13	Los Angeles Lakers	2.19%	+7	1.83%
14	Denver Nuggets	2.14%	+7	1.41%
15	Washington Wizards	2.12%	-5	2.72%
16	San Antonio Spurs	2.08%	+7	1.37%
17	Philadelphia 76ers	2.02%	+2	1.86%
18	Indiana Pacers	1.82%	+4	1.39%
19	Dallas Mavericks	1.54%	-6	2.41%
20	Portland Trail Blazers	1.47%	-5	2.08%
21	Boston Celtics	1.46%	-3	1.88%
22	Sacramento Kings	1.43%	+3	1.28%
23	Minnesota Timberwolves	1.28%	-7	2.04%
24	New York Knicks	1.24%	-7	1.94%
25	Toronto Raptors	1.19%	-1	1.33%

Shout out to Memphis for beating the Thunder by an NBA record 73 points. They had 9 guys score in double figures plus a 10th with 9 points. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that before. Makes sense that they scored 152 points! Memphis is in the middle of a great stretch of games, going 6-1 in the last 7. It’s not against cupcakes either. They won in Dallas and in Miami, and also against the Lakers on the 2nd night of a back to back.

Our adjusted model favors the Clippers, Lakers, and Nuggets. All of them get lots of points in the paint at high efficiency. Normally that translates well to the slower pace of the playoffs.

I love Damian Lillard, but man if he really wanted out of town his chance is now. He keeps saying he wants to be part of the solution in Portland, though. CJ McCollum is out until who knows when, so it seems like another year that Portland will only go where Lillard can take them. They have lost 7 of the last 8 with the only win against the Pistons. Tough times for sure in Rip City.

Washington, with their negative point differential, is somehow 4 games over .500 and tied for the #4 seed in the East. They are at a crisis point in the season. They are 7-8 in their last 15 games, only 2 of those wins came against playoff teams, and half of the losses are to non-playoff teams. It’s the dog days of the season and they need a reboot. It’s going to be hard to come by because they are about to embark on a 11 day 6 game road trip, 5 of those games being against playoff teams. If they are still relevant at the end of December then you can count them as being playoff worthy. Alternatively, they could also end the calendar year under 0.500.

The rumor out of Indiana is that they are about to blow the whole thing up. They should get a decent return on some of their players, but we may need to throw them into the Bottom 6 soon if they’re giving up. They don’t have any notable incoming or outgoing picks in the foreseeable future so they could opt for a quick rebuild and try to trade their own good pick in 2022 for a top player (Ben Simmons?) but it sounds like they are going to do the opposite and dump their own players for picks.

The Bottom-5

Rank	Team	Current Probability	Change	Last Week Probability
26	Houston Rockets	1.12%	0	1.11%
27	Oklahoma City	0.94%	+2	1.01%
28	New Orleans Pelicans	0.94%	0	1.03%
29	Orlando Magic	0.91%	-2	1.04%
30	Detroit Pistons	0.93%	-1	1.00%

I’ve got bad news for New Orleans. Either

1) Brandon Ingram is severely overrated because he can’t make this team tread water without Zion

or

2) their roster is so bad that not even full-strength Zion and Ingram could carry them to the playoffs (tangent - this is why LeBron is the GOAT - he took terrible teams to the finals).

It’s probably some of each, but let’s break down the numbers. The Pelicans are 7-20. The average winning percentage of teams making the play-in tournament in the West has been 0.462. That means they need to get to 38 wins to have a shot at the #10 seed, so they need to go 31-24 the rest of the season. 31-24 is a 0.563 winning percentage, which equates to winning around 46 games over a full season. Will the Pelicans wake up tomorrow and play as good as the Grizzlies and Heat have played this year, meaning they will be better than the Clippers and Lakers and 76ers have played this year? That’s a no for me. Zion was supposed to be ready by opening day. He is already 6 weeks behind schedule with no timeline for his return. Time for them to give up on the season and see what needs to happen for Zion to be able to play a full season (lose 50 pounds? Or is it just unlucky that he has been injured his whole NBA career?). He’s played in less than half of the games since he was drafted. Do they dare trade him?

You can run that math for these other 4 teams and it’s pretty bleak. Houston(!!!) is the owner of the longest active winning streak in the NBA at 7 games. They even beat James Harden (without Durant) in their annual game in Houston. This is probably the high water mark of the season so enjoy it while it lasts.

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