Rankest of 'tankers'
I compared three different methods of ranking and rating the nine teams that are in the running for worst WL record. The Knicks appeared to be out of until they lost KP but they're 1-9 in their last 10 games so they still have a remote chance. The first method is one we all know - point differential. The other two are calculations from box score items, summed over all games for the teams and all their opponents against them (available from Doug's NBA and MLB stats.) (If you're interested, one uses offensive efficiency which is the ratio of good offensive things (points, assists, orff rebs, FTA) to bad offensive things (TOs, missed shots), with opps off eff being your def eff. The other uses ranking of differential box score items, then combines those ranks into an overall rank.} The number under OffEff is projected wins for the season.
Team Pt.Diff OffEff Rank
Phx -8.9 25 29
Sac -8.2 27 30
Chi -6.3 27 28
Atl -4.7 33 27
Mem -4.5 33 26
Orl -4.4 33 25
Bro -4.1 33 24
Dal -2.6 36 23
NYK -2.6 36 21 (Det is 22)
The correlation is so good that it looks faked but it's just the way it turned out. I make this comparison from time to time to validate my OffEff and Rank calculations and its usually not this perfect.
Two other things I noticed looking at the 'expanded' stats from the standings: Among these nine teams Chi, Phx and Sac had the best records in 3pt games - 8-5, 5-3, 3-3. Chicago, NYK and Phx had the best records against sub 500 teams - 12-8, 13-12, 11-11.
Sac was better than most at 8-12.
It's not evidence that would stand up in court but three different kinds of data all pointing the same way has me conviced that Phx, Sac and Chi are not truly tanking, they are simply bad. The Knicks certainly weren't tanking before KP went down but I'm not sure now. The other five have almost certainly been tanking all year or most of it.