Power Rankings Checkpoint 1: Series Intro
Get prepped for the first official update to my season preview series with this primer
Now that the holidays are upon us, it’s officially time for me to reassess my priors on all 30 teams, and make some necessary adjustments to my season preview series. For a refresher on how I format my power rankings, take a look back at my tier explanation article.
In the time between Christmas and the end of the calendar year, I will release updated versions of Tiers 1 through 6. Some tiers might look drastically different than they did in the preseason, while others might be virtually unchanged.
In each team’s section, I will provide a brief overview of where the team currently sits. I will also take a look at how their top-line metrics (Record, ORTG, DRTG, Net Rating) are tracking in comparison to my original projections. I’ll highlight a couple points where I was right, as well as a couple where I was wrong, and then I’ll finish by providing an updated outlook for each team as we head into the true meat of the NBA calendar.
In my view, we are about to enter the regular season’s most informative stretch. In the season’s first few months, there’s a natural ramping up period as teams adjust to new personnel and players knock the rust off from the offseason. In the season’s final few months, the best teams are often winding down the minutes on their stars and ensuring health for the playoffs, while the league’s worst teams are in full-on tank mode.
However, from now through the trade deadline, it is full speed ahead. The standings start to become more stratified, and there is a large enough sample size of data for most coaches and organizations to understand what adjustments are needed. The league’s buyers and sellers will start to become clear, and trade speculation will run rampant through the daily news cycles.
It is also the most grueling part of the schedule. The vast majority of teams will be dealing with injuries to at least a few of their key rotation pieces, and coaches will need to rely on the full depth of their roster to battle absences and tough travel scenarios. It is easy for momentum to start steamrolling in either a positive or negative direction.
As such, my rankings will likely be most locked in once we reach checkpoint #2, which will be following the trade deadline in February. Nevertheless, the start of the season has given us a solid baseline of information with which to work. Stay tuned next week for my first edition, where I’ll reset Tier 1.