Rudy T once said that the true way to measure how well a team is doing is to take out the schedule biases of road records and home records...in other words, look at road wins minus home losses. This makes sense, especially for a team like Houston which has played 22 road games versus 14 at home, and a pretty tough schedule the first half. Are we the third best team in the conference? Probably not, but this does point toward a positive future....and i'VE Mentioned this before - we're poised to make a run with a good home schedule and a lot of easy teams to feast on, plus T-mac's return to the line-up soon with a team that's playing rick's offense finally. TeamRoad Wins - Home Losses1. Phoenix 92. New Orleans73. Houston 54. LA Lakers55. San Antonio46. Dallas47. Golden State48. Utah3 Portland 2 Denver2 Sacramento-4 LA Clippers-6 Seattle -7 Memphis -8 Minnesota-12
This is a two-folded story. You have to consider how many you have won, not only the difference between road wins and home wins. I remember we were better on road trips seasons ago, which should not rank us any lower because we were overall very good at that time.
It doesn't matter because at the end of the season, road wins - home losses will reflect your record perfectly and it will rank you the exact same way as your record (since every team will have the exact same number of road games and home games). This technique is meant to measure how a team is doing in a season taking out the scheduling bias as it concerns home vs. road games. So some teams have a great record because they have played a ton of home games where they have done well, but are actually really terrible on the road. Portland is a good example. They are 5-10 on the road and have a lot of road games remaining, so this means they should fade a bit in the next month or so. Same with Denver.
http://www.kiva.net/~jsagarin/sports/nbasend.htm Sagarin's schedule-adjusted rankings have us at 5th or 6th in the West. I think that's closer to the mark.
I still think Hollinger's power ranking is a notch above other systems, since it's the only one that factors in strength of schedule, recent play and average point differential, but Sagarin's are always pretty good too. Hollinger's rankings currently have us at 8th overall and 6th in the West as well.
