Hey everyone, here’s a quick and dirty, special edition issue of Ankit’s Cool OKC Thunder Newsletter. This one isn’t exactly related to the Thunder, but I thought it would be fun to share.
I decided I would pick winners and losers (on September 20, 2022) for all 1230 games in the 2022-2023 NBA season to see how that would shape my rankings. I mostly did this for fun just to see how the standings looked when compared to my gut feeling of what I think the standings ultimately will be.
If you want to try doing this yourself, I’ll post instructions on how to do this yourself later!!!
How did I do it
If you’re not really interested in the semi-nerdy way in which I created the spreadsheet to make this possible, feel free to skip this section and jump straight to the results below!
The first thing I needed to do was to get the schedule. That was pretty easy to do since I just copy pasted that from here. This gives you 1230 rows in this format:
GAME DAY DATE VISITOR HOME LOCAL ET TV
# 105 Tue. 11/1/22 Orlando Oklahoma City 6:30 PM 7:30 PM TNT
This gets us most of the way there but unfortunately does not convert very easily to a spreadsheet. To fix that, I wrote a python script that converted the copied schedule into a CSV. Google Sheets has a very nice import feature that nicely places the contents of a CSV into a spreadsheet.
This was more work than necessary to do something pretty simple, especially when I realized that I could have just exported nicely formatted CSVs of the schedule from basketball-reference. 🤦🏾
From there, my good friend @aakashgarg24 did some excel black magic to create a nice spreadsheet that auto-updates standings as you make your picks!
If you want to try this out yourself, feel free to copy this spreadsheet and make your own picks! Here’s a link to the spreadsheet! Feel free to make any changes to your copied version as you see fit. Let me know what you think if you decide to!
Results
Here’s what you probably were waiting for! If you wanted to see what my specific picks were for each game - you can check that out here!
East Standings
76-6 – Milwaukee Bucks
70-12 – Boston Celtics
68-14 – Philadelphia 76ers
55-27 – Miami Heat
50-32 – Brooklyn Nets
45-37 – Cleveland Cavaliers
44-38 – Atlanta Hawks
32-50 – Chicago Bulls
26-56 – Toronto Raptors
25-57 – Charlotte Hornets
24-58 – Detroit Pistons
23-59 – New York Knicks
22-60 – Washington Wizards
20-62 – Orlando Magic
8-74 – Indiana Pacers
West Standings
68-14 – Denver Nuggets
66-16 – Golden State Warriors
63-19 – Los Angeles Clippers
60-22 – Minnesota Timberwolves
58-24 – New Orleans Pelicans
55-27 – Portland Trailblazers
53-29 – Phoenix Suns
52-30 – Dallas Mavericks
46-36 – Los Angeles Lakers
41-41 – Memphis Grizzlies
24-58 – Oklahoma City Thunder
20-62 – Sacramento Kings
14-68 – Houston Rockets
11-71 – San Antonio Spurs
11-71 – Utah Jazz
Thoughts on the results
As you can probably tell, these standings are WILD. I have the Bucks breaking the all time wins record with four 65+ win teams and six 60+ win teams. On top of that I have one team with less than 10 wins (sorry Pacers fans!) and four with less than 15. These outcomes are so heavily favoring a small group of teams and are INCREDIBLY unlikely to be anything remotely close to what happens.
These picks obviously reflect my bias where I think Milwaukee, Boston, and Philadelphia will dominate the east and Denver, Golden State, and the Los Angeles Clippers will run the west. Because I biased towards a small cohort of teams dominating the league, I had twelve teams with 26 or fewer wins, which lead to some weird results like the Raptors making the play-in game with a 26-56 record.
In the end, the win totals are drastically off what will happen in reality, but I think this exercise did reflect which 20 teams I think will make the play-in game/playoffs. Personally, I think the league will be significantly more competitive than these rankings. I also learned it’s very hard to account for rest, schedule, timing, etc. when tracking 30 teams across 1230 games on a spreadsheet. There’s just so many games and it’s really hard for my peanut brain to stay engaged during each pick and not just go with what my gut says in 2 seconds to make them.
What do I actually think will happen?
East Standings
Philadelphia 76ers
Milwaukee Bucks
Brooklyn Nets
Boston Celtics
Miami Heat
Cleveland Cavaliers
Atlanta Hawks
Toronto Raptors
Chicago Bulls
New York Knicks
Washington Wizards
Detroit Pistons
Orlando Magic
Charlotte Hornets
Indiana Pacers
I personally believe the top of the East is incredibly stacked. I had the Celtics at #2, but with the suspension of Ime Udoka, I think the Celtics will not be able to rally like they did last season. I think Philadelphia and Milwaukee will be incredibly dominant this coming season. I think one of them will end up winning the East despite me sticking to Milwaukee here.
Brooklyn, despite the crazy drama around KD and Kyrie, made some good moves and I think the addition of Ben Simmons will give them some defensive toughness. I think KD and especially Kyrie will try to prove that they’re not crazy and will have a bounce back year. Admittedly, this is a pick I’m not super comfortable with, but whatever. Cleveland and Atlanta have made some great moves to bolster their roster, however I think they will just be good regular season teams alongside Miami. Toronto I think has a solid roster to make the playoffs.
Chicago I think will struggle especially with the Lonzo injury and Vucevic not really being a great fit on the Bulls roster. I went back and forth on the Knicks and Wizards, but ultimately gave the edge to the Knicks because I do think RJ Barrett will continue to show some more development especially with a guy like Brunson by his side. I think Detroit and Orlando are one year away from making a playoff push. With the loss of Bridges, the Hornets will plummet in the rankings because even though LaMelo is incredible, I don’t know who is going to help him out offensively. That’s gonna be a recipe for disaster for any team with a poor defense. The Pacers are a strong tanking team in my eyes, and thus fall to last place.
West Standings
Denver Nuggets
Los Angeles Clippers
Golden State Warriors
Minnesota Timberwolves
New Orleans Pelicans
Portland Trailblazers
Dallas Mavericks
Los Angeles Lakers
Phoenix Suns
Memphis Grizzlies
Sacramento Kings
Oklahoma City Thunder
Houston Rockets
Utah Jazz
San Antonio Spurs
Like I mentioned earlier, I think the Nuggets, Clippers and Warriors are the powerhouses of the West. I expect one of them to probably come out of the West in the playoffs. Minnesota, New Orleans and Portland I think will be very good regular season teams, but not as dominating as the top 3. I think Luka is gonna have another MVP caliber season, but I’m not sure if the Mavs will be able to replace Brunson’s production which will hurt them quite a bit this season (though I’m gonna keep an eye on Jaden Hardy). The Lakers should make the playoffs with their new coach and hopefully a healthy LeBron and AD and are definitely a few tiers above the tankers.
Phoenix I think will fall apart with some of the locker room dysfunction that is coming to light specifically around Ayton while Memphis will really struggle without Jaren Jackson Jr on the floor till the new year. The Kings are on the fringe of the playin game based on their recent moves just by nature of not ever committing to a tank making them better than the 4 tanking teams. OKC and Houston should be ahead of the Jazz and Spurs if only because the Jazz and Spurs are starting the tank this year.
Conclusion
Overall, this was a fun but very long experiment. I don’t think I’ll do this again because it took so much time and honestly got a little boring at times because it’s so monotonous, however it was cool to do at least once.
If you have any thoughts about anything I wrote, feel free to reach out on Twitter @ankitpancakes!