That is very strange in deed.


Another weird statistical blip is the point differential vs. team record for New Jersey/Philly and Portland/Utah.

ESPN - NBA Standings, Pro Basketball Standings, NBA Team Records

Portland has a better record than Utah, although their point differential is 5 points per game worse. Same with Jersey over Philly.

wow and we thought we had issues with our starters mins..... wade is headed for another injury.. i know it was an ot game but both guards played over 51 mins, haslem 48 mins and wright 41...

there playing desperate in dec, by the end of january they will be totally burned out, and/or injured....

The Heat already have injuries, either short-term or season-ending, to their top 2 players at point guard AND their top 2 at center.

I think that probably evens out over the course of a season. I just looked at the last couple of final season standings, and it seems like point differential tends to track with record fairly closely.

30 games is a decent-sized sample for a lot of stats, but maybe not for point differential. The Bulls right now are still a bad team at 10-17, with a -4.8 PPG differential, but I think they were something shockingly bad like -10 only a month or so ago. Even Minnesota right now (-8.4) isn't that bad.

Portland's largest margin of victory for the entire season is only 11 points.

Their losses have been by as much as 21 points.

They are on quite a roll now though. On the season, they have beat Dallas, us, NO twice, Toronto, Denver twice, GS, Utah.

Aldridge and Roy are the real thing. Outlaw has been around but still has a pretty decent game.

Portland though needs Oden to be considered a serious contender in the Western Conference. They are a weak rebounding team currently ranked 23rd. They are also a below average free throw shooting team and not a good offensive team, 20th in the league.

They are also very young with their top two players being very young. If Oden comes back and can play without spending a lot of time on the injured reserve list then they will have the nucleus of a very good team.

They have a decent chance at making the playoffs this year if Aldredge or Roy don't go down with an injury, but even if do make the playoffs this year, they should be eliminated in the first round.

I was just thinking about something that I heard one of the road announcers say the other day during a Pistons game.

He pointed out how misleading it is to look at the Pistons' gross rebounding margin/deficit. His reasoning is that since we usually win the turnover margin, and sometimes by a wide margin, that the other team tends to get many fewer field goal attempts. Since defensive rebounds are the main component, we get fewer total rebounds than we would if let them run their offense without interference.

Because of this, we should be looking at % of available rebounds. However, that can also be misleading, because the tougher shots our opponents are forced to take, the more random the rebounds get. We've all seen those pseudo air-ball rim grazers than Jeff Foster pulls down.

Moral of the story, this is another complicated stat that can't be viewed in isolation.

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"I think sometimes the last couple of years we've been a little too predictable offensively." Billups

Offensive rebound stats might be an important one to look at.

You can see this when you look at the Bulls who are among the league leaders in offensive rebounding - mostly because they miss so many more shots than anybody else. I'm guessing though that even though % of available could be biased by the kinds of shots a team forces another to take, it's still a much better measure than the rebounding difference.

we are better the all of 4 teams when you look at total rebounds a game.... however if you look at Differential we are 12th overall.

another interesting stat.... NBA - Statistics by Team - Yahoo! Sports

if you look were the only team that is postive in good stats and negative in bad stats.... meaning were doing everything right form rebounds to assists to turnovers to fouls....