The Indiana Pacers have the easiest start to the year of any team, but it won’t do much help if they keep blowing games to the likes of the Nets.
It’s always a bit tough to gauge a team’s schedule early in the season. Some things are obvious: The Golden State Warriors are great, the Los Angeles Lakers are terrible. We know this.
But a lot of the other assessment relies on projecting a team’s talent, and that’s further complicated by early-season injuries and general rotation questions that tend to exist on the periphery for most teams until after Thanksgiving.
That said, this is also the NBA. Basketball is easier to predict than most sports since talent rules the day above all.
So while it won’t be perfect, we can generally get a lot out of this early-season schedule analysis from the friendly folks of Nylon Calculus.
They analyzed the first 10 games for each team this year, and found that none have an easier start than the Indiana Pacers.
Here is author Bo Schwartz Madsen’s summation of Indiana’s opening stretch of opponents.
"the Indiana Pacers get the easiest start. Indiana only plays three teams that are projected to be better than 0.500 in the 2H2P projection — Boston, Charlotte, and Dallas — not exactly powerhouses."
It would be interesting to know exactly what he thinks about the Pacers opponent tonight, the Chicago Bulls.
Many analysts looked at them as a team that, due to lack of shooting, would struggle to make the playoffs. I was sorta surprised by this since Dwyane Wade isn’t some 40-year-old shell of Dwyane Wade yet while Jimmy Butler is a gd monster. Throw in solid role players — Nikola Mirotic, Robin Lopez, and Taj Gibson — and even Rajon Rondo, and this certainly isn’t a bad team whatsoever. It could be very good.
Regardless of the minutia, here are the Pacers first 10 opponents:
- vs Mavericks
- @ Nets
- @ Bulls
- vs Lakers
- @ Bucks
- vs Bulls
- @ Hornets
- vs 76ers
- @ 76ers
- vs Celtics
This is easy street. The Nets, Lakers, Bucks, and the Sixers (twice) are all bad teams. Plus the Pacers face none of the Cavs, Raptors, or any top Western Conference teams. This is dodging bullets.
This is why the blunder in Brooklyn last night is so disappointing. The Pacers have a good chance to start their season off on the right foot. And given all the roster turnover, there will likely be some expected stumbles against the likes of Chicago, Charlotte, and Boston. They have to take care of business vs the Brooklyns and Phillys of the world.
For some background, here is Madsen’s comments about the methods used for his analysis.
"To quantify this, I have looked at the first 10 games for every team to see how difficult their early slate is. Opponent strength comes from the projections made by some highly competent people here at Nylon Calculus, Nick Restifo and Andrew Johnson. I could not choose one over the other, as that would be like choosing your favorite child, so instead I have averaged their projections into one highly and hopefully plausible and possible (2H2P) projection.In calculating opponent strength I also adjust for home court and back-to-back. This gives the following measure of schedule difficulty for the first 10 games of the season."
Hopefully the Nets lose won’t mar this stretch too badly.
Next: Pacers 7 Biggest Questions This Season
The Pacers had a great opportunity to start of the season going 7-3 — or better. Don’t blow it. Because after this start, it only gets harder.