Coming into NBA training camp, optimism abounds. Staffers and players are excited. Seemingly everyone has had the best summer of their lives. It takes a lot more than a preseason loss to dampen anyone's spirits.
No, dampening spirits is what happens when a team gets punked in the regular season.
Or perhaps when BPI — ESPN's Basketball Power Index — says a team might not win quite as much as all the optimism suggests.
This year, BPI's win-total predictions aren't radically different from what Las Vegas projects, so we're going to clue you in on what Vegas doesn't really tell you — things such as the chances your team will gets a top-six seed in the playoffs, its likelihood of making the Finals, and maybe even the reason.
From the No. 1 team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, down to a few squads ranked in the 20s, here's what BPI forecasts.
No. 1 Oklahoma City Thunder (No. 1 overall)
OKC has a 98% chance of earning a top-four seed. For perspective, that's like having an eight-point lead with two minutes left in a game.
I'm not sure whether people realize how deep OKC is. Last season, the net points metric we use to evaluate players was positive for everyone in the Thunder's rotation and a couple of guys outside of their rotation — 12 team members in total. In contrast, the Thunder's Finals' opponents, the Pacers, had just five players positive in the regular season.
No. 2 Denver Nuggets (No. 3)
The Nuggets have a 67% chance of earning a top-four seed, which brings home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
The gap between the Nuggets' starters and their bench was the biggest in the NBA last season. The starters added 7.6 points to their scoring margin per game, and the bench took away 3.8. That pattern has
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