You are however correct in that teams that are weaker will inherently have stronger schedules at the end of the season (because they lost to harder teams). I realized this after I posted and was going to post again with this recommendation:

SOS should only be considered for teams with winning records.

All in all, despite what I’ve written, I find SOS to be a rather hit or miss indicator and much prefer offensive/defensive differential (point scored – points allowed) as an indicator of strength.

I suspect the reason they don’t play a totally balanced schedule, aside from travel considerations, is that they (the NBA execs) want to cultivate strong regional rivalries (a la Lakers-Blazers, Lakers-Kings, etc). It’s harder to do that when you play everyone three times (which is what a totally balnaced schedule would amount to, more or less).

Logically, we can all agree that playing to a .500 record with a western conference schedule is much tougher right now than doing the same on an eastern conference schedule… meaning that, presumably, a .500 team in the west is a better team than a .500 team in the east. In SOS they look the same, though.

From a measuring standpoint, I think the way to fix this is to introduce a feedback mechanism to generate a rating – a “meaningless number” in that it doesn’t directly correlate to their actual wins – but one that provides an absolute scale for comparison between teams with different schedules.

Of course, there’s a more logical solution….I’ve recently been of the mind that not only should the playoffs seed the top 16, regardless of conference, but the regular season schedule should also be evened out. Why do teams play more within their division and conference? I suppose at one time, like the old 2-3-2 playoff format, it was dictated by travel, but anymore…. who cares who is a division champ? And does it take anything away from a Conference champ just because they played equal games in the other conference?

I’d really like to see that. It would totally alleviate all the problems from having such a disparity in conference strength which effects EVERYTHING. For instance… players generally need 50 wins to get MVP… so because of this disparity it actually makes it easier for an eastern conference player to win MVP, right?

To bear this out, look at the SOS of the top 15 teams in Hollinger’s rankings. Combined SOS is 0.497, and only five of the teams have SOS over 0.500 (including the Lakers, of course). It’s not because they’ve had an explicitly weaker schedule; it’s because they don’t play themselves. By comparison, the combined SOS of the bottom 15 is 0.504. Considering you’re combining 15 teams into one average at this stage (60 or so games in), that difference is huge. But not unexpected, if you think about it for a moment.

No one is saying SOS isn’t real. But its main value, as far as I’m concerned, is in comparing midseason records. A 40-20 team with an SOS of 0.490 isn’t as impressive as a 38-22 team with an SOS of 0.510. But by the end of the season, that difference simply won’t be there anymore. It can’t be, because the NBA has eschewed an unbalanced schedule that emphasizes intra-divisional play.

The first unbiased determiner is the strength of your division. You play an additional 2 games ( 1 home, 1 road) with each of the teams in your division. The reason I call this unbiased it that it never changes, always 4 games a year against division opponents. If you’re in a strong (SouthWest) or weak (SouthEast) division, you will inevitably play harder or easier opponents than other teams from other divisions.

The second biased determiner is your remaining 20 games who are scheduled by the league to create matchups and television opportunities. The one caveat is that the teams have to be in the same conference, so it is semi-unbiased towards conferences with stronger divisions. This factor is the most random as you can end up with a tough schedule where you play your extra games against strong teams – see Lakers (2 – Dallas, 2 – New Orleans, 2 – San Antonio, 2 – Utah, 2 – Portland, 1 – Denver, 1 – Houston).

So is strength of schedule real? Yes. Does it even out at the end of the season? Nope, in fact it diverges more and more with each game the passes. Do the Lakers have one of the toughest, if not toughest, schedule this season? Absolutely.

When I speak of strength of schedule, I am also purely talking about W-L ratio of teams you face. This of course doesn’t take into account seasonality (having harder games earlier or later in the season) or streaks or the many other intangible factors that could affect things.

Now Phil can have either one on the court with Kobe or Lamar for just about the whole game in the playoffs. So, those scoring lags when we would have to rest Kobe or Lamar (making the offense too one-dimensional) won’t be there because there will always be a very talented inside-outside combo on the floor.

A very scary thought ….