On the Golden State Warriors, Atlanta Hawks, Scoring Margins, and Narratives

Feb 6, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Hawks guard Jeff Teague (0) is fouled by Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) on a steal attempt in the third quarter of their game at Philips Arena. The Hawks won 124-116. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

Tonight, we hungry consumers of professional basketball spectacles will be treated to a rare delicacy. Two of the most dominant regular season teams in recent memory — the 53-13 Golden State Warriors and the 53-14 Atlanta Hawks — will face off in round two of their season series. It’s only so often we have one team with a record this good in an NBA calendar year. To have two such teams, and to have such a late-season matchup, is must-see television.

What makes this game so special is that, despite the very similar records, the Warriors and Hawks could not be more different analytically this season. In very simple terms — scoring margins.

Golden State’s +10.1 average margin of victory ranks eighth-best in NBA history. They have yet to lose a game by 15 points and could become the second to ever accomplish that feat. They’ve already won more games by double-digits (36) than any team did all last season. They’ve utterly destroyed almost every single opponent all year.

Meanwhile, Atlanta’s +6.1 average margin of victory more closely resembles that of a solidly good team, not a historically great one. The difference between No. 1 Golden State and No. 2 Atlanta in margin of victory is larger than the difference between No. 2 Atlanta and No. 11 Oklahoma City. The Hawks also have three blowout losses of 25-plus points.

But as I showed in a WaitingForNextYear article about NCAA Tournament paper tiger Ohio State, the valuable margin of victory statistic also can be misleading at times. For the Buckeyes, my point was that their meaningless comebacks in blowout losses led to an inflated average margin of victory. This is why many computer formulas seem to love them, despite a pretty mediocre looking resume and local fan apathy.

What does a more detailed breakdown of margin of victory potentially tell us about the Warriors and Hawks on the verge of their second face-off? As inspired by Bleacher Report’s Dave Finocchio, and from the NBA’s media stats site, here is a look at the two teams compared to the league average given a certain in-game margin:

Since this is a new kind of margin of victory-related breakdown, I’m not going to give it a whole ton of weight. But as we stated in our mission, the goal of this site is just as much to find narratives and storylines within interesting data as it is to provide ground-breaking research. And I believe the above stats can add a bit of our context to our ongoing discourse about the difference between these two teams.

When up by 11 points-or-more, the Warriors continue to play very competitively. While the average NBA team falls back precipitously — at a rate of -16.7 points per 48 minutes — the Warriors play nearly even. On the other hand, the great Hawks are surprisingly one of the worst teams here. They’ve fallen back many times when up by large amounts.

When down by 11 points-or-more, the NBA average is then the exact opposite. In general, teams come back a bit to earth, reverting to the mean. Golden State, again, has dominated when down by double-digits. They’ve also rarely been in this situation at all. With Atlanta’s three blowout losses, they’ve spent much more time in this situation and have done worse than average, again.

When the game is within 10 points on either end — where the average team sits over 72 percent of the time — the Hawks then end up better than the Warriors! Which is incredibly counter-intuitive given the massive difference in average margin of victory. But the Warriors were so much better in the minority occasions when the game is somewhat out of hand already.

Does this make the Hawks any better than the Warriors? Certainly not. There are all kinds of stats in the world that would prove the all-time dominance of Steve Kerr’s squad right now. But given a record only one half-game behind them, we actually might be under-appreciating the Atlanta Hawks. When games are close — for as much as this stat might matter — they’ve actually been better. And that will be a neat thing to keep in mind tonight when they play again.