The Very Unofficial 2015-16 NBA League Pass Rankings

Everyone likes rankings. Right?

Ok, actually plenty of people strongly dislike rankings of all kinds. Player rankings seem to garner the most venomous responses (sorry, NBA Rank), but team ranks aren’t far behind. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m a bit of a sucker for rankings. For as much as I hate artificial Top Ten lists, put one in front of face and I’m generally going to read it. And even if people claim to hate them, they still talk about them; rankings have this intrinsic hold on our brains – for better or worse, we are drawn to them.

So really, everyone has feelings about rankings.

Based on that, and the educated guess that if you’re reading this site you likely subscribe to NBA League Pass, it’s completely logical to rank teams based on their League Pass watch-ability. Naturally, this is a little different than the standard Power Rankings[1. <rant>: why are they Power Rankings, and not just Rankings? Doesn’t the sequential ordering provide enough dominance from one slot to the next, isn’t the power assumed, when did this become…</rant>] – this is economics! You paid $200 (roughly, depending on the package and payment options), so how do you best get your money’s worth?

Here’s how, so I theorize:

The result is a score, between 0.0 (quick, change the channel) and 1.0 (#LeaguePassAlert).

As a viewer, you are naturally draw to certain elements of the game. While each viewer has unique, distinct tastes, there is plenty of overlap among the masses. These rankings are designed to capture both the intellectual and artistic elements of the NBA experience. So what happens when you intersect Freshness, Rarity, and Squad-ability? You get my version of NBA League Pass Rankings – probably the only set of rankings where Sacramento tops the list.

Seriously.

But first, the categories…

Freshness

Freshness is newness. The degree of a team’s freshness should be based on how different they are from last year. But not just different through trades and free agency – different from youthful change. Thus, freshness consists of three equally-weighted criteria: a) new coach (six total this offseason); b) new logo, uniform, or court (partial points for alternates); c) 2015 lottery picks (actively playing). A new coach brings a new playbook, and likely a new culture. New gear brings a visual appeal; the oft-hard-to-quantify aesthetics of the game. A lottery pick brings youthful hope. These three factors combine to make you want to watch; a fresh team is new and fun. Here’s the Top 11 Freshest teams for next season (yes, 11 – there’s a dramatic falloff from there):

The Kings are fresh? Between their 10-game throwbacks and a trill lottery pick, indeed they are. The Bulls are actually the only non-lottery team on the fresh list. They’ve got Hoiberg, a new offensive scheme, and some silver alternates this season. Plenty of freshness.

Rarity

This factor is much more straight-forward. Between ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBATV, there are 250 nationally televised games this season. Yes, NBATV counts – almost half of all US residences with one TV have access to it. So this is a bit of supply and demand: aside from religiously watching your favorite team all the time, you want to maximize League Pass by watching the teams you rarely see on the national broadcast. Based on the percentage of the schedule you won’t see without League Pass, these are the seven rarest teams to watch:

And the eight most televised teams:

In theory, you don’t want to waste a League Pass night on a team you can watch on the major networks (stellar matchups aside). Put down that LA vs. LA game and turn on the Pistons-Magic!

Squad-ability

Huh? This is a combination of two metrics that get at identifying good teams. First, I calculated the percentage of each roster’s All-Stars. This was designed to be a proxy for the Big Names that are worth tuning in for. Second, I took an average of the projected win totals from the analysis of Nylon Calculus’ own Nick Restifo and our, er the Dallas Mavericks’ own Kevin Ferrigan. Merge them together, and you get the most popular, most successful teams:

Unsurprising, but important to factor into these rankings.

The Results

Before we get carried away, look at how some of these teams group together. Want to move up these rankings? You need to be fresh: the teams with the worst freshness make up the bottom 25% of the rankings. Also, just being good isn’t enough: the highest “good” team is the Bulls at #5, immediately followed by the Thunder at #6. Those sneaky Thunder are a real sleeper here: with a new coach, a lottery pick, some interesting new unis, and two Stars, they are only dragged down by their national coverage.

So…does this measure pass some common sense tests? Maybe. The Kings, Nuggets and Sixers are the Top Three?!?! But wait, consider this:

And this:

And this:

My point is that there is a lot of excitement on these teams. Sure, there’s a knee-jerk reaction to go straight to the Cavaliers and Warriors each night – but 40% of their schedule is already on national TV! I’d recommend using your subscription to find the diamonds in the rough. While this ad-hoc system isn’t perfect (the Pelicans and Wizards are surprising casualties), it was never designed to identify the best teams. It is designed to identify the most visually-appealing, hard-to-find, quality teams. Use these rankings on those random nights of League Pass viewing.

Data support provided courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com, Darryl Blackport, Krishna Narsu, Kevin Ferrigan, and Nick Restifo.