Every NBA restart team’s schedule ranked

We ranked every team in the Orlando NBA return based on schedule.

Last week, the NBA released their new schedule for the eight-game period before the playoffs in their Orlando restart. As was to be expected, there was a lot of conversation surrounding the schedules: who had the strongest, who had the weakest, who’s was the best, so we decided to rank them based on a points system I developed.

Essentially, the points system is a dumbed-down version of the NBA’s strength of schedule, which took three factors into consideration: a team’s record against their opponents, the number of playoff teams in each team’s schedule, and where the team ranked in the standings. A higher score means a better schedule for your team.

For the first factor, I looked at each team’s record against their opponent. If they had a winning record, I took the number of wins, subtracted it from the number of losses, and added one. If they had a losing record, I took the number of wins and then subtracted the number of losses, giving the team a negative score.

Then, I looked at each team’s schedule. For every opponent in the top eight of either conference, the team was assigned negative one point. If the team faces an opponent at the top of either conference, they were assigned negative three points.

Finally, I took into account where each team ranked in their conference’s standings by assigning them inverse points. So, for example, the Washington Wizards are the lowest team in the East, so they had one point. The next team got two, the seventh seed got three, and so on and so forth until I reached the one seed. Then, I divided by 10, in order to better contextualize the scores. What I got was a comprehensive ranking of each team’s schedule.