English

Improving upon NBA point-differential rankings

Applications 2019-12-04 v1

Abstract

For some time, point-differential has been thought to be a better predictor for future NBA success than pure win-loss record. Most ranking and team performance predictions rely largely on point-differential, often with some normalizations built-in. In this work, various capping and weighting functions are proposed to further improve indicator performance. A gradient descent algorithm is also employed to discover the optimized weighting/capping function applied to individual game scores throughout the season.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.01574,
  title  = {Improving upon NBA point-differential rankings},
  author = {Samuel Henry},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.01574},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:34:43.874Z