One thing that analytics can do is see the future. It's like a superpower without the movies made about it.
ESPN's analytics superpower for the NBA is the Basketball Power Index (BPI). The superpower isn't perfect, but it is better at seeing the future than the average guy doing clicker finger reps on League Pass. It sees how good teams were before, how they have changed, and who they have to play. It adjusts to the teams that overperformed underperformed, based on the players in the game.
For example, the BPI understands the Memphis Grizzlies underperformed last year with Ja Morant playing just nine games and the injury-riddled team giving plenty of minutes to guys who won't get them this season. This season's projected starters (Morant, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr., Marcus Smart and Zach Edey) played a total of 137 NBA games last season, an average of 27 per player, which is coincidentally how many games Memphis won last season. The experienced guys are back, and Edey looked like a Rookie of the Year candidate in Summer League, so the BPI sees them with a 69% chance of making the playoffs in the very crowded Western Conference.
What the BPI struggles to foresee -- as we all do -- is injuries. Past injuries are the best projection of future injuries, so it could happen again in Memphis, and the BPI is a little leery of it. That's one reason why top teams -- not just Memphis -- tend to regress toward 41 wins; the BPI doesn't see any team likely to win 60 games this season.
Among the teams that finished at the bottom last season, the BPI also assumes that they actually compete and not tank ... err, go into development mode. As a result, the BPI forecasts teams like the Brooklyn Nets, Portland Trail Blazers and Washington Wizards higher than most projection systems, thinking they're actually going to play guys like Ben Simmons or Bojan Bogdanovic over youngster Noah Clowney. Or, in the Wizards' case, Malcolm Brogdon over second-year forward Bilal Coulibaly; or Jerami Grant over Scoot Henderson in Portland.
But in either case, the BPI will adapt as the season progresses.
With that introduction, let's answer the top party topics that the BPI can address.