My schedule strength post from a week and half ago prompted a question about whether home court advantage should be factored into the picture. This leads to a slightly different evaluation: determining the overall difficulty level of a schedule. Besides opponent strength and the home court advantage, there are a number of other factors that could conceivably affect the difficulty of a game: opponent's opponents' winning percentages, timing of prior games, whether opponent is coming off a loss or win, opponent's record over recent games, etc.

I decided to run a series of regression analyses to determine which factors are the most significant contributors to overall schedule toughness. I incorporated regular season results from the past four full NBA seasons (2001-2005) into each analysis. Each test actually included two runs: one to predict the home team's score, and another to predict the road team's score.

I examined as many factors as possible: Opponents' winning percentage (overall + home/road), opponents' opponents' winning percentages, opponents' average points scored/allowed (overall + home/road), home court advantage, timing of prior games, opponents' record over the last 1, 5, 10, 20, etc. games.

In the end, only a handful were useful in predicting the final result. Not surprisingly, the most important factor in determining the outcomes for a given team was its own strength, measured by its average points scored and allowed across all other games in the season. I kept these variables in the regression analysis to ensure meaningful results. Here are the remaining factors, which I combined to evaluate schedule difficulty:

• Opponent average points scored in all other games in the season
• Opponent average points allowed in all other games in the season
• Home court advantage (worth 3.41 net points)
• Road team playing 4th game in 5 days (worth 1.85 net points)
• Road team playing 2nd of back-to-back games (worth 1.49 net points)

Interestingly, teams were not significantly worse when playing the 4th game in 5 days or the 2nd of back-to-back games at home. Apparently, travel and unfamiliar surroundings contribute more to fatigue than game action.

Given these factors, it is possible to calculate which teams have faced the most difficult overall schedules so far this year. To do this, I compared each team's actual schedule to an average league schedule--multiplying the regression coefficients by actuals and averages, then subtracting the overall difference. The result indicates how many extra net points a team is losing or gaining each game due to the difficulty of their schedule.

Most Difficult Schedules (through games of 11/27/05)

Rank	Team	Net Points/Game
1.	Denver	-1.90
2.	Houston	-1.37
3.	Dallas	-1.31
4.	San Antonio	-1.16
5.	Milwaukee	-1.12

Easiest Schedules (through games of 11/27/05)

Rank	Team	Net Points/Game
30.	New York	1.49
29.	Golden State	1.35
28.	New Jersey	1.33
27.	Portland	1.33
26.	LA Clippers	1.30

This evening I deployed a new version of lowpost.net, which now includes an application that can be used to track NBA-themed weblogs from around the Internet.

It was inspired by the terrific memeorandum application, and designed to enable fans to quickly determine what's happening in the world of NBA weblogs.

Here's a brief overview of how it works:

• Each hour, it checks the XML (RSS, Atom, or RDF) feeds for several dozen NBA weblogs.
• For each post, it identifies the NBA-related links, players, teams, coaches, executives, broadcasters, and other people referenced.
• Posts are compared using these references in order to identify similar groups. The grouping isn't always perfect, but it generally yields interesting results.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Over the course of an 82-game NBA regular season, schedule strength works out to be roughly the same for all teams in each conference. Teams play 3 or 4 games against each conference opponent, plus 2 games against each team from the opposite conference. As a result, the only real scheduling advantage goes to the best teams, who benefit from the fact that they don't have to play themselves.

On the other hand, with the season now just two weeks old, there is still a fair amount of schedule strength variation. Teams that have played the toughest schedules are probably better than their record indicates, and teams with the weakest schedules are probably worse.

For this quick survey, I calculated strength of schedule (SOS) using the same basic formula that goes into the RPI rating:

2/3 * opponents' winning percentage + 1/3 * opponents' opponents' winning percentage

Toughest Schedules (through games of 11/15/05)

Rank	Team	Record	Opp	Opp-Opp	SOS
1.	Milwaukee	4-2	27-13	115-109	0.621
2.	Indiana	4-2	24-15	126-96	0.599
3.	Boston	3-4	28-17	134-131	0.583
4.	Philadelphia	5-3	28-20	155-139	0.565
5.	Phoenix	3-3	24-16	100-132	0.544

Milwaukee has had by far the toughest schedule in the league to date, with all 6 opponents posting winning records in their other games. They also have a winning record of their own, thanks to the torrid shooting of Michael Redd and Mo Williams and the improbable return of T.J. Ford. Another Central Division team, Indiana, ranks #2. This is further evidence that the C.D., which also includes 6-2 Cavs and the 7-0 Pistons, will be the toughest division in the league this year.

Weakest Schedules (through games of 11/15/05)

Rank	Team	Record	Opp	Opp-Opp	SOS
30.	Portland	2-3	12-19	88-94	0.419
29.	Utah	4-5	22-34	165-178	0.422
28.	Golden State	5-3	18-28	151-144	0.431
27.	LA Lakers	3-4	18-27	137-129	0.438
26.	Sacramento	3-5	22-28	139-158	0.449

The 5 weakest schedules in the league all belong to Western Conference teams, some of which could be in for a long season. These teams have already played total of 9 games (winning 7) against Eastern Conference cellar dwellers New York, Toronto, and Atlanta. I can't remember the last time the Warriors had a winning record this "late" in the season, but when you consider the fact that only one of their opponents so far has a winning record, it's hard to get too excited.

Since one new NBA coach is apparently already drawing criticism, there may not be much time left to look at the this year's coaching changes. 10 teams switched head coaches since last year, and as usual, there was a lot of recycling. All but two vacancies went to guys with previous head coaching experience in the league (much to Rick Barry's dismay).

To me, these guys fit into four categories:

Elite - Top shelf reputations add credibility, sell tickets.

• Phil Jackson
• Larry Brown

Solid - Respected personalities with demonstrated success.

• Flip Saunders
• Nate McMillan
• Maurice Cheeks

Unproven - Casey and Brown are getting their first gigs; Stotts has been given a mulligan for his stint in Atlanta.

• Dwane Casey
• Mike Brown
• Terry Stotts

Huh? - Is that the best they could do?

• Bob Weiss
• Brian Hill

Weiss has been in the league for a whopping 38 years (as a player and a coach). His career head coaching record coming into this season was 212-291, including exactly 2 postseason wins. His last head coaching job was 12 years ago. That's not exactly the kind of resume that inspires the fan base or the players.

Hill was ousted as the Magic head coach by an Anfernee Hardaway-led player revolt back in 1997. (In retrospect, that was probably Penny's last act as an NBA star.) The firing was unfair--Hill probably deserved at least another year on the job after riding Shaq and Penny to the Finals in 1995. But do you really want your head coach selection to be based on "righting a wrong?"

The season is still less than a week old, but we've already had our share of surprises:

I can strike with 99 percent accuracy
at maximum speed, in rapid succession.
• Kobe Bryant is wearing a black mamba costume under his shorts this year. Find out why in Part II of Bill Simmons' enjoyable NBA Preview.
• The Hornets, Jazz, and Clippers are in 1st place in their respective divisions, surprising everyone except ESPN.com's Chris Sheridan. The Hornets are actually in a 4-way tie, but winning 2 out of the first 3 games is still fun for a team that is widely expected to finish last in the conference.
• Marcus Camby hasn't missed a game.
• Chris Duhon is averaging 11 assists per game.
• Mark Cuban used his blog to go after the TNT Inside the NBA studio last week. This actually isn't too surprising--Cuban has taken aim at a lot of targets in the past through his blog, like Google, referees, Donald Trump, and the NBA schedule-makers. The fact that the best coverage of the spat is available on the NBA's official web site seems a little strange, though.

Local whipping boy Mike Dunleavy Jr. signed a $44 million, 5-year extension with the Warriors tonight. The contract probably isn't as egregious for Golden State as last summer's $51 million and $36 million contracts that will pay Adonal Foyle and Derek Fisher through their 35th birthdays, but it still seems pretty bad.

Did W's management really need to pay him that much? Dunleavy was the league's 26th-best small forward last year according to John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating. He routinely gets torched by opposing swingmen. His backup, Mickael Pietrus, is arguably a better all-around player.

What's more concerning to Warriors fans is the overall salary situation. As ESPN points out, the team now has $313 million committed to 6 players in long-term deals: Dunleavy, Foyle, Fisher, Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, and Troy Murphy. I'll point out that only 3 of these guys are very good.

As it stands today, the Warriors have the 4th-highest committed salary for 2006-07 (after the Knicks, 76ers, and Mavericks), and the 2nd-highest salary for 2007-08 (behind only the 76ers). By 2008-09, the team will have a whopping $65 million in committed salaries, currently good for tops in the league.

Mortgaging the future by eliminating salary cap flexibility is a reasonable strategy when your team is in the midst of a championship run. However, having failed to reach the playoffs for 11 straight seasons, the Warriors are not in that boat. If the current squad can't get it done consistently like they did for the last 2 months of 2004-05, Chris Mullin may be recognized as another veteran of the lottery process in another 5 seasons.