Net Rating has long been the gold standard for evaluating team strength, and for good reason. Over the last decade (2015-2024) NBA Finals teams have ranked 5.5 out of 30 on average. Net Rating works by looking at the combination of how many points a team scores and gives up per 100 possessions. Based on the evidence above, It’s a strong predictor of success. Because of this, Net Rating is commonplace when evaluating a team’s overall strength. Adding to its utility, it can also be broken down into Offensive and Defensive Rating to help identify what side of the ball a team is better on. But in the new age of NBA analytics is there a better measuring stick? In this article I’m going to look at the predictive power of different team stats to see if Net Rating is still king.

 

Adjusted Net Rating:

First let’s look at Adjusted Net Rating. Adjusted Net Rating is similar to Net Rating except there is a strength of schedule adjustment based on who a team plays. That means blowing out a good team vs a bad team would affect your Adjusted Net Rating differently. Adjusted Net Rating like normal Net Rating is a per 100 possession stat and it can also be broken down into Adjusted Offensive and Defense Rating. Over the last decade Finals teams have an average rank of 5.3 in Adjusted Net Rating. This is slightly better than normal Net Rating but it’s so close that they are basically the same.

 

 

Clutch Net Rating:

Next is Clutch Net Rating. This only looks at the final 5 minutes of a game when the score is within 5 points. The idea behind this stat is that crunch time is the most important part of the game and because of that it’s possible that important takeaways could be gleaned from the data. However, in practice it holds less insights than most would hope. Over the last decade, Finals teams have finished 8.4 out of 30 on average, meaning you would be better off using normal Net Rating. An interesting nugget from my research was that the 2022 Celtics were 26th in Clutch Net Rating. That was the worst mark of any finals team over the last 10 years. 

 

SRS:

SRS or Simple Rating System is extremely similar to Adjusted Net Rating. But instead of being a per 100 possession stat it looks at average margin of victory (Per game vs per possession). Like Adjusted Net Rating it adjusts for strength of opponent, but it can’t be split into offensive and defense SRS. Over the last 10 years the Finals teams have finished 5.4 out of 30 on average in SRS. In my mind you can use SRS and Net Rating interchangeably. 

 

Win %
It’s not groundbreaking to say winning a lot of games is a good indicator of team strength, but how does it perform relative to Net Rating? Over the last 10 years the Finals teams have finished 4.6 out of 30 on average in Win %. What’s funny about this is Win% has been around since the dawn of time, and it’s slightly more predictive than Net Rating when it comes to making the Finals. 

 

Team LEBRON:

LEBRON is Basketball Index’s all-in-one metric. It’s usually used to evaluate individual players, but it can also be used at a team level. It works differently than net rating because it looks at each player’s box score numbers and plus/minus, combining many data points into a single number. To get Team LEBRON it weights each player’s value by the percentage of minutes they have played. The secret formula that sets LEBRON apart is it’s built in luck adjustments to the plus minus portion of the stat. With all that explaining out of the way let’s see how it actually performs when it comes to predicting Finals appearances. The average Finals teams ranks 3.3 out of 30 on average in Team LEBRON. This outperforms Net Rating as well as every metric mentioned above. Every Finals team of the last decade has finished inside the top 8 in Team LEBRON.

 

Conclusion:

The stats mentioned above do a pretty good job of predicting playoff success (I wouldn’t use Clutch Net Rating) but there are differences. Next time you’re wondering if your team has a shot at the Finals check Team LEBRON.

Follow me on Twitter for more basketball analysis (@Taylormetrics) 

 

Here are the average ranks of Finals teams (2015-2024) in the stats mentioned above.

Team LEBRON: 3.3

Win % : 4.6

Adjusted Net Rating: 5.3

SRS: 5.4

Net Rating: 5.5

Clutch Net Rating: 8.4