Well, we're a month away from the start of basketball season, and it's time to get cracking on my NBA season preview. I'll be doing a kind of overview post for each of the conferences and then do in-depth analysis of each team individually, one or two a day, depending on how much time I have.

So, before I did this, I intended to have a post about some various basketball statistics that I'll be using to evaluate the teams, but I didn't ever get it done, so I'll do a quick overview of them here. In addition to traditional statistics, I'll be using some of these more advanced, possession-based metrics. Most of these statistics come from Dean Oliver's book Basketball on Paper, and most can be found on Basketball-Reference.com. If you want the in-depth formula used to calculate these, I strongly recommend Dean's book, it's a really, really good read.

Exp Win% (Correlated Gaussian)
The expected winning percentage I'll be using is similar to the Pythagorean Winning Percentage used in baseball by Bill James, but it's a bit different (most Exp Win% you find for basketball are Pythagorean with different exponents). Basically, it takes PPG and DPPG (points allowed) and uses them to make an estimate at how many games that team should have won. What this Exp Win% does in addition to using PPG and DPPG, is that it takes variability into account. Inconsistency tends to pull teams towards .500 (down if they're above .500, and up if they're below .500), and this accounts for that. Why should you care about this? Well, teams that differ significantly from their expected win-loss record most likely got lucky or unlucky, and, barring significant change, they're likely to move towards that expected value the next year.

Team ORtg and DRtg
Team Offensive Ratings and Defensive Ratings are fairly easy to understand. It's simply points scored and points scored against per 100 possessions. This is a MUCH better rating of how good a team is offensively or defensively than just PPG or DPPG because it compensates for pace. For example, Golden State led the league in scoring this year at 106.5 PPG, but it was really only because they played at such a high pace. Their ORtg was 107, only .5 more than league average. The Pistons scored only 96 PPG, but their ORtg was an excellent 109.2. The league average rating last year was 106.5 (league average ORtg and DRtg are, by definition the same).

Individual ORtg and DRtg
Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings work on the same principle as the team ratings, but they're not nearly as cut and dry. The formula for it is quite complicated, but it takes into account all of a player's statistics in respect to the team's statistics (for example, an offensive rebound is more important on a team that doesn't get many offensive rebounds, and it's more valuable on a team that makes a higher percentage of their shots). ORtg is a very powerful tool that is excellent at evaluating how efficient a player is, but taken alone it can be deceptive. The players who get the highest offensive ratings are often role players like 3PT shooting specialists (Steve Kerr, Brent Barry, Jeff Hornacek, etc.). Really elite players are the guys who have high offensive ratings while also using a lot of possessions. In addition, high-possession guys who maintain decent a decent ORtg allow their team's role players to be more efficient because they don't have to use as many possessions. DRtg is a lot tougher to calculate because of the lack of good defensive statistics, and it is much better at evaluating post players than perimeter players who don't contribute much to traditional statistics (guys like Bruce Bowen or Joe Dumars). This may not be such a bad thing, since, as Oliver points out in his book, a great defensive center has a much bigger impact on his team's defense than a great defensive guard. At any rate, I'll list defensive ratings, but I'm not nearly as confident with them as I am with offensive ratings (DRtg is one of the things that I'm working with trying to come up with a better measurement of defense, but until then, this'll have to do).

eFG%
Effective Field Goal Percentage is quite simple, and a lot of you probably already know about it. It's field goal percentage, but it weights 3-pointers made as 1.5 times the value of 2-point field goals made. (FGM + .5(3PTFGM))/FGA

Well, there you go, a bunch of new statistics to work with. One more thing to note about my season preview is that I'm honestly not a huge fan of ranking teams 1 to 30 at this point in the year since so much can change and fluctuate over the course of a season. So, while I will be ranking the teams, the more important things is that I'll be categorizing teams by how far I think they can possibly go (i.e. championship contenders, playoff contenders, bottom feeders, etc.).

Lastly, I'll give you a little preliminary list of my preseason championship contenders and MVP candidates to give you something to talk about.

Condenders (in no particular order): Spurs, Mavs, Rockets, Jazz, Celtics, Nuggets, Bulls, Suns

MVP Candidates: Duncan, LeBron, Yao
- I know it's a short list, but I genuinely think Duncan has to be the prohibitive favorite heading into the season, and it'll take a monster season from someone to dethrone him. Lebron and Yao if he can stay healthy are the two guys most poised to have that kind of monster season on a good team.