Originally posted on 03/12/2022:

Quote Originally Posted by thomorino View Post
Wrong, the problem with your strength of schedule argument is you are just going off the record of teams. The top teams in the East don't have as good of records as teams like Phoenix because they are constantly playing each other. You can't judge how good a team is just by their record, so the way you are calculating strength of schedule makes no sense.

As usual you are wrong.
Today's your lucky day.
I'm going to tutor you in math.
You can look this up because I'm licensed, I get 95 dollars an hour to to tutor math, and 125 dollars to tutor computer.

I'm not going to charge you anything.
Oh, this is not my way of calculating things, this is the NBA's way of calculating things.
I'll dumb it down for a simple mind like yourself, as advanced math is clearly not your forte.

There are 82 regular season games.
East plays east 50 times.
East plays west 32 times.

And vice versa. (that means 'and the other way around'

50 divided into 82 = 60.9%
I'll round that number off so your simple base ten mind can follow and call it 60 percent.
That means 40 percent of the east conference games are played against west teams.

40 percent is a large percentage.

And this is how the NBA works the schedule every year.



  • Four games (2 home, 2 away) against each of the other four teams in their division (there are six Divisions of 5 teams each) = 16 games
  • Four games (2 home, 2 away) against six of the other 10 teams in their conference = 24 games
  • Three games against the other four teams in their conference (1 home, 2 away vs 2 teams, 2 home, 1 away against the other two) = 12 games
  • 2 games (1 home, 1 away) against each of the 15 teams in the other conference = 30 games.
  • Total : 82 games


There is a five year rotation, set by the league, which determines which Out of Division conference teams are played four times and which 3 in any given season, this guarantees that in any given set of 5 years, each team is in the “four game” pool 3 times and the “Three Game” pool twice. Further, of those two years in the “Three game” pool, one season will have 2 home and 1 away and the other the reverse.

So, given the information I just gave you provided by the NBA, even a simple mind now can tell me why the two teams with the two hardest (toughest) SoS comes from the Pacific Division.

Would you like me to tell you why?
Come on, you can figure it out.

Final point, the SoS is updated on a nightly basis.

Here's your link again.
No charge for the math lesson.
(this time)

https://sagarin.usatoday.com/2022-2/nba-team-ratings-2021-22/