FanPost

A look back at the Pistons in back-to-backs over the last 15 years

Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA released the 2014-15 scheduled last week. As always, the DBB staff was quick to follow with awesome analysis. There was one part that stuck out to me though.

Back-to-backs? 22! That's the most of any team in the NBA. 6 other teams have 21.

So I asked myself: How much does that matter? How much difference does it make if the team played on the previous day? To my knowledge, no team will play back-2-back-2-backs this year (and keep that in mind, it may skew some of the data in lockout years). Well, I'm not sure I really answered the question, but here's what I found in the data.

With the Pistons having 22 back-2-backs, that means they will be playing 26.8% of their games after having played the previous day. The Pistons, lately, have been pretty bad in the tail end of back-2-backs. Last year they went 7-13 for a .350 winning percentage. Over the last 6 years combined, they've gone 40-121 for a .331 win percentage. Here's a complete look at the last 15 years.

Year B2BW B2BL B2BW% NB2BW NB2BL NB2BW% OW OL OW% AW
1999-00 9 11 0.450 33 29 0.532 42 40 0.512 +2
2000-01 5 14 0.263 27 36 0.429 32 50 0.390 +3
2001-02 13 10 0.565 37 22 0.627 50 32 0.610 +1
2002-03 11 13 0.458 39 19 0.672 50 32 0.610 +5
2003-04 15 8 0.652 39 20 0.661 54 28 0.659 0
2004-05 12 9 0.571 42 19 0.689 54 28 0.659 +2
2005-06 15 7 0.682 49 11 0.817 64 18 0.780 +3
2006-07 17 5 0.773 36 24 0.600 53 29 0.646 -4
2007-08 12 8 0.600 47 15 0.758 59 23 0.720 +3
2008-09 5 11 0.313 32 34 0.485 37 45 0.451 +3
2009-10 5 18 0.217 22 37 0.373 27 55 0.329 +4
2010-11 7 14 0.333 23 38 0.377 30 52 0.366 +1
2011-12 8 14 0.364 17 27 0.386 25 41 0.379 +1
2012-13 8 11 0.421 21 42 0.333 29 53 0.354 -2
2013-14 7 11 0.350 22 40 0.355 29 53 0.354 0

Now, all of that means nothing unless you have something to compare it to and more numbers to confuse you.

Over the last 15 years, the Pistons have averaged 21 back-2-backs per season. The lowest average is 17.7 by the Mavericks. The highest average is 22.1 by the Bobcats (I should state right here that the Bobcats only have 10 years worth of data in stats.nba.com where I pulled the back-2-back records - Franchise Transfer). The median of those averages is 19.6, so the Pistons are on the high end.

The lowest amount of back-2-backs in the last 15 years was 13 by the Magic in 2012-13. The highest in any year has been 24 which the Pistons had back in 2002-03 and other teams have had on 5 other occasions. The median each year is between 19 and 21 and the mode each year is anywhere between 18 and 22.

The worst back-2-back winning percentage in any season was 0.048 by the Nets in 2009-10 when they went 1-20 (only one other team has won only 1 back-2-back, the Raptors in 2002-03 went 1-17). The best back-2-back winning percentage in any season was 0.936 by the Mavericks in 2006-07 and the Heat in 2012-13 when they each went 15-1. The worst overall back-2-back winning percentage in the last 15 years is the Bobcats at 0.330. The best overall back-2-back winning percentage in the last 15 years is......wait a minute.....let me check this again.........BUT THEY'RE OLD!!!! Ok folks, it is the San Antonio Spurs at 0.633, who actually had their second best yearly back-2-back winning percentage LAST YEAR!!! I'm curious how they do that...;)

What about percentage of overall wins and losses? The Pistons worst year was 2008-09 when they only accounted for 13.5% of their overall wins (5 out of 37), and 2002-03 when they accounted for 40.6% of their overall losses. Their best year was 2006-07 when they accounted for 32.1% of their overall wins (17 out of 53) and also when they accounted for 17.2% of their overall losses (5 out of 29). In comparison, the worst year by any team was the Raptors when their 1 win in 2002-03 was only 4.2% of their 24 overall wins and the Jazz in 2008-09 when their 18 losses were 52.9% of their 34 overall losses. The best year by any team was the Warriors in 1999-00 when their 8 wins were 42.1% of their 19 overall wins and the Heat in 2012-13 when their 1 loss was 6.25% of their 16 overall losses. The average percentage of overall wins is 21.6% and the overall losses is 28.1%.

Want some more numbers and fuzzy logic? What if those weren't back-2-backs? What would the teams records look like if you applied the winning percentages of the non-back-2-back games and applied them to the back-2-back games?

So for the Pistons, if you were to have taken the non-back-2-back winning percentage and applied it to the back-2-back games, in 11 of the 15 seasons the Pistons would have had a better overall record and only twice would they have had a worse overall record (2012-13: -2, and 2006-07: -4). In 2009-10 and 2002-03, they would have added 4 and 5 wins respectively. As a matter of fact, 6 of those 11 seasons would have added at least 3 wins. What about the playoffs? Well, sadly nothing would have changed. The Pistons still wouldn't have made the playoffs any of the years that they haven't (see data explanation below)

So overall, I think it does matter how many back-2-backs, but not extremely. Now, there were some years when the teams could have added 9 or more wins to their total had their non-back-2-back winning percentage had translated, the most being 12 by the Jazz, and that would have put them at 60 wins. However, those were few and far between. So, how important of a factor, negative or positive, do you think the Pistons having the most back-2-backs this year will be? Do you think one of the reasons some people want to lessen the number of games in a season is to get rid of back-2-backs?

Data Explanation

Before I get tore into about my data, believe me, I know it isn't perfect. Age and coach (see SAS) matter greatly into how back-2-backs are handled, as well as time of season, travel, injuries and other factors. Also, my fuzzy logic didn't correlate more wins for the Pistons with removing any wins from the other teams. This was all done in Excel. When I calculated the transposed number of wins based on non-back-2-back winning percentage, I just used the ROUND function, not ROUNDUP or ROUNDDOWN. Therefore, some of those wins for one team may have been losses for other teams, I didn't check to see that they correlated. Also, my "playoff rankings" for each year ran on these "new" win totals.

I would have absolutely have loved to dive into where teams ranked based on age, or something like back-2-back wins by age per minute, or something like that. I would have also loved to have dived into the difference between home back-2-backs, road back-2-backs, back-2-backs where the first game was a home game and back-2-backs where the second game was a home game. Would it have mattered in the overall data? Possibly not, but I think it'd be interesting to see. I would have loved to dive further into (stats.nba.com has the data, I just didn't have the time/patience) to see how more or less efficient teams were in their back-2-backs.

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