The start of the NBA season is almost upon us, which means that season preview season is in full swing. The Defector staff preview is coming next week in its usual format, but over at Nothing But Respect, we took a slightly different angle: a detailed look at the season that just happened.
I happily consume dozens of NBA season previews, all of which have if not the same format, then the same editorial outlook. There is some crude math that takes into account last season’s performance and offseason shuffling, and the two factors are combined to give a rough estimate of how a team will perform in the next season. This is by nature imprecise work, a series of educated guesses that paw at predicting something that cannot be predicted. At best, they can set the table, outlining expectations and identifying the spectrum of possibilities. But the substance of those expectations is past performance, which is often glided past even though it is the only certainty here.
