The Cleveland Cavaliers became the NBA title favorite in July when LeBron James decided to sign there, and they start the 2014-15 season as the top team in the NBA Vegas Rankings. But it's not a landslide.
Our panel of handicappers -- Erin Rynning of sportsmemo.com, Geoff Kulesa of wunderdog.com and yours truly, Dave Tuley -- takes our individual power ratings and averages them to come up with our group's power ratings, which can then be used to weigh the relative strength of two teams and compare it to the point spread for a given game.
One of us has the Cavaliers as 3.5 points higher than the No. 2 team, the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, and another has the Spurs tied for the best rating with the Los Angeles Clippers. When it all shook out, we have the Cavs rated one point ahead of the Spurs, with the Clippers another 1.5 points back. So there's less than a 3-pointer separating our top three teams.
Then there's NBA Insider Kevin Pelton, whose SCHOENE projection system offers yet another look at how the season might end up. He's bullish on the Cavaliers, posting a 10-win difference from Vegas (see below).
Here is the ranking of all 30 NBA teams from Vegas' perspective, along with which teams are overrated and underrated in their season win totals.
Season win totals
In the NBA season win totals, where bettors are basically trying to figure out which teams will exceed or fall short of expectations in relation to the posted over/under, it's interesting to note that the top 13 teams in our power ratings are the same 13 teams with the highest over/under -- in order. I'd like to think that means we're on the same page as the oddsmakers in ranking these teams.
Here are the undervalued and overvalued teams looking at it that way.
Undervalued teams
New York Knicks: Our panel has them rated 1.5 points better than the Brooklyn Nets and 2 points over the Charlotte Hornets, yet their win total of 40.5 is lower than those two teams. Judging by where they fall on our ratings, they should be closer to the 44 wins of the Miami Heat right above them. We'll see if those extra few points per game equate to those extra wins.
Indiana Pacers: Paul George is out indefinitely with a compound fracture in his right leg and most people have them plummeting from being a contender, but our panel doesn't have the Pacers quite falling off the face of the earth. Their over/under win total is 33, but we have them rated around teams that are projected to be around .500 (41-41).
Overvalued
New Orleans Pelicans, Atlanta Hawks, Denver Nuggets, Phoenix Suns: I'm grouping this foursome together because they are all projected to finish over .500, but our panel has them being below average and closer to the Detroit Pistons at 36 wins than the teams above them.
Again, these are based on the average of our power ratings and there's certainly a difference of opinion on others, so we invite readers, especially those using their own power ratings to make basketball bets, to say where they think the ratings are off in the comments section below.
Enjoy the season. We'll be back periodically during the season to update the NBA Vegas Rankings.
These rankings represent the perceived neutral court value of each NBA team in the eyes of Vegas bettors and handicappers. For example, if the Thunder were to play the Knicks on a neutral court, you could use the ranking system to determine what these panelists would grade as the perceived line of the game (before adjusting for home-court advantage).