Here's A Thingy Tracking NBA Teams' Nerd Ratings Through History

FiveThirtyEight has a cool interactive up today by Nate Silver and frenemy of the program Reuben Fischer-Baum, calculating the Elo ratings throughout history for every team in the NBA. I’m a sucker for Elo ratings, so I love this. I’m also a sucker for the shitbag Knicks, so I pulled up their chart ready to cringe. That’s it up there.

(Elo ratings are used to quantify relative strength; you gain or lose points for wins and losses, and gain more points for winning against a stronger—higher rated—opponent than for beating up a lower-rated one like the Knicks, who suck, with the opposite being true for losses.)

It’s not allllll pain, to be fair. (Mostly, though.) If you click on the chart at 538’s page, it zooms in so you can see individual seasons; if you mouseover the lines, you’ll see results for individual games. Here’s a screen of one of the only good weeks in the last 15 years.

That’s it. The rest stinks. Time to trade a draft pick for Roy Fucking Hibbert, or whatever fresh garbage is lying in wait.

[ FiveThirtyEight]