We’re about 20 games into the 2022 NBA season, and power ratings are my favorite thing in the world, so it’s time to start pumping out NBA power ratings in addition to my NFL and College Football ratings.

As with the football ratings, it’s mainly based on net statistics, for example net points per game, net rebounds per game, etc. There are also efficiency metrics like True Shooting% and both offensive and defensive points per 100 possessions.

There are a few stat categories that I double-weight: net points, effective field goal%, true shooting%, net field goal%, and net rebounding, but other than those, they’re all single-weighted.

The ratings are on a scale of 70-100, so the closer to 100 you are the better. The worst teams in the league are going to be in the low-70s.

Here are the inaugural 2022 NBA power ratings, which will be updated weekly because I don’t have the time to update them nightly:

I have my ratings compared against ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI).

As you can see, the top and bottom of my ratings are very similar to ESPN’s BPI, but there are some significant differences in the middle.

For example, my ratings have the Boston Celtics at 10, BPI has them at 20. Because ESPN doesn’t share their formula for BPI, I have no idea why, exactly, this is the case. But I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that the Celtics rank 25th in eFG% and 20th in TS%, as well as being 20th in offensive efficiency.

ESPN has the Bulls at 16, but I have them at 8. I don’t really see how the Bulls aren’t a top-10 team right now: they’re 5th in net points, 7th in eFG%, 5th in TS%, and 5th in net field goal%. They’re also 10th in offensive efficiency and 7th in defensive efficiency. There are some things they do poorly, like get to the free throw line, offensive rebounding, and taking care of the ball, but they rank really highly in a lot of categories otherwise.

ESPN also has the Clippers up at 4 while I have them at 15. The Clippers are very good on defense, but other than that, they do not rank highly in really anything.