Defensive rating
There is another school of though about these beloved Philadelphia 76ers. That camp believes that they play solid defense. And they have some statistics to back them up. On NBA.com/Stats , the defensive rating of the Philadelphia 76ers roster is 103.7, good for seventh best in the NBA. Now that is a different story altogether. Now there has to be something going on here, but what is it?
Well, it’s that fascinating field of Basketball Analytics, and how the efforts to create “like” comparisons sometimes do not achieve their goal. That may be the case with the use of Defensive Rating. In short, a team “defensive rating” is the number of points given up by a team per 100 possessions. Per Squared Statisics, the actual formula for any given NBA team’s defensive rating is the following (where TDR is Team Defensive Rating,)
The formula equals opponent points divided by team possessions multiplied by 100. Now here is where the kicker comes in.