National Basketball Association

Percentages Say the Bulls Could Get Off to a Good Start This Season

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The Chicago Bulls are one of the NBA’s truest mysteries this season, but when you glance at their first 10 games, the percentages like the Bulls in the early portion of the year.

The 2016-17 NBA season begins on Tuesday night, but for the Chicago Bulls, they’ll have the advantage of sitting back until Thursday night to host the Boston Celtics in their season opener.

The Bulls, unlike a few teams that could be in their way in the Eastern Conference playoff race this season, have a favorable 10-game start to the season.

(And, yeah … playing the Brooklyn Nets on Halloween night does help them.)

What’s the factor in their first 10 games that should bring some optimism? Their schedule.

Bo Schwartz Madsen at Nylon Calculus — FanSided’s site for all things NBA and analytics — wrote a short, but interesting piece on the strength of schedule for all 30 NBA teams in their first 10 games.

An explanation of Madsen’s calculations:

To quantify this, I have looked at the first 10 games for every team to see how difficult their early slate is. Opponent strength comes from the projections made by some highly competent people here at Nylon Calculus, Nick Restifo and Andrew Johnson. I could not choose one over the other, as that would be like choosing your favorite child, so instead I have averaged their projections into one highly and hopefully plausible and possible (2H2P) projection.

In calculating opponent strength I also adjust for home court and back-to-back. This gives the following measure of schedule difficulty for the first 10 games of the season.

There’s a chart included in Madsen’s piece on the Mean Opponent Winning Percentage (MOWP), and according to his numbers, only five teams (Milwaukee, Minnesota, Golden State, Atlanta and Indiana) have an easier 10-game start than the Bulls do this season.

Who has the toughest schedule to start the NBA season? (@BoSchwartz – @TheStepBack) https://t.co/5UCn5u0alG pic.twitter.com/3kbUV8Gv0t

— The Nylon Calculus (@NylonCalculus) October 25, 2016

The MOWP for the Bulls’ opponents is hovering around 46 percent, which could play into their favor and get them off to a much-needed good start.

(Of course, the Bulls started out 7-3 last year with wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder, and … well, you saw what happened.)

Who do the Bulls play in that 10-game start? Well, let’s break it down a little further.

First 10 games for the Bulls this season:

Oct. 27 – Boston

Oct. 29 – Indiana

Oct. 31 – at Brooklyn

Nov. 2 – Boston

Nov. 4 – New York

Nov. 5 – Indiana

Nov. 7 – Orlando

Nov. 9 – at Atlanta

Nov. 10 – at Miami

Nov. 12 – Washington

(Bold italics = playoff team last season.)

As you can see, seven of the first 10 games for the Bulls are at home. Four of those are against the same two teams (Boston and Indiana). The other three games are against teams that missed the postseason in the East last season, including the return to Chicago for Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah with the Knicks on Nov. 4.

The toughest-two game stretch for the Bulls is Nov. 9-10 when the Bulls play at Atlanta — who they haven’t beaten in Atlanta since April 2014 — and then the next night, Dwyane Wade returns to Miami in the SEGABABA on Nov. 10. This pair of games is also the tougher of the two back-to-back sets the Bulls have in the first 10 games this season, compared to the New York/Indiana set on Nov. 4 and 5.

Things have obviously change for virtually all of the Bulls’ opponents in this first 10-game stretch, but they have immensely for this roster as well.

Despite the unknowings surrounding the Bulls, there’s still some optimism for this roster in the early going, and could make a difference later in the year. Teams like Atlanta took a step back this season, which is expected because losing Al Horford on your roster always hurts.

If the Bulls started 7-3 again this year, that would feel like some solid overachieving on their part.