When looking at the team standings in the NBA, I always see some team being up or down “half a game”.
What does this mean? How does it happen?
In: Other
It just means that one team has played a game more than the other team. Usually because of where the team’s rest days line up, but it can also be due to cancelled games or other weird situations.
Pretend Team A and Team B have both played 50 games. Team A is 31-19, Team B is 32-18. Team B is 1 game ahead, because they’ve both played the same number, and Team B has won one extra.
But now instead, let’s say that Team A has played 50, but Team B has played 49 (with a record of 31-18). It’s not a perfectly clean comparison, because they haven’t had the same number of data points. So we use the half a game to differentiate that, we’d say that B is down by half a game, and if they lose, their records will be tied, but if they win, they’d be up a game.
It’s how you talk about teams that haven’t played the same number of games. Let’s say team A has a record of 12-5 and team B has a record of 13-5. We would say team B is up half a game. At the end of the season it all evens out and teams can only be ahead or behind by full games, but during the season, teams will have played different numbers of games at any given point due to travel and other and other scheduling issues.
The teams have played different number of games. If a team is 5-3 and another is 5-2, they’re not a full game ahead in the standings because they have the same number of wins but one fewer losses. If they were 6-2, that would be a full game ahead, but at 5-2 it’s only .5 game ahead.
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