3.1 What questions can we ask?

There are several questions we can ask about teams. Many of these can be asked about players too (as well as many other questions), but for we’ll focus on teams now.

Team strength

• Can we estimate how good a team has been?
• Can we estimate how good a team will be going forward?
• Can we decompose a team’s strength into offense, defense, and other components?

Game outcomes

• How likely is it that a team will win their next game?
• How many points a team will score in their next game?
• By how many points will a team outscore, or be outscored, in their next game?

Season outcomes

• Can we predict how many wins that team will have this season? - What chance does the team have of making the playoffs?
• To what extent does the strength of a team’s division impact how likely they are to make the playoffs?

Schedule

• Does a team’s travel miles impact the outcome of a game? If so, are west coast teams at a disadvantage because they travel more?
• Does altitude (e.g. playing in Colorado, Utah, etc) impact the outcome of a game?
  
• Does the amount of rest between games impact a team’s chance of winning? Are back-to-back games harder to win?

Eventually we’ll answer all of these questions, to some extent, starting the team strength, game outcomes, and schedule related questions.