Betting: Are the Lakers a top 5 team without Anthony Davis?
Jared Quay, Preston Johnson & Matt Moore of the Action Network break down Preston's Top 10 Power Ratings as we head into the NBA All-Star game.
Video Transcript
MATT MOORE: Let's take a look at the Preston's power ratings and get a sense for what his model shows when we look at the league. You see the Jazz number one, no surprise there. The Bucks, you got the Clippers, the Nets without KD, which is interesting. The 76ers there at number five. And then the Suns at six above the Lakers, followed by the Nuggets, who I think all the metrics kind of say the Nuggets are better than their record, along with the Celtics and Mavericks.
I think when I look at it, there's really kind of an interesting dynamic there with the Lakers being lower. Let's start there, Preston. Why the Lakers grayed out, especially without AD? I can understand. Are you surprised they grayed out this high without AD or that they grayed out that low?
PRESTON JOHNSON: I think most people will be surprised they still grayed out that low because they still have LeBron James and everybody else. I point to people though, that follow that game. I think Jared mentioned it. The Suns ended up beating the Lakers by 10 or so. But that was biggest game in LA. The Suns closed a favored in that game.
So if you're playing on the road, I know there's not a ton of fans right now. Home court advantage maybe isn't worth what it used to be. But the Suns were a favorite on the road against the Lakers without AD. So that's kind of where you can obviously add Anthony Davis, one of the top 10 players in the league. That's going to change the dynamic. The Lakers are going to move up as far as my ratings are concerned.
But I think that's extremely fair as far as where the Lakers are at and where the Suns are at. And the market agreed. And just to put more context on it, look, the Lakers were in Utah about a week ago, getting 8 and 1/2 points. And they lost by 20-something and weren't even close. So that kind of gives credit to the Jazz.
If you put it, oh, wow, the Lakers are 8 and 1/2 points worse to the Jazz, you know, without Anthony Davis-- now, I believe Dennis Schroder was also missing from that game. So he's going to impact it slightly. But yeah, I think overall, these are pretty close to what people would expect. I think the Nuggets, Celtics, Mavericks combo, eight through 10, are some interesting teams that kind of have a baked-in prior, which is my projection going into the season and my rating on these teams going into the season based on some of the data and the underlying metrics saying these are three teams that have probably underachieved from a win-loss perspective, the Nuggets being one of the highest.
So I think those are three teams that are probably going to start winning more. Again, I know Boston's kind of now won, I think, three or four in a row. They're getting back into things. And Dallas has won, I think, seven of 10 or eight of 10. So those are three teams to just kind of keep an eye on. But that other seven, I think it's pretty sound. And Utah deserves to be number one at this point. And the market's treating them as the best team in the NBA as well with the point spreads that they've been laying.