It’s always a bit tough to gauge a team’s schedule early in the season. Some things are obvious: The Golden State Warriors are great, the Los Angeles Lakers are terrible. We know this.
But a lot of the other assessment relies on projecting a team’s talent, and that’s further complicated by early-season injuries and general rotation questions that tend to exist on the periphery for most teams until after Thanksgiving.
That said, this is also the NBA. Basketball is easier to predict than most sports since talent rules the day above all.
So while it won’t be perfect, we can generally get a lot out of this early-season schedule analysis from the friendly folks of Nylon Calculus.