2024-25 NBA Elo Ratings
2024-25 NBA Elo Ratings
Plus a history of the NBA in Elo ratings from 1947 to present.
The 2024-25 NBA season tips off in just four days!
Well, we have to wait four days. In the meantime, here’s something to keep us from going crazy (like Cartman probably would): I’ve crunched the numbers1 and developed Elo ratings for all 30 teams. These ratings will give us some insight into how the season might unfold.
Before diving into the details, here’s a quick look at how all 30 teams stack up based on their preseason Elo ratings.
For those unfamiliar, the Elo rating system was developed by a Hungarian-American physics professor named Arpad Elo to rank chess players. Since then, it has been adapted for various zero-sum games, including soccer and Scrabble. I’ve been using Elo to rate NFL teams, and now I’m applying it to NBA teams.
The Elo ratings for NBA teams follow the same method I use for the NFL: they’re based solely on game results and margin of victory. There are no adjustments for roster changes. Each team's preseason rating is reset using a mean-reversion approach, where 75 percent of their final rating from last season is carried over, and the remaining 25 percent is adjusted toward the league average. This brings everyone’s rating closer to the league average without entirely discounting their performance from the previous season.
It’s no surprise that the defending champion Boston Celtics open the 2024-25 season as the highest-rated team in the NBA. After leading the league with 64 regular season wins and dominating the playoffs with a 16-3 record, they finished last season with an Elo rating of 1746. Due to the typical preseason reset, their rating dips slightly to 1686, but they remain comfortably ahead of other top contenders, such as the Dallas Mavericks (1629), Oklahoma City Thunder (1624), Minnesota Timberwolves (1622), and Denver Nuggets (1614).
I am currently working on a full-season forecast, which will include ratings, projected win-loss records, and playoff odds. Stay tuned for that in the coming days!
A History of the NBA with Elo Ratings
I didn’t just calculate Elo ratings for the start of the 2024-25 season. I went back and calculated ratings for every team, season, and game since the NBA was founded in 1946. This was a challenging coding task. I had to process over 70,000 NBA games, while also tracking teams that changed names, cities, or sometimes both.2 On top of that, 14 teams no longer exist! RIP, Providence Steamrollers.
But it was worth it! Now we can compare the relative strengths of all NBA teams throughout the league’s 78-year history!
We can answer fun questions such as: Who are the highest-rated teams in NBA history?
The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls had the highest Elo rating in NBA history. They achieved a rating of 1863 on June 9, 1996 after defeating the Seattle Supersonics in Game 3 of the 1996 NBA Finals. The Bulls lost Games 4 and 5 before closing out the series in Game 6 and winning their fourth championship in six years. The Bulls lost 42 Elo points from their two losses before gaining seven back when they defeated the Sonics in Game 6. They ultimately finished the season with a rating of 1828, just shy of the peak they hit after Game 3.
The Bulls’ dominance in the 1990s is evident in the Elo ratings. Five of their six championship teams rank among the top eleven all-time, while their 1992-93 squad, the only one not on the above list, still ranks an impressive 33rd overall.
We can see the Bulls’ success with Michael Jordan in the following graph. Here, I plotted every team’s Elo rating after every game from the NBA’s first game on November 1, 1946 to the league’s most recent game—Game 5 of the 2024 NBA Finals on June 17, 20243. The Chicago Bulls’ ratings are in red, while every others team’s ratings are in a light, opaque grey color. I also highlighted the following four points:
Opening game of the 1966-67 season (October 15, 1966): The expansion Bulls played their first game against the St. Louis Hawks.
Michael Jordan's debut (October 26, 1984): The Bulls started the season with a below-average Elo rating of 1384.
Game 3 of the 1996 NBA Finals (June 9, 1996): The Bulls achieved the highest Elo rating in NBA history (1863) with their blowout win over the Supersonics.
Jordan’s final game with the Bulls (June 14, 1998): The Bulls edged the Utah Jazz 87-86, winning their sixth championship in eight years.
The Golden State Warriors of the 2010s are prominently featured in this list as well. The 2016-17 Warriors achieved the second highest rating of all-time, 1855, on June 7, 2017 after they defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the 2017 NBA Finals. The 2015-16 Warriors reached a rating of 1820, the fourth highest of all-time, on December 11, 2015 after starting the season with a 24-game win streak.
Fun fact: Steve Kerr was involved with five of the six highest-rated teams of all time—either as a player or the head coach. Can you name them?4
The oldest team on this list are the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks. They’re so old they were led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was known as Lew Alcindor when the Bucks achieved the seventh-highest Elo rating in NBA history on March 8, 1971. Abdul-Jabbar did not officially change his name until June 3 of that year.
I plan to do more in-depth analysis of these historical Elo ratings in the weeks and months ahead. In the meantime, enjoy the preseason ratings and this quick glimpse into NBA history.
Personally, I find the word “crunch” to be an overly violent verb to use when referring to such a task, but, hey, I used it anyway.
The Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans in 2002 and eventually changed their name to the Pelicans. Meanwhile, Charlotte got an expansion team in 2004, the Bobcats. The Bobcats later changed their name to the Hornets after New Orleans Hornets became the New Orleans Pelicans. That, in and of itself, was annoying to deal with.
June 17, 2024 was the 30th anniversary of the famous O.J. Simpson Ford Bronco chase. Happy anniversary, everyone!
This should be pretty easy: It’s all of the top six teams except the 1985-86 Boston Celtics.