You can't read too much into NBA statistics until about 20 games into the season. There's too much variance from game to game until you can get big enough of a sample size to matter. A quarter of the way through the season is when some of the statistical anomalies from early in the season either normalize -- or they show us that they weren't anomalies at all, and that's there's actually something behind a certain surprising team.
For our example, we have two teams. Team A is a team without a traditional superstar, a team many expected to miss the playoffs, yet a team that currently sits at 13-6, good for the best record in the Western Conference. Team B is a team many expected to contend for the top seed in the West but currently sits at .500. If the playoffs started tomorrow, this superstar-filled team would be on the outside looking in.
You could crunch millions of numbers, look at hours of game tape, but there's one statistic that feels like it best distills one of the starkest differences between Team A and Team B. It is this: Team A may be the deepest team in the NBA, with a bench that averages 55.9 points per game, tops in the league. Team B may be the most shallow team in the NBA, with a bench that averages 26.7 points per game, dead-last in the NBA and nearly five points per game behind the next-to-last-place team.
Team A is the Los Angeles Clippers. Team B is the Houston Rockets.
That's the theme of this week's Power Rankings: One statistic from each team that proves telling in this team's standing a quarter of the way through the regular season.
