Basketball-Reference.com Blog: Team Similarity Scores

Neil Paine's Methodology:

1. Calculate the Four Factors for each team on offense and defense (technically, I guess that would make it Eight Factors, but whatever).

2. Calculate the Z-score for each team's factors by subtracting the league average and dividing by the league's standard deviation.

3. Compute the difference between the two teams' z-scores and square it... Do this for all 8 factors.

4. Add the squared differences together, weighted by the following: Offensive & defensive eFG% - 0.2 each; offensive & defensive TOV% - 0.125 each; offensive & defensive ORB% - 0.1 each; offensive & defensive FT rate - 0.075 each.

Results: Of the ten teams most similar to the Hawks, there's two teams (Dallas and Portland, 2010 editions) who are not yet through with their season, six teams that won between 42 and 51 games, and the 2006 Detroit Pistons (a team historically good at not turning the ball over), who won 64 games. The Hawks can't win 64 games but being more similar to that Pistons team than the injury-ravaged 2010 Trailblazers softens the blow of seeing that team on the bottom of the list.