Are They Meeting Expectations?

SO WHAT'S THE MATTER, BULLS?

After only eight games, the team that was striving for perfection last year is suffering from inner strife, back biting, and self doubt. Not to mention bad shooting, poor ball handling, and four losses.

The Bulls' first loss to the Boston Celtics was followed by a poll on ESPNet, asking readers whether it symbolized a much improved Celtics team, a fallen champion Bulls team, or just a fluke. It was definitely a combination of all three, but mostly the latter two. The Bulls showed in that game that their only safe ball handlers are Michael Jordan and the tall guy in the suit on the bench. Not Phil Jackson -- the other guy, the one who cried at the ring ceremony because he wasn't sure he'd ever get to be there again.

It was also a fluke, however. The Bulls aren't so bad that they should lose to the Celtics. They should still take at least 8 of 10 from that band of underdeveloped wannabees. The Celtics were hot and the Bulls were not ready.

Losses like that happen, sometimes meaning nothing. So what do the records mean now, after only a couple weeks?

We can answer that. We can look at the teams out there and determine whether your predictions are doing OK, whether my predictions are doing OK, or whether the Bulls are likely to win 60 games again.

Presented below is a calculator that allows you to determine how likely it is for a team we think will win 69.5% of their games to win only 4 of their first 8. What the box second from the right says is that a 0.695 team has a 20% chance of winning 4 or fewer games out of 8. What the box on the far right says is that a 0.695 team has 94% chance of winning 4 or more games out of 8.

This answers the question about the Bulls: If the Bulls really are a team that should win 57 games, what is the chance that they just got unlucky to win only 4 of 8 games? The answer is 20%.

Statisticians look at this and say "Don't worry about the Bulls yet." A 20% chance of something happening is actually a fairly common event. If it were 5% or 1%, then people should start wondering. The point is: we knew the Bulls would be worse this year and the fact that they are only 0.500 through 8 games does not mean that they are even worse than we thought.

We can carry out the above analysis on all the teams thus far. Now you can see the true disappointments, the true surprises, and the teams whose record is still consistent with what we expect...

Regardless of the numbers here, don't forget teams like last year's Phoenix Suns. They lost their first 13 games, but were a 0.488 team in the end. The random chance that a 0.488 team goes 0-13 is 0.02% -- or less than one-tenth of one percent. This tells you that teams do change during the season... as the Bulls will.