Every team, one number. The difference between any two teams is the point spread on a neutral floor — add home field and you have the line. Compare any two numbers below and make your own line, or use the calculator to do it for you.
| Index | PF | PA | Total | PF home | PA home | Home total | PF away | PA away | Away total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma City Thunder | 100.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2 | San Antonio Spurs | 99.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 3 | New York Knicks | 98.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 4 | Minnesota Timberwolves | 97.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 5 | Philadelphia 76ers | 97.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6 | Boston Celtics | 96.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 7 | Denver Nuggets | 96.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 8 | Detroit Pistons | 95.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 9 | Miami Heat | 95.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 10 | Cleveland Cavaliers | 94.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 11 | Toronto Raptors | 94.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 12 | Indiana Pacers | 93.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 13 | Los Angeles Lakers | 93.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 14 | Atlanta Hawks | 92.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 15 | Houston Rockets | 92.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 16 | Orlando Magic | 92.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 17 | Portland Trail Blazers | 91.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 18 | Utah Jazz | 91.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 19 | Washington Wizards | 91.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 20 | Charlotte Hornets | 90.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 21 | Dallas Mavericks | 90.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 22 | Golden State Warriors | 90.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 23 | Phoenix Suns | 90.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 24 | Chicago Bulls | 89.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 25 | Los Angeles Clippers | 89.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 26 | New Orleans Pelicans | 89.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 27 | Milwaukee Bucks | 88.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 28 | Brooklyn Nets | 87.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 29 | Memphis Grizzlies | 86.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 30 | Sacramento Kings | 85.0 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Take the two teams' numbers and subtract. That is the spread on a neutral floor. Give the home side its home field and you have the line — a team at 96.0 hosting a team at 94.0 is favored by 2 plus home field. Nothing else to it, which is the point: one index point is one point of spread, so anyone can make a line in their head.
The house standard. That number — index gap plus home field — is where every line starts, in every sport on this page. The ratings are updated by hand after each night's scores, so the opinion is already baked in and the analytics do not get to argue with it. What the model may do is move the line, by two points at most, and the preview has to say why. Totals start from the situational number — this team's home scoring against that team's road defence, and the mirror — and the model may nudge that by three points at most, again explained in the preview. If the math wants more than the cap allows, it gets the cap.
There is one larger allowance, and it has to be earned. When something specific to that game changes it — a player ruled out, a rest day, a lineup change, weather — the move can run to six points, but only if the reason is named on the card. Two points cannot express a starter being scratched, and a rule that cannot price the most important thing that happens to a game is not discipline, it is a blind spot. What does not qualify: a number we get wrong on the same team every week. That is our error to fix at the source, not something to spend this budget on.
A sportsbook's number is a price. It is set to draw money to both sides, it moves with the money rather than with the game, and it carries the book's margin. Ours is none of those things — we take no bets, so we have nothing to balance. What you are reading is our estimate of what the game will actually do. You cannot wager at our number, and if you are betting, the book's price is the one that matters.
We are not trying to disagree with the market. We are trying to be right, and we build the number without reference to theirs — so where the two differ, that difference is the whole point of reading us. Sometimes we land on the same number they do. That is information too, not a wasted day.
Whether that independence has been worth anything is a fair question, and not one we get to answer with adjectives. Every number we publish is graded against the market's and against the final score on The Record, including the leagues where we are currently losing that comparison.
Scoring columns fill in as 2026-27 games are played. Nothing from last season or the exhibition schedule is shown — the rating carries the number until real scores exist.
Spread from the index (adjusted margin of victory, rebased to 100) plus 2.5 home court, and that is the line — the model may move it two points at most, always explained in the write-up. Total uses home/away scoring splits: away points plus home points at their respective venues, taken at face value once a team has five games at each. Before that the gap is discounted to the share that measures real — at a full 41-game venue sample the NBA's offensive signal is sd ~1.7 and its defensive signal is zero, so early-season splits are mostly noise and are treated that way. Moneyline from a normal curve at 12.0 margin SD, the same figure the nightly grader uses.