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I'm using this post to establish that all of the in-house stats here at LNIB are now live and updating daily. That includes WAADE, Adjusted Efficiency, Aggression+ and Variance+, Moreyball Rate, and the Possession Battle.
Let's dig into some takeaways from each stat.
Their 11-1 record puts them on pace to go approximately 76-6, so the Thunder (+42.33) are again on track to absolutely smash their own all-time record (+35.86) for WAADE. But the Pistons (68-14 pace, +31.07) and Spurs (60-22 pace, +26.27) are also on track for top-10 all-time finishes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Kings (21-62 pace, -29.71), Pacers (7-75 pace, -29.36), and Clippers (22-60 pace, -26.50) are on track to finish inside the bottom 10.
OKC remains over a year younger than the league average team, per Basketball-Reference, but is now 10th-lowest in minutes-weighted age, as opposed to being in the top five over the last several years. Still, the Thunder are by far the best team in the league and they don't even have their second-best player on the court yet. They might really win 70-plus games.
The Clippers are, as expected, one of the oldest teams in history, but that may change going forward with Bradley Beal out for the year and Chris Paul seemingly out of the rotation and Kawhi Leonard once again injured. They played guys like Jordan Miller (from? THE U!) and Kobe Sanders as part of the regular bench rotation against the Nuggets on Wednesday night. We'll see if that helps them actually play better (it did for a half against Denver, at least), but it'll certainly help them get younger.
It's at least worth noting that right now, 19 teams have a positive WAADE and only 11 are in the negative. I don't know how often that's happened before.