Breaking down the OKC Thunder schedule using the MOIST-ARID analysis

The second annual MOIST/ARID analysis

Not all matchups are created equal. The Thunder, as we’ve established, have the seventh-toughest schedule in the league coming up. The last game of the season, however, is against the Milwaukee Bucks, who, assisted by the Thunder’s most recent win over the Toronto Raptors, are becoming increasingly more likely to be locked into the one-seed on the last day of the season.

That’s the best team in the league, who will likely have nothing to play for, who will likely rest their important players in preparation for the Playoffs.

Remove that game from the Thunder’s schedule, and the difficulty falls from seventh to 12th.

That’s just an example of how situation and opponent can affect schedule difficulty. There are more things – things like tanking and caring, and just flat-out bad teams.

Last season, the Thunder entered the stretch run with the hardest strength of schedule in the league, in the 6 seed, and ended the season in fourth.

Our innovative (but entirely made up and subjective) statistic captured and predicted this unexpected result, so let’s apply it again, in the Second Annual MOIST/ARID Schedule Analysis.