We’re Changing How We Think About The NBA Hot Takedown is joined by Nate Silver to explain our new NBA metric and Chris Herring to understand the recent controversy with China.

With the NBA preseason officially underway, we’re unveiling something new. Since 2015, FiveThirtyEight has put out forecasts for the NBA season based on player ratings from ESPN and Basketball-Reference.com. But this year, we created our own player rating metric — called RAPTOR — which will power this season’s forecast. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver joins for a segment of Model Talk to help us understand how RAPTOR works.

After a pro-Hong Kong tweet from Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, the NBA found itself plunged into a geopolitical scandal. FiveThirtyEight senior sportswriter Chris Herring joins the show to unpack why a league that is no stranger to political confrontation is struggling to respond.

Finally, our Rabbit Hole pays its respect to Sara’s Minnesota Twins. After a record-breaking season, their playoff hopes ended in a far more unfortunate record.

Here’s what we’re looking at this week: