I wasn't commenting on that. If D.o.s. wants to claim that the personnel is worse on defense that's fine. If he wants to claim that they play a better style of defense that's fine. If he wants to claim the defense was better this year than last year then it's worth pointing out that it wasn't.
And if you want to avoid having a nuanced conversation about basketball, strength of schedule, etc to make sure you "win" that's fine too. 103.6 is indeed a smaller number than 104.8.
What's the strength of schedule argument? Relative to the rest of the league the other division team's offenses were as good or better in 2013 than in 2014.
This statement isn't true.
Edit: To show my work first column is offensive rating the second is relative to league average
14 13 14 13
LAL 104.2 107.8 -2.5 1.9
PHX 109.5 101.2 2.8 -4.7
SAC 105.7 105.9 -1 0
GSW 107.5 106.4 0.8 0.5
Total 426.9 421.3 0.1 -2.3
Av 106.725 105.325
Lg Avg 106.7 105.9
I'd also add that this rough calculation is somewhat inaccurate due to not incorporating pace. Fast paced games will effect your overall DRTG more than slow paced games naturally because each possession is weighed equally in the overall season's average.
On a tangent I seriously think the Nuggets, 76ers, and Lakers alone probably pushed up the league average offensive rating. They all played some seriously terrible defense at a really fast pace. Last years bad defensive teams were playing 91ish possessions per game. Those three were knocking out 98!
You did more research than I did. Last year the other 4 teams were 9th, 11th, 12th and 29th in offense, last year they were 8th, 12, 20th and 22nd. It occurred to me that there was a chance the 29th would pull the average down, but the difference is pretty small. The difference in the better offenses would be roughly 1/4 of the difference. Possibly overlooked, but the much bigger difference you cited was the difference in league average. But between the two effects the 2014 numbers will still come up slightly below the 2013 average. I suppose I should amend my original statement from "worse" to "close to the same" (not a big deal, since I'm no more worried about "winning" when I post stats than you undoubtedly are), but that doesn't help him much.
Also, from a cursory review, the 2013 team with the worst offense played at the slowest pace of the four, while the 2014 team with the worst offense played at the fastest pace of the four, so that will likely work against you.