DEA had TPBL's second-best margin and the fourth-best record

New Taipei CTBC DEA outscored opponents by 4.4 points a game in the 2025-26 TPBL regular season. Only the Taiwan Beer Leopards did better, at 4.8. The standings put DEA fourth: 20-16, behind the Leopards at 23-13 and behind Formosa and Hsinchu, who both finished 22-14.

Four clubs sit within 0.7 points of each other on margin, and their records run from 20 wins to 23. This piece looks at what separates them, and the answer is mostly one kind of game.

The figures come from the league's published results for all 126 regular-season games of 2025-26, each of the seven clubs playing 36. Our wins and losses match the official standings for every club, and our points scored and allowed match the league's team statistics.

What the margin predicts

A club's points scored and allowed give an estimate of how many games it should have won, called Pythagorean expectation: games played times points scored to a power, divided by points scored to that power plus points allowed to that power. The power is a choice, so we use two: 10 and 14, which give a range. Expected wins below are shown as that range.

Club	Record	Points for	Points against	Margin per game	Expected wins	Wins minus expected	Games decided by 5 or fewer
Taiwan Beer Leopards	23-13	99.2	94.3	+4.8	22.4 to 24.1	-1.1 to +0.6	5-4
New Taipei CTBC DEA	20-16	99.1	94.6	+4.4	22.1 to 23.6	-3.6 to -2.1	4-7
Formosa Dreamers	22-14	100.4	96.1	+4.3	21.9 to 23.3	-1.3 to +0.1	4-6
Hsinchu Lioneers	22-14	95.6	91.6	+4.1	21.9 to 23.3	-1.3 to +0.1	8-5
New Taipei Kings	19-17	98.5	99.8	-1.3	16.4 to 16.8	+2.2 to +2.6	6-3
Taipei Taishin Mars	11-25	96.2	103.6	-7.4	9.4 to 11.6	-0.6 to +1.6	5-5
Kaohsiung Aquas	9-27	93.6	102.6	-8.9	7.8 to 10.3	-1.3 to +1.2	4-6

Five clubs finished within two wins of what their margin predicts, whichever power is used. Two did not. DEA won more than two fewer games than expected, and the Kings won more than two more.

Where DEA's wins went

The gap has a clear source. DEA played 11 games decided by five points or fewer and won four. The Lioneers played 13 and won eight, and the Kings played nine and won six.

DEA's four close wins were by three or four points. The seven losses were by two to five:

• November 7, lost 92-87 at Formosa.
• January 3, lost 79-84 to Hsinchu at home.
• January 10, lost 114-111 at Kaohsiung.
• February 15, lost 96-93 at the Leopards.
• March 8, lost 90-88 at Kaohsiung.
• March 28, lost 103-99 at Hsinchu.
• April 1, lost 89-91 to Mars at home.

Home and away tell a similar story. DEA went 13-5 at home and 7-11 away. A team that outscores opponents by 4.4 points a game over 36 games and goes 7-11 on the road has a lot riding on a handful of finishes.

Last season, in reverse

The year before, DEA were on the other side. In 2024-25 they were outscored by 4.2 points a game, 86.7 to 90.9, the lowest scoring in the league, and still went 16-20. Their margin predicted 12.3 to 13.9 wins. They won two to four more than that, and went 5-3 in games decided by five or fewer.

So DEA's record has been two to four wins above the margin in one season and two to four wins below it in the next. The margin moved by 8.6 points a game between the two years. The record moved by four wins.

What the numbers show, and what we read into them

The numbers show that DEA's fourth place in 2025-26 came with the second-best margin in the league, and that they lost seven of 11 games that were decided by five points or fewer. Both are counts, and both are in the table.

What it means is our reading. Close-game records are noisy: eleven games is a small sample, and a four-win gap between a record and a margin is the size of a single bad stretch. We do not claim DEA were unlucky. We say their margin is the better guide to their quality than their record, and that a club with their margin would be expected to win more than 20 of 36 over another season with a similar schedule.

The test is already under way. In 2026-27 DEA are 1-1, an 89-81 home loss to the Kings followed by a 128-100 win at Kaohsiung. Two games prove nothing. By the 20-game mark, check whether DEA's record has moved toward their margin, and whether the faster scoring we found in the league's first games is changing what a margin of four points means.