Milwaukee coach George Karl touched on it when he came through town earlier this week: an arcane system for ranking teams based on the difficulty of their schedules at any given point.

Basically, it's a plus/minus system in which teams are awarded one point for every road victory but have one point deducted for each home loss. It's a relic of the 1970s or before, traced back to former Denver and San Antonio coach Doug Moe (or someone he learned it from). Karl is a Moe devotee and embraces the system.

A lot of it is common sense -- winning on the road is a good thing, losing at home is bad. The relevant point for the Timberwolves is that, in this system, they are the best team in the NBA.

With only two home losses and nine road victories, the Wolves (entering their game against Utah on Friday) were plus-7. Milwaukee, Dallas and New Jersey were plus-6, while San Antonio, Sacramento, Boston and the Lakers were plus-5.

The rationale is that, until schedules start to balance out, this is the handiest way to gauge teams' relative strength. Consider that Utah, Seattle and the Clippers all began the night with 16-15 records. But the Jazz were minus-1, the Sonics were at 0 and the Clippers, who had 15 of those victories at home, were minus-6.