2019-20 team win projection contest

[Kevin Pelton]

Justin Jackson is "Justin A. Jackson" in my spreadsheet to differentiate from the 2018 Orlando second-round pick.

Andre Iguodala and Josh Jackson are both on the Grizzlies' roster, for the record, but I'm not projecting them to see any minutes at this point as Jackson is reporting to the G League and Iguodala is staying home.

[RyanRiot]

Subject to revisions and reviews, based on K Pelton minutes linked upthread.

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west   wins        east   wins
LAL    54.7        Phl    53.9
Hou    53.9        Mil    52.6
LAC    51.9        Orl    45.5
Uta    50.7        Ind    45.2
Por    46.7        Bos    42.3
SAS    45.5        Brk    41.7
Den    44.8        Det    41.4
NOP    41.9        NYK    40.5
GSW    41.0        Tor    37.9
Dal    40.6        Chi    36.3
Sac    39.5        Mia    36.2
Min    36.7        Cle    35.4
Phx    35.0        Atl    34.6
OkC    28.2        Was    27.7
Mem    21.5        Cha    26.1

Kevin P has some mighty funny minute projections, but I'll go with it.
I've made no attempt to account for near-identical superstars on the same team: Harden/RW, George/Kawhi
After scaling to 41 wins per team, the conference imbalance is extreme. So I added 1 win to each East team and dropped the West by 1.

I think that's the highest projection I've seen on the Knicks by about 8 wins. What players does your model like on the Knicks better than other models?

[Rd11490]

Using the Blend column for the contest:



Edit: edited 10/17/19

[Mike G]

I think that's the highest projection I've seen on the Knicks by about 8 wins. What players does your model like on the Knicks better than other models?

I haven't looked at other models, but I have looked into the Knicks, noting the anomaly as you have.
According to the K Pelton minutes distribution which I used, only 3/8 of the playing time will be from players who won just 17 games last year. The rest is coming from an interesting assortment of pretty-good new acquistions.
Here are their 2018-19 stats from b-r.com along with my own entirely-boxscore eWins:

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. Knicks        Min?   e484   PER   WS/48   BPM
Julius Randle   2340   1.65   21.0   .131   1.4
Kevin Knox      2184    .43    8.7  -.030  -6.0
R.J. Barrett  * 2184   1.25   17.0   .125   1.0
Marcus Morris   1900   1.04   14.2   .104  -1.4
M Robinson      1872   1.31   22.0   .217   5.7

Bobby Portis    1824   1.28   15.3   .058  -2.8
Dennis Smith    1824    .81   13.5  -.014  -2.7
Elfrid Payton   1752   1.03   14.0   .058  -0.9
Allonzo Trier   1155    .52   12.2   .030  -4.2
Wayne Ellington  924    .57   11.8   .097    .2

Taj Gibson       624   1.14   17.8   .144   1.0
Reggie Bullock   590    .43   10.5   .078  -0.9
Frank Ntilikina  273    .12    6.0  -.045  -5.7
Damyean Dotson   234    .47   10.8   .037  -2.3

. total        19680   1.00   15.1   .079  -0.9

Of the returning players, only Robinson is remotely 'good' by any measure. I don't count him as the superstar others do, yet.
I have no clue why Knox should continue getting major minutes, while DD and Frank Niti get almost none. Or why Taj coming off his best year, according to some, should be 3rd string.
* Barrett numbers are made up from nothing but a formula (for eWins based on his being #3 in the draft) and rough equivalents in the others.

PER concludes they're an avg NBA team, which should make playoffs in the East. BPM says they're on the bubble. WS isn't that hot on them, but much better than last year.

[Mike G]

Using the Blend column for the contest:
...
Edit: edited 10/17/19

Your current predictions bear little resemblance to your original.
What do "3 year" and "1 year" refer to?

[Crow]

3yr and 1 yr presumably are the projections using his 3yr and 1 yr RAPM estimates for players.

The blend appears slightly tilted towards more 1 yr weight.

His Twitter says he found a bug that he had to fix.

[mtpowell22]

Hey everybody, I created this Win Totals league to track everyone's projections and follow the predictions leaders in-season as things play out. Join here and input your projections: https://wintotals.com/leagues/b6ca8a6d

Cheers!
Miles

[Rd11490]

Using the Blend column for the contest:
...
Edit: edited 10/17/19

Your current predictions bear little resemblance to your original.
What do "3 year" and "1 year" refer to?

Crow is correct, I found a bug in my code that was throwing away all rookie minutes.
3yr is built of 3 yr 4 factors, 1yr is based on 1 yr 4 factors

[Mike G]

So without rookie inputs, the Pels were going to win 42 games.
And with that fixed, they're now looking at 38 or 39

Maybe they shouldn't play any rookies?

[Rd11490]

My model treats all rookies exactly the same. I'd say that the pels are one of the many blindspots with this model.

[jgoldstein34]

Good luck to everyone this year.

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Team	Wins
ATL	27.19
BRK	36.71
BOS	49.36
CHI	39.25
CHO	26.21
CLE	23.13
DAL	45.51
DEN	52.36
DET	32.89
GSW	44.85
HOU	55.88
IND	41.96
LAC	50.15
LAL	49.34
MEM	31.51
MIA	43.41
MIL	59.95
MIN	39.23
NOP	43.64
NYK	26.27
OKC	37.54
ORL	41.74
PHI	53.51
PHO	29.55
POR	45.38
SAC	37.41
SAS	40.72
TOR	47.78
UTA	47.57
WAS	29.99

**Updated post Zion injury news**
**Final update prior to season**

[eminence]

Will update mine tomorrow, been a long day, but is everyone else getting at or near record levels of conference imbalance? I think as of now mine's at 63/37.

[eminence]

Alrighty, here we go. Switching it up a bit this year and going with a simple regression based on player grades (accuracy hopefully similar, just wanted to try something new). Still included my completely arbitrary no ties within conference rule.

Things not considered:
-Injury risk (other than downgrading guys who are currently injured)
-Trade likelihood
-Schedule strength (if I had to guess it'd probably be more accurate to shift the entire East up a win or two and the West down accordingly)

East
Bucks 53
Heat 49
Sixers 48
Raptors 45
Celtics 44
Pacers 42
Magic 41
Nets 38
Pistons 37
Bulls 36
Wizards 32
Hawks 29
Hornets 28
Cavs 24
Knicks 20

West
Warriors 59
Jazz 57
Clippers 56
Rockets 54
Nuggets 53
Lakers 52
Thunder 44
Blazers 42
Mavs 41
Wolves 40
Spurs 37
Pelicans 36
Kings 33
Suns 32
Grizzlies 28

Edit for Zion injury, Pels -3, Bucks/Pacers/Magic all +1.

[RyanRiot]

Trying something new this year where I simulate the whole schedule instead of just making team-level projections and back that into 1230 wins. Also artificially increased the standard deviation of wins because the grouping was way too tight. Hopefully it works out.

Code: Select all

Team	Wins
MIL	58.52
HOU	55.81
PHI	54.94
DEN	53.49
LAC	51.78
UTA	50.36
BOS	49.14
LAL	49.03
GSW	47.62
TOR	47.58
MIA	44.22
IND	43.98
ORL	42.95
POR	42.88
DAL	42.13
NOP	41.22
BKN	41.02
SAS	40.16
CHI	37.72
MIN	37.7
DET	36.5
OKC	35.73
SAC	35.3
PHX	30.54
ATL	29.75
WAS	28.8
MEM	28.09
NYK	25.94
CHA	25.23
CLE	21.87

[eminence]

Dang it on Zion, looks like I'll need at least one small update yet this evening. Guess I'm glad it came out today?