Predictions 2014-2015

[jimmytonic]

I'd feel good about taking the TWolves over and the Lakers under. To get above 31 wins, the Lakers need a really optimistic minutes distribution for Kobe as well as assuming that either Kobe or Lin/Boozer/Davis return to 2013 form (by RAPM, I haven't looked at the difference between 2013 and 2014 for them with other metrics), and ultimately this team has too much incentive to tank once they hit Allstar Break and realize that they're 10 games behind the 8th seed.

[Mike G]

Why are 21 eWins only equivalent to 1 or 2 wins?

It's similar to the reason that a team which scores 45% of the points in a series of (48 minute) games is expected to win only about 6% of the games.

Not wanting to sidetrack this thread, but to me it's anathema to suppose that a player makes negative net contributions and yet plays lots of minutes. In eWins, very few players have a negative win-creating rate.
Not to pick on Win Shares, but 59 of 482 players last year had ws/48 < 0.
The year before, it was 64 of 469.
If eWins were to be 'transformed' such that team eW = Wins, the ratio would be even worse.

An eW rate of zero (per x minutes) seems to be pretty close to a reasonable 'replacement level' value. That makes sense to me. I like things that make sense.

[Crow]

Number of players who played at all in 40 plus games with ws/48 at or below
zero? 7. http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... y=mp_per_g

Numer who played 300 plus minutes, 14. 100 plus, 35.

[Dr Positivity]

I like Milwaukee as a sleeper. Sanders and Ilyasova were IMO the best players on their playoff team 2 years ago and are still there even if in sub-optimal condition, I like the trio of Mayo, Middleton, Dudley shooting 3s at SG/SF, Giannis could have a good year, Jason Kidd's combination of spacing and aggressive defense seems perfect for making a team over perform. The other thing about Milwaukee is unless Parker sucks, they don't have any other scrub parts of their rotation, unlike other tanking teams. They have like 12-13 reasonable pros or better (Knight, Bayless, Marshall, Wolters, Mayo, Middleton, Dudley, Giannis, Ilyasova, Henson, Sanders, Pachulia + Parker)

[Mike G]

Yes, that's a good number of credible personnel. But none of them are great. I have Knight and Henson just above avg last year; Ilyasova was close to avg; the rest trend from mediocre to barely useful (Dudley).

Having 3-5 below-avg players on the floor at all times, they won't beat many good teams; but there are lots of weak teams in the East, so I guess they'll win 20-25. And that's figuring Jabari Parker goes 20 mpg at nearly-avg proficiency.

[J.E.]

Pinnacle now also has O/U for ~20 teams.

For these teams, people seem to have bet the over (in some cases heavily):
ATL(41), BRK(41.5), CLE(58.5), DET(35.5), IND(32.5), MIL(24), MIN(26.5), PHI(15), SAC(29.5)
.. and the under
LAL(31.5), NOP(43), WAS(49)

People are expecting more regression to league mean for MIL and PHI
Byron Scott has recently raised some eyebrows by saying "I like the fact that we only shot 10 threes" (league average was 21.5 last season)

For the Pelicans, quality depth and wing defense are going to be an issue

[Mike G]

Byron Scott has recently raised some eyebrows by saying "I like the fact that we only shot 10 threes" (league average was 21.5 last season)
..

Maybe he means he likes that they can win a game (vs Den, 98-95) without much reliance on the 3 (going 5-10).
Maybe it's a strategy. The Lakers were 1-11 in a 15-pt loss to GSW; and then 0-3 from the arc in a 41-pt loss to GS.

It's good to avoid a 3-pt shootout vs the Warriors. It may also be that he's ahead of the curve here: It may take more teamwork to get the inside game going; you can always 'settle' for the 3.

The team is relatively 'new' -- just 47% of minutes are accounted by players who were on the team last season.

[nbacouchside]

Updated predictions to account for Durant's absence:

Code: Select all

+------+------+
| Team | Wins |
+------+------+
| CLE  |   59 |
| SAS  |   58 |
| GSW  |   58 |
| MEM  |   58 |
| DAL  |   58 |
| LAC  |   57 |
| OKC  |   56 |
| CHI  |   51 |
| MIA  |   49 |
| HOU  |   49 |
| POR  |   48 |
| WAS  |   48 |
| TOR  |   48 |
| PHX  |   45 |
| ATL  |   42 |
| IND  |   41 |
| MIN  |   37 |
| BKN  |   37 |
| NOP  |   36 |
| CHA  |   33 |
| ORL  |   31 |
| BOS  |   31 |
| DET  |   30 |
| DEN  |   30 |
| NYK  |   30 |
| MIL  |   25 |
| SAC  |   24 |
| UTA  |   23 |
| LAL  |   20 |
| PHI  |   18 |
+------+------+

[bondom343]

About 3 wins for KD is what I figured. I've seen people speculate things like 8, which seems way overboard, but didn't know if I was being a homer as an OKC fan. As for the Lakers, its only preseason, but I'd recommend they rethink the approach. Their offense has been pretty poor, and the shot chart for a GSW game:





So more long 2s.

[Statman]

Why are 21 eWins only equivalent to 1 or 2 wins?

It's similar to the reason that a team which scores 45% of the points in a series of games is likely to win only about 6% of the games.

Not wanting to sidetrack this thread, but to me it's anathema to suppose that a player makes negative net contributions and yet plays lots of minutes. In eWins, very few players have a negative win-creating rate.
Not to pick on Win Shares, but 59 of 482 players last year had ws/48 < 0.
The year before, it was 64 of 469.
If eWins were to be 'transformed' such that team eW = Wins, the ratio would be even worse.

An eW rate of zero (per x minutes) seems to be pretty close to a reasonable 'replacement level' value. That makes sense to me. I like things that make sense.

Which is why I don't have negative WAR at all in my work, any production that might produce a negative WAR is rounded to zero. After all is said and done - I rework WAR at the team levels to have the summed individual WARs exactly match team wins (well, win%*82 for seasons below 82 games). The good thing about no negative WAR is that it suppresses the individual WARs a little of high usage guys on teams that have a bunch of low usage guys. Well balanced teams that don't have a bunch of poor production guys (ie Spurs) don't have their individual WARs suppressed much at all, since the vast majority of players on the team produce above replacement level (replacement level is zero wins, anything above starts producing WAR).

If someone wants to rank all the guys at zero WAR in an order, they can then look at their HnR in my lists.

[Statman]

Who in this group is maybe the best at predicting minutes (% season minutes) for players? I think it'd be interesting if a bunch of us predicted the team results based on the same projected minutes for every player - and see how much our projections might vary despite the constant at individual minutes played.

Plus, it'd make it so much easier for me, because I STILL don't really know how to best project player minutes. And yes, I'm lazy - hoping someone will do part of my work for me......

[sndesai1]

for minutes, i would say just pick up some projections from a fantasy basketball site like yahoo or espn (or take the average of a few of them)


here are my predictions:

Code: Select all

╔══════╦════════╗
║ Team ║  Wins  ║
╠══════╬════════╣
║ SAS  ║  60.0  ║
║ OKC  ║  57.4  ║
║ CLE  ║  56.1  ║
║ GSW  ║  55.6  ║
║ LAC  ║  55.4  ║
║ CHI  ║  53.3  ║
║ DAL  ║  53.1  ║
║ MIA  ║  51.6  ║
║ MEM  ║  51.1  ║
║ HOU  ║  49.2  ║
║ WAS  ║  46.1  ║
║ ATL  ║  45.8  ║
║ TOR  ║  45.3  ║
║ PHO  ║  45.1  ║
║ POR  ║  44.7  ║
║ BRK  ║  44.3  ║
║ IND  ║  41.0  ║
║ MIN  ║  38.3  ║
║ NYK  ║  36.4  ║
║ DEN  ║  33.9  ║
║ NOP  ║  33.0  ║
║ CHA  ║  32.9  ║
║ DET  ║  30.7  ║
║ ORL  ║  28.2  ║
║ SAC  ║  27.5  ║
║ BOS  ║  26.5  ║
║ LAL  ║  24.6  ║
║ MIL  ║  23.1  ║
║ UTA  ║  21.5  ║
║ PHI  ║  18.3  ║
╚══════╩════════╝

[bbstats]

Here's mine, based on RPM once again.

Code: Select all

Tm	Wins
CLE	60.2
LAC	56.9
GSW	56.0
SAS	55.3
OKC	55.2
DAL	52.0
MEM	51.0
CHI	47.4
HOU	47.2
TOR	47.1
WAS	46.7
POR	46.4
MIA	45.7
IND	42.0
ATL	41.4
PHO	40.3
NOP	40.1
CHA	38.7
DET	38.2
DEN	37.1
BRK	36.0
MIN	35.2
UTA	34.9
NYK	31.7
SAC	29.3
BOS	29.0
ORL	28.2
MIL	25.3
LAL	21.5
PHI	13.9

[J.E.]

Here's mine, based on RPM once again.

I like those (obviously?)

I just don't see where so many people get 55+ wins for GSW from. They're not exactly deep. Curry is 2 years away from having played 26 games. Bogut, last season, played twice as many games as in 12-13 and 5 times as much as in 11-12.

Obviously, 55 isn't impossible, but almost everything has to go right for them to win that many

Chicago is obviously pretty volatile, depending whether Rose can get back into form or not. Vegas seems to think so

Utah seems surprisingly high at 35, up from 22PWins a season ago. Is it because they're so young?

[sndesai1]

well i'm a warriors fan, so i might just have on rose-colored glasses.

curry has played in 90%+ of games 4 out of 5 seasons, and 1 year with 40% (in that tank year i believe).
i'm 99.9% sure he isn't playing 82, but i don't think that he's especially likely to miss significant time - more likely 5-6 random games here and there with a twisted ankle.

andre iguodala's injuries are more concerning imo, with him having missed 15-20 games in 3 out of the last 4 years, and he's hitting his thirties now.

they're definitely not super deep, but the starting lineup is unbelievable, draymond green is a huge + off the bench, and livngston should provide better value as a backup point than what they had last year. hopefully, barnes reverts to being a slight negative instead of a major negative


however, if there does happen to be a significant injury to the star player, the warriors would definitely be less prepared than many other top teams to handle it.