Predictions 2013-14

[Mike G]

The Wolves. Opening this thread, I had them picked at 46 wins and was questioned. I replied:

Minny won 31 last year with Love playing just 18 games; Rubio missed 25, Peko 20. They've added Kevin Martin and Corey Brewer, good players off the bench. ..

I settled on 44.6 wins. This is based on Love, Pekovic, and Rubio each playing 26 mpg X 82 G. Martin and Brewer 24. No lousy players need to take the floor.
So Love is leading the league in everything and going 36 mpg; Martin is way up from last year and going 35 min., etc.

Love already has 2.5 times as many Win Shares as he got last season.
They're on pace for 60 wins. Their Garnett-era peak was 58.

[Yooper]

As a group, We are expecting the East to win 48% of all games. Last year, thanks to a .418 mark vs the West, they were .457 Pythagorean. So, we are expecting the East to better-than-halfway close the gap to .500 .

It's a nice hope, we tend to have it every year, and it basically never happens. The East tends to get the higher draft picks, they have the more productive rookies, and something just as big offsets all that.

The reason I bring it up is that team win expectations are somewhat dependent on this eternal imbalance. SRS needs an adjustment to predict Wins, depending on East or West Conference.

I didn't make any such adjustment in my predictions. Last year in the East, Chi, Atl, and Bos were over .500, with negative SRS. Western teams had SOS about 0.7 PPG tougher than Eastern teams had. This makes a difference of about 2 wins per team, plus or minus.

Mike, this post was very prescient. I remember when I did my predictions I thought about this a fair bit. I generally believed the West had gotten better but since I had Utah declining by 25 games and Denver by 17 I just couldn't come up with enough improvement in the other Western teams to overcome this margin so ended with the West loosing 6 games or so. The interesting things is that my estimate for those two teams seems very reasonable so far, or at least not terribly off. Amazing how the Western teams are murdering the East. Has it ever been this disparate?

[Mike G]

Code: Select all

Year     -   East-West  E W%
2012-13   -   188-262   .418
2011-12   -   114-156   .422
2010-11   -   189-261   .420
2009-10   -   204-246   .453
2008-09   -   231-219   .513
2007-08   -   192-258   .427
2006-07   -   193-257   .429
2005-06   -   198-252   .440
2004-05   -   194-256   .431
2003-04   -   166-280   .372
2002-03   -   178-270   .397
2001-02   -   187-230   .448
2000-01   -   161-258   .384
1999-00   -   193-227   .460
1998-99   -    46- 38   .548
1997-98   -   243-177   .579
1996-97   -   242-178   .576
1995-96   -   214-206   .510
1994-95   -   159-205   .437
1993-94   -   170-194   .467
1992-93   -   191-173   .525
1991-92   -   180-183   .496

East is currently down 44 to 17, which is .279
Unthinkably bad.

[Mike G]

At 19.5% of the season:

Code: Select all

Bobb   9.50      jank   10.41
jBro   9.60      ATC    10.53
416x   9.70      deep   10.65
ncs    9.83       eW    10.70
hDon   9.95      fpli   11.12
Yoop  10.04      13Py   11.43

[Mike G]

At .224 of the season:

Code: Select all

Bobb   8.65      Yoop   9.56
jBro   8.76       eW    9.58
416x   8.99      fpli   9.86
hDon   9.24      jank   9.89
deep   9.33      ATC    9.89
ncs    9.42      13Py  10.67

Everyone's improved dramatically since last report. At least some teams are doing more like they were supposed to.


I predicted the Nets to win 60 games, and they're on pace to win 22. My 38W error is the largest on the whole board; in fact, almost everyone's Nets guess is bigger than any other error.

How does one get it so wrong? Here's what I predicted for this season's minutes; their eWins/484 are the same as last year's. I made no age adjustment, per se; just gave the biggest minutes reductions to their older players.
(Nets average age on the floor this year is 30.1 -- 3rd oldest team in the league, after Miami and Dallas)
Minutes are per team game: DNP = 0 Min.

Code: Select all

.2013-14         - Predicted -      Projected after 18 G
.Nets           Min   e484  eWins    Min  e484  eWins   diff
Williams,Deron   32   1.62   8.8      12   .88   1.8    -7.0
Lopez,Brook      26   1.83   8.1      18  1.69   5.0    -3.0
Pierce,Paul      26   1.63   7.2      24   .75   3.1    -4.1
Garnett,Kevin    24   1.62   6.6      20   .96   3.3    -3.3
Kirilenko,Andrei 22   1.17   4.4       3  1.12    .6    -3.8

Johnson,Joe      28    .90   4.3      33   .86   4.8    + .6
Blatche,Andray   14   1.59   3.8      23  1.14   4.4    + .6
Evans,Reggie     16   1.30   3.5      12   .21    .4    -3.1
Terry,Jason      22    .63   2.3      11   .14    .3    -2.1
Anderson,Alan    12    .70   1.4      23   .45   1.8    + .3

Livingston,Shaun  8    .73   1.0      24   .64   2.6   + 1.6
Teletovic,Mirza   4    .68    .5      10   .65   1.1    + .6
Shengelia,Tornik  2    .27    .1       5  -.41   -.3     -.4
Taylor,Tyshawn    4    .12    .1      11   .31    .6    + .5
Plumlee,Mason   ( 2    .29    .1 )    15   .85   2.1   + 2.0
total           242         52.0     243        31.5   -20.5

The rookie Mason Plumlee has replaced Chris Johnson (numbers in parentheses) in my prediction list.
Note that the other 'positives' in the difference column are only due to playing more minutes than expected. No one is actually playing as well as last year.
Actually, Tyshawn Taylor is 'better', but still not actually 'good'.

[Crow]

What specifically about eastern teams sucks the most? Coaching strategy, coaching execution, player acquisition, player development, lineup management, player attitude, westward space & time travel for road games or what? What varies the most from "the western way" (of all western teams or just the many decent to good ones)? Are there are a lot of western team commonalities?



How do you try to deduce or infer which variance is causing the most impact on wins? Is the difference stronger in terms of wins than the underlying stats? RAPM splits of various kinds would be one technique to give you more to chew on but simple stat splits might help some too, in lieu of that extra work and acknowledged presence of estimate error.

[Bobbofitos]

I didn't use a proper aging curve for the Nets. That's my excuse.

[schtevie]

Re Nets. If you take J.E.'s 2013 values and his RAPM aging curve (guesstimates off his graph) and do the calculation based on actual minutes played, you get a team expected to win 44 games, 45 if they hadn't aged. Given that the conspicuous, current shortcomings are on defense and the season remains young, it seems reasonable to believe that they will ultimately perform to these expectations if not their own.

[Mike G]

Given their mpg this year, at last year's eWin rates, they total 44.5 eWins over 82 games.
If they were all getting the minutes I guessed at, and as badly as they've played, they project to 27 eWins.
As bad as their availabilities have been, their performances when available have been even worse.
I don't think there's an 'aging curve' that would predict all members of a team are gonna suck and miss lots of time.

[jbrocato23]

How about the Suns? Other than the Nets, they're the most surprising to me at this point.

[AcrossTheCourt]

To fill out some of their remaining minutes, I used a pretty low "replacement level" filler for the roster of the Suns and 76ers. Without that, I think I would have had both teams closer to 24 wins. Suns had some improvement from a small handful of their players, and they surprised opponents who thought they could take a night off. I never thought the 76ers would be horrible; I thought they still had some useful players and Young was underrated.

I used an age adjustment for the Nets, but that didn't help me.... One issue I had was the "value" of Gerald Wallace. Terrible on offense, but some of his defensive metrics were good. There are a number of strange and alarming things wrong with the team. I need to write a longer piece on them. Some quick thoughts:
-Kirilenko has only played 52 minutes so far.
-Pierce and Deron Williams are around a 50 TS%; that's way too low for both of them, even old-man Pierce.
-Garnett has been unspeakably bad at shooting: 37.7 TS%. There is no way he's going to keep that up the rest of the season ... I assume.
-Garnett's defense has finally fallen off even though his box score markers haven't budged (blocks/steals/DReb%.)
-Alan Anderson and Mason Plumlee have the fifth and third most minutes played (not including this game.)
-Kidd is a terrible coach. I should have penalized them for letting a recently retired player coach, but that's hindsight.

[Mike G]

The Suns are aiming at 44 wins. Our predictions ranged from 18 to 30, avg 23.
I guessed 19, via eWins.

Code: Select all

Phoenix          - predicted -        19 games pace    substitutes  
.Suns           e484   mpg   eW      e484   mpg   eW   
Goran Dragic    1.14   30   5.8      1.47   29   7.3   
Eric Bledsoe    1.16   28   5.5      1.58   23   6.2   
Channing Frye    .80   24   3.3       .96   27   4.4   
Shannon Brown    .65   22   2.4       .17   10    .3   Goodwin,Archie
Emeka Okafor    1.28   22   4.8       .00    1    .0   Kravtsov,Viaches
Markieff Morris  .77   22   2.9      1.21   24   5.0   
P.J. Tucker      .52   22   1.9       .54   31   2.9   
Gerald Green     .54   16   1.5       .67   28   3.2   
Marcus Morris    .34   16    .9      1.07   23   4.1   
Malcolm Lee      .42   10    .7       .14    5    .1   Christmas,Dionte
Kendall Marshall .04   10    .1       .05    2    .0   Len,Alex
Ishmael Smith    .06    8    .1       .37    8    .5   
Miles Plumlee    .56    6    .6       .98   29   4.8   

Missing key players Okafor and Brown, it doesn't matter. I made a wild guess on Frye's effectiveness, and he's surpassed that (and in more minutes). The Morris brothers are incredibly better. Even with the missed games, Bledsoe is on pace to exceed expectations.
Plumlee came out of nowhere, it seems. Green and Tucker have stepped up with huge minutes out of necessity.
The exact opposite of the Nets : Every last player (who showed up) has improved markedly.
The top 7 players are averaging .087 better TS% than last year.

Code: Select all

eW+    per36 rates   Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast  e484  2013 Eff%   Sco   Reb   Ast  e484
.03   Tucker,P.J.   .562   11.5   5.6   2.1   .54      .520    9.4   6.7   1.8   .52
.39   Dragic,Goran  .571   20.5   3.1   7.3  1.47      .530   16.2   3.5   6.8  1.14
.48   Plumlee,Miles .492   12.4  11.1    .7   .98  Ind .283    7.0  13.0   1.3   .56
.14   Green,Gerald  .566   18.7   3.7   1.9   .67  Ind .461   14.6   4.6   1.7   .54
.43 Morris,Markieff .543   17.9   8.3   2.5  1.21      .468   12.4   7.8   1.8   .77
.39   Bledsoe,Eric  .583   22.2   4.6   6.6  1.58  LAC .506   15.4   5.5   5.4  1.17
.38   Morris,Marcus .570   17.6   8.0   1.7  1.07      .513   13.4   6.6   1.5   .65
.06   Smith,Ish     .343    7.0   3.5   6.4   .37  Mil .385    7.3   4.0   4.9   .20

These 8 total 2.25 eWins more than expected after 19 games.
Over 82 games, that would be +9.7 -- equivalent to 19.4 more wins. Rookies add a few more.

[jbrocato23]

The Morris brothers are incredibly better.

Gotta wonder how much being together helps these guys. I remember reading something when they were first drafted about how much they were gonna struggle to cope with not being around one another.

[Mike G]

Last year, Marcus was having a breakout season in Houston. Then he was traded to Phx.
His 1/3 of a season with the Suns was terrible. And this year, I can't remember which is 'the good one' -- they're both good.

[Crow]

What specifically about eastern teams sucks the most? ...

The western conference has about a 4 pt edge on the east on offensive efficiency and it is built from an edge on almost every offensive stat. The east has a fraction of a pt lead on defensive efficiency, with the detailed stats favorably one or the other about as frequently.

There is plenty more that could be considered with additional time (including whether the division win% difference is in line with about a 3.5 pt net point difference or whether the west has outperformed on wins compared to pyth. win expectations) but that is the simple surface story.

One other thing I had a moment to check involves GM achievement. The western GMs combined have more than twice the number of division and conference titles won under their leadership and 3 times the league titles. Didn't as quickly have average years on the job or the title / experience ratios but that could also be looked at.

Coaches could be checked too. West has twice the average experience, about 2.5 times the playoff appearances and roughly three times the division, conference and league titles.

Coaching and front office experience and success may be part of the explanation for the west's current dominance. Only a 7%pt different in west vs east coaching win % though.