2015-16 Team win projections

[Mike G]

Everyone is trailing the "prediction" of (2015PythW + 41)/2
Is that only because both it and the submitted win projections are heavily regressed?

[kmedved]

I believe so, yes. That method just takes SRS, and adds a number of dummy games to each team's rating (7 per Neil Paine in the comments) for regression to the mean purposes. Right now, that means every team's rating is still regressed back to the mean at least 50% (since nobody has played more than 7 games).

As the season progresses, those 7 dummy games will mean less, and actual talent differences will have more impact.

[Dr Positivity]

I am most concerned about going low on Mia and Orl. Miami struggled on D last year despite Spo being a defense first coach going back to his first 2 seasons before Lebron. They may prove that an aberration (currently 9th in DRTG). Scott Skiles effect has been huge for Orlando.

[kmedved]

Here's what it looks like with no dummy games:



Much more extreme W-L results, and the 2015PythW falls back down.

[kmedved]

Update after Sunday's games:

[kmedved]

Update through Tuesday's games:

[AcrossTheCourt]

Were my HP Preview or Nylon wins collected for this?

And I imagine I looked great right away because I regressed to the mean pretty hard.

[Dr Positivity]

The Heat are playing too good, calm down Tyler Johnson

[kmedved]

I don't know if the projections came from NylonCalculus or from HP. I grabbed the projections on this google doc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... MtssxvP0vk) and a few others posted later in this thread.

[kmedved]

And here's the update after Friday's games:

[Statman]

Rockets, Clippers, 'Wolves, & OKC are killing me. Pretty sure the first three will correct more toward my predictions - I kinda knew subjectively my super crazy high prediction for OKC would haunt me, but the player projections (and quality minute allotment I was given for that team for optimized results) were a perfect storm of goodness, and the projections are the projections.

The top 6 so far (gsw, sas, okc, cle, mia, tor) were all in my top 8, with lac & hou the odd 2 out.

The bottom 3 and my bottom three so far exactly match - brk, phi, & lal.

Could be worse.

[Dr Positivity]

My projection of 33 Ws for PHI is gonna need some help. Noel at below replacement value so far stings with no Covington or Marshall playing

[kmedved]

Through Sunday:

I added a counter for average wins by conference, as the East seems to no longer be quite so terrible at the bottom. 41 wins for the Knicks is out of the playoffs for instance.

[Mike G]

... the East seems to no longer be quite so terrible at the bottom. 41 wins for the Knicks is out of the playoffs for instance.

Good catch. In fact, the East is 27-25 vs the West. And it is not just a fluke of scheduling. By SRS, 10 of 15 teams in the East are above avg; just 6 of 15 in the West are >0.

While the East has tended to get the best rookies, it's been offset by trades and other player movement favoring the West. Some years, the West has had more improved players.
Does anyone venture a guess as to what it is this year?

[kmedved]

I would guess it's reversed, with the West having the better rookies (Towns, WCS), player movement being relatively flat (Monroe and Carroll stayed in the East, Batum and Hibbert mostly cancel), so the remaining Eastern improvement must be coming from player talent improvement.