57 wins. That’s improvement over this year’s 56 wins, but not much. Why don’t the Clippers look better? Well, they lost Eric Bledsoe who, as it turns out, was a +1.61 player in xRAPM and played 1500+ minutes for them last year. Jared Dudley and J.J. Redick had lower xRAPMs than Bledsoe, as did Darren Collison. Additionally, the Clips lost Lamar Odom who was a +.82 xRAPM and replaced his 1600+ minutes with the terrible Byron Mullens and a combination of wings who will likely be worse than Odom was last year, at least by xRAPM. Plus, Jamal Crawford and Matt Barnes project to decline relatively significantly, while Blake Griffin somewhat offsets that with a pretty significant improvement, as he climbs towards his peak years. Subjectively, this prediction seems like it could be a bit low, as the Clips had the MOV of a 59 win team and most NBA heads had them improving this offseason. Plus, Doc Rivers is in a different class as a coach than Vinny Del Negro. But I present the numbers here for you, dear reader, to ponder over.
http://nbacouchside.com/post/5809966637 ... s-clippers
Previous projections:
East:
Nets: 60-22
Heat: 59-23
Bulls: 59-23
Pacers: 56-26
West:
OKC: 61-21
I have yet to adjust for SOS and HCA, which is something I plan to do when I wrap everything up.
