How many wins for the wolves this year?

[Wolves2011]

How many wins will the wolves produce?

I've bastardized the wages of wins methodology to make an estimate.

The three best players on this team this year are likely to be

Jefferson - PER 23.16 [#3 among Centers];
- wins produced 6.1 [but was injured, only played 50 games]

Love - PER 18.39 [#13 among PF]
- wins produced 10.0 [#13 among Centers in only 25 minutes per game] **

Sessions - PER 17.65 [#13 among PG],
- wins produced 9.2 ** [#10 among PG in only 27 minutes per game] **

[Sessions PER would have been #11 among SG, he played about half his time there.]

Wins Produced is from Wages of Wins Journal methodology.

** In the Wages of Wins, wins produced methodology, more minutes played means more wins. So all three of our best players Jefferson due to injury, plus Love and Sessions because of limited minutes would have produced more wins with more minutes played.

If Jefferson, Love and Sessions each played 2870 minutes, eg play 82 games with 35 minutes each, wins produced would have been -

Jefferson 0.160 WP48 - if played 2870 minutes - wins produced = 9.6
Love 0.234 wp 48 - if played 2870 minutes - wins produced = 14
Sessions 0.203 wp48 - if played 2870 minutes - wins produced = 12.1

with these numbers

Jefferson is about #16 among centers using the wages of wins methodology. [Because he clasify's many of the best PF as centers, eg. Duncan. Gasol, Lee, Bosch, Horford, and defense plays a bigger role than for PER, where it plays no role.

Love would be ranked #2 among PF for some of the same reasons above. If you took all Centers and PF who ranked about Love he would be #6. Just Howard, Pau Gasol, David Lee, Tim Duncan and Troy Murphy are ranked higher than Love at the Center and PF positions.

Sessions would rank #6 among PG with 12.1 wins produced and #5 among SG. There are only 9 guards ranked higher than Sessions if he played starters minutes.

Thats about 36 wins produced just for the 3 best Wolves players.

As many of you know, wins produced is correlated to actual win totals usually plus or minus a couple of games.

If others produce positive results - Flynn, Gomes, Brewer, Ellington, Pavlovic etc its even better.

Last year;

Brewer Wp48 0.053 - if he played 30 minutes per game 2460 minutes = 2.7 wins produced

Gomes wp 48 0.012 - if he played 22 minutes per game = 0.5 wins produced

Pavlovic wp48 0.072 - if he played 25 minutes per game 2050 minutes = 3.1 wins produced



Most others on the team - Cardinal [wp48 minus 0.033], Pecherov [wp48 minus 0.014], wilkins [wp48 minus 0.046] have negative wp48. (Couldn't find Hollins.)

Flynn and Ellington - no stats, so we'll leave out.

So for fun lets make the negative guys zero, this might be true if Flynn and Ellington are positive and the negative guys mostly sit on the bench.

The wins produced

Love = 14
Sessions = 12.1
Jefferson = 9.6
Pavlovic = 3.1
Brewer = 2.7
Gomes = 0.5

Total team wins = 39 wins
plus whatever Flynn and Ellington produce minus what the other guys take away.

[revprodeji]

I think they could produce at that level towards the later part of the year. For the first couple months we will be developing chemistry and becoming aware of the system. My over under is 28.

[Wolves2011]

The wins produced

Love = 14
Sessions = 12.1
Jefferson = 9.6
Pavlovic = 3.1
Brewer = 2.7
Gomes = 0.5

Total team wins = 39 wins
plus whatever Flynn and Ellington produce minus what the other guys take away.

should be 42 wins.... need to learn to add better...lol...

42 wins without anything from Flynn or ellington - should be an interesting year.

[Basti]

I think they could produce at that level towards the later part of the year. For the first couple months we will be developing chemistry and becoming aware of the system. My over under is 28.

I pretty much agree with you here except that my estimate for over/under is 22 wins.

[Esohny]

I think they could produce at that level towards the later part of the year. For the first couple months we will be developing chemistry and becoming aware of the system. My over under is 28.

I pretty much agree with you here except that my estimate for over/under is 22 wins.

Around 30 seems reasonable. To be anywhere near .500, they'll need some serious good fortune.

[Breakdown777]

I don't see many teams getting worse, so I think we'll end up about the same as last year. If we are healty, that may result in a few more wins. 26 is the number I'd go with.

[Foye]

I'd say 25-30 wins.

[Canomad]

29 wins

[GopherIt!]

(6 x 7 - 3 x 4) / (3 + 6 - 4 x 2)

[Klomp]

(6 x 7 - 3 x 4) / (3 + 6 - 4 x 2)

Yeah, 30 sounds about right

[Wolves2011]

For those who say the wolves should have 25 wins or 30 wins etc there is a disconnect.

1) The wages of wins methodology for teams is plus or minus a few wins.
You add up individual player contributions from scoring points efficiently, rebounds, assists steals etc and using statistical magic, identify how many wins that translates into. This is then compared to actual team wins. The result is usually plus or minus 2 or 3 games.

2) So either the player performance per 48 minutes is much worse - fewer rebounds by Jefferson and Love, fewer assists by Sessions fewer points by all concerned or

3) You think they will play fewer minutes, eg Jefferson is hurt, Kurt benches Love and Sessions plays them fewer minutes than last season. Because even if they just reproduce what they did last year, with Jefferson playing 50 games, Love playing 25 minutes per game, Sessions playing 27 minutes per game these three player get 6.1 [Jefferson], 10.0 [Love] and 9.2 [Sessions] wins

25.3 wins [for Jefferson, Love and Sessions].

Again that assumes Jefferson only plays 50 games, Love plays 25 minutes per game and Sessions plays 27 minutes per game.

Pavlovic, Brewer and Gomes were good for about 3.5 games more last season.

So if Jefferson is hurt and Love and Sessions are bench players the team has 28.9 wins.

I understand your reluctance to accept these stats.

24 wins to 42 is a lot.

But you are forgetting.

1) Jefferson was injured = he played only 50 games.

2) Love got much better in the second half of the season and played limited minutes

3) We signed Sessions, [who Hollinger calls the most underrated player in the NBA] and his minutes will increase.

4) We got rid of many players who were not positive contributors, but who played many minutes, like Telfair or who played many minutes and contributed little

Foye played 35 minutes per game and contributed 1.3 wins. He was replaced by Sessions who contributed 9.2 wins in only 27 minutes per game. Many negative contributors played big minutes for the wolves last season.

As long as Flynn isn't a big negative contributor [playing a lot of minutes] and other players follow historical patterns, this team almost has to win more than 35 games.

The only way this doesn't work is if

1) player performance per minute deteriorates.

2) minutes of high performers are reduced

3) low performing players - like Telfair, Foye, McCants etc play many minutes.

But we'll see.

[Basti]

it's nice to see you putting so much effort into this but you seem to forget that this team is basically a complete new team with only 5 players returning (Al, Love, Brewer, Gomes and Cardinal) and a new coach with a completely new system. it will take a few months just to get used to each other . plus our team is very joung and doesn't really rely on veteran play like last year with a guy like Miller playing heavy minutes.

[Wolves2011]

The wages of wins methodology has a good history.

Either

1) performance per minute is reduced

2) minutes are reduced for good players and go up for bad players

or they win many more games than people expect.

People here forget that in early Feb, when Jefferson was hurt, this team was on its way to 30 to 35 wins.

If jefferson hadn't gotten hurt and they had won say 33 games, would 40 wins seem so far away?

If could be that "newness" of the team and coaches, results in player performance per minute being reduced.

Flynn isn't smart enough to pass to Jefferson inside, he pouts and stops rebounding therefore his numbers fall.

Sessions sits the bench because Kurt wants to get Flynn 40 minutes per game at PG, and won't give the "small" Sessions time at SG.

etc...

But I don't think those things are likely.

people made the same argument as you are making here, for why the Celtics couldn't win a championship 2 years ago.

It will take a season for Pierce, KG and Ray and the others to Jell. They might win their second or third season together.

I'm hoping for a positive surprise.

Don't forget they were on their way to 30 to 35 wins last year before Jefferson was hurt.

[deeney0]

26 +/- 5

[C.lupus]

If could be that "newness" of the team and coaches, results in player performance per minute being reduced.

I think this is your answer. The problem with predicting wins for this team is that it has 10 new players, a new coaching staff, and new front office. It really isn't the same team as last year at all, even though there are some returning players. Heck, the Clippers are about as close to last year's Wolves team as this Wolves team is.

This team is also still very young, which is a big factor that will cost them wins. The difference between us a Boston is that the Celtics added two HOF veterans to a team with a HOF veteran. We aren't even in the same conversation here.


I think somewhere around 30 wins is feasible for this team with (as Rev pointed out) most of the wins coming later in the season.

[Narf]

To point out the obvious, how many we win really depends on how many minutes they give rookies early. If we start Flynn and give big minutes to the other rookies we could reasonably win 5 or 6 of our first 20 games while they learn how to play and be a .500+ team after that. The way this team is built, we ought to have some serious growing pains. My guess is we win 34 games, 12 in the first half and 22 in the 2nd half.

[Arlisin]

You guys are pretty optimistic in my opinion. I would be glad if we win 25 this year, our rookies play a lot of minutes and improve. We lost Miller and Foye who were both important players (even though I am glad they got traded). So we will struggle big time. If Flynn does not turn out to be an amazing rookie I don't see us win close to 30 games.

[Narf]

You guys are pretty optimistic in my opinion. I would be glad if we win 25 this year, our rookies play a lot of minutes and improve. We lost Miller and Foye who were both important players (even though I am glad they got traded). So we will struggle big time. If Flynn does not turn out to be an amazing rookie I don't see us win close to 30 games.

I agree this board is pretty optimistic, but we have a league average or better starter at 4 positions and only SG is a negative. But more importantly, we have what looks like a solid coaching staff for the first time since Flip left.

I think basing the Wolves season on years past is assuming the worst, not being "realistic"

[Arlisin]

I don't think that our small forwards are above league average. Same goes for our point guards. I like Sessions and Flynn and I think they both will be very good players one day but I don't see them doing great this season. I think our only above average starters are Jefferson and Love and Jefferson comes back from an injury so i don't see us winning anything close to 30 games but I hope for the best of course.

[Wolves2011]

I don't think that our small forwards are above league average. Same goes for our point guards. I like Sessions and Flynn and I think they both will be very good players one day but I don't see them doing great this season. I think our only above average starters are Jefferson and Love and Jefferson comes back from an injury so i don't see us winning anything close to 30 games but I hope for the best of course.

Sessions was #13 ranked PG by PER [he would have been #11 at SG, where he played about half his minutes last year. ]

Sessions was ranked #10 in wins produced [Wages or Wins].

Hollinger the guy who produces the PER stats for ESPN, calls Sessions the most underrated player in the NBA and the steal of the summer.

We are above average at 3 positions, center, power forward and whereever Sessions plays.

If Flynn, plays at a high level that could be a fourth position.