bwgood77 wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:If Booker played 20 of the 29 games he sat out on, we may have won another another 8-10? So that's already close to 30 wins alone on that sad team we put on the floor last season. With Ayton, more shooting from Ariza and Bridges (hopefully) and some more improvement from our young guys, I think we have a floor of 30 wins. Add in some big Booker games and the odd game where Bender puts on his big boy pants, that's another 5, maybe 8 wins.
So I'm still sticking to 35 wins but with a team with this much potential but still relative lacking in experience, the win deviation could easily be in the 10 game range. 45 wins isn't out of the question, but neither is 25, especially if we fall down hard because of the lack of talent from a playmaking standpoint and of course, injuries
Booker would have been good for 10 more wins if he played 20 more games? No, maybe a handful. We had a pretty brutal schedule to in. In the last 13 games he DID play, we won 1 game, against Memphis. In the 6 before that which he played, we won one against Dallas.
Our schedule was extremely tough down the stretch when he was out as well....most all against really good teams fighting for the playoffs.
I think we can improve a lot. I think mid 30s is do-able, and with Igor and our added shooting, defense, and Ayton, I could almost see anything....considering I watched that Hornacek coached team without a lot of talent win 48. Thinking of what Igor did with Slovenia, if things go just right, it wouldn't shock me if we were one of those final teams fighting for the playoffs either. This is one offseason it's tough to make a prediction...I'd probably stick with mid 30s but getting more than that won't surprise me at all.
I don't mean those exact games he sat out last season, we could've won half of those. I mean in any random 20 game stretch, we could have been good for 8-10 wins had he played and of course, if we weren't so intent on tanking. Last season whether he played or not, we were just a bad/good tanking team and we would've lost a lot of games anyway. I'm using last season's performance to project this upcoming season's W/L's.
What my point is that, with a poor tanking-minded team and him having played only 54 games, we were a 21 win team. Had we not tried to tank in a lot of games and had he played more, we probably come closer to 30 wins than low 20's. Happy to agree to disagree on this point but I'm using this as my basis for next season's projections. With the team we now have, a better coach, better system and internal improvements, a near 15-win improvement is what I'm projecting. More so than the talent we have on board, I do think that the coaching change will have the biggest impact on W's this season. While we have gotten better talent-wise, I think guys like Ayton, Bridges and even the 2-3 season 'vets' aren't necessarily ready to consistently contribute but coaching will be the difference maker, if Koko produces as advertised.
