Predict the Wizards record in 2012-2013

[GhostsOfGil]

I expect significant time lost from both Nene and Okafor so I'm going to go with 32-50

I may come back and revise before the season starts.

[tontoz]

33-45 if healthy.

And 4 ties, right?

I'm saying if wall And Nene come back healthy maybe in December we have a chance to get 35+ wins

I think you missed the joke.

[BarnabyJones]

37-45.

[nuposse04]

I'm an optimist...I thought somewhere between 42-45 wins before the wall injury I believe...Probably a 36 win team unless the frontcourt shows up big time in the beginning of the season. That and Wall finally turning the corner...

**** it,

41-41

[CaPtaiN eYeSaNo]

40-42

[queridiculo]

The lack of cohesion due to our injury issues is going to put this team in a hole early. Who know when Wall comes back, and how effective he will be when he does.

Having had my fair share with stress related patella and foot injuries I fully expect this to linger throughout the season.

I'm not quite as optimistic as some of you folks here. I don't see this team winning more than 30 games.

I'll put my guess at 28-54, another lottery trip in this teams future.

So long Ernie, and thanks for nothing.

[FAH1223]

thats the great thing if this team gets back into the lottery, we'll get a new GM in no time

[tontoz]

Didn't we already have a predictions thread?

Anyway i am going with 35 wins. I think the interior strength will carry the team but the weakness at the 3 will hold it back.

[closg00]

thats the great thing if this team gets back into the lottery, we'll get a new GM in no time

Ted has never fired a GM

[DaRealHibachi]

34-48...

[Rafael122]

Quite surprised that Hollinger picked the Wizards to finish with 38 games won this season. I am going to go with 40. But if Wall is out for stretches out of time, I am bumping that down to about 35.

[Ruzious]

I think Vegas has it right. 30.5-47.5.

I could be off by half a game... or so.

With Wall's injury and Nene missing training camp, I was thinking probably just short of 30 wins. They'll be yet another miserable start to the season (8-32, around .250 winning percentage) and an extended yet utterly meaningless feel good late season run (around .500) that has a strong possibility of taking us out of the running for a high lottery pick this time around. And once again, that run will have the front office thinking, they're just a bit of good health & one player away from competing for the playoffs. And the reign of Ernie Grunfeld continues.

Of course I need to see some preseason games to get a real feel for things but I'm not overly optimistic about the season or long term.

I just wonder when the novelty of having older, professional players with marginal talent will wear off and the board begins to yearn for guys with "upside" on the roster once again.

The preseason's gone pretty much as expectorated. I'm sticking with 30.5 wins, though that seems a bit overly optimistic.

[nate33]

Quite surprised that Hollinger picked the Wizards to finish with 38 games won this season. I am going to go with 40. But if Wall is out for stretches out of time, I am bumping that down to about 35.

Don't have Insider. Can you give a summary of what he said?

Hollinger never missed an opportunity to bash the Wizards, but his projection would rank him as one of the most optimistic analysts out there. Of course, I have been equally as optimistic so it's hard to say that I'm surprised. I'm just happy someone out there agrees with me that that stats post-Nene suggest that the Wizards are actually competent. Too many people take it is a given that the Wizards suck without actually looking at the numbers.

[tontoz]

Quite surprised that Hollinger picked the Wizards to finish with 38 games won this season. I am going to go with 40. But if Wall is out for stretches out of time, I am bumping that down to about 35.

Don't have Insider. Can you give a summary of what he said?

Hollinger never missed an opportunity to bash the Wizards, but his projection would rank him as one of the most optimistic analysts out there. Of course, I have been equally as optimistic so it's hard to say that I'm surprised. I'm just happy someone out there agrees with me that that stats post-Nene suggest that the Wizards are actually competent. Too many people take it is a given that the Wizards suck without actually looking at the numbers.

Overview

Go through the bad franchise checklist, and this one pretty much ticks all the boxes:

• Young players showing no signs of development, even after several years? Check.

• Firing the coach midseason and hiring his top assistant, then figuring what the heck and giving the gig to the assistant full-time? Check.

• Using all their future cap space to trade for mid-tier veterans with cap-clogging deals? Check.

• Short-circuiting multiple rebuilding projects for quick fixes? Check.

• Andray Blatche? Check.

Yet one of the joys of being bad in the NBA is that the league will keep lobbing lottery picks your way until you have almost no choice but to become decent for a few years. The Wizards tried to forestall this fate a few years ago by trading a lottery pick to Minnesota for Mike Miller and Randy Foye, and it worked for a while. But after a few more lotto picks and another move that's a direct homage to the Miller-Foye deal, the Wizards may accidentally find themselves in the playoff race this season.


HOLLINGER'S PLAYER PROFILES
Check out Hollinger's player scouting reports and '12-13 stat projections for the Wizards' roster. Player Profiles

Certainly, the Wizards won't be the comedy routine they were at this point a year ago, when they had quite possibly the lowest collective basketball IQ in the history of the game. Washington sent out several of the dimmer bulbs from that group, with the result that Jordan Crawford is the only remaining player who routinely makes you want to smash light fixtures and throw cutlery.

Nonetheless, the Wizards' inability to develop their players is going to remain a story for as long as they have talented first-rounders stalling out after a year. John Wall is entering his third season and still can't make a jump shot or set up his man for a screen; Crawford is in Year 3 and has no idea yet what a good shot is or why it might be desirable to take one. After the failures of Nick Young, JaVale McGee and Blatche, among others, this is getting a bit repetitive.

The 'Zards have had a few successes, however, most notably with French center Kevin Seraphin. He came to Washington raw but showed some refined skill as a starter late in the season, with better post moves and an improved mid-range J. This is incredibly encouraging news for Wiz fans, proving that it's at least theoretically possible for players to improve here. Trevor Booker also showed progress as energetic combo forward, and stood out amid this team's general malaise by hustling and playing hard every night.

Hopefully some of that will rub off on Chris Singleton and Jan Vesely, a pair of 2011 first-round picks who struggled mightily as rookies. Vesely, in particular, seems cut from the fine recent tradition of athletic young Wizards with no idea how to play basketball.

Washington fired Flip Saunders and hired top assistant Randy Wittman, and while Wittman got more results out of these guys (including Seraphin) than Saunders, his past track record in Minnesota is less than encouraging. The same can be said for general manager Ernie Grunfeld, who somehow got a contract extension despite a four-year stretch where the Wizards went 88-224.

So enjoy the sugar high of playoff contention this year, Washington. Chances are it will wear off quickly.





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2011-12 Recap

[Dat2U]

Nate I don't know how anyone could take that late season run seriously.

1. The sample size is too small.
2. That winning streak to end the season was against teams playing out the string for the most part.
3. The condensed season with all those games packed into a short period of time meant that as the season wound down, we saw a lot of games that weren't of normal NBA quality.
4. At the very least, any optimism should be tempered with a grain of salt. We've seen meaningless late season feel good runs before.
5. Before training camp even began, our two best players were out with injuries that will delay the start of their season.
6. The lack of offensive skill on our roster is glaring.

To me 38 wins is the absolute best case scenario if your wearing rose colored glasses. I wouldn't consider it optimistic, more like slightly unrealistic.

[nate33]

Dat2U, I've posted about the late season run multiple times. The bottom line is that, even if you ignore the 6 game winning streak to end the season, the Wizards were still a MUCH better ball club than they were pre-trade.

From an earlier post:

Even if you ignore the 6 game win streak, the post-trade team still had a -3.1 point differential. I'm talking about the worst possible sampling of games: the 19-game stretch after the trade during which Nene missed 13 of the games, but before the win streak at the end of the year. That sampling of games excludes the two Miami wins, the Chicago win, and one of the Charlotte wins. It also incorporates the embarrassing 38-point loss to New York. Even in that awful, injury-depleted period of time with no Nene, no Booker (and no McGee or Young), the Wizards had an OffEff of 99.1 and a DefEff of 102.2. That's a -3.1 point differential. The Pythagorean Wins Formula says that a -3.1 point differential is a 32-win pace. (If you ignore the New York game, the Wizards had just a -1.0 differential, which is a 38-win pace.)

So we're talking about taking a 32-win team, and adding Nene, Okafor, Booker, Ariza and Beal; plus an improved Wall, Vesely and Seraphin. With reasonable health, I expect around 38-42 wins. This year, 38 wins might be enough to squeak into the playoffs.

[Ruzious]

I gotta agree with Dat. If we're comparing this year's team to the team the Wiz had at the end of last season, Okafor is likely to give the Wiz less production that James Singleton gave. Ariza compounds the shooting problems the team has. Beal is a 19 year old rookie. Wall is hurt. Vesely looks noticably less athletic. Nene will likely slow down. Seraphin had what appeared to be a disappointing offseason.

[nate33]

I gotta agree with Dat. If we're comparing this year's team to the team the Wiz had at the end of last season, Okafor is likely to give the Wiz less production that James Singleton gave. Ariza compounds the shooting problems the team has. Beal is a 19 year old rookie. Wall is hurt. Vesely looks noticably less athletic. Nene will likely slow down. Seraphin had what appeared to be a disappointing offseason.

I think all those changes are marginal. The big change is that Nene is lilkely to play more than 31% of the games this year. When Nene plays, the team is pretty damn good.

Seriously, that team during the 19-game stretch that I'm talking about (which excludes the 6-game winning streak at the end), started Vesely and Seraphin for most of the games. Now we're talking about adding 3 big men (Nene, Okafor and Booker) who are all better than those two guys. And the loss of James Singleton may hurt, but let's not overstate the issue. During that 19-game stretch, Singleton was only on the roster for 6 games and he averaged just 21 minutes a game.

[Ruzious]

You're seeing only what you want to see. They were playing mainly against bad teams, injured teams, and teams that didn't care. Those games are not the equivalent of the average opponents the Wiz will face. The Wiz finished with the 2nd worst record in the NBA last season because they didn't have those opponents all season. They improved after the Nene trade, but they still finished 2nd worst in the NBA - even with the improvement. As much as you and the Wizards organization try, you can't spin away from that. Even Earl Monroe's best spin moves couldn't erase a 2nd worst in the NBA finish. For the reasons I spelled out in the last post, they have NOT improved the team in any significant way for this season. I'd love to be wrong, but to expect a good team is not logical, imo.

[tontoz]

During nate's 19 game stretch the Wizards played

Hawks twice
Memphis
Indy 3 times
Boston
Philly
Orlando
NY

That's 10 games against playoff teams.