PG: Burned by the Heat in Miami

[SFour]

Wemby did have a big impact, he almost won DPOY as a rookie.....add him to a healthy Raptors team and they're 5th seed in the east at the bare minimum.

That's a wild assertion. How do you figure that? 5th seed Heat have 13 wins, Raps have 7. You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season? Out of 26 games? Nearly doubling our win total? We already have proof that adding Wemby to the Spurs didn't increase their win totals....at all...over 82 games. But...here's an attempt to analyze it statistically, so we have something to debate other than "I feel like...".

Win shares are a calculated stat, which inherently has its flaws. But it does do a fairly decent job of attributing relative contributions of each player to a team's win totals. Wemby had 3.7 WS last year and so far this year 1.8 WS. For reference, Poeltl had 3.8 WS last year and 2.4 WS this year. Even if you allow for inaccuracies in the win shares stat, granting Wemby DOUBLE his win shares this year, so 3.6 win shares, that would only put us at 10-11 wins, good for anywhere from 8-11th, ie a play-in team. And that's dropping him onto a team that still has Poeltl on it, playing the number of minutes he already does. If you allow him to play PF alongside Poeltl, taking Mogbo (1.0 WS) and Boucher's (0.9 WS) minutes, it's not entirely clear that we actually win that many more games this year. Now, granted, Wemby has played 6 fewer games than some of our guys, but even assuming full health, and pro-rating his Win shaes of 1.8 from 20 to 26 games, that's still only 2.34 win shares, nowhere near the 6 wins we'd need to get to 5th.

Just for historical perspective on win shares and their accuracy, 2018-19 Kawhi had 9.5 WS in 60 games, while 17-18 Derozan had 9.6 WS in 80 games. We won 1 fewer game with Kawhi playing 60 games. Poeltl had 5.6 WS in 82 games, Green had 5.9 in 80 games, which is a wash. If Kawhi played a full 80 games like Derozan did, he'd pro-rate to 12.7 WS, giving us 3 more wins than 17-18, which I can believe we were a 62 win team in 18-19 if fully healthy. We should've won a few more games than with Derozan.

Wemby is a defensive beast but he was actually a negative on the offensive end last year, due to a high volume of inefficient 3p shooting (32.5% on 5.5 attempts). This year he has nearly double his attempts with marginal shooting improvment, 34.1% on 9 attempts per game. He takes almost exactly half his shots from 3. By most statistical/efficiency measures, Poeltl is actually a better offensive player than Wemby by nearly the same amount that Wemby is better than Poeltl defensively. Which is to say, they're about a wash in terms of contributing to wins.

That's a statistics based analysis. I'd be interested to see how you'd justify us being a 5th seed with Wemby instead of Poeltl, or even WITH Poeltl.

FWIW, the league leader in WS this season is Shai with 4.8 WS. Jokic is 4.6 WS. Meaning adding a MVP candidate to our team is the bare minimum to get us into the play-in conversation. Which makes sense to me on paper/eye-test. We're not one piece away from being a contender...we're one piece away from being in the play-in, maybe winning the play-in. Granted, we lost a lot of wins and win shares due to injury, but that's part of the game.

But for the sake of argument...Pro-rating Scotties' 1.0 WS over 14 games, and IQ 0.1 WS over 3 games, we're theoretically only "missing" about 1 WS for a fully healthy Scottie, and about 1 WS for IQ. Add 2 Wins for those injuries, plus 2-3 Wins by adding a fully healthy Wemby (without losing Poeltl), and we're STILL only at 4-5 more wins. Again, 11-12 wins total, good for 8th in the East.

I don't see how you get us to 5th in the East...let alone at "a bare minimum". We're not one player away from fighting for home court advantage with the Knicks/Magic/Cavs/Celts. Nope. These stats are the reason why I completely disagree with people who think we're a near .500 team (13 wins) if we were fully healthy, or just 1 piece away from competing. There's nothing to back up this assertion other than "gut feelings".

I think he’s also assuming that Barnes hasn’t missed half the year, IQ hasn’t missed it all, etc.

We’re not one player away, but you could argue that we’ve been missing 3/4 key pieces in almost every game this season. Add Wemby to that and hell you might be fighting for a top 3 seed. IQ/Dick/RJ/Barnes/Wemby would be one of the best young teams in the league (especially since the depth would be among the leagues best to).

The key to adding Wemby would be that you would have Poeltl off the bench....that would fix one of the team's biggest weaknesses. Both the starting lineup and bench would improve. I would move Ochai to the starting lineup for defense and Dick to the bench for offense.

IQ-Davion
Ochai-Dick
RJ-Brown
Barnes-Mogbo
Wemby-Poeltl

You can't tell me this team wouldn't be better than the current Heat or Spurs. It's insanity to say their expected wins would only be 12 so that only puts them at 8th place, ignoring that 1 more win puts them at 5th....we're arguing over nothing. This is the problem with being overly obsessed with advanced stats.

[ontnut]

That's a wild assertion. How do you figure that? 5th seed Heat have 13 wins, Raps have 7. You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season? Out of 26 games? Nearly doubling our win total? We already have proof that adding Wemby to the Spurs didn't increase their win totals....at all...over 82 games. But...here's an attempt to analyze it statistically, so we have something to debate other than "I feel like...".

Win shares are a calculated stat, which inherently has its flaws. But it does do a fairly decent job of attributing relative contributions of each player to a team's win totals. Wemby had 3.7 WS last year and so far this year 1.8 WS. For reference, Poeltl had 3.8 WS last year and 2.4 WS this year. Even if you allow for inaccuracies in the win shares stat, granting Wemby DOUBLE his win shares this year, so 3.6 win shares, that would only put us at 10-11 wins, good for anywhere from 8-11th, ie a play-in team. And that's dropping him onto a team that still has Poeltl on it, playing the number of minutes he already does. If you allow him to play PF alongside Poeltl, taking Mogbo (1.0 WS) and Boucher's (0.9 WS) minutes, it's not entirely clear that we actually win that many more games this year. Now, granted, Wemby has played 6 fewer games than some of our guys, but even assuming full health, and pro-rating his Win shaes of 1.8 from 20 to 26 games, that's still only 2.34 win shares, nowhere near the 6 wins we'd need to get to 5th.

Just for historical perspective on win shares and their accuracy, 2018-19 Kawhi had 9.5 WS in 60 games, while 17-18 Derozan had 9.6 WS in 80 games. We won 1 fewer game with Kawhi playing 60 games. Poeltl had 5.6 WS in 82 games, Green had 5.9 in 80 games, which is a wash. If Kawhi played a full 80 games like Derozan did, he'd pro-rate to 12.7 WS, giving us 3 more wins than 17-18, which I can believe we were a 62 win team in 18-19 if fully healthy. We should've won a few more games than with Derozan.

Wemby is a defensive beast but he was actually a negative on the offensive end last year, due to a high volume of inefficient 3p shooting (32.5% on 5.5 attempts). This year he has nearly double his attempts with marginal shooting improvment, 34.1% on 9 attempts per game. He takes almost exactly half his shots from 3. By most statistical/efficiency measures, Poeltl is actually a better offensive player than Wemby by nearly the same amount that Wemby is better than Poeltl defensively. Which is to say, they're about a wash in terms of contributing to wins.

That's a statistics based analysis. I'd be interested to see how you'd justify us being a 5th seed with Wemby instead of Poeltl, or even WITH Poeltl.

FWIW, the league leader in WS this season is Shai with 4.8 WS. Jokic is 4.6 WS. Meaning adding a MVP candidate to our team is the bare minimum to get us into the play-in conversation. Which makes sense to me on paper/eye-test. We're not one piece away from being a contender...we're one piece away from being in the play-in, maybe winning the play-in. Granted, we lost a lot of wins and win shares due to injury, but that's part of the game.

But for the sake of argument...Pro-rating Scotties' 1.0 WS over 14 games, and IQ 0.1 WS over 3 games, we're theoretically only "missing" about 1 WS for a fully healthy Scottie, and about 1 WS for IQ. Add 2 Wins for those injuries, plus 2-3 Wins by adding a fully healthy Wemby (without losing Poeltl), and we're STILL only at 4-5 more wins. Again, 11-12 wins total, good for 8th in the East.

I don't see how you get us to 5th in the East...let alone at "a bare minimum". We're not one player away from fighting for home court advantage with the Knicks/Magic/Cavs/Celts. Nope. These stats are the reason why I completely disagree with people who think we're a near .500 team (13 wins) if we were fully healthy, or just 1 piece away from competing. There's nothing to back up this assertion other than "gut feelings".

I think he’s also assuming that Barnes hasn’t missed half the year, IQ hasn’t missed it all, etc.

We’re not one player away, but you could argue that we’ve been missing 3/4 key pieces in almost every game this season. Add Wemby to that and hell you might be fighting for a top 3 seed. IQ/Dick/RJ/Barnes/Wemby would be one of the best young teams in the league (especially since the depth would be among the leagues best to).

The key to adding Wemby would be that you would have Poeltl off the bench....that would fix one of the team's biggest weaknesses. Both the starting lineup and bench would improve. I would move Ochai to the starting lineup for defense and Dick to the bench for offense.

IQ-Davion
Ochai-Dick
RJ-Brown
Barnes-Mogbo
Wemby-Poeltl

You can't tell me this team wouldn't be better than the current Heat or Spurs. It's insanity to say their expected wins would only be 12 so that only puts them at 8th place, ignoring that 1 more win puts them at 5th....we're arguing over nothing. This is the problem with being overly obsessed with advanced stats.

I just gave a detailed and nuanced example of our best case outcome with a fully healthy team and adding Wemby (and not trading anyone off the team), to show that we'd still be below 5th place. This fantasy best case scenario adds 4-5 wins, instead of the "easy 6 more wins" you claim, and you reply with "oh hey, just throw one more win onto that total and we're 5th". As if the best case scenario wasn't enough, just tack on an arbitrary win to exceed our maximum expectation - when you previously claimed 5th was the bare minimum. Can you not see how disengenuous this way of debating is?

Listen, if you said "with Wemby and a fully healthy team we'd be competing against the Heat for 5th", that might be a more accurate statement. But that's not what you said, you said we'd be 5th at, and here's the important term: "bare minimum". And that's just simply not the case, is it?

[YogurtProducer]

I just gave a detailed and nuanced example of our best case outcome with a fully healthy team and adding Wemby (and not trading anyone off the team), to show that we'd still be below 5th place. This fantasy best case scenario adds 4-5 wins, instead of the "easy 6 more wins" you claim, and you reply with "oh hey, just throw one more win onto that total and we're 5th". As if the best case scenario wasn't enough, just tack on an arbitrary win to exceed our maximum expectation - when you previously claimed 5th was the bare minimum. Can you not see how disengenuous this way of debating is?

Listen, if you said "with Wemby and a fully healthy team we'd be competing against the Heat for 5th", that might be a more accurate statement. But that's not what you said, you said we'd be 5th at, and here's the important term: "bare minimum". And that's just simply not the case, is it?

Wemby did have a big impact, he almost won DPOY as a rookie.....add him to a healthy Raptors team and they're 5th seed in the east at the bare minimum.

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

[ontnut]

I just gave a detailed and nuanced example of our best case outcome with a fully healthy team and adding Wemby (and not trading anyone off the team), to show that we'd still be below 5th place. This fantasy best case scenario adds 4-5 wins, instead of the "easy 6 more wins" you claim, and you reply with "oh hey, just throw one more win onto that total and we're 5th". As if the best case scenario wasn't enough, just tack on an arbitrary win to exceed our maximum expectation - when you previously claimed 5th was the bare minimum. Can you not see how disengenuous this way of debating is?

Listen, if you said "with Wemby and a fully healthy team we'd be competing against the Heat for 5th", that might be a more accurate statement. But that's not what you said, you said we'd be 5th at, and here's the important term: "bare minimum". And that's just simply not the case, is it?

Wemby did have a big impact, he almost won DPOY as a rookie.....add him to a healthy Raptors team and they're 5th seed in the east at the bare minimum.

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you? I took ZERO minutes away from Mitchell or Shead or whoever to account for IQ.

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Boucher has 1.0 WS this year, who knows what Olynyk is? Is the bench better? Maybe. But there's a butterfly effect to changing the entire bench lineup too. Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

Also, did you forget the part where Poeltl and Wemby are still both on the team? I already accounted for that. So Olynyk should get almost 0 playing time. What you're really arguing here is Brown is the big difference? REALLY? LMAO.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". But there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. Yes, win shares are flawed, just like most advanced stats, but that said, they're probably less flawed than your "eye test" or "feelings. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby, if you're not going to use facts and stats. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know, maybe he'd be an even better version of himself in Toronto.

[SFour]

I just gave a detailed and nuanced example of our best case outcome with a fully healthy team and adding Wemby (and not trading anyone off the team), to show that we'd still be below 5th place. This fantasy best case scenario adds 4-5 wins, instead of the "easy 6 more wins" you claim, and you reply with "oh hey, just throw one more win onto that total and we're 5th". As if the best case scenario wasn't enough, just tack on an arbitrary win to exceed our maximum expectation - when you previously claimed 5th was the bare minimum. Can you not see how disengenuous this way of debating is?

Listen, if you said "with Wemby and a fully healthy team we'd be competing against the Heat for 5th", that might be a more accurate statement. But that's not what you said, you said we'd be 5th at, and here's the important term: "bare minimum". And that's just simply not the case, is it?

Wemby did have a big impact, he almost won DPOY as a rookie.....add him to a healthy Raptors team and they're 5th seed in the east at the bare minimum.

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you?

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Is the bench better? Maybe. But Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". Bbut there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know.

You said they could have an expected 11-12 wins total when healthy and then in the same breath you act like it's impossible for them to achieve 13 wins...you don't see how that's ridiculous? You're too wrapped up in statistics. There's a reason why games are played and not simulated by a computer.

[ontnut]

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you?

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Is the bench better? Maybe. But Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". Bbut there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know.

You said they could have an expected 11-12 wins total when healthy and then in the same breath you act like it's impossible for them to achieve 13 wins...you don't see how that's ridiculous? You're too wrapped up in statistics. There's a reason why games are played and not simulated by a computer.

They could make 13 wins sure. Best case scenario given the info we have. But you said "worst case scenario" not "best case scenario".

Justify that.

You're the one proposing a NBA2k fantasy sim situation that's completely unrealistic

[YogurtProducer]

I just gave a detailed and nuanced example of our best case outcome with a fully healthy team and adding Wemby (and not trading anyone off the team), to show that we'd still be below 5th place. This fantasy best case scenario adds 4-5 wins, instead of the "easy 6 more wins" you claim, and you reply with "oh hey, just throw one more win onto that total and we're 5th". As if the best case scenario wasn't enough, just tack on an arbitrary win to exceed our maximum expectation - when you previously claimed 5th was the bare minimum. Can you not see how disengenuous this way of debating is?

Listen, if you said "with Wemby and a fully healthy team we'd be competing against the Heat for 5th", that might be a more accurate statement. But that's not what you said, you said we'd be 5th at, and here's the important term: "bare minimum". And that's just simply not the case, is it?

Wemby did have a big impact, he almost won DPOY as a rookie.....add him to a healthy Raptors team and they're 5th seed in the east at the bare minimum.

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you? I took ZERO minutes away from Mitchell or Shead or whoever to account for IQ.

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Boucher has 1.0 WS this year, who knows what Olynyk is? Is the bench better? Maybe. But there's a butterfly effect to changing the entire bench lineup too. Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

Also, did you forget the part where Poeltl and Wemby are still both on the team? I already accounted for that. So Olynyk should get almost 0 playing time. What you're really arguing here is Brown is the big difference? REALLY? LMAO.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". But there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. Yes, win shares are flawed, just like most advanced stats, but that said, they're probably less flawed than your "eye test" or "feelings. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby, if you're not going to use facts and stats. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know, maybe he'd be an even better version of himself in Toronto.

This conversation is just so dumb.

You think adding IQ, Wemby, healthy Barnes, Olynyk, Brown, etc. would not add 6 wins? Honestly that is just ridiculous.

Barnes playing - 5-9
Barnes not playing - 2-11

Barnes alone by that metric himself has added 3 wins.
IQ? Probably another win or two
Wemby? Considering he is the best of the bunch is probably good for 3/4 wins himself
Brown/Olnyk? Considering we have given Mogbo, Boucher, Battle, Shead, Davion, and Bruno decent minutes this year I would say those 2 would add another win or two.

Like IDK how you possibly think adding 5 players to this team cant provide 6 wins

[SFour]

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you?

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Is the bench better? Maybe. But Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". Bbut there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know.

You said they could have an expected 11-12 wins total when healthy and then in the same breath you act like it's impossible for them to achieve 13 wins...you don't see how that's ridiculous? You're too wrapped up in statistics. There's a reason why games are played and not simulated by a computer.

They could make 13 wins sure. Best case scenario given the info we have. But you said "worst case scenario" not "best case scenario".

Justify that.

You're the one proposing a NBA2k fantasy sim situation that's completely unrealistic

I said bare minimum assuming full health, it should go without saying if multiple starters are injured it would derail the season.......there's nothing ridiculous about .500, if anything that's a moderate prediction that doesn't account for the possibility of the team overachieving. If I told you at the start of the season the Cavs would be #1 in the NBA at 23-4 you would also say I'm proposing a NBA2k fantasy right Like I said there's a reason the games are played in real life and not on a computer.

[ontnut]

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you? I took ZERO minutes away from Mitchell or Shead or whoever to account for IQ.

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Boucher has 1.0 WS this year, who knows what Olynyk is? Is the bench better? Maybe. But there's a butterfly effect to changing the entire bench lineup too. Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

Also, did you forget the part where Poeltl and Wemby are still both on the team? I already accounted for that. So Olynyk should get almost 0 playing time. What you're really arguing here is Brown is the big difference? REALLY? LMAO.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". But there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. Yes, win shares are flawed, just like most advanced stats, but that said, they're probably less flawed than your "eye test" or "feelings. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby, if you're not going to use facts and stats. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know, maybe he'd be an even better version of himself in Toronto.

This conversation is just so dumb.

You think adding IQ, Wemby, healthy Barnes, Olynyk, Brown, etc. would not add 6 wins? Honestly that is just ridiculous.

Barnes playing - 5-9
Barnes not playing - 2-11

Barnes alone by that metric himself has added 3 wins.
IQ? Probably another win or two
Wemby? Considering he is the best of the bunch is probably good for 3/4 wins himself
Brown/Olnyk? Considering we have given Mogbo, Boucher, Battle, Shead, Davion, and Bruno decent minutes this year I would say those 2 would add another win or two.

Like IDK how you possibly think adding 5 players to this team cant provide 6 wins

You're just making up stats now lol. By your arbitrary gifted wins, we would have another 11 wins with everyone healthy + Wemby... so we'd have 18 wins? LOL. You gotta be kidding me, right? 2 wins ahead of NY for 3rd, and 3 behind Boston. We'd go from missing the play-ins last year to sole possession of 3rd in the East? Meanwhile, IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE, Wemby hasn't had ANY of that impact on San Antonio's win total in his rookie season. THEY WON THE SAME AMOUNT OF GAMES WITH HIM.

Come on bro, you can't believe this stuff you're saying.

This is why statistics matter, because your feelings about what this team is/could be and how big of an impact one player can make on wins game to game, are completely unrealistic.

[ontnut]

You said they could have an expected 11-12 wins total when healthy and then in the same breath you act like it's impossible for them to achieve 13 wins...you don't see how that's ridiculous? You're too wrapped up in statistics. There's a reason why games are played and not simulated by a computer.

They could make 13 wins sure. Best case scenario given the info we have. But you said "worst case scenario" not "best case scenario".

Justify that.

You're the one proposing a NBA2k fantasy sim situation that's completely unrealistic

I said bare minimum assuming full health, it should go without saying if multiple starters are injured it would derail the season.......there's nothing ridiculous about .500, if anything that's a moderate prediction that doesn't account for the possibility of the team overachieving. If I told you at the start of the season the Cavs would be #1 in the NBA at 23-4 you would also say I'm proposing a NBA2k fantasy right Like I said there's a reason the games are played in real life and not on a computer.

Fully healthy preseason, with an O/U of 30.5, Vegas predicted we'd be sitting around 9.5 wins right now. We're under by 2.5 games, so if we grant that injuries caused this 2.5 game difference, I'll give you 2.5 wins over Vegas odds for an "overachieving" Raps team. That still only gets us to 12 wins if we overachieved fully healthy. I mean c'mon.

.500 for this team was the upper end of any realistic projection of how this season was going to go. We already got breakouts from Agbaji and Dick too, don't forget, which are taken into account with our current win total. You think the ENTIRE TEAM was going to outperform their preseason projections? That's being unrealistic. Some were always going to do better, and some, worse.

Anyhow, you can believe what you want to believe, but I'll continue living in a world where actual on-court results and statistics matter.

[YogurtProducer]

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you? I took ZERO minutes away from Mitchell or Shead or whoever to account for IQ.

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Boucher has 1.0 WS this year, who knows what Olynyk is? Is the bench better? Maybe. But there's a butterfly effect to changing the entire bench lineup too. Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

Also, did you forget the part where Poeltl and Wemby are still both on the team? I already accounted for that. So Olynyk should get almost 0 playing time. What you're really arguing here is Brown is the big difference? REALLY? LMAO.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". But there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. Yes, win shares are flawed, just like most advanced stats, but that said, they're probably less flawed than your "eye test" or "feelings. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby, if you're not going to use facts and stats. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know, maybe he'd be an even better version of himself in Toronto.

This conversation is just so dumb.

You think adding IQ, Wemby, healthy Barnes, Olynyk, Brown, etc. would not add 6 wins? Honestly that is just ridiculous.

Barnes playing - 5-9
Barnes not playing - 2-11

Barnes alone by that metric himself has added 3 wins.
IQ? Probably another win or two
Wemby? Considering he is the best of the bunch is probably good for 3/4 wins himself
Brown/Olnyk? Considering we have given Mogbo, Boucher, Battle, Shead, Davion, and Bruno decent minutes this year I would say those 2 would add another win or two.

Like IDK how you possibly think adding 5 players to this team cant provide 6 wins

You're just making up stats now lol. By your arbitrary gifted wins, we would have another 11 wins with everyone healthy + Wemby... so we'd have 18 wins? LOL. You gotta be kidding me, right? 2 wins ahead of NY for 3rd, and 3 behind Boston. We'd go from missing the play-ins last year to sole possession of 3rd in the East? Meanwhile, IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE, Wemby hasn't had ANY of that impact on San Antonio's win total in his rookie season. THEY WON THE SAME AMOUNT OF GAMES WITH HIM.

Come on bro, you can't believe this stuff you're saying.

This is why statistics matter, because your feelings about what this team is/could be and how big of an impact one player can make on wins game to game, are completely unrealistic.

What stats did I make up exactly...?

Adding the likely DPOY and a guy who gives you 23ppg on 60TS% would be a MASSIVE addition for this team. I could 100% see this team healthy + just adding Wemby for free could be 3rd in the East lol.

Again, this team with Barnes is 5-9 (and really, if he did not get hurt in the games he left could be 7-7 but whatever) which is a 29 win pace. We are on a 15 win pace without Barnes. Simple math here suggests that is 14 wins over the course of a season. Add Wemby, who is better than Barnes, and you would see another leap. Add IQ/Brown/Olynyk and suddenly you have a really good starting group (IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby) and arguably the leagues best bench in Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl AND decent third stringers in Shead/Walter/Battle/Mogbo/Boucher

Like yeah... I will actually say that team without question would be a top 4 team in the east.

[YogurtProducer]

.500 for this team was the upper end of any realistic projection of how this season was going to go. We already got breakouts from Agbaji and Dick too, don't forget, which are taken into account with our current win total. You think the ENTIRE TEAM was going to outperform their preseason projections? That's being unrealistic. Some were always going to do better, and some, worse.

No, but IQ playing more than 3 games, Barnes more than 14, Olynyk more than 4, and Brown more than 0, would be expected. So who cares if Agbaji and Dick broke out, half our rotation simply just hasn't played.

Dick/Agbaji playing better does nothing to offset Barnes/IQ not playing.

[ontnut]

This conversation is just so dumb.

You think adding IQ, Wemby, healthy Barnes, Olynyk, Brown, etc. would not add 6 wins? Honestly that is just ridiculous.

Barnes playing - 5-9
Barnes not playing - 2-11

Barnes alone by that metric himself has added 3 wins.
IQ? Probably another win or two
Wemby? Considering he is the best of the bunch is probably good for 3/4 wins himself
Brown/Olnyk? Considering we have given Mogbo, Boucher, Battle, Shead, Davion, and Bruno decent minutes this year I would say those 2 would add another win or two.

Like IDK how you possibly think adding 5 players to this team cant provide 6 wins

You're just making up stats now lol. By your arbitrary gifted wins, we would have another 11 wins with everyone healthy + Wemby... so we'd have 18 wins? LOL. You gotta be kidding me, right? 2 wins ahead of NY for 3rd, and 3 behind Boston. We'd go from missing the play-ins last year to sole possession of 3rd in the East? Meanwhile, IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE, Wemby hasn't had ANY of that impact on San Antonio's win total in his rookie season. THEY WON THE SAME AMOUNT OF GAMES WITH HIM.

Come on bro, you can't believe this stuff you're saying.

This is why statistics matter, because your feelings about what this team is/could be and how big of an impact one player can make on wins game to game, are completely unrealistic.

What stats did I make up exactly...?

Adding the likely DPOY and a guy who gives you 23ppg on 60TS% would be a MASSIVE addition for this team. I could 100% see this team healthy + just adding Wemby for free could be 3rd in the East lol.

Again, this team with Barnes is 5-9 (and really, if he did not get hurt in the games he left could be 7-7 but whatever) which is a 29 win pace. We are on a 15 win pace without Barnes. Simple math here suggests that is 14 wins over the course of a season. Add Wemby, who is better than Barnes, and you would see another leap. Add IQ/Brown/Olynyk and suddenly you have a really good starting group (IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby) and arguably the leagues best bench in Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl AND decent third stringers in Shead/Walter/Battle/Mogbo/Boucher

Like yeah... I will actually say that team without question would be a top 4 team in the east.

That math is faulty and doesn't take into account games we would've lost anyway even with Barnes because we're simply playing better teams than us. That's a bad way to project wins because it assumes that every game has an equal chance of being won, which it doesn't. Remember the Raptors record without Kawhi? 17-5. Using your way of predicting wins, that Raptors team should've won 63 games without Kawhi. 5 more than we did WITH him. See how that doesn't work out?

[ontnut]

.500 for this team was the upper end of any realistic projection of how this season was going to go. We already got breakouts from Agbaji and Dick too, don't forget, which are taken into account with our current win total. You think the ENTIRE TEAM was going to outperform their preseason projections? That's being unrealistic. Some were always going to do better, and some, worse.

No, but IQ playing more than 3 games, Barnes more than 14, Olynyk more than 4, and Brown more than 0, would be expected. So who cares if Agbaji and Dick broke out, half our rotation simply just hasn't played.

Dick/Agbaji playing better does nothing to offset Barnes/IQ not playing.

FYI the 03-04 Cavs added in LEBRON JAMES (and Kapono), plus some more vets, and then won 18 more games to go from 17 to 35.

That would translate to 5 more wins over 26 games, which IF we were a .500 team fully healthy, overachieving with multiple breakouts blah blah blah, that would only get us to 18 wins, good for 3rd, in a historically weak Eastern conference. That's a lot of IF's, and a direct drop of Lebron James, 1st or 2nd best player of all time, PLUS not taking any minutes away from guys like Barnes or Barrett or whoever broke out and contributed to wins. That's the kind of level of talent we'd need to add to this team if you're talking about getting into the top 4 discussion. I like Wemby and all, but he's not on Lebron's level.

You keep ignoring the fact that the Spurs were 22-60 without Wemby, with a whole bunch of rookies like Sochan and Champagnie, and 22-60 with him in his rookie year with almost the same team. Just dropped him in.

[YogurtProducer]

You're just making up stats now lol. By your arbitrary gifted wins, we would have another 11 wins with everyone healthy + Wemby... so we'd have 18 wins? LOL. You gotta be kidding me, right? 2 wins ahead of NY for 3rd, and 3 behind Boston. We'd go from missing the play-ins last year to sole possession of 3rd in the East? Meanwhile, IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE, Wemby hasn't had ANY of that impact on San Antonio's win total in his rookie season. THEY WON THE SAME AMOUNT OF GAMES WITH HIM.

Come on bro, you can't believe this stuff you're saying.

This is why statistics matter, because your feelings about what this team is/could be and how big of an impact one player can make on wins game to game, are completely unrealistic.

What stats did I make up exactly...?

Adding the likely DPOY and a guy who gives you 23ppg on 60TS% would be a MASSIVE addition for this team. I could 100% see this team healthy + just adding Wemby for free could be 3rd in the East lol.

Again, this team with Barnes is 5-9 (and really, if he did not get hurt in the games he left could be 7-7 but whatever) which is a 29 win pace. We are on a 15 win pace without Barnes. Simple math here suggests that is 14 wins over the course of a season. Add Wemby, who is better than Barnes, and you would see another leap. Add IQ/Brown/Olynyk and suddenly you have a really good starting group (IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby) and arguably the leagues best bench in Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl AND decent third stringers in Shead/Walter/Battle/Mogbo/Boucher

Like yeah... I will actually say that team without question would be a top 4 team in the east.

That math is faulty and doesn't take into account games we would've lost anyway even with Barnes because we're simply playing better teams than us. That's a bad way to project wins because it assumes that every game has an equal chance of being won, which it doesn't. Remember the Raptors record without Kawhi? 17-5. Using your way of predicting wins, that Raptors team should've won 63 games without Kawhi. 5 more than we did WITH him. See how that doesn't work out?

I see you forgot the raptors had a better winning % without Kawhi in 2019/20 than they did in the 2018/19 season (a 60-22 pace to be exact).

So I guess in this situation, that is how this works.

[YogurtProducer]

.500 for this team was the upper end of any realistic projection of how this season was going to go. We already got breakouts from Agbaji and Dick too, don't forget, which are taken into account with our current win total. You think the ENTIRE TEAM was going to outperform their preseason projections? That's being unrealistic. Some were always going to do better, and some, worse.

No, but IQ playing more than 3 games, Barnes more than 14, Olynyk more than 4, and Brown more than 0, would be expected. So who cares if Agbaji and Dick broke out, half our rotation simply just hasn't played.

Dick/Agbaji playing better does nothing to offset Barnes/IQ not playing.

FYI the 03-04 Cavs added in LEBRON JAMES (and Kapono), plus some more vets, and then won 18 more games to go from 17 to 35.

That would translate to 5 more wins over 26 games, which IF we were a .500 team fully healthy, overachieving with multiple breakouts blah blah blah, that would only get us to 18 wins, good for 3rd, in a historically weak Eastern conference. That's a lot of IF's, and a direct drop of Lebron James, 1st or 2nd best player of all time, PLUS not taking any minutes away from guys like Barnes or Barrett or whoever broke out and contributed to wins. That's the kind of level of talent we'd need to add to this team if you're talking about getting into the top 4 discussion. I like Wemby and all, but he's not on Lebron's level.

You keep ignoring the fact that the Spurs were 22-60 without Wemby, with a whole bunch of rookies like Sochan and Champagnie, and 22-60 with him in his rookie year with almost the same team. Just dropped him in.

You seem hyper focused on Wemby. You’re ignoring IQ, Brown, Kelly, and 12 more games of Barnes. (And, you seem to ignore that Wemby isn’t a rookie anymore, he’s an improved 2nd year player).

Sorry dude. It is outlandish to suggest all those guys don’t win 4 more games. Like completely fully outlandish.

[SFour]

He did say fully healthy.

You took our 7 wins and the Heats 13 and said "You're saying Wemby would add 6 wins this season" completely ignoring that we would also be adding IQ, Brown, and Olynyk to Wemby (as well as 13 more games of Barnes) if we were "healthy". I can confidently say a team of IQ/RJ/Agbaji/Barnes/Wemby with a bench of Davion/Dick/Brown/Olynyk/Poeltl would have 13 wins right now at a minimum. Thats a team that would be competing for home court.

So your "detailed and nuanced" example ignored a lot of important context.

Also, win shares is a flawed way of looking at this anyways. Jokic led the lead at 17 win shares last year, but I think we all know removing Jokic from DEN would have a much higher impact than only 17 wins. The same player on two different teams will have vastly different "win shares" despite being the same player because it is 100% box score stat based.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. I included both a fully healthy Scottie and IQ, as well as adding Wemby. Those would be the two most important players to add, and to be fair, I added them at FULL health, not missing even a single game. That wasn't enough of a contingency for you? I took ZERO minutes away from Mitchell or Shead or whoever to account for IQ.

Now you want Brown and Olynyk too? OK...well, there's only so many minutes in a game. You add those guys in, and take some guys like Agbaji out. Without Brown's absence this year, Agbaji may not break out like he has, or Dick, for that matter. Boucher has 1.0 WS this year, who knows what Olynyk is? Is the bench better? Maybe. But there's a butterfly effect to changing the entire bench lineup too. Brown was pretty bad last year, and Olynyk looked like trash at the Olympics, so who knows? We don't have any real data on them this year.

Also, did you forget the part where Poeltl and Wemby are still both on the team? I already accounted for that. So Olynyk should get almost 0 playing time. What you're really arguing here is Brown is the big difference? REALLY? LMAO.

That's fine, if you guys want to argue from the perspective of "I feel like". But there's no way to actually debate your feelings and convince you otherwise, so this was entirely pointless. Yes, win shares are flawed, just like most advanced stats, but that said, they're probably less flawed than your "eye test" or "feelings. It's like the whole "I identify as..." argument which has clearly never gone anywhere - I can't convince you that you're not a couch if that's what you believe you are lol....just like I can't convince you we're not actually a top 4-5 seed fully healthy with Wemby, if you're not going to use facts and stats. Adding Wemby to SA didn't even win them an extra game...but what do I know, maybe he'd be an even better version of himself in Toronto.

This conversation is just so dumb.

You think adding IQ, Wemby, healthy Barnes, Olynyk, Brown, etc. would not add 6 wins? Honestly that is just ridiculous.

Barnes playing - 5-9
Barnes not playing - 2-11

Barnes alone by that metric himself has added 3 wins.
IQ? Probably another win or two
Wemby? Considering he is the best of the bunch is probably good for 3/4 wins himself
Brown/Olnyk? Considering we have given Mogbo, Boucher, Battle, Shead, Davion, and Bruno decent minutes this year I would say those 2 would add another win or two.

Like IDK how you possibly think adding 5 players to this team cant provide 6 wins

lmao at this rate you could also toss in Harper and he'll say it's still not a .500 team