Predict the Wizards record in 2010-2011

[doclinkin]

Jeff Sagarin has us at 27th in the league to start the season.

[jimij]

36 wins. And I still think we get the 8th seed because after the top 6, the East is going to suck.

If Howard is back before the end of November maybe we can get 40 but who knows.

[nuposse04]

i'm an optimist. 46 wins, 5th seed. Outside shot of advancing in the playoffs.

[verbal8]

I'll go with 35 wins. Biggest issues are depth and experience. I think the first team will be better than their opponents in a majority of their games, but will have a hard time closing games.

Random prediction: The Wiz will be leading at the half in more than 50% of their games.

Other predictions: Gil averages 20 points and is not traded. Wall averages 8 assists. Blatche around 15 & 8, which will be viewed as a disappointment. Josh Howard emerges as the "MVP" - in the sense that he is the difference-maker. When he's on (and healthy), the Wiz win more often than not, but when he's out, the team really struggles. Minor mid-season trade involving Young and/or Thornton.

That would be great if you predictions come true. As long as he is not playing 38 minutes, 8 rpg would be a good average for Blatche. If averages "only" 15 ppg it means other players are scoring and he is probably scoring efficiently. I think 20 ppg for Arenas would be great for the Wizards. It means the scoring is distributed, but he is successful.

I am not sure how likely it is, but I see your point about Josh Howard being an "MVP". If he returns to 2007/8 form, the difference between starter and back-up could be biggest at SF. I expect Arenas and Blatche to be better than Hinrich and Yi. However Hinrich and Yi have looked like solid options as back-ups. Thornton and Booker really have not looked very good so far.

[hands11]

I'll go with 35 wins. Biggest issues are depth and experience. I think the first team will be better than their opponents in a majority of their games, but will have a hard time closing games.

Random prediction: The Wiz will be leading at the half in more than 50% of their games.

Other predictions: Gil averages 20 points and is not traded. Wall averages 8 assists. Blatche around 15 & 8, which will be viewed as a disappointment. Josh Howard emerges as the "MVP" - in the sense that he is the difference-maker. When he's on (and healthy), the Wiz win more often than not, but when he's out, the team really struggles. Minor mid-season trade involving Young and/or Thornton.

Oh yeah, Nick is defiantly on the hot seat.
I say AB averages more like 17-19 pts but not sure he averages that many rebound. 6-7 rebounds.
Wall average 9-10 assists
And of course Gill will be getting his 20-24 a game.

[Nivek]

Kevin Pelton at Basketball Prospectus has updated season predictions based on his statistical projection system, which he calls SCHOENE. He plugs in the numbers and simulates the season 1,000 times. The average from those simulations says the Wizards will win 23.1 games and finish with the league's worst record. In those simulations, the Wizards and Clippers were the only teams to not make the playoffs even once.

[Nivek]

Also at Basketball Prospectus, Bradford Doolittle uses a different statistical prognostication method, which he used to simulate the upcoming season 10,000 times. In his system, the Wizards finish 28th on average with 30.0 wins. Doolittle predicts the Wizards as having a 1.0% chance of finishing .500, a 4.8% chance of making the playoffs and no chance of making the Finals or winning the title. In his 10,000 simulations, the Wizards' high in wins was 45, their low was 8.

[montestewart]

Also at Basketball Prospectus, Bradford Doolittle uses a different statistical prognostication method, which he used to simulate the upcoming season 10,000 times. In his system, the Wizards finish 28th on average with 30.0 wins. Doolittle predicts the Wizards as having a 1.0% chance of finishing .500, a 4.8% chance of making the playoffs and no chance of making the Finals or winning the title. In his 10,000 simulations, the Wizards' high in wins was 45, their low was 8.

There are a few statistical projection methods that have predicted that the Wizards may have a chance to make Washington basketball history. Wages of Wins comes to mind. I hope it's not quite as bad as all that.

[Nivek]

Yeah, one version of Wins Produced said the Wiz could be the worst team in league history. Arturo revised his projection with some more analysis and went into the 20s, I think. The numbers don't like the Wizards much for this season.

[montestewart]

^
I predicted 37 wins, knowing that there are an inordinate number of open questions (like the entire starting lineup, along with primary reserves), and a majority of them could quite well break badly for the Wizards. Few teams go into a season with so many crucial variables.

[gesa2]

I wonder what the Nets board was predicting before the first game last year --

"Hey, we've got Devin Harris and Brook Lopez. Ji is looking good in training camp, there are some interesting young wing players. If everything breaks our way, we could win 45 + games"

[gesa2]

I have to say that I'm actually really excited and optimistic this year. I just know that I'm biased too. Wall's here! Gil's back! Andray broke out last year! How can we not be really good?!?!?

[Illuminaire]

It's certainly intersting to see how all the advanced metrics say we will be historically bad, or at least, one of the worst three teams in the league this season. I think the reasons for that are fourfold:

1) Our best player may or may not play a lot of games, and may or may not play at a high level. This creates a powerfully influential variable that all the stat people are defaulting to the lowest setting.

2) Our second best player has no NBA baseline for stats at all. (Also, I don't think anyone is properly taking into account the defense that John Wall seems both capable of and willing to play on a nightly basis).

3) Our third best player has only played close to his potential for 32 games. While we believe he`s turned a corner and will play no worse than that 32 game sample, statistical extrapolations will instead see those numbers as his ceiling.

4) Anyone basing their calculations on Dave Berri`s work will be (IMHO) overvaluing rebounding - an area where we show up as extremely weak.


To me, points one and four are valid issues that could very well drive our win total down. I think we can make some pretty darn convincing arguments that the Wiz are going to be a fair bit better than 23 wins, though, based on points two and three.

[montestewart]

I wonder what the Nets board was predicting before the first game last year --

"Hey, we've got Devin Harris and Brook Lopez. Ji is looking good in training camp, there are some interesting young wing players. If everything breaks our way, we could win 45 + games"

I'm not a Nets fan, have no feelings of homerism, and no reason to inflate a prediction other than just being wrong, which I was, as I predicted the Nets would win 24 games. I can easily see a Nets fan guessing much higher.

[wermolwermol777]

I was trying to search the archives, but couldn't find anything about previous years picks, but I think I've never predicted anything less than 41-41.

Gonna go with 36 wins this season, but I am cautiously optimistic about doing a fair bit better than that.

Certainly excited about the season and I hope I'll be able to catch more of the games than I have the past two years.

[no D in Hibachi]

I was trying to search the archives, but couldn't find anything about previous years picks, but I think I've never predicted anything less than 41-41.

Refer to page 2 of this thread for PY picks.

[Donkey McDonkerton]

36 for me

[doclinkin]

Yeah, one version of Wins Produced said the Wiz could be the worst team in league history. Arturo revised his projection with some more analysis and went into the 20s, I think. The numbers don't like the Wizards much for this season.

Nah as I quoted him on the last page, he says 'between 9 and 21 victories', though his best case scenarios vs his craptastic scenarios average out to 13.3 wins. That's what I'm sticking him with.

I got into it a little bit with Galletti and Berri on their John Wall analysis. Both seem to think it has been conclusively proven (by their numbers) that Derrick Rose is a bad player-- and that John Wall is analogous, if worse.

My argument is that both John Wall and Derrick Rose's numbers suffered a little bit in two respects: they both played with dominant rebounders (in terms of overall rebounding%, in Joey Dorsey and DeMarcus Cousins; and with Rose now next to a dominant rebounding frontcourt) and they both played in college in a system that exposes the PG to pressure, while requiring them to push the action, get a jump on the transition, thus not to rebound on defense.

The WoW response seems to be: well, overall numbers suggest that rebounding numbers are durable from year to year. That is, in the NBA there's a 90% correlation between rebounding figures from any one year to the next, whereas other statistics show somewhat more variation all are relatively stable. (From Stumbling on Wins. Excerpt pirated online):

Code: Select all

TABLE 3.1 Consistency Across Sports
Statistics...
How Much of the Variation in Current
Season Performance Is Explained by
Performance Last Season?
Plus–minus                              23%
Field goal percentage                   47%
Free throw percentage                   59%
Turnovers, per minute                   61%
Steals, per minute                      68%
Free throw attempts, per minute         71%
Personal fouls, per minute              70%
Field goal attempts, per minute         75%
Points, per minute                      75%
Defensive rebounds, per minute           86%
Offensive rebounds, per minute          86%
Blocked shots, per minute               87%
Assists, per minute                     87%
Total rebounds, per minute              90%


The data set consisted of 6,766 players who logged at least 500 minutes in consecutive seasons from 1977-78 to 2007-08

I'm no rock scientist, but I'm not sure the data says what they think it says.

Yes FG% will surely alter as scout write the book a given player, or work to solve a team's particular favorite sets; or players work on their shooting form in the offseason. Heck the league fiddles with rule sets to emphasize this or that aspect of scoring. But the formula of 'How to Rebound' remains stable. And generally a player's given role on a team tends not to alter. If you are expected to rebound one year, you usually are paid to fill the same role next year.

The numbers may suggest too that the core of teams are relatively stable. Also, the way the data is phrased, it looks like they're simply comparing consecutive years. This may only prove that in general players do not radically alter their games in a single year, since more often than not players tend to remain with a single team for a couple years in a row. If they tracked a control group of players who switched teams to see how their numbers altered, I'd be curious to see if those numbers proved more volatile. If you watched the statistical vector change between an incoming and outgoing coach with very different philosophies to see the effect on player stats, that too might tell you something.

I'd also be interested to see if there are teams who consistently produce outliers to the Wins Produced system.

For example: The Calipari version of the Dribble Drive Motion offense puts the ball in the hands of a talented PG (usually a freshman under Coach Cal) and says: create something. No plays run, they just attack. If stopped they kick out and the sets re-initiate with the ball in the hands of a secondary player.

This high usage emphasis for young ballhandlers exposes them to TOs, which kills them in the Wins Produced measure -- though their teams seem to actually, you know, 'win' just fine with them pushing the ball.

And generally this is a 'spread four' offense with one player in the post and the others clearing out to the wings and outside the three line to create running room. Seems to me this allows a dominant solo offensive rebounder to really star under the boards, with somewhat inflated numbers, while robbing his teammates of opportunities. Thus depressing their 'Win' scores.

And on defense Coach Cal even asks his PGs not to chase rebounds, since their primary job is to push the transition attack, let someone else get the board and find them, they've already begun to move. Again: robbing them of boards. Thus, by this metric, 'wins'.

I find many pure stat-heads are a little suspicious (even disdainful) of anything related to coaching, or systems. If I'm guessing it's because they lack a kinetic understanding of the game in motion, preferring the relative calm of a dataset and a spreadsheet over the lingo and jargon associated with the white-board X's and O's talk.

But here I'll join veKsdraziW aka nopaeWterceSehT in lamenting the fact that even a beer-shilling pigskin pundit can expound on the pros and cons of a 4-3 vs 3-4 defense in football, where the average b-ball fan never even hears the basics of a 3-2 match-up zone like Flip's preferred system. The color guy in basketball is just there to add a few folksy words, no real analysis or knowledge. Hubie does a bit. Mike Fratello used to break it down some. Mostly, nope.

[montestewart]

But here I'll join veKsdraziW aka nopaeWterceSehT in lamenting the fact that even a beer-shilling pigskin pundit can expound on the pros and cons of a 4-3 vs 3-4 defense in football, where the average b-ball fan never even hears the basics of a 3-2 match-up zone like Flip's preferred system. The color guy in basketball is just there to add a few folksy words, no real analysis or knowledge. Hubie does a bit. Mike Fratello used to break it down some. Mostly, nope.

And it wouldn't take that much. For us busy fans that don't have to time to rewatch games, pausing every once in a while during a break too short for a commercial, show a quick graphic and a replay, illustrating why what you just saw at top speed worked or didn't work. It would be great if the Wizards pre-game show actually previewed the opposing team on that level, reviewing the teams' favorite plays and defensive sets, and illustrated them with clips.

[lupin]

I've been moving/on the road/homeless/moving in for the last month, but I just had to get my prediction in while it still counted.

35 wins.

That's my usual and I don't see much reason to change. If Wall shows his true self sooner than later, they could easily challenge for a playoff spot and play .500. They won 26 last year with a really rotten team so I think there is room for improvement regardless. I'll go with my usual and hope for the better.