Hollinger forecast: Raptors 22-60 (could be worst)

[tsherkin]

Yeah, I delved pretty deeply into his individual Drtg, for example...read the stuff on his website, did some experiments on my computer with it. The ideas are fine, but fine ideas aren't that interesting unless they have some predictive value (at least, imo.) Anyway, to each his own.

I'll PM you about this, want to talk about it more in-depth.

Hoopstarr, where did you get your ORTG? B-R has the Raptors at 111.3 last year. So does Knicker Blogger.

Did you calculate it yourself?

I expect a pretty big regression from us, but I don't think we'll be quite as bad as 100 ORTG.

[Ripp]

Sure, feel free to PM me. I think I posted in the Stat board too here about how I had issues with Oliver's Drtg stuff...there was a long post here earlier about it. In a nutshell, it isn't clear how you test the validity of Oliver's Drtg stuff, since they don't seem to map to actual lineup Drtgs.

I'm actually working hard right now writing a PBP parser so I can setup my own methodology and get some predictions up...problem is ESPN PBPs have so many goddamn errors in them

[ATLTimekeeper]

Great, you made me analyze this more than I wanted to.

The Nets' undoing was their total lack of shooting in general, especially high value shooting. They were last in TS% and had awful outside shooting. We will be close to last with the loss of Bosh and a roster full of low TS% shooters except for Amir. Our rebounding will either stay the same or get worse from the mid-20s of last year. Free throw trips will drop significantly. The defense probably won't be the worst again but it won't be any better than around 108. Offensively, we were at 108.6 last year. A bunch of good team's were around 104-106 last year. No way we're beating that without a single reliable scorer and low FT rates. We'll probably be around 100-102 there. That's a team that can't possibly be any better than the Warriors/Pistons/Wizards/Sixers were last year and possibly as bad as the Nets. Hence, I don't see why anyone would expect more than those teams' 26/27 win totals. I discounted a couple more from that max because of the coaching and general lack of talent, hence 24 as a high and 12 as a low.

Where'd you get this information? I think the only below-average TS%-at-their-position rotation player on our team is Sonny, with Andrea being slightly below average. Barbosa had an off year, but his career averages have always been high. I think they'll still be able to shoot.

[Ripp]

I think he means relative to the team average. I guess this makes sense...it is easy to be a high TS% guy on a great offensive team. However, send the same person to a low TS% team, you expect his TS% to plummet.

So looking at the TS% of players on the team relative to other players at their position probably doesn't make a lot of sense...you should compare it to the team #. So if I'm +5% over my team, but my team is terrible at scoring, this is probably suggests I'm a better scorer than a -5% guy on a GREAT offensive team.

At least, this is the way I'm interpreting his comment, I could be way off base.

Hrm, a quick calculate indicates that the team TS% is:

Code: Select all

8534/(6631+2118*.44)/2 = 56.42%


(http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/TOR/2010.html)

It appears that only Amir, Marcus, Jack, CB and Jose were above the team average (in that order).

08-09:

Code: Select all

octave:7> 8121/(6673+1861*.44)/2
ans =  0.54199


Hrm....so crudely speaking, 2.2% swing in team TS% leads to an Ortg change of 107.0 to one of 113.1?

I think an Oliver style four factors analysis of the lineups with and w/o CB last year is probably a good initial guess. I wonder how different it would be than the most crude thing you can do, just taking last year's Ortg/Drtg without CB and plugging that into Pyth wins..

Hrm, food for thought...I should think about this stuff later.

[Hoopstarr]

Great, you made me analyze this more than I wanted to.

The Nets' undoing was their total lack of shooting in general, especially high value shooting. They were last in TS% and had awful outside shooting. We will be close to last with the loss of Bosh and a roster full of low TS% shooters except for Amir. Our rebounding will either stay the same or get worse from the mid-20s of last year. Free throw trips will drop significantly. The defense probably won't be the worst again but it won't be any better than around 108. Offensively, we were at 108.6 last year. A bunch of good team's were around 104-106 last year. No way we're beating that without a single reliable scorer and low FT rates. We'll probably be around 100-102 there. That's a team that can't possibly be any better than the Warriors/Pistons/Wizards/Sixers were last year and possibly as bad as the Nets. Hence, I don't see why anyone would expect more than those teams' 26/27 win totals. I discounted a couple more from that max because of the coaching and general lack of talent, hence 24 as a high and 12 as a low.

Where'd you get this information? I think the only below-average TS%-at-their-position rotation player on our team is Sonny, with Andrea being slightly below average. Barbosa had an off year, but his career averages have always been high. I think they'll still be able to shoot.

Assuming Jarrett Jack doesn't have an incredible TS% year again, we don't have any standouts among the guys handling the scoring load. I forgot about Barbosa though, who has been very efficient in the past. We'll see how he does in a different environment.

tsherkin, I got the stats on Hoopdata

[ATLTimekeeper]

Assuming Jarrett Jack doesn't have an incredible TS% year again, we don't have any standouts among the guys handling the scoring load. I forgot about Barbosa though, who has been very efficient in the past. We'll see how he does in a different environment.

Jose has twice posted +.600 TS. It's scoring by committee, so I don't know how many guys will be asked to carry the load. They're all fairly efficient shooters. The difficulty will be in creating open looks, which is why they'll have to run. I could see a slide because the half-court offense will be bad, but to compare them to last year's Nets is probably too drastic.

[tsherkin]

Jose's TS% isn't super-relevant because he's an incredibly low-usage guy who doesn't take risks, ever. If you work hard, high TS% isn't hard to come by when you refuse to shoot open jumpers half the time and otherwise don't really press your luck trying to initiate anything other than a pick-and-roll. Remember that you're talking about a 10 ppg player who has yet to take 10 FGA/g or more than 3.0 3PA/g in his career. Also remember that his TS is heavily affected by his FT%, which dropped off precipitously last season from the two previous years.

His scoring ability is unimpressive, particularly given his approach to offense. He's a good example of how not to use TS%; you can't just assume he could increase his sub-18% USG without a significant drop in his scoring efficiency. He's not a scorer, never has been. He's unfathomably useless from inside 10 feet unless he's right at the rim, and he had an unsustainable year from 10-15' last season. He's a good perimeter shooter, but because he has no mid-range game and is a perimeter player who relies on quality looks that don't require a lot of dribbling, he's not a guy who could really extend his offense successfully. Ask him to shoulder more of the load at your peril... and then also remember that he'd have to do it in 25-28 mpg, because when he plays much more than that, his effectiveness drops right off the map.

I strongly suspect Barbosa is about to have a season like his 03-04 campaign, another year where he was asked to be a scorer and distributor. I'd imagine he'll be a little more efficient because he's improved as a FT shooter (and he was a rookie then), but when people are looking at his efficiency numbers (and his shooting numbers from downtown), no one is remembering that he had absolutely NO defensive attention on him because the vast majority of his career was played with Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire and at least one other important offensive threat (Joe Johnson, Boris Diaw, Jason Richardson, Shaq, etc) and often two of them. He's been an afterthought to the defense his entire career, which will NOT be the case in Toronto.

[ATLTimekeeper]

I wasn't saying that Jose would pick up the scoring slack. Far from it, I'm well aware of his weaknesses on offense, I was just stating that he's likely to shoot well this year, which will help with our efficiency on that end.

[tsherkin]

Will it? If he repeats what he did last year, which is likely, then it'll be a neutral impact, not a positive one. He'd have to maintain efficiency and score more in order to positively impact our offense, otherwise he's treading water in the flooded boiler room of our sinking ship.

[Tenacious_C]

Good read!

[Supercollider]

Prescient. Scary.

[5DOM]

Wrong about Amir, Davis and us being the worst, but this guy and his super computer were pretty damn good. Imagine if Triano actually did what the computer said and played Marcus Banks. At least 40 wins.

[darth_federer]

I said 25-30 in the other prediction thread at the beginning of the season. If they didnt have so many injuries i think they could have gotten to 25. Nice bump.

[Rhettmatic]

Wrong about Amir, Davis and us being the worst, but this guy and his super computer were pretty damn good. Imagine if Triano actually did what the computer said and played Marcus Banks. At least 40 wins.

I think Hollinger is one of the best NBA analysts out there, certainly at ESPN (though I like Thorpe too, he always tends to be biased in favour of the guys he works out).

Hollinger's still wrong lots, but the whole "he doesn't watch games" meme is ridiculous -- the guy writes scouting reports for every single player in the NBA and they're on point more often than not. He knows his stuff.

[dacrusha]

I, too, predicted 22-wins... but the season isn't over just yet.

lol @ novi13 and his 40-win predictions.

[Harry Palmer]

I submit that Hollinger, and really any objective outside source should be viewed as trolls, and shouldn't be allowed in here even if they...check that, especially if they turn out to have been right all along.

[Lionel Messi]

I, too, predicted 22-wins... but the season isn't over just yet.

lol @ novi13 and his 40-win predictions.

Contender is always wrong. Always. I don't think he has ever been right about anything.

[Lionel Messi]

I submit that Hollinger, and really any objective outside source should be viewed as trolls, and shouldn't be allowed in here even if they...check that, especially if they turn out to have been right all along.

The thing is that he's wrong about why our record is what it is, but he's right about the record.

[CreaM]

Hollinger should apply to be our GM, no joke.

[Harry Palmer]

I submit that Hollinger, and really any objective outside source should be viewed as trolls, and shouldn't be allowed in here even if they...check that, especially if they turn out to have been right all along.

The thing is that he's wrong about why our record is what it is, but he's right about the record.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCdxHl1bcQU[/youtube]