I've said for a while that I thought we were in the 5-8 range in terms of lottery slots. That'd put us in line for 30 or so wins, which is pretty much what I anticipate. I said this in a thread in the T&T forum, with some numbers behind it.
Karmaloop wrote:For the Lakers, just by addition by subtraction the Lakers are getting a head coach that should improve them a few wins alone. I've never seen a head coach who managed to put 95% of his roster in the worst possible situation repeatedly. I mean, you almost have to try and sabotage it (hat tip to the Tank Commander). And by sheer fact that we've no longer got Kobe Bryant shooting the Lakers out of games, that alone should get more opportunities for the other players to improve. At point guard, they're clearly looking for a significant jump out of D'Angelo Russell. I've searched for the best rookie-to-sophomore season jump, and while none fit well I think James Harden-level stats isn't out of the realm of possibilities. Obviously, Russell will get more scoring opportunities, but anything short of a 2 VORP improvement will be a bit of a disappointment for me. And that translates to a ~5 win improvement. If Julius Randle can turn into at least a replacement level player, that's another 2 wins right there. I'm not totally sure what we will get out of Brandon Ingram, but let's assume that's another 1 VORP and when you take the minutes from Nick Young AND Kobe Bryant, that translates to roughly another 5 wins. And I'm not expecting Luol Deng to be as good as he was last year, but I'd imagine he's more productive than Brandon Bass and Metta World Peace even with modest regression. Expecting another ~2 wins with his addition isn't totally crazy. So right there, that's a 14 win improvement. That takes them from 17-65 to 31-51 which isn't a crazy estimation. I've pegged the Lakers as a 30-35 win team next year. Any less it's a disappointment, any more and they exceed expectations.
30 wins should be our O/U. Anymore wins and we likely overachieved or we likely got some unexpected contributions. Any less wins, and I feel like we underachieved.
Kilroy wrote:I think 40 wins are within reach this season... I would be shocked if we were in any kind of position to keep our pick this year.
That would be incredibly optimistic, borderline unreasonable. We won 17 games last year...we aren't going to have a 23ish win swing. That's highly unlikely. I mean, I can't think of a team in recent years that saw that kind of swing without a significant free agent additions.