Ruzious wrote:payitforward wrote:Dat2U wrote:
I dunno where you get 44 wins from. We had below average play from the starting PF & SG spot. We had poor bench play (which IMO would subtract wins). I'd want to see more than a superficial analysis before drawing conclusions.
Sorry, I wasn't being very clear -- last column in that table is "wins". I went through it and added up the figures for all Washington players. The total was @44 wins (when in fact we'd won 41 games). I did have to estimate/parcel out for guys who played for more than one team last year.
It's still fair to describe that as "a superficial analysis" on my part, of course. W/o any insight into the factors, regression methods, etc. that define this metric it's hard to do anything more.
Now that we have Morris - who you hate - replacing Dudley - who you love and Hump - who you like - not to mention Burke replacing Sessions - do you have them going from 41 wins to 36 or so?
I don't "hate" Markieff; I just look at his productivity, and it tells me he's not a particularly good player. In fact, he doesn't seem like a bad guy at all -- from what one can tell via glimpses of his interaction with teammates.
Dudley is good as a 3, his natural position (though he can also play at the 2); he's not a good PF. Not at all. And he wasn't a good PF for us. He's a tremendous shooter, yes (60.2 TS% for us last year -- that's #16 among all NBA players!). But, his rebounding was so bad as to nullify the positive effect of that shooting. 65+ guys played 20 minutes/game at the 4 last year -- only 4 of them rebounded worse than him.
Humphries played 475 minutes for us last year. He was irrelevant.
I'd say that if Markieff plays at the level of his best year, 2013-14, when he was below average but at least didn't cost his team wins but rather actually contributed a little bit, if that's how he plays, and if Nicholson plays at the level of his career-best year (last year), then we are at more or less the same level of PF production as last year -- or even a little better.
But, of course, I don't think it's terribly likely for both players to equal their career bests in the same year. Hence, in all, I'd say we are probably going to be a little worse (but not much) in productivity at that position this year than we were last year.
I have us at 39 wins this year. We're going to be a lot better at the backup Center position, and I expect both Otto and Oubre to improve, so that we'll be better at the 3 as well. But... we'll be at lot worse at the backup PG, and the backup SG is waaay up in the air.
Now... if Gortat and Mahinmi could be on the floor together for 15-20 minutes a game, and if Satoransky were to eat up both backup guard spots and produce at a league average for a guard, then in fact we could be a lot better than 39-43. Barring an enormous jump from Beal (not holding my breath), that's the only way we have a good season -- i.e. keep Morris/Nicholson/Smith to as few minutes as possible and keep Burke on the bench.
Unfortunately, both the above ideas are long shots. And if we have any significant injury time from Porter, Gortat, Mahinmi, and/or Wall, we could fall below my 39 win figure pretty easily. Hence, fingers crossed!
