2017-2018 Brooklyn Nets Season Win Total Predictions

[Roy Tarpley]

I'm going with 27 wins.

I think we really did a great job transitioning the team with guys who fit better. We got a big who can defense/switch/run and moved our primary scoring from bigs to smalls. we added shooting. we got a 2 way vet farmiliar with the systems.

on the other hand we had alot of turnover, we lack talent and depth and like last year cant sustain injury to a top 6-7 rotation guy. The focus will be on development and we probably lose games we could win to allow young players to play through struggles.

i can see a high end output of 32-34 or a disaster scenario of 15 wins but i think 27 would be my prdiction

Here was my initial post/prediction (I later bumped this from 27 to 29 wins). Pretty close, as we sit at 27 wins with 2 to games to play. So im basically right on target-ish.

Reading back through this thread was fun. Crazy how many people thought this was a 40+ win team and thought it was like no big deal to double your win total. I thought we would be better without lopez but thats still a transition. and bottom line, in the NBA it still mostly comes down to TALENT. sure we play hard and modern and that makes us better then our talent but we sitll have like bottom 5 talent. add to that we arentreally gunning to win so much as develop and sub 30 wins seemed like a lock.

you can point to injuries but thats part of talent. when you lack talent, you cant sustain a good record when guys go down. teams with talent can do that.

i will say we got shafted alot in close/late games... so im fine with anyone saying because of that this could ahve been a 32 win team.

Either way, 27-29 wins for me is a MASSIVE success. Kenny has done an outstading job. worked miracles development wise when you look at what dinwiddie, levert, rhj, harris, and allen did this season. not to mention +7 or +9 wins. thats no small feat.

+9 wins is like a 30% increase.

no one should be disapointed.

I agree that 27-29 wins, given the injuries, is a massive success. It was +7 or +9 wins from last year, but perhaps even more since a Lin-less team last year was on a 13 win pace.

I also agree that the Nets had less latitude for injuries since they lack relative talent. The Spurs can lose Leonard and still win 46-48 games. The Celtics can lose Gordon Hayward and still win 54-56 games (though the Celtics are a bit of an outlier since Brad Stephens can win with little talent).

This being said, I still believe that the Nets with Lin and Russell playing 70+ games, and with Booker, would have won between 35-40 games. Out of the 450 players in the NBA, maybe 20 players end up missing most of the season with injuries (4-5%), so the Nets just came up unlucky with Lin's injury. I know you think Lin is worth maybe 2 wins tops, which I disagree with, but there's no way to settle this so no point in debating. I really wish Lin played half a season so we could see how the team played with him, and have some data to use.

In any case, I agree that this season was a big step forward.

[Prokorov]

28 wins. 1 game to play.

[MrDollarBills]

28 wins. final game versus Boston who will most likely use the young guys and bench against us. i hope the Nets prove my prediction wrong.

[moonpie]

Celtics will be on the 2nd night of a b2b as well

[Vae Victus]

1st things first, people who bet on the over still have a chance. This is utterly **** hilarious as i won last year's over bet on like the last game of the year (by putting in my bet early to take advantage of the 19.5 line before it moved). This year i put 500 bucks when the 28.5 came out, thinking it was gonna be a no brainer easy money. I was gonna put in more near the end of pre-season as i was loving what i saw from the Nets, but ended up not doing so. I was thanking my lucky stars that i didnt when Lin went down in Game 1, expecting an utter disaster of a season.

Lakers overperformed and i lost my $100 under bet on them. Still im not too unhappy. Ingram has blossomed, Kuzma has been a MAJOR surprise, Lakers future is looking bright if Maginka doesnt screw up free agency.

Cmon Nets, play your hearts out, cmon Celtics be utter bitches to CLE and tank the last game to screw over their pick so Ainge can look like a bigger "winner" in the Kyrie deal. I think Ainge loves when fans/pundits stroke his ego and WILL send a tank imperative to Stevens to "protect" the players, to drive the CLE pick into a lower pick. If BRK wins and NYK loses, BRK moves to #9 lotto seed. Its gonna be HILARIOUS watching CLE outtank NYK to try to protect their lotto spot.

Honestly i think this team could win 29 even if Lin were to go down for injury for half the year, this team is sooooooooooooooooooooooo much deeper with NBA talent than last year. As i said earlier this offseason, the only player the team truly cant afford to lose is Mozgov, unless JAR magically steps up (which to be quite frank is like impossible so soon). His skillset is damn near perfect for the system and it looks like he's revitalized now that he's off that dysfunctional Laker squad, playing exactly how the team wants him to play in EuroCup.

With a fully healthy Lin i expect 36 wins with a solid chance at the Playoffs if lots of East teams start tanking in the latter half of the season. Lots of cheap wins to pick up.

Only downside to that is how it makes Danny Ainge look like an utter genius in dumping the devalued pick onto CLE AND getting a healthy young PG with more contract control time.

Stupid CLE... shouda voided the deal, enjoy your 10-15 pick.

Requoted page 5 from The Official Lin Net Thread III

I nailed the prediction in regards to win total, but the different factors getting there was off.

Lin went down the ENTIRE year and the team is STILL on the cusp of 29 wins, i personally woulda thought the Nets would utterly collapse without Lin at all to like 20 games like last year. As i said, the team is soooooooooooooooooo much deeper than last year. Dim stepped up for a bit to take over Lin's secondary guard role. DMC ended up being a positive thus giving SF/PF depth. Harris kept up his efficiency even with more mins. Levert progressed. JAR gives the team a big man fixture in the middle to work with. And the team picked up cheap wins at the end just as i predicted in the win prediction thread! Haha and i said that theyd do it with Lin only missing HALF the season!

Mozgov ended up being utterly useless which definitely hurt alot. However Tyler Zeller was able to semi competently man the middle until JAR was ready to start. I figured JAR would need 40-50 games to get ready for NBA conditions, was expecting him to gain like 15-20 pounds so his rail stick thin ass wouldnt break while banging in the paint

Ainge, i bet when you saw Lin get hurt on Game 1, you swore like a sailor in that you expected BRK to give CLE a top 3 pick, thus making you look less like a genius. It's all good man, you still da man. You still da smartest GM of them all. *soft chanting* Billy got robbed, Trader Danny is da best.

Sit ALL your starters. Sign a coupla 10 day guys, play em 48 mins. Dont risk Brown, Tatum, Rozier, Horford to injury.

Make sure CLE gets that #9 pick... thats all that matters, right Ainge?

[treiz]

Still in the hunt for being, technically, the predictions winner -(we all know that the Nets would've won at least mid-30 games with a healthy team! ):

FiveThirtyEight 29
Westgate over/under (28.5) 29
ESPN Basketball Power Index 29
Nyloncalculus.com 29
Bill Simmons 29
Mosdefinition 29
Mystical Apples 29
Prokorov 29
treiz 29
oldjim 28
Jose Rizal 28
MrDollarBills 28
Trader_Joe 28

One more!

[MrDollarBills]

I'm going with 27 wins.

I think we really did a great job transitioning the team with guys who fit better. We got a big who can defense/switch/run and moved our primary scoring from bigs to smalls. we added shooting. we got a 2 way vet farmiliar with the systems.

on the other hand we had alot of turnover, we lack talent and depth and like last year cant sustain injury to a top 6-7 rotation guy. The focus will be on development and we probably lose games we could win to allow young players to play through struggles.

i can see a high end output of 32-34 or a disaster scenario of 15 wins but i think 27 would be my prdiction

Here was my initial post/prediction (I later bumped this from 27 to 29 wins). Pretty close, as we sit at 27 wins with 2 to games to play. So im basically right on target-ish.

Reading back through this thread was fun. Crazy how many people thought this was a 40+ win team and thought it was like no big deal to double your win total. I thought we would be better without lopez but thats still a transition. and bottom line, in the NBA it still mostly comes down to TALENT. sure we play hard and modern and that makes us better then our talent but we sitll have like bottom 5 talent. add to that we arentreally gunning to win so much as develop and sub 30 wins seemed like a lock.

you can point to injuries but thats part of talent. when you lack talent, you cant sustain a good record when guys go down. teams with talent can do that.

i will say we got shafted alot in close/late games... so im fine with anyone saying because of that this could ahve been a 32 win team.

Either way, 27-29 wins for me is a MASSIVE success. Kenny has done an outstading job. worked miracles development wise when you look at what dinwiddie, levert, rhj, harris, and allen did this season. not to mention +7 or +9 wins. thats no small feat.

+9 wins is like a 30% increase.

no one should be disapointed.

Doubling your win total takes a massive infusion of talent. Look at the Sixers. They added a generational stud in Ben Simmons along with a good group of veterans + Embiid and they went from 20 something to 50 within one season.

[All Nets]

I was too optimistic in my 37 wins prediction, but we did exceedingly well in pre-season so I got a bit caught up. I figured adding Carroll to Lin and Booker would have resulted in enough veteran leadership to compose the younger talented guys like LeVert, RHJ, and DLo.

In a perfect world where Lin doesn't get injured and we didn't have RHJ/DLo side-lined for much of Jan and early Feb, and Booker doesn't get traded, maybe we would have looked closer to how the Lakers and Charlotte looked this season.

Fortunately I did hit my 27.5 line though. Best of luck to all those who need 29 wins tonight!

[Roy Tarpley]

CONGRATULATIONS to: oldjim, Jose Rizal, MrDollarBills, Trader_Joe for correctly picking 28 wins as the season total. Step up to collect your +1s (or people can +1 their other posts later on).

2017-18 Nets Win Predictions

Board mean: 34
Board win range: 28-44 (taking out the top and bottom outliers)
NetsDaily writers (average of 8 writers): 33
ESPN early prediction: 30
ESPN Basketball Power Index: 29
Nyloncalculus.com: 29
FiveThirtyEight: 29
Westgate: 28.5
My prediction: 40
Actual wins: 28

My thoughts

- The Nets record of 28 wins was very close to the analyst predictions of 29-30 wins.

- I have no doubt in my mind that with a healthy Lin, healthy Dlo, Booker, and Zeller, we would have won more of those close games and AT LEAST 35 games IF NOT pushing close to 40 wins.

- In the 2016-17 season, the pundits estimated the Nets would win anywhere between 20-29 games. The Nets won 20 but should've won close to 30 with a healthy Lin, Levert, and RHJ starting at PF. The pundits adjusted and predicted 29-30 wins for the 2017-18 season, which the Nets almost hit even with all the terrible injuries. It's clear to me that the pundits continue to underestimate the Nets. I think the pundits will adjust again and the consensus estimates for 2018-19 will probably be closer to 33 wins (making it harder to bet the over!).

- The Nets improvement of +8 in wins (or even more if you go by the Nets record in 2016-17 without Lin, a 13 win pace) was attributable to: (1) big improvements by RHJ, Harris, and Levert; (2) Dinwiddie being a better PG than Whitehead and Skil from last year; (3) Jarrett Allen's swift development; (4) Carroll returning to preinjury form; (5) Crabbe being better than Skil from last year; and (6) Dlo picking up the load from losing Lopez. Quincy Acy declined in production but Cunningham was a pleasant surprise so that's a scratch.

- I expect continued incremental growth from RHJ, Levert, Allen, and Crabbe. I don't expect greater numbers from DMC or Harris. I have no idea how Dlo, Lin, or Dinwiddie will fare next season.

[TheNetsFan]

Post Crabbe trade, I bump my projection up to 28 +/-2. They added depth helps on the wings, but we're still thin up front. I also expect long-term talent acquisition to trump record, so I believe there's a very good chance Lin and/or Booker get dealt by the deadline.

For those betting sorts, with the line at 28.5, the under is probably the safer bet.

I had it nailed, before drinking the pre-season Koolaid & upping it to 30, while keeping the downside at 26 and setting the upside at 32. Of course given the number of L2M bad calls & the injuries, 30 was not a bad "optimistic" pick.

[MrDollarBills]

Nailed it, unfortunately. I wanted win 29 so bad lol

anyway, I think that my prediction would have been wrong had Lin not gone down, Russell missing 10 weeks, and the disastrous double injury to both RHJ and LeVert which resulted in this team getting the tar beaten out of them for a stretch.

My early 2018-19 prediction is 34 wins. But that can change based on what Marks does in the offseason.