The Bucks are favored to repeat, and our model predicts they will also capture the No. 1 seed in the conference by four games over the next-closest competitor. (The Bucks have by far RAPTOR’s highest full-strength roster rating for both the regular season and the playoffs.) Milwaukee was given the fifth-best title odds both in last year’s preseason prediction model and the pre-play-in games version before eventually slaying its playoff demons and defeating the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals.
The model’s current operating assumption is that Kyrie Irving plays in 0 percent of regular-season Nets games, because that is the current state of affairs after the Nets announced earlier this week that Irving cannot play for them until he gets vaccinated.2 If he were to play half of this season’s games, for whatever reason, the Nets’ title chances would jump from their current 8 percent to 12 percent. We’re hedging our bets some by guessing that he’ll be back for half of his minutes during the Nets’ playoff games, should they get that far.
Let’s start with the Lakers. The model does not like this version of the team. L.A. has the ninth-best projected record in the conference, which would have the Lakers once again competing in the play-in tournament. The reason behind that: RAPTOR views LeBron James and Anthony Davis as the only net-positive players on the roster during the regular season.4 The model is particularly low on Russell Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony, who are projected to play sizable roles. It’s notable that L.A. is given a better chance of postseason success than its projected win-loss record and point differential would suggest — and that’s largely due to the presence of James and Davis.
We next have to address the Warriors, who are projected to finish worse than they did last year and miss the play-in tournament entirely. And that’s not because the model isn’t accounting for Klay Thompson playing games. It’s actually the opposite.5 RAPTOR penalizes players who suffer Achilles tears, as Thompson did prior to last season. Throw in the fact that he was already coming off a torn ACL prior to that, and the model now views him as a net-negative player. The model views the Warriors, like the Lakers, as being chock-full of negatives, with only Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Gary Payton II (The Mitten!) grading out as net positives, among the team’s projected rotation players.
The Lakers being this bad would be so delightful.
