Rank these teams in what you predict will be seed order: Knicks Nets Celtics Sixers Raptors Pacers Bulls Bucks Pistons Cavaliers Heat Hawks Wizards Hornets Magic
Truthfully, I find your predictions more notably un-hopeful (Bulls-fan-wise) than Good Hope's are notably hopeful. C'est la vie, here's mine: 1. Heat 2. Bulls 3. Pacers 4. Nets 5. Knicks 6. Cavs 7. Hawks 8. Wizards
I figure the nets really loaded up with talent scoring Pierce and Garnett. They're old, but still rank up their with our Boozer/Deng pair, IMO. DWill, Smith, and Pierce are going to handle and move the ball in a way that should be a thing of beauty. Garnett is still a world class defender and a very skilled offensive player. Their C is a weak rebounder, but Garnett will help with that. Otherwise, Lopez is one of the top C's in the league. Indy may have the best SG/SF combo in the league outside of Wade/LeBron, assuming Granger comes back healthy. They have one of the best C's in the league at both ends of the court, too. David West is a terrific PF. They're young and deep (west is 32, the rest are 27 or younger). They have 10 guys who had a PER better than Kirk last season. He was our starting PG, and is basically our 6th or 7th man. They're also defending central division champs. The Bulls pretty much treaded water over the past 2 seasons. We replaced ~$5M veteran talent that helped us win a league best number of games with guys on rookie contracts. No way is Nazr+Dunleavy a better pair than Asik+Korver. Not even close. The rest is a wash. So basically the other teams simply got better. We wasted time on Nate and Marco (San Antonio likes him, but what do they know about talent and winning?). The knicks won 54 games. Without Amare, who played crippled and still put up a 22 PER in limited playing time. Is he going to be back? If they match that, we have to win 54 (+9) to match. I'm from Missouri. Show me.
Not a bad philosophy, but you only seem to apply it to the Bulls. Your projections for the Nets and the Knicks depend on some key wishful thinking. I completely agree that the Pacers are going to be a handful.
There's no wishful thinking regarding my projections for the Nets and Knicks. Both won more games than the Bulls. I don't think they got worse, but better. We are making projections, though, and Rose coming back vs. Amare coming back are important to consider. I'm not sure what my projections for the nets requires wishful thinking. Not only are their starters elite at all 5 positions, their bench includes Andray Blatche, Andrei Kirilenko, and Jason Terry. Maybe all three would start for us
For the 2010-11 and 2011-12 NBA seasons the Bulls led the NBA in regular season wins. Over those two seasons, the Bulls' top 4 scorers were Rose, Boozer, Deng and Noah. The top 4 rebounders were Noah, Boozer, Deng and Gibson. These 5 players are still on the team and the oldest is Boozer who is 31. The starting SG for the 2010-11 team was Keith Bogans, an excellent defender and team player, but a non-factor in terms of scoring. The starting SG for the 2011-12 team was Richard Hamilton who missed 38 of the lockout-shortened 66-game season. Jimmy Butler will be the starting SG this season and figures to be far more productive than either Bogans or Hamilton. He's also able to provide quality backup to Deng at SF. The #1 off-the-bench scorer for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 teams was Kyle Korver, who has averaged 14.0 points per 36 minutes over his career. This season's off-the-bench scorer is Mike Dunleavy, who has averaged 15.2 points per 36 minutes over his career. Kirk Hinrich (career 13.4pts and 5.9 asts per 36 minutes and a 2.68 asts/to ratio) replaces C.J. Watson (career 13.5pts and 4.5 asts per 36 minutes and a 2.37 asts/to ratio) at backup PG. Hinrich can also play SG. That covers the top 8 players. On paper, the 2013-14 top 8 is better than the 2010-2012 teams. The 2010-2012 teams had deeper bench quality which is almost entirely attributable to Omer Asik.
Jimmy Butler is roughly equivalent to Ronnie Brewer, who was on both those teams, but gone. I called it a wash. He may really step up his game and be a stud. Or teams may actually pay attention to him since he's no longer an off-the-end-of-the-bench guy and he may struggle. I hope the former. 2010-11 Team PER Noah 18.8 Deng 15.5 Boozer 18.8 Gibson 14.3 Last season PER Noah 18.1 Deng 15.1 Boozer 17.1 Gibson 14.4 Only Taj had a .1 improvement, the others? Bogans' 9.0 PER is replaced by an equally terrible Kirk. Starting doesn't matter, right? It's the minutes! The bench is weaker because we don't have Brewer (or Butler) on it this time. CJ Watson's 12.8 PER is replaced by Teague's 6.0. Korver is still the very best in the whole NBA at something. You can't say that about Dunleavy. Call it a wash.
Do you think a team of 12 guys with 15 PERs beats a team of 12 guys with 10 PERs almost all the time?
I think better players do have better PERs. If you have a guy over 30 PER, you win championships. If you have a guy with over 23 PER, you might make the finals. If you don't have a guy over 20 and win it, you're the exception to the rule.
For those who aren't familiar with the PER stat, it's basically a way that a guy (John Hollinger) figured out to slam all of the recorded (boxscore) individual statistics into a single individual statistic. There's nothing new to it..it's just a way of presenting boxscore stats in a different way. On the defensive side of the ball, PER only gives credit to the traditional boxscore stats of defensive rebounds, steals and blocks. While turnovers committed are included, turnovers caused are not...for example, if a defensive player takes a charge, the player who committed the charge is penalized by a turnover, but the player who took the charge is given no credit for creating the turnover. PER makes no attempt to include occurrences that go beyond the boxscore statistics. Most NBA teams have their own proprietary individual statistics to evaluate individual player performance. In my opinion, there is certainly a positive correlation between an individual player's PER and the likelihood that a player will be selected by fan vote to the NBA All Star team. This correlation between PER and Coaches' selection to the NBA All Star Team is not very strong.
It's a bit more than you describe. What is a PER of 15? Can you compare a player's PER for one season with a different player's PER for another? What about comparison of players who played different positions? Defense is important, but you far overrate it. You can take a guy who's athletic but has no real basketball ability and at least teach him to keep his body between his man and the basket. It's when you have a guy with LeBron's talent playing defense that it's special. Hence, PER is pretty fucking awesome.
They played different positions. His PER as starter wasn't 10.4, which is a big distinction. I thought Marco was awful off the bench, while I thought Kirk was just awful. And I liked Ronnie Brewer better than either. Guess what? His PER was 12.3. And I liked Carmelo Anthony better than Deng all along, even though the coaches never got the chance to add him to the NBA all star teams since the fans chose him.
My guess would be this: 1). Heat 2). Bulls 3). Pacers 4). Nets 5). Knicks 6). Hawks 7). Wizards 8). Bucks I predict this year's Bulls will have similar success to years 1 and 2 of the Tom Thibodeau era provides Rose stays healthy. Not having Asik blows, but Jimmy Butler will be better than anyone else we've had at two-guard the last 3 years. He's much better than Ronnie Brewer on offense. Kirk/Taj/Dunleavy is about a wash with CJ/Kyle/Taj. I'm cautiously optimistic that Snell/Teague/Murphy will provide meaningful contributions, but it's dangerous to count on rookies and end of bench players too much. The big difference is that the East is much heavier at the top. The Heat are as good as ever, and the Nets, Knicks, and Pacers are all better than they were in the past. I know the Nets are a great team on paper, but I predict they'll be less than the sum of their parts, at least in the regular season. If nothing else I think time has shown that quickly constructed teams of aging all-stars take longer than usual to adjust to shared shot-taking responsibilities. I think we're better than the Knicks and Pacers, but of course both are tough. The Hawks look about the same to me as last year. What does swapping out Paul Millsap for Josh Smith do for you? It was a much better contract, but on the court I think it comes out about a wash. I think the improved play of the Wizards at the end of the season will prove to be legitimate so long as Wall stays healthy and personalities don't clash. The Bucks and Pistons will duke it out for that final seed and I predict the Bucks will take it because they're always all-in for the last seed it seems like. The Cavs made some splashy moves, but nothing that moves them up the standings that much. My guess is that Andrew Bynum is toast, and the 6 million put-option they placed on his knees will wash out. That leaves them with Anthony Bennett and the Russian Sniper. I actually think the Russian will have a more meaningful rookie year for them than Bennett, who might start off slowly due to injuries and the fact that he doesn't really have a place on the team.
