27. Portland Trail Blazers WAR: 5.4 | Best Under-25 Player: Zach Collins (3.5) The Blazers picked Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum in the top 10 of consecutive drafts and have made the playoffs every season since. Now Portland is in the position of being committed to its core group and hoping to uncover diamonds later in the draft. That’s an area where optimism about future performance and objective computer analysis clash: CARMELO thinks poorly of Anfernee Simons, for instance, after 2018’s no. 24 pick barely played as a rookie. Historically, that’s not an indicator of success. But the Blazers think a player like Simons has much better days ahead. https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/7/23/20703286/nba-young-core-rankings
Lillard expected to have 9th best WAR in next five years: Best 5-Year CARMELO Projections, All Ages Player Team Age in 2019-20 5-Year Projected WAR James Harden Rockets 30 59.5 Giannis Antetokounmpo Bucks 25 52.9 Ben Simmons 76ers 23 42.4 Luka Doncic Mavericks 20 41.6 Nikola Jokic Nuggets 24 41 Karl-Anthony Towns Timberwolves 24 37.6 Anthony Davis Lakers 26 37.4 Joel Embiid 76ers 25 36.1 Damian Lillard Trail Blazers 29 33.6 Stephen Curry Warriors 31 33.2
Here is how they determined the rankings: Using FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO player projections, which develop a multiseason future forecast based on a player’s history, we determined the number of wins above replacement over the next five seasons for every player on each team’s roster. Then we filtered out players so that only the under-25 players remained (specifically, the players who won’t turn 25 until halfway through the 2019-20 season or later) and ordered the teams by the resulting WAR totals. (WAR compares a player’s output to a baseline level that estimates what a minimum contract or two-way player would produce in the same situation.)
Why isn't Nurk mentioned? He's still only 24. Stupid rankings. Edit: I see you just posted their ranking system.
I sent them a note pointing this out; had to call it an "editorial tip" as that was the only near relevant category.
“specifically, the players who won’t turn 25 until halfway through the 2019-20 season or later” Nurk turns 25 in August.
So what! For the entire history of the NBA, only one team to win a championship was under 25 years old, on average. Only 3 champions were barely under 26 years old. One championship team's average age was almost 33 (Bulls). Are we raising a nursery, or, trying to win a ring? BTW, the youngest team to win a ring was the 76/77 Blazers.
They’re not wrong that good rookies usually play. But if they’re that good, they’re probably not coming to a team with a 1st Team all NBA at their position and an almost All-star taking backup minutes and the 3rd best shooter in the L mopping up the rest. He’ll, CJ didn’t play much until year 3. He turned out alright.
Portland is rated very low every season in every category always....we've never gotten ink from the nba media until this last playoff run. Nobody really wrote much about our offseason on any of the major sports sites. They'll probably have us projected as a low seed again.....been there, done that...#23wins or was it 27 they said? Dame couldn't even get allstar votes for years.
How about Jermaine O'Neil? We traded him for Dale David ... he became an allstar. He sat for 2 years ...on Dunleavy bench ?
