Penny Hardaway had a resurgence in the 1999 lockout season, as I recall, then was injured again in 1999-2000 and was never the same again.
That 96-97 Charlotte team was an aberration. Their pythagorean wins number was 46. They just happened to get really, really lucky that year. I think we'll win 54 games. And it won't be luck.
I guess one way to look at this thread is by title alone. Another way to look at this thread is by it's content. I certainly can't make anyone actually read the original intent of this topic, but I know the smart people will come through in the end.
Seriously, though, although I enjoyed reading your research, there are two pretty big issues: 1. I just don't see it applying to this team, and 2) It's pretty arbitrary to select just exactly .500 teams. To point 1): We're talking about (potentially) a team with a possible Mitch Richmond (Roy), Rasheed Wallace (Aldridge), David Robinson (Oden), Manu Ginobili (Fernandez) and Baron Davis (Bayless). Can you imagine sticking those guys, all in their early 20's, on the same team, and then trying to speculate how they'd do based on them being .500 without three of those guys the year before? We're getting such a massive injection of talent this year from our rookie class. It's really unprecedented. Add in that no other team in history (other than Dallas and New York) has an owner who is more willing to throw all budgets out the door if he thinks he can buy the right guy, and it gets harder to predict. To point 2): .500 is a nice number for comparison because it's so easy to say and understand. You won half, you lost half. But comparing a .500 team from last year in the Western Conference to, say, Charlotte in a much weaker conference 12 years ago is pretty tough. The league's changed to drafts of younger kids, more international players, a bunch of different changes, rule changes, etc. Our .500 team last year might be more comparable to a .450 team at that time in that conference, or a .550 team. And being exactly .500 is nothing magical. A lucky (or unlucky) bounce here or there and suddenly you are a .487 team or a .524 team, without really any change in the makeup of the team. A better data set would include teams of say .460 to .540, instead of teams who were just exactly .500. Then you'd better capture teams who were really, really mediocre. It's a lot bigger hassle to compile that data, though, so I don't blame you for not doing it. I wouldn't. The big question I think you're really trying to get at is what are the won/loss expectations people have for the team, and are they realistic. Right now I'm thinking we're a 53-56 win team. If we're sniffing anything close to .500 for the next decade, I'd be extremely disappointed.
