A number of people have made predictions for the upcoming season as part of The Wages of Wins Network 2011 Super Stat Geek Smackdown. Andres Alvarez – at Nerd Numbers the Blog – has collected these predictions for both the Eastern and Western Conference. These two collections are reposted below. In addition, there was an excellent article by Kurt Badenhausen at Forbes on David Stern’s recent arguments concerning the NBA’s finances. These arguments might mean that there won’t be a Smackdown before the 2011-12 season because that season might not be played. So the Badenhausen article is certainly something each NBA fan should read.
The Eastern Conference Selections
Various writers from the Wages of Wins Network got together for a friendly competition; Who could predict the regular season best? Arturo showed off a little by modeling the entire NBA! Below we go over how the Wages of Wins Network analysts (we need a short nick name, any suggestions?) predicted the Eastern Conference. This is followed by a discussion of the Western Conference.
Make sure to check out the actual picks here
Wages of Wins Network 2011 Stat Smackdown
I sent out an invitation to the Wages of Wins Network Stat Smackdown a week before the season started. This may seem like a very short period of time, but amazingly we had eight writers sign up! I’m very excited about this and I’ll be reporting on our progress through out the season. For those of you wondering my plan currently is to update the Automated Wins Produced Site once a week starting next Tuesday. As I mentioned the Stat Smackdown has indeed started (oddly with Boston proving Arturo right but by a larger margin than he expected). Anyway in the next few days I’ll give a run down of how the Wages of Wins Network thinks this season will shake down.
Again, let’s get the party started by looking over the Eastern Conference.
Wages of Wins Network Eastern Conference Breakdown. Seeds and Records are average of all writers.
#1 Seed: Miami Heat
By unanimous decision Miami takes the East. No analyst has them out of 60 wins, although a certain Miami fan has them the greatest of all time.
#2 Seed: Orlando Magic
One of only three teams in the East all of the analysts have confidence to get 50 wins. They’re a pretty steep drop off from Miami and in a dog fight with the next team for their spot.
#3 Seed: Chicago Bulls
This team pretty much rated as an Orlando light. Some analysts don’t think they’ll crack the 50 win ceiling, but all of them think they’ll be in the top four seeds.
#4 Seed: Boston Celtics
Going by record predictions this team is slated to be as good as Orlando. Going by seed predictions they’re fighting with Chicago. Essentially all of the analysts think the East goes Miami with Boston, Chicago and Orlando fighting over second place.
#5 Seed: Atlanta Hawks
No one thinks they’ll repeat their 50 win season from just a season ago. In fact Atlanta just barely edges out Milwaukee for the distinction of “best team likely to exit in the first round”.
#6 Seed: Milwaukee Bucks
It was a coin flip between 5 and 6 for all the writers between Atlanta and Milwaukee. I was tempted to take the plunge and put them at 50 wins. I balked and it looks like I wasn’t the only one.
#7 Seed: Cleveland
Cleveland doesn’t even win this seed convincingly. Let’s be honest as well Cleveland wants the 8th seed and a chance to make Miami reenact Dallas’ debacle. Still as has been mentioned, life is not as dire in Cleveland as everyone thinks.
#8 Seed: Charlotte
Welcome to the East, all the analysts predict a losing record and yet Charlotte is still slated as a playoff team. Sadly all the momentum from last year seems to have come to a halt.
#9 Seed (tie): New Jersey Nets
They missed out on the free agent bonanza. However trading for Troy Murphy and some young players means this team could be fighting for a playoff spot. I hope they trade Murphy for Melo, but I suspect many of our predictors don’t.
#9 Seed (tie): New York Knicks
Well it’s a step forward right? I wonder what snake oil Walsh is going to sell the fans this year. In other fun news in their terrible years apparently New York was cheating by illegally scouting players. New York, where you can spend tons of money, cheat, have a superstar and still be terrible!
#11 Seed: Indiana Pacers
So begins a streak of teams slated to have wins records in the 20s. I don’t know what Larry had planned for this team but it sure isn’t winning.
#12 Seed (Tie): Detroit Pistons
“If we stay the course, we are dead! WE ARE ALL DEAD!“ – John Conner Terminator: Salvation
They stayed the course and the writers have spoken. Sorry DJ, maybe next year?
#12 Seed (Tie): Toronto Raptors
Without Lebron Cleveland is a playoff team (in the East). Without Bosh Toronto is better than Washington. At least they have a statistically sound fan base.
#14 Seed Philadelphia 76ers
I have a player crush on Andre Iguodala. It breaks my heart that when Philly had Iverson they got Mutombo and made a championship push but with Iguodala they’ve actively shipped any talent around him. If they trade Iguodala at least it would make for a fun experiment.
#15 Seed Washington Wizards
The most “optimistic” authors have Washington matching last season’s debacle. The most pessimistic have them as worst of all time. Sorry for any disrespect Ted.
Western Conference Selections
And here are the Western Conference Selections
Wages of Wins Network outlook of the Western Conference. Seeds and Records are the average of all analysts picks.
#1 Seed: Portland Trail Blazer
They barely edge out the Lakers as the favorites. They’ve won over 50 games the last two seasons while battling injuries. They have depth at every position. Even accounting for Oden being out this team should still be great. When they rock the NBA remember we said it! (And if they fail, feel free to forget)
#2 Seed: Los Angeles Lakers
They’re defending champs. They have three talented big men. They were weak at the small forward and point guard position. In the offseason they acquired a good small forward and point guard. This season looks a lot like last season, but the competition has gotten stronger.
#3 Seed: San Antonio Spurs
Ginobli and Duncan still have some life left in them. Tiago Splitter and Dujain Blair look poised to help push this team forward. They’re not as cut and dry among the analysts as the Lakers and Blazers but they’re still favored to keep the dynasty running another season.
#4 Seed: Oklahoma City Thunder
The good news is they’re slated to join the top half of the west. The bad news is that most analysts have them below 50 wins. We’ll see if Durant keeps up his great play and if the Thunder can find a way to plug the big hole at center.
#5 Seed: Dallas Maverick
Will this be Dirk’s year? Most analysts say no. They’re still slated to make the playoffs but they look like they’ll take a step back from next year. The plan looks like putting a bunch of hope in older and recovering players. We’ll see how that pans out, but the predictions aren’t great.
#6 Seed: Golden State Warriors
The Wins Produced metric has been a huge fan of David Lee for a while. Finally he’s moved to a good team (and more importantly one that isn’t intentionally tanking). If Stephen Curry keeps up his stellar play and Biedrins comes back then this team looks in great shape.
#7 Seed: New Orleans Hornets
A healthy Chris Paul is enough to help this team move forward. Many of the analysts have them back in the playoffs and one has them breaking the 50 win mark. It looks like Paul will go another year without a ring but at least he should return to the playoffs.
#8 Seed (Tie): Phoenix Suns
Let’s give them some credit for self control with letting Amare walk. Unfortunately the truth is they now are very weak in the middle. They also have Dallas’ problem of hoping older players in Nash and Hill can keep them running. The sun has probably set on their championship chances but hopefully they can give some one a battle in the first round.
#9 Seed (Tie): Denver Nuggets
Yipes, what happened? Well Billups has gotten older, Martin and Birdman are injured and Harrington will be taking important minutes from better players. I wanted to be upset by these predictions as a Nuggets fan but I can’t. What really upsets me is that Melo may actually get to leave town and convince people he was a big reason the Nuggets were good.
#10 Seed: Utah Jazz
They will really miss Carlos Boozer. People that think Jefferson is an acceptable replacement are kidding themselves. Add in the fact that their competition has improved and they look poised to fall off the top of the Northwest Mountain.
#11 Seed: Sacramento Kings
This may seem a little low but remember last season they only won 25 games. Sacramento looks in great shape with Tyreke Evans, Samuel Dalembert and a top prospect in Demarcus Cousins. This team will improve greatly this year and look great for the future.
#12 Seed: Houston Rockets
This team has a few issues. They don’t really have any superstars (no Yao doesn’t count). Also even though Yao is coming back he is not helping them as much as you’d think as the Rockets actually are pretty good in the front court. I really wish Yao could have won a ring with McGrady but at least he’ll go to another All-Star game this year.
#13 Seed: Memphis Grizzlies
What have they done to move forward from last year? Not much except tank their cap by signing one of the most overrated players to a long term contract. With most teams having two talented bigs would make me happy. Say hello to the exception.
#14 Seed: Minnesota Timberwolves
Kevin Love should keep a poster of Kevin Garnett in his locker to remind himself there is hope. A possibility is that Michael Beasley pulls a Chris Andersen and sees a huge jump in his performance playing clean. Even then the rest of the roster will keep this team from having any hope of improving.
#15 Seed: Los Angeles Clippers
Hoopsworld does not seem to agree with us. For those of you that haven’t checked the Wages of Wins analysts really like Blake Griffin. The rest of the Clippers are just that bad. Last year they won 29 games. You’d figure adding Blake Griffin would improve them. However they let Marcus Camby, Drew Gooden and Steve Blake (or their best players) go. As such don’t expect improvement from this team. Be happy if they hold serve from last year.
- Dre
And here is the article from Forbes on the NBA’s Math.
from Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes.com
NBA owners held a two-day Board of Governors meeting last week in New York and the message that came out of the meetings was that the league is doomed. Commissioner David Stern delivered the bad news which includes $370 million in losses last year for owners, an expected loss of $350 million this season and the contraction of teams on the table to help stem losses.
The owners’ collective bargaining agreement with the player is set to expire after the season which kicks off tonight. Some type of lockout seems like a foregone conclusion. Do NBA owners really have it that bad? Stern’s posturing on the issue deserves its own Saturday Night Live Weekend Update “Really!?”segment. With apologies to Seth and Amy, here goes.
Really, David Stern. You had buyers agree to pay record prices for two under-performing, dysfunctional franchises in the Wizards ($550 million) and Warriors ($450 million) over the past 6 months, but no one can make money owning an NBA team. Really? That is $1 billion for 2 teams that have lost 70% of their games the past two seasons. Really!
And NBA players salaries need to be cut by $750-$800 million because owners are losing so much money. Really? Who offered these contracts to Rudy Gay ($84 million), Joe Johnson ($124 million), Drew Gooden ($32 million) and DarkoMilicic ($20 million). And that was just this summer. Don’t even get me started on past deals for Eddy Curry, Larry Hughes and dozens of others. Really.
NBA revenues last season topped $3.8 billion and player salaries are capped at 57% of revenues. Really? The 57% is based on basketball-related income which excludes 60% of arena signage and luxury suite revenues as well as 50% of naming rights revenue. So the NBA actually pays out around 54% of revenues to players. For the NBA to collectively lose money teams must spend more than $1.75 billion (or $59 million per team) on non-player costs. Really? Are trainers rubbing liquid gold on players?
Really, commissioner. Last summer you said that basketball-related income was expected to decline 5% during the 2009-10 season, but BRI actually rose 1%, a swing of $215 million. And teams still lost $370 million? Really!
And ratings for the NBA Finals on ABC this year were up 26% and the highest since 2004. Really! The season begins tonight with one of the most anticipated regular season games ever when the Boston Celtics face-off against the remade Miami Heat and their trio of stars: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. No money to be made here though. Really?
The league is hurting for sponsorship revenues right now. Really? This summer league sponsor Southwest Airlines did walk away from the NBA, yet the league added a new partner in banking giant BBVA. It also renewed agreements with long-time sponsors Anheuser-Busch, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola Kia Motor and Right Guard. Really!
There are 10 NBA teams owned by billionaires including the latest addition to the club Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov who is worth $13.4 billion. Really! How did these guys all get so rich? By buying money losing assets? Really!
- Kurt Badenhausen
So there you go. You can see what might happen in 2010-11. And we also can see that the arguments that might cancel 2011-12 are not very good. Nevertheless, you might want to really enjoy this season. There is a possibility that we won’t get another season as quickly as we might like.
- DJ
I find it interesting that the min-max spreads go up as you get further down in the rankings: other than San Antonio (17) and Miami (14), most top teams only have a 6-7 win difference between min and max. Then when you get to the bottom of the conferences, suddenly there are teams like Minnesota (24) and Washington (20) and most teams seem to have 10-win spreads.
I suggest the term “WoW Journalists” to describe writers for the WoW Network.
I should change my nickname to “Outlier” after my picks for the Heat (max), Magic (max), Hawks (max), Pacers (min), Pistons (min), Sixers (min), Wizards (min), Blazers (max), Lakers (max), Mavs (max) and Hornets (max).
I’m concerned about the Heat after the first two games but feeling GREAT about that Wizards pick. They should be proud they kept the deficit under 45 (I guess the Hawks will be able to keep their title of “Magic Whipping Boys” a third consecutive season).
>>Really? Who offered these contracts to Rudy Gay ($84 million), Joe Johnson ($124 million), Drew Gooden ($32 million) and DarkoMilicic ($20 million). And that was just this summer. Don’t even get me started on past deals for Eddy Curry, Larry Hughes and dozens of others. Really.<<<
If you can point to a long list of very overpaid players (and it's not that hard), that's actually evidence of a problem with salaries. It's actually an argument for cutting salaries.
Personally, I think all sports need a "hard" cap.
Even though teams compete against each other, they are not competing against each other in a business sense. They are like individually owned departments within a larger corporation that is competing with "other sports and other forms of entertainment".
So the goal should not be to create a system where big cities with a lot of extra revenue can bid away and retain players at the expense of everyone else. The goal should be to create entertaining and competitive games where a lot of teams have a chance to win and keep the interest of their fans.
The way it's set up now is approximately equal to Chase Manhattan Bank (for example) having various departments bidding away employees from each other, raising all their costs, leaving some departments in bad shape, hurting their services in some areas, and then trying to compete with Citibank. It's nutty.
With a hard cap cities like NY, LA, and Chicago with cable deals etc… would make a lot more profit, but that's OK as long the small cities can afford the hard cap. The best run organizations will still get better results and attract the best players for that reason and the bigger market teams will simply be worth a lot more money. There is nothing wrong with that. If you buy a big market team you will pay a lot more for it, so the returns will remain in line with smaller market teams.
The trick is defining the hard cap in relation to other sports entertainment so that playing basketball remains competitive with other major sports. That way it can continue to attract top athletes. At the same time, the total return on capital for the league has to be high enough to justify ownership of a team. "Profit" is not an adequate standard. It's actually an idiotic standard.
Any cities that cannot afford the hard cap and thus can't put together a competitive team should be eliminated from the league PERIOD unless the owner is stupid enough to want to continue losing money or get inadequate returns.
This would really not be that difficult if everyone wasn't so greedy and eager to get every penny they could.
The teams are owned by separate individuals, so the example you used is useless. The “total return on capital” or “profit” is obviously already sufficient, since there were buyers willing to pay huge amounts of money for the Wizards and Warriors. The NBA’s revenues increased and the finals were highly watched, suggesting people are already entertained by the league.
And there are overpaid people in all walks of life. That’s part of the risk of running a business and hiring employees.
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I’ll take the over on wins for the Suns. It’s amazing that they went to the Western conference finals last year and WOW are projecting them as barely making the playoffs. I thought WOW wasn’t high on Amare? The only way the Suns don’t outperform expectations AGAIN is if somebody gets hurt.
Ben,
Amare in his hayday was a really good center. He declined and was reduced to an average center. So we didn’t think he was worth his max money, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t helping the team. http://arturogalletti.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-short-supply-of-tall-people-revisited/
Arturo summed it up pretty well here. Essentially a good way to tank your team is to not have ANY big men. The Suns have a really strong backcourt but not enough up front. They were right not to pay Amare 100 million for 6 years, but they still need to replace him in the center (Dampier!!)