A Short Post: NBA Rankings 3/14/13

I know, I know, I’ve been AWOL.

Life happens. It’s still happening by the way. My life has been workshops, capital plans and executive pitches since I got back from Sloan.

I’ve actually generated three possible patents, $4 million in possible projects, come up with a $20 million capital plan and fixed a three major pieces of capital equipment (in dress pants in between presentations). All in the last four days.

So today we go short and sweet.

Rankings , the executive pitch version so of course we lead with the money shot.

And we follow with the table form.

The blurbs?

Miami and OKC are back on top.
San Antonio really misses their Point Guard.
The Clippers are really glad to have their Point Guard Back.
Rudy Gay? Not a star or a max guy.
The Pacers are perfectly set up to earn their playoff bones and nobly lose to the Heat in the ECF.
No one should want to see the Rockets in the Playoffs.
Everyone should want to see the Jazz.
The Knicks took a gamble and lost apparently.
Karl and the Nuggets blowing a playoff series by not playing a center for a whole 4th Quarter against Memphis? It’s fate.

Let’s give you the simulation as well:

Miami is still flirting with history. Teams that win 65 plus games have an awesome playoff track record.

Of course we close with the summary:

The East is booked solid with only the seeding in play.The West of course is way more interesting.

I expect:

The Thunder and Spurs to play a chess game around opponents, injury and rest for the 1 seed (with Popp somehow getting rest, homecourt and the Jazz in round 1).
The Clipps to get the 3, Denver the 4, Memphis the 5 and Dre writing a 10,000 word attack on George Karl after he blows this series.
Houston to get the 6 and LA and Utah the 7 and 8. The biggest xfactor is Bogut. If he’s healthy, kick Utah out and prepare for all out war in round 1 in the west. Seriously, there would be no bad series in that western first round.

-Arturo

20 Responses to "A Short Post: NBA Rankings 3/14/13"

Frederic Bush says:

March 14, 2013 at 10:56 pm

Don’t trust your model and GSW’s 96.6% playoff percentage?
Arturo Galletti says:

March 14, 2013 at 10:59 pm

Fred,
It’s a straight points model. I do think the roster in GSW is shaky. I also think I may be underrating the Utah (and Denver) HCA late in the season because of overall fatigue. Just my gut.
Charles Connaughton says:

March 14, 2013 at 11:53 pm

The Warrior’s roster is terrifying due to how thin they are at center. They have, like, the animated corpse of Andris Biedrins and as much of a hobbled Bogut as the doctors will allow. Oh, and a rookie that plays 2-3 minutes a game. Your back-up plan is to play David Lee and his…glorious…interior defense at center. What could possibly go wrong?
dynamo.joe says:

March 15, 2013 at 5:59 am

@ Charles, that’s Karl’s dream team.
Al S says:

March 15, 2013 at 8:31 am

I’d be interested in your analysis at some point (presuambly after the season) as to why some of your preseason predictions were high or low. For some it’s easy – MIN and PHL, for example. But why are OKC and MEM playing better than expected preseason – their respective trades? How about IND?
HoopDon says:

March 15, 2013 at 12:02 pm

Al S

The Thunder are excelling for a few reasons. Durant has significantly improved from 11-12 to 12-13. Harden’s loss of production is huge, but Arturo might have underestimated Kevin Martin’s improvement once he started playing with Westbrook/Durant, guys who can get him great looks. Westbrook’s play-making has significantly improved, as evidenced by Sefalosha and Ibaka shooting the lights out this year.
Adam T says:

March 15, 2013 at 2:16 pm

I like the win simulation results display a lot.

It’s pretty neat how LAC, DEN, and MEM are basically in a dead heat for the 3 seed in the simulation results. I imagine the results of tonight’s game will have a non-trivial impact on those odds.

I didn’t realize San Antonio had slipped that much. It looks like there’s a decent chance that whoever emerges as their second round opponent (LAC/DEN/MEM/HOU) will have a chance at an upset. Unfortunately, I really don’t like Denver’s chance of pulling that off.
Arturo Galletti says:

March 15, 2013 at 2:42 pm

Adam T,
Keep in mind that I expect Tony Parker to be back for the playoffs. I don’t expect SA to really have to much trouble in round one.
Hasani Davis says:

March 15, 2013 at 4:17 pm

thank you for taking the time to make the power rankings
now that we are in the home streach, two GLARING points in favor of us quants.

Memphis…… nuff said as a quant is now working for the team and they bring in a crap load of high wins players and “out of nowhere” become a powerhouse.

and HOUSTON ROCKETS. who also have on more than one occation taken low value wins players and traded them in for high value players. spending 8 mil per for a 7ftr center who is 2nd in the league in rebounding, trading an inefficent shooter and volume scorder in for james harden. the rockets are young efficent and a quants dream.
Adam T says:

March 15, 2013 at 4:19 pm

Oh, not round 1 – unless they end up with Houston, which is possible. But if Parker isn’t back strong, they are definitely vulnerable in round 2, which was what I was talking about
Blake says:

March 15, 2013 at 7:35 pm

Hasani,

I wouldn’t call Kevin Martin an inefficient volume scorer, as shooting efficiently is his one great skill. He has a career 59.6 TS%, with most seasons over 60 TS%. His lack of productivity comes from not excelling in any other categories.
Charles Connaughton says:

March 15, 2013 at 8:00 pm

Denver really needs that 3 seed if they’re to escape a first round playoff exit in the 4/5 bracket to a team that will play their star bigs in the 4th quarter. I really don’t want to see what happens if you let Griffin, Jordan, Gasol, or Randolph play against a Karlball lineup. For the sake of Dre’s head, here’s hoping Denver steals the 3 seed.

The biggest concern for the Lakers is Kobe going nuts and chucking them out of games – contrary to conventional wisdom, the Lakers are playing phenomenally when Kobe isn’t lighting up the board (18-6 record when Kobe scores 25 points or less) rather than when he is (16-26 record when Kobe scores 26 or more). If he starts trying to carry the team, do not expect things to end well.
Brian says:

March 15, 2013 at 10:14 pm

I’ve never understand where all the Biedrins hate comes from, he’s still a great rebounder and shot blocker (15.1 and 3.9 respectively per 48) and above average player overall at .151 wins per 48, but his totals and per game averages never look impressive because he never gets any minutes. In Jackson’s defense he is shooting poorly this year, but is a career 59.4% EFG so it’s not like he’s a complete disaster on the that side of the ball. He’ll probably never put up star numbers again, but I don’t see why he can’t still get 20-25 minutes as a backup, especially when playing Lee at center is Jackson’s alternative.

As for MEM, one thing Arturo posted earlier in the year is that they have better shot selection this year:
http://wagesofwins.com/2012/11/12/breaking-down-the-2012-nba-offenses-looking-for-floor-stretch/
Charles Connaughton says:

March 16, 2013 at 1:20 am

No, Biedrins is in fact a complete disaster on offense. You can’t look at career numbers when evaluating him, because he fell off a cliff a few years ago and isn’t even a shadow of the player he used to be. The sum total of his offensive game at this point are put-backs, which he can barely convert for par anymore. Let me repeat for emphasis – the guy shoots 55% on tip-ins and put-back dunks, and does essentially nothing on offense otherwise. Oh, and keep in mind that he hasn’t been a par offensive rebounder in a few years on top of that.

Defensively, well, at least he’s a 7 footer that gets his hands up. That clogs the lane better than David Lee does. The problem is that he’s actually a terrible defender, and any time an opponent penetrates into the lane there’s a good chance they’re on a quick trip to the foul line, courtesy the walking free throw dispenser that is Biedrins. He couldn’t play 25 minutes a game with any consistency even if you wanted him to because he’d have fouled out before the 20 minute mark half the time.

His redeeming value at this point is that he can still box out the opposing center and won’t get posted up. That actually has some value on the Warriors, who are so thin at center that it still makes sense to play the guy. But above average? His WP48 is being carried by ‘being above average with respect to turnovers’ – quite a feat for the guy who never touches the ball. He’s not total deadweight yet, but he’s a prime example of how WP48 can start to get misleading when you have a player far, far outside the norm.
Adam T says:

March 16, 2013 at 12:52 pm

Charles,

FWIW, even George Karl appears to not be crazy enough to put Kennth Faried at the 5 against a lineup with Gasol and Randolph – or at least he never did it last night. He still thinks Chandler is a power forward, though.
Andrew Johnson says:

March 16, 2013 at 12:55 pm

What’s the calculation on the min and max wins for the year? Hard to evaluate the model’s performance without understanding that.

Also, I never really understood why the model liked the Knicks so much. You’ve got Tyson Chandler, a forty something Kidd, and a lot of expensive mediocrity. But, pretty much everyone has performed as expected or better.
Charles Connaughton says:

March 16, 2013 at 2:59 pm

I’ll defend George Karl about playing Wilson Chandler at the 4.

The only power forwards on Denver’s roster are Faried and Anthony Randolph; Karl doesn’t trust Randolph and hasn’t given him many minutes (he’s been really inconsistent in the limited time he has played). If he’s not willing to play Randolph (maybe he should?), he can’t play Faried 48 minutes a night, so he needs someone to play the 4 when Faried is on the bench – who on that roster is better? Gallinari? Corey Brewer?

Chandler at the 4 may be bad, but it’s the least bad of all the options (unless you decide that Randolph is good enough for bench minutes).

I’ll rip Karl all day for not playing a center though. With both Koufos and McGee on the roster there’s no excuse to never have one of the two of them on the floor. If they’re both sitting down you’re being dumb or trying to prove a point – though the only point it really proves is that you’re willing to be dumb just to prove that you can be, or something.
Statmandu (@lovethoseknicks) says:

March 16, 2013 at 9:32 pm

D’Antoni used to play Chandler at PF also. He’s basically seen as a stretch PF because he has 3 point range. IMO he defends the position OK. Just don’t expect as many rebounds from the position because he’s typically out on the perimeter or in the corner behind the arc. That’s the role of the modern PF. A lot of teams are basically trading in rebounds from the PF position for better spacing for the PG, C, and any slashers they have. The real problem with Chandler is that he doesn’t get to the FT line enough (hurts his efficiency) and he takes bad shots. IMO he’s at least better than Harrington in the same role.
Concerned Troll says:

March 17, 2013 at 8:46 pm

Hasn’t Chandler been rebounding like a slightly below average 4 when he’s in at the 4 this season?
2013 Playoff Picks for Round 1 says:

April 20, 2013 at 9:35 am

[...] For setting the player value, I ended up calculating the ADJP48 (Raw unadjusted Wins Produced, go here for more detail) for the season for every player and adjusting it to take out the effects of homefield advantage. I won’t go into full detail (not just yet anyway) of that here but you can see part of that work here. [...]

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