daboywonder2002
Superstar
delfino not even healthy.Straight dumb sh*t.. we need a real GM in place and not Doc Rivers. Let him stick to coaching
Eric Bledsoe, Caron Butler and a 1st rounder for JJ Reddikk, Delfino and a no name big
2014 Nba Off Season Thread
- Thread starter red222
- Start date
the way we mishandled bledsoe was total fukkingStraight dumb sh*t.. we need a real GM in place and not Doc Rivers. Let him stick to coaching
Eric Bledsoe, Caron Butler and a 1st rounder for JJ Reddikk, Delfino and a no name big
statuslmaoooooooooo @ willie fukking green playing the same amount of minutes as bledsoe was getting when vinny del retard had him
He Who Posts Well
Veteran
They about to stretch waive him too
OaklandCertified
Town Business
Leandro barbosa signs with the Warriors
@Skooby
If you get moment breh hook us up
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...ter-season-team-most-likely-win-nba-title-nba
If you get moment breh hook us up
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...ter-season-team-most-likely-win-nba-title-nba
Ranking NBA teams by tiers
Change might be the way of the world, but that's not always readily apparent in the NBA.
It can often feel like the same teams keep generating the same results year after year. The Chicago Bulls of the 1990s won six of eight titles, and had Michael Jordan not retired, it might have been eight of eight. The Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics won 11 titles in 13 years. The Spurs have won at least 50 games (including prorated strike seasons) in 17 straight seasons. You get the idea.
Change does come, even in the NBA, and this summer it feels like we had our fair share of movement on the team hierarchy ladder. It starts in Cleveland, where LeBron James and Kevin Love hope to super-charge the Cavaliers, and the outlook has changed drastically for a few other teams as well.
Just before the start of the 2014-15 season, we sorted teams into tiers based on projections, and we're repeating the process today to see where teams stand after a tumultuous offseason. Team baseline win projections have been formulated by combining early SCHOENE forecasts with team projections generated by the same RPM-based methodology we used last week to rank players.
The hope is to balance out any inherent biases within the two systems and, in reality, the forecasts are pretty close for all but a couple of teams. Baseline wins were plugged into a Monte Carlo-style simulator of the 2014-15 schedule that accounted for home-court advantage and other scheduling factors. Finally, the top eight players on each team were used to calculate a postseason baseline, and using the seeds from each simulated regular season, the playoffs were played out. This process was repeated 1,000 times.
The results of all those probabilities and random numbers serve as the basis for separating the teams in tiers below. A lot has changed since last season. (To see just how much, just click on the final version of last spring's Hollinger Playoff Odds.) Each team's average win total in the 1,000 simulations is listed in parenthesis.
Title contenders
(Teams that won a championship in at least 5 percent of simulations, ordered by title odds)
Cleveland Cavaliers (68.3), Los Angeles Clippers (61.1), Chicago Bulls (57.4), San Antonio Spurs (57.1)
There is nothing but downside to Cleveland's forecast. Teams just don't project to win 68 games. Projections are actually an optimistic snapshot of a team, since we don't know who's going to get hurt, or who is going to tank down the stretch. Forecasts are regressed -- a 38-percent career 3-point shooter who shot 29 percent last year will project to shoot much closer to his established norm. Conversely, players coming off career seasons are forecast to decline, if only a little. Almost by definition, forecasts aren't meant to produce outliers. Yet here are the Cavaliers, whose initial win baseline (about 64 wins) was boosted even further once it was plugged into an Eastern Conference-friendly schedule. As a result, Cleveland won a whopping 59 percent of the simulated titles. Should Cleveland be considered the clear championship front-runner? Perhaps. Continuity matters, though, and until we've seen just how well James, Love, Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters will mesh, we have to believe these forecasts are bloated. Nevertheless, it's a nice starting point.
The Bulls actually were on this tier at this time last year, when we didn't know Derrick Rose would be injured again, and it's no surprise that Chicago would show up here again. The Clippers, on paper, appear to have passed San Antonio, but, as always, the Spurs are held back by aging factors which might not actually apply to an organization that transcends anything approaching a trend. The fact that the Spurs' on-paper forecast is this strong is amazing given the age of their core. The other thing that must be noted is that they are the only West teams that made it into this tier, suggesting that the Clippers and Spurs have separated themselves from the rest.
Second tier
(Teams that won at least 1 percent of simulations but less than 5 percent, ordered by title odds)
Oklahoma City Thunder (56.9); Houston Rockets (51.7); Portland Trail Blazers (51.0)
As you can see, the Thunder's win total should put it into the first tier, right where you'd think they'd be. However, OKC won just 2.5 percent of the simulations. That's not just due to the expected strength of the Clippers and Spurs, but also the Cavaliers. The Thunder won about 11 percent of the simulated Western Conference titles, but fell short in most matchups with Cleveland. However you slice it, the road to the 2015 championship shapes up to be an arduous one.
Playoff contenders
(Teams that won less than one percent of the simulations but made the playoffs at least 15 percent of the time, ordered by playoff probability)
Toronto Raptors (47.2), Washington Wizards (47.0), Golden State Warriors (53.4), Atlanta Hawks (43.1), Miami Heat (42.2), Charlotte Hornets (42.1), Dallas Mavericks (50.8), Detroit Pistons (39.0), Memphis Grizzlies (46.8), New Orleans Pelicans (45.3), Phoenix Suns (43.7)
Disconnect between the Warriors' win baseline and their postseason odds is a product of two things. First, as you might guess, the playoff road in the West is wicked, and the Warriors simply didn't successfully traverse the Clippers-Spurs-Thunder minefield very often. The other part of it is that the Warriors' boiled-down playoff rotation didn't measure up, which is why they fell short of the Rockets and Blazers. In the East, either the Raptors or Wizards figure to be the team most likely upset the two-club power structure in that conference.
Stuck in the middle
(Teams that made the playoffs in less than 15 percent of the simulations but averaged more than 25 wins per simulation, ordered by playoff probability)
Indiana Pacers (34.1), Brooklyn Nets (33.9), New York Knicks (28.2), Boston Celtics (26.9), Denver Nuggets (34.1), Minnesota Timberwolves (32.8), Utah Jazz (27.9), Sacramento Kings (25.3), Milwaukee Bucks (25.0)
Knicks and Nets fans have to be startled by these initial projections. In the Knicks' case, there is really no basis for objective optimism, and the numbers get worse when you consider their grim picture painted by New York's collective RPM ratings. Of these teams, you have to look at Denver as the team most likely to move up a tier into playoff contention in the West. In the East, the Nets can surely move up if Brook Lopez and Deron Williams reach something close to optimum health.
Jahlil Okafor or Emmanuel Mudiay?
(Teams that averaged fewer than 25 wins per simulation, ordered by projected wins)
Los Angeles Lakers (23.1), Orlando Magic (22.1), Philadelphia 76ers (10.9)
Both SCHOENE and RPM are in agreement about the Magic and Sixers, though it would be a mild surprise if Orlando is actually this bad. As for the Lakers, RPM methodology sees them as about a 24-win team in a vacuum. SCHOENE is at around 30 wins. There is no optimism to be found in either forecast. When you combine those numbers and run them through the gauntlet of a Western Conference schedule, you get the worst season in Lakers history. If the Kobe Bryant of 10 years shows up, sure, things will look better. But it seems like a big "if."
Microfracture
Real G's move in silence
They're frauds.Thunder should be in that top tier over them. It's been the same since CP3 got there...any series they win is close, and whoever bounces them punks em.
DoubleJ13
Smooth sailing from here on out...
2nd tier 
Should have never traded Hash to Philly
Should have never traded Hash to Philly
tofuspeedstar
Bosozoku Champion
Coangelo called Harden the leader of Team USA?
OhMozGov is only a draft pick away.
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
We got the best backcourt in the league. Our starting and bench guards are official.
It's true, because on paper they are hands down the best team in the league, and have been since CP3 got there. Blake and DJ's progression is elevating the level of play but they still have yet to get there.
Still, the OKC series was their series to win and if it wasn't for that 3 point foul CP3 committed then they might have won a championship this past year.