Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight's NBA Player projections

The comps for Dwight are really terrible.

I like the idea but I'm not sure just using War works

 

Dwight role-player, wtf?

 

538 Nba projections are terrible. None of his projections were ever close last season

 

Welp, they still show DMo at 222lbs so you can't expect any accuracy from them.

 

In general, I have not been impressed by 538's sports work (nor their science articles, TBH). I think they just do sports because $ but Silver's talent really seems to be political projections more than anything else.

I know "data are data" but something eludes them in sports. Or they bore me to tears in any case.

 

Look at Dwight's vs. Jordan's chart. Outside of Dwight having more usage% (which is supposed to be good) they're the same. One is a borderline all start and the other is a key role player...

 

I played around with that site for a while too but it seems both inconsistent and overly dependent on a few variables.

For example, a guy like Bradley Beal, who everyone knows is talented, but hasn't shown much in terms of advanced stats, gets the benefit of the doubt and is dubbed a "Future All-Star". Elfrid Payton, who I like, also gets that label, while having his fair share of statistical struggles last year.

Kawhi, who everyone knows is an elite defender and an advanced stats darling, gets an "MVP candidate" label, even though nobody in their right mind thinks he will win one in his career.

I could go on about the "groupings", but overall their statistical models are just faulty and inconclusive.

That said, it's still fun to play around with.

 

Examples? Just curious.

 

There are EIGHT MVP candidates, according to the CARMELO projections (7 are in the west, and the other is LeBron James)

In order to see which players this system viewed as 'All-Star' level, I took 'MVP', 'All-Star', and 'Borderline All-Star' players and separated them by conference.

Eastern Conference
All-Stars (6):
Jimmy Butler
Kyrie Irving
LeBron James [MVP Candidate]
Kevin Love
Kyle Lowry
John Wall

Borderline All-Stars (8):
Kyle Korver
Paul Millsap
Nicolas Batum
Joakim Noah
George Hill
Paul George
Khris Middleton
Greg Monroe

Western Conference
All-Stars (11):
Stephen Curry [MVP Candidate]
Draymond Green
James Harden [MVP Candidate]
Chris Paul [MVP Candidate]
Blake Griffin
Anthony Davis [MVP Candidate]
Kevin Durant [MVP Candidate]
Russell Westbrook [MVP Candidate]
Damian Lilliard
DeMarcus Cousins
Kawhi Leonard [MVP Candidate]

Borderline All-Stars (14):
Chandler Parsons
Klay Thompson
DeAndre Jordan
Mike Conley
Marc Gasol
Ricky Rubio
Jrue Holiday
Serge Ibaka
Eric Bledsoe
Tyson Chandler
Danny Green
Tim Duncan
Gordon Hayward
Derrick Favors


The talent disparity is evident between conferences. These are the 'worthy' selections, but I'm sure Kobe, Wade and Carmelo will be voted in. Thoughts? (Also, interesting what they put for Rose and Whiteside haha.)

 

This list is pretty legit. I wouldn't take Dwight over any of those centers listed (Cousins, Gasol, Jordan) aside from Chandler.

Kawhi has legit MVP candidate potential and he's only 24.

 

It's worthless to develop such a projection and use a database with wrong data like wrong heights, and positions.
They are also using this to make nba preview predictions and according to them a team of 10 role players and no star will win around 50 games. (Boston).

 

To be fair, they're projecting Marcus Smart to be a future all-star and it's also the Eastern Conference.

 

you just proved my point if they are projecting him for next year.:grin: (or for any year in my opinion even with the Boston media hype machine).

 

Also they projected them at 48 wins, what did Boston win last year? 40-42? It's not that crazy to think with improvements from Smart, Olnyk, Sullinger they could win a few more games.

 

It's crazy. But I will make a thread about the east projections because it will be a bloodbath and it will be interesting to see what everyone else thinks.
-Do you know how old is Olynyk? And he can't improve his wingspan. How can we expect him to improve at defence with such bad athletic profile? Sullinger supposedly went into a contract year/intervention/rehab diet and still looks fat.
And they took advantage of a tanking east to reach that record in the last two months of the season when half the east was tanking like mad.
Amir Johnson is always every year injured and loses a lot of games. After him there is no rim protection yet again. You have a team with half guards and half pfs with no good rim protecting C and inside defence, except Amir and with no great wings.

What I hate about thsi things is that they think that a team projections is like math. Just add every players WARP and you got the total wins. But it doesn't work like this. It's not arithmetic. With no interior defence and with no good wings except maybe bradley and with no star ...

 

I agree with you, one shouldn't use the team projections as some type of crystal ball to determine how many games we're going to win.

However, what I do find useful about it is comparing Team A to Team B, so instead of saying Team A is going to win 48 games, you can say, Boston is probably better than Charlotte.

I actually agree with this and think Boston has a chance to surprise a lot of people next year in a weak Eastern Conference. They are at minimum a playoff team over there.

 

Let's face it,

the only reason ESPN is pushing this crappy website is just because Grantland is done after Simons departed.

 

Yeah Dwight is a key role player while horse **** like Portions, Jrue Holiday, Rubio etc are borderline all stars.

Makes sense.

**** them