[ESPN] Kevin Pelton Win Projections for 2025-26 Season

Nothing is certain in the West. The Fred injury has already set us back, but our win total from here on out will largely be determined by the health and availability of the other Rockets, as well as the health and availability of our opponents.

I wouldn't be surprised if we don't win as many games as we did last year, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we won 58-59. We'll just see.

 

The standard margin for me is at 54-55, this should be attainable.

I guess if they go on an invincible tour like the MDA and Harden Rockets, wow....historical record.

Keep in mind CP3, Harden and Ego were the best playmakers/combo guards in a generation not named Steph.

Not just wings, they were running the whole show to perfection and Prince Luc, Ariza, those guys were the perfect complementary pieces on Defense.

 

My view is that FVV's shortcomings are typically things stars do, and the way he provides value normally doesn't overlap with stars. FVV may be a high floor, low ceiling guy. I don't see the problem with that unless one is viewing him as the star of the team. On a team with Durant, Sengun, and Amen, the PG role (or other guard for those that want Amen to have that title) is going to be basically limited to providing value in keeping turnovers down, off-ball shooting (about 40% as a Rocket despite a bad year at 38% last season), processing, and defense with some dribbling using advantages created by others. The 4th or 5th best starter that does those things raises the ceiling of a team with stars even if the guy isn't a high ceiling guy.

There are a ton of players that would be better as the guy with the ball in their hands all the time. Most of those guys aren't good enough to be the guy with the ball in their hands on a championship team or even the Robin.

I don't buy the arguments some have voiced on FVV basically being in the way of the Rockets' offense. The better Amen got, the better the offense got with Amen and FVV in the game.

 

Turnovers are going to be an issue this year without FW.

Pelton knows his stuff and he's not watching games and forming an opinion. His model was very successful last year and has been in years past.

GS doesn't have to win 56 games, they just have to win over 45.5 to beat the total. They won 48 games last year and are much better this year with Jimmy (even though an injury risk). Do people think they really won't cover 45.5 wins?

The replacement of KD for Jalen is huge. The loss of Fred will hurt but it's hard to know how much. I bet Rockets over last year but won't this year because there's a lot of uncertainty with Fred out.

 

What did he predict for the rockets last year? I tried looking it up but I’m not paying $12 to find out. I would guess his model would have us about the same as this year.

 

So I looked and he was off last year on the Rockets. He had 40.4 wins and the line was 43.5 wins. Mid season he looks at the data for teams and predicted 51.5 wins for the Rockets.

But I've looked at Pelton's wins for all teams and they were really good last year. Maybe it was off for Houston last year. I still wouldn't put oney on over 53.5 wins but maybe others would.

 

I think we will have more TO’s this year, but we will be running more and getting into our half-court offense faster. Our TS% will be astronomically higher. Our efficiency on offense will far outweigh an increase in TO’s. FVV average 5 assists and 2 TO’s a game. What is better 7 assists and 3 to’s with better overall efficiency or 5 assists and 2 to’s with the worst TS% from starting guards in the league. Our offense is going to way better than last year without FVV. Our defense has always been the biggest concern with losing FVV.

 

Over and bank it

 

Thanks, I agree 53.5 is too high for me to put money down. Would put money on the 43 over or whatever number his model put out.

 

Reed Sheppard thinks otherwise

 

Durant is more of a perfect fit on this team than anywhere he has been except GS. I predict the Rockets will be a serious contender for the NBA championship. They will pass the Warriors. Reed is going to come around, and the bench will help.For early in the season, they really look in sync.

 

My high-level projection, without any deep-diving to any advanced stats or anything, is as follows -

We had 52 wins last year.
Now let’s split between the remaining players and new players we have in our roster, and see what contribution they have to our total 52 wins they worth as of last seasonz

The young core which remains in the team (Alpi, Amen, Bari, Tari and Reed) worked hard this summer, and with another year of experience, they should improve this season as well. This should add about 2 more wins.

Durant instead of JG - if Durant was able to play 82 games like young Jalen, I would project about 7-8 more wins. Durant is the consistent shooter we were missing so much. But if we take into account about 15-20 missed games by Durant, it off-sets it’s contribution for let’s say 3 more wins.

Next we have DFS instead of Brooks - I think it’s safe to say that this change won’t effect our winning record. Again, I did not dive into any stats analytics or anything, I’m sure one can argue why DFS is much better or worse that Brooks, but overall I think that eventually we replaced one role player by another, both are similar quality level.

Last but not least, we have an injured FVV instead of a healthy one, which leaves us without our starting PG. I do believe that the additional minutes to Reed and Davidson, and extended ball handling by Amen and Sengun, in the long term, can work quite good. But, we will probably need to adjust for a few games early this season. So assuming that FVV absence won’t be that catastrophic, I guess it will have a negative effect of 3 less wins.

So overall according to my really simplistic model, which did account Fred’s injury and some level of games to be missed by Durant, we can have 54 wins.
I’m not sure that I put my money above the 53.5 line, but I’m not that certain we’ll be below it, at least not 6 wins below..

 

I agree, it doesn't seem to be based on stats or facts this seems more like straight personal opinion. It say's stats but something has to be missing. It doesn't list what stats are used to determine this. No way Warriors got better by signing Al Horford and we got worst having Durant.

"
Based on the scoring of projections at the APBRmetrics forum, my recalibrated forecast had the second-lowest root mean squared error, a method that heavily penalizes bad misses. It also had the strongest correlation to actual wins and losses.

To project teams, I start with player ratings based on a combination of my SCHOENE stats-based projections and luck-adjusted regularized adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) provided by Krishna Narsu that covers the past three seasons. For each team, I project games played based on those missed to injury over the past three years and current absences then subjectively guess at the distribution of playing time."

Seems to be too many variables to be any kind of accurate.

 

Meh some guys are gonna miss time, it’s gonna take some time for our backcourt to figure it out, and Fred’s loss hurts our spacing, defense and will increase our turnovers. Most every team in the west got better. I say 51 wins. I don’t see us as the #2 seed this year…and that’s okay. We’ll be much more prepared for the playoffs. I think we’ll be a better team but have a worse record than last season.

 

for the rockets, it is hard to judge because of several reasons:
1) we lost fvv but we have potential to playmake from center position
2) Jalen green and brooks left, replaced by kd and one more player. Jg and kd are very different profiles
3) we have young prospects that is ready to take a leap. that is hard to estimate

so I think their model just doesn’t capture these things well but I understand that it is a tough case for a mode to handle.

nice forum by the way! Thanks for sharing.

 

6 teams that will definitely be better than they were last yr in the Western conference:

okc - youth development and healthy Chet
Spurs - youth development and healthy Wemby
Clipps - added Beal, Lopez and Collins
Portland - youth development and added Holiday.
Lakers - full season of Luka
Warriors - full season of Jimmy, added Horford, and some youth development

 

46 wins is a joke.
FVV's loss hurts but he wasn't wearing a red "S" on his chest.
Golden State at 2nd seed?

We won 52 games last season and could have stapled on one or two more if we hadn't locked up 2nd seed early. (We tended to play well against good teams and suck against mediocre teams.)

That being said, no major injuries issue? 54-55 is more likely.

 

Yeah, they've got some dubious logic if they think an old team like the Warriors is going to hold up to the 82 game grind without having to strategically give away games to get rest for Curry, Butler, etc. And that's if they stay healthy. They're just assuming the Warriors are going to bring it every night against teams other than the Rockets, which is unlikely with their age.

 

Lack of point guard doesn't mean a lack of facilitators though, as long as Sengun is healthy.

The problem for Phoenix last year was that they had zero facilitators for their three big guns on offense, making Beal, Booker, and Durant far less effective than they maybe could have been. Beal and Booker also not being good defenders complicated things, but who cares.