I'm not quite sure how you did your math. The Heat won 2/3 of their games against the west and 73% against the east. If they had played 30 games against the east and 52 against the west, then they would have won 57 games assuming the same winning percentages. That would have put them in a three-way tie for 2nd place with the Lakers and Mavs.
If the Celtics beat the Heat, which they will.... will you never post here again? I'll take the same bet.
The difference is your rounding up and giving them two extra wins - one from the EC scenario and one from the WC scenario but I wouldn't round up on a win probability percentage - that just seems like your tilting odds further. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't round up in that mathematical scenario.
Ok, that makes sense. I still think 57 wins is realistic once you factor in schedules. For example, the Heat lost twice to Dallas, but both of those games came early in the year when the Mavs were still playing very well. If they were to play four times during the season, it's unlikely they would have all come during the stretch when Dallas was playing its best basketball.
As stated earlier, your assumptions about what people say about the Heat are wrong - everyone thought they would get better as they were able to build via FA. That being said I have my doubts that this team is going to get significantly better than it is now. Miller and Haslem are both over 30 and frankly Miller has never been a model of perfect health so that's a legit concern for the future. Haslem is younger than Juwon so I guess that counts as an upgrade for their bench low post guys but I think Haslem's effectiveness has been overstated. He isn't going to power them to anything more than maybe 1 or 2 extra wins in a best case scenario. The real problem for the Heat is their whole "plan" to upgrade via FA/salary exceptions to the soft cap moving forward could be seriously derailed by the new CBA that's being negotiated and since Lebron/Wade/Bosh toyed with so many teams in the offseason, I think the Heat are going to find few sympathetic ears. They still have a pretty big window for 2 or 3 more years with their talented 3, but I question whether they are going to be able to upgrade that roster more than it is now AND whether they can seriously compete more than 3 years out. Zydrunas & Dampier have been decent but those guys are running on fumes and who do you replace them with? Same for Bibby - guy gets the Derrick Fisher award for savvy vet who literally has one skill left(hitting 3s) that comes in handy after getting torched by opposing PGs. I may be wrong...but I doubt it.
...ya, I suppose you would also have to consider one WC team would have to be moved to the EC and that would also skewer the win percentage as well depending on who that team was - it was really just meant to be a ballpark but I would still hesitate to say 57 wins....watching the Heat's struggles against good teams I'm skeptical that moving to a significantly tougher conference would only make a one win difference from the EC. Maybe the 30 games against the WC teams is too small a sample size and the 40 games against teams over .500 (of which there are 9 in the WC) is a better sample to draw from. Common sense just tells me that there is no way the Heat would win only one less game playing the Western Conference than what they played in the Eastern.
Keep in mind also that 1/3 of the Heat's losses came against the other top three teams in the East (record 3-8). They were .500 against the top three in the West, so they'd benefit from the change in conference there.
...but that's such a small sample size I don't think you can make too strong an argument that had they played 12 games against the top 3 in the West they would have necessarily won 6 of those based on what they did in 6 actual games this season - especially since larger sample sizes against good teams suggest they probably wouldn't have fared anywhere close to that well.
i have them 38-14 in the east and 20-10 in the west. so that's: (38/52)*30+(20/30)*52=56.6 wins so round up to 57. even breaking it down gives 21.9 wins in the east and 34.7 in the west so 22+35=57. and as was mentioned, the heat haven't necessarily had trouble with merely good teams, just the upper echelon and the east has as many as the west.
why should the 2nd 6 games be different than the first 6? if we're talking small samples, you could just as easily argue that because chicago scored the winning points with under 30 seconds left in all 3 of their wins over the heat that it was just close game randomness hurting their record against good teams and a different season could have played out much differently just based on a few bounces of the ball no matter what conference they were in.
the key is how the new cba handles things with regards to the current highest payroll teams if they go to a hard cap. in a true hard cap/no exceptions scenario the talent to contract value ratio would be most important and that should benefit the heat, as lebron and wade have the two best non-rookie contracts in the league, as they could both get a lot more with no maximum contract. that allows them to currently have the 3rd best record while spending $18M less than boston, $25M less than dallas, and $26M less than the lakers. even the bulls would be slightly higher if rose and noah were off their rookie contracts. but if they somehow grandfather in the current high payroll teams for a few years while keeping teams like miami/okc/chicago under some new hard cap, then it might spell trouble.
That's really not true, regarding the contributions of Miller and Haslem. Haslem was their best backup big and they really don't have another legit PF. He can also play C against some teams. That, combined with his ability to hit jumpers and spread the floor for Wade/LeBron....him being gone is a big loss. As far as Miller, having another weapon that can just hit threes at a 40% clip does wonders when you have Wade/LeBron on your team, and Mike Bibby is a perfect example of that. You are basically going from 2 guys who could start for a lot of teams coming off your bench to dudes like Howard and James Jones...guys that shouldn't be starting for anyone. 1-2 extra wins?
The 1-2 wins is strictly in reference to Haslem. My point is when it comes to wins, role players contribute only in small parts to team's overall win total. The very very best players might only produce a 10 win increase so for a guy like Haslem(who by the way, is NOT a starter on his own team on most nights and may be a starter for less than half of NBA teams), I think 1-2 wins is probably accurate if not generous. Obviously they are a better team with him but my point is his contribution is only a small part of their win total. Miller is a good fit for that team but let's face it - James Jones statistically did the same thing this season they were hoping for from Miller....and besides - Miller is an injury prone guy. He has played 82 games exactly once in his career. The expectation that Miami ever would have had Miller for a full 82 is just off base. Yes Miami is a better team with him, but Miller's contribution to Miami in an 82 game season is limited because the expectation that he probably won't play a full season, probably won't start, and probably will have just as many awful games as good ones.
I disagree with you there - your correct that Lebron/Wade/even Bosh would all have relatively good superstar deals in a hard cap, but the point is no one would be able to field a competitive roster with 3 star contracts in a hard cap scenario if the cap shrinks down even further than it is now(as expected). They based their roster growth projections entirely on cap exceptions.
Why are you rounding up? I don't understand that. I know it's easier to deal with whole numbers and generally we can round up without consequence in most scenarios, but if they win .66% of their games against the WC, and 73% against the EC, in my mind I'm not going to round up the result because we don't play .6 of a game - we only play full games. You just drop the decimal all together because at that point it means you would probably win the next few quarters of a game but it doesn't have a real correlation to the 82 game season because that rounding up your doing account for two more games Miami would never actually play(an 84 game regular season).
Is this some kind of New Math? Of course you round here. He's not rounding up... he's rounding to the nearest, which is the best approximation you can make. Rounding down would be unfairly penalizing the team.
See I don't look at it as rounding down - based on the win percentage they would win 34.7 games against the West. I'm not rounding down - they would win 34 games in an 82 game season and 7/10 of another game but they don't play 7/10ths of games. I realize this is ultimately a semantic argument/non-issue because a game or two is standard variance in pretty much any method we could use but I stand by my math - you don't round to the nearest because the whole integer is what your after here. ....and my original point is they are 4 or 5 seed in the West with the way I projected it and ESPN's adjusted win percentage agrees with me on that as well - .001 ahead of OKC for the 4th seed.
the heat have a MUCH better chance to go to the finals if they were in the west than in the east. let's put it that way. the 2 teams who are capable of beating the heat are in the east: celtics and bulls. even if the heat were the 4th seed in the west, i don't think they have any qualms about going through the likes of the thunder/mavs/spurs or lakers to get to the finals.
By your logic, say I play you in one-on-one 10 times and you win 9 of them. Your winning percentage vs. me is 90%. We then predict how you would do over a 1 game "season" vs. me. Your expectation would be 0 wins and 9/10 of another game we don't play, so we'll just call it 0.
Not matter what the Heat do, the haters will always find an excuse to bag them. First it was they wont make the playoffs, then when they made the 2nd seed in the East, it was they would be 4/5 seed in the West. Next one, is that if they make it to the finals, it will be "They woudnt make it in the finals if they were in the West. Fun times ahead..
