I am just as bummed as the rest of you, but I keep trying to find a silver lining in all this. I tell myself we have a young up and coming team, and the league's elite teams can't keep winning forever. Common sense right? And everyone knows the thunder are the team of the future. So, i dusted off my old college stats book to see how we stack up with the teams of the future. First, I sorted all of the NBA's teams by average age as of the trade deadline. Next, I did the same with average experience. Then, I divided each of these numbers by the team's current winning percentage and multiplied the two numbers together. I know its not a Hollinger stat or anything, but it kinda confirms what we already know, and shows where we stack up. For instance, the Rockets average experience is 4.2, average age is 26.88, and win % is .520. When performing the calculation, this gives us a score of 3.303, 9th best in the whole NBA. by comparison, the Grizzlies are #1 with 5.362 and the Thunder are #2 with 5.112. The cause for hope are the teams that are skewed. The Spurs sit at 4.129, but the majority of their core players are up in age with McDysse, Duncan, Jeffries, and Ginobili, etc. Same with the Knicks with Billups. On the opposite end of that argument, are the Miami Heat with a score of 2.592. They have a somewhat younger core, with a lot of older veterans chasing a ring. this adds to their team age and experience. Bottom line, this puts us about 5th or 6th in the West in about 3-4 years, with far more assets and ability to improve the team between now and then. I will make an attempt at uploading the Excel File in case any of you want to play with the math, but not really sure how to do it.
Sorry, formulas are slightly wrong. Numbers remain relatively the same. If you download the Excel File, Column G should be =(E2+F2)*C2
Your spreadsheet link points to your local drive which I'm sure you don't want to grant everyone access to (just a mess to manage). Do you have a file share somewhere you can post this?
Might I suggest making up a spreadsheet for the league 3 or 4 years ago to see just how accurate the prediction might be? Something about this smells off.
@Red Dragon, i thought about that too, just out of sheer curiousity. But, that comparison would only be 100% accurate if no transactions were made between then and now. Ages change year to year, but star players change teams too. Something like that is a game changer. my whole point of the thread is that we have a solid foundation for improvement in comparison to the rest of the league.
True. We can't assume every player ages the same, look at Kobe and McGrady, Kobe still dominates and Mcgrady's body failed on him years ago.
No. This is why I factored in current winning percentage to account for talent. So I'm basing this not on just collective age/experience, I'm basing it on age/collective experience as it relates to winning games. Otherwise I'd just make a spreadsheet saying we are one ofthe youngest teams in te NBA and based on a spreadsheet like that teams like the clippers and twolves would be ranked higher than the thunder and grizzlies.
Interesting. However, just as you mentioned why doing an analysis of the past won't work, the same holds true for the future, right? What if we unload three, four young assets for an old, cagey vet next year? Suddenly we're no longer poised for the future like your spreadsheet suggests.
All the more reason for us to stay the course..... unless we can land a Dwight Howard, which would only impact the spread sheet in a positive way because he is younger than our average team age and he would add to wins.
A post that symbolizes the excruciatingly painful state of Houston sports. Look at we're having to resort to just to find hope. Jesus.
Not really, it's mostly people overreacting to a young, winning team that has 18 million dollars of salary sitting on the bench, and lots of room for improvement. If you think this team has a bad future then I'd hate to hear what you think of teams like Golden State or the Raptors that have sucked forever.
