“All the money in the world can’t buy what it takes to be a champion” -Charlie Sheen or The Ultimate Warrior?
I discovered a fun little game today. Look at quotes and figure out if Charlie Sheen or the Ultimate Warrior said it? (take a look here)
This is an enjoyable but hard game. Which shouldn’t be that surprising since they both share a spirit animal.
Insanity Wolf knows PI out to infinity digits
I found that little tidbit because I was a little annoyed today. I wanted to rank all the teams but all the trades were screwing with me.
I took a deep breath and decided to get creative. It’s time for a Rebuild of the League.
“I embarrassed him in front of his children and the world by healing at a pace that his unevolved mind cannot process.” -Charlie Sheen or The Ultimate Warrior ?
Take all the players, figure out which rosters they’re currently on, project their minutes, figure out their WP48 (weighed more towards the present than the past), take out the effects of altitude,rest and opponents.
Sound like a pain in the butt to do.
Luckily, I have an app for that.
There's an app for everything (Image courtesy of xkcd.com)
The messy part looks like this:
The cool and pretty part looks like so:
Couple of notes on this:
- This is injury adjusted so it assumes that Perk, Camby, Gay and a few others are not available.
- The New Look Thunder when healthy are the Class of the West. Anything but the Finals would be a huge disappointment.
- The Blazers should scare the pants off anyone in the Playoffs. I’m back on the Blazer Bandwagon. Homecourt advantage and Eduardo the kneecapping evil elf of Oregon are the only thing that could stop them from going deep in the Western Playoffs.
- Boston needs to sign somebody to play Center for them desperately (Paging Dr. Murphy, Dr. Troy Murphy please answer the green phone and ignore the red one).
- I owe Morey an apology. Shipping off the bad has made his team look way good. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.
- Orlando is a contender. Assuming Dwight can stay out of foul trouble
- Philly and Memphis are for real. New York is not
- The Eastern playoffs will be epic.
That was fun. Keep in mind that there is some guesswork here but it’ll be fascinating to watch.
One last quote and then goodnight:
“Your jaw would hit the floor if I revealed the identity of the corporate and mainstream bigwigs and hotshots who write me in secrecy, privately cheering me on, sweating and panting at the thought of just once having the balls to tell the ones they work with, and even the ones they have to live with, that they don’t give a fuck what they think.”-Charlie Sheen or The Ultimate Warrior ?
Chicago Tim
03/01/2011
You’ll have to do it again after all the buy-outs and resignings.
arturogalletti
03/01/2011
Yes, totally.
Fred Bush
03/01/2011
OKC will not catch the Spurs and is unlikely to catch Dallas; won’t they still be a dog due to HCA if they face either of those two teams in the western conference finals?
some dude
03/01/2011
OKC is 4 games behind LAL (tiebreaker) with only 20-24 games to go. According to Arturo, they should win 55. LAL should still be at 57.
If LAL beat OKC to end the season, that’s a 5 game lead to make up in a short span. Highly doubtful. OKC is by no means locked to the 4 seed, but they’re not far away from it. Chances are they will meet the Spurs in the 2nd round, not the conference Finals.
arturogalletti
03/01/2011
This is regular season team strength right now. I’d need to re-work it for postseason and add in HCA. I think it’ll be a lot closer than it appears on paper. In fact, They may need to be favored. But that’s a future post.
statsguy
03/01/2011
How did you get +18 wins for Thunder? I will be very surprised that Perkins and Nazr suddenly makes that team into a power house with efficiency differential nearing 10.
My prediction, this year, neither guy makes huge impact, mostly due to injury and adjustments (Perkins isn’t even playing for 2~3 more weeks). Might make some noise in playoffs but I doubt that they can beat SA, LA or even DAL.
Next year, given that they both play, Thunder might fall inline with other West contenders. I don’t expect Perkins or Nazr would shoot as well as he did with KG, Pierce and Ray drawing defenders away from post (WoW linearity assumption would be tested). We may see some modest dropoffs in their WPs. Additionally, Thunders really had trouble getting good perimeter shots before. Now this problem might be even worse.
Patrick Minton
03/01/2011
statsguy:
It’s not just Perk and Nazr, who are both about average, it is a) the removal of the albatross named Jeff Green and b) the presumption that Ibaka gets more minutes.
Basically OKC subtracted a pretty bad player and added two average ones, while giving a very good one more minutes. That’s a huge net win.
some dude
03/01/2011
1. I don’t get your schedule adjustment. The heat have played the 2nd easiest schedules and yet get a 1 win bump while Chicago played a very strong schedule and gets its win totals reduced. HUH?
2. OKC. Going to continue to disagree. It’s not about WP it’s about how you get them. No inside scoring option for easy buckets will be their demise. You can’t analyze everything purely on a number on a piece of pper.
3. Houston- hahaha. By this chart you expect them to finish 15-6. I would be flat out shocked if they do that.
4. Recent play should also have a schedule adjustment. Miami and Dallas have had two of the weakest recent schedules while Chicago has had a much tougher one and has put up nearly the same point differential. LAL 4th toughest with most on the road.
Miami finishing 17-3 as the chart suggests is highly doubtful.
I think Hollinger’s power rankings and playoff odds makes a lot more sense after following both your rankings and his. Also BBR’s rankings, too. Hollinger has Miami most likely at 59 wins (i think 62 is their cap).
Seems to make much more sense to follow PD with scheduling in a monte carlo sim than a WP with a scheduling adjustment that doesn’t make sense to me.
arturogalletti
03/01/2011
All,
Let me clarify. This is not a record prediction. This is a prediction of how good the team is now. So based on the current roster and performance OKC would be projected to win 65 games over an 82 game span.
The schedule adjustment is done in two parts actually. The second part is Homecourt and rest.
some dude
03/01/2011
I get that. That’s how I did Houston’s numbers. I didn’t mention OKC because Perk is out, so I knew you don’t think they’d win as many as the rankings claim.
But you are telling us Houston is a 57 win team. I want to see them prove that over their final 21 games. Let’s see em go 15-6. Does Houston count Yao healthy?
Finally, Boston is going to regret the Murphy signing if Shaq is ever hurt. Krstc has already hurt them on defense (he nearly cost them the game vs Utah last night) and Baby is bad too. Throw in Murphy, yeesh. Boston’s front line looks meek all of a sudden outside of KG. Their interior defense has been the heart of the team and without it, I wonder what will happen.
Mike G
03/01/2011
I have an emergency. I need your immediate updated prediction of Celts based on Troy Murphy acquisition. I’m hoping somehow this will reduce the negative impact of the 2 Thunder-ers, by transferring inefficient power forward minutes to high yield minutes.