Some Early Prediction Thoughts

all stats taken from Basketball-Reference.com

I'm researching and exploring some methods to utilize in the hopes of making a more objective, more accurate prediction for the 2009-10 season with the goal of getting within, let's say, ten games of the Hawks' final record. A small step but one which would constitute an almost 30% improvement for me over last year's prediction. It's all about setting attainable goals. That last sentence is surely a petard on which I'll be hoisted.

This first table looks at Win Shares, cataloging each player's rate of Win Shares per 1000 minutes for his career, the 2008-09 season, and while playing for the Atlanta Hawks.

	WS/1000 Min
Name	Career	08-09	w/ ATL
Bibby	2.24	2.44	2.19
Johnson	1.85	2.37	2.08
Williams	1.86	2.87	1.86
Smith	1.65	1.98	1.65
Horford	2.51	2.94	2.51
Crawford	1.39	1.34	N/A
Murray	0.69	1.57	1.57
Pachulia	1.86	2.58	1.96
Evans	2.14	2.01	2.01
Jones	2.35	2.81	2.35
West	1.67	1.49	1.67
Morris	-0.95	0.00	0.00

One can pretty easily take those rates, make an educated guess about each player's 2009-10 rate, assign minutes for 2009-10 season, and calculate a rough estimate of the team's projected wins. Something like this...

Name	Minutes	WS
Bibby	2700	5.9
Johnson	3100	6.8
Williams	2380	6.8
Smith	2655	5.3
Horford	2520	7.4
Crawford	1975	2.7
Pachulia	1400	2.9
Evans	1500	3
Teague	680	0.8
Jones	500	1.3
West	270	0.4
Morris	0	0
TOTAL	19680	43.3

Last year's 47-35 team (46-36 Pythagorean record) earned 45.1 Win Shares.

The reasoning behind that Jeff Teague projection will be the subject of a future post which I'll preview here only by saying that point guards drafted outside of the lottery over the last six seasons, even point guards who have gone on to be above average players, have pretty much all been below average players as rookies. Collectively, they've been well below average.

Though Win Shares is a useful tool for a rough exercise such as this (not least of which because one needn't make hundreds of calculations) it doesn't give you much of an idea about the shape of a player's contributions. Thus, as a complement to Win Shares I've also looked at each player's Offensive Rating (ORtg) and Defensive Rating (DRtg) for the 2008-09 season and their careers.

	Career		08-09
Name	ORtg	DRtg	ORtg	DRtg
Bibby	108	108	113	109
Johnson	107	110	110	110
Williams	109	110	117	108
Smith	101	105	103	104
Horford	111	105	114	104
Crawford	105	111	110	117
Murray	98	109	104	109
Pachulia	107	108	113	106
Evans	113	110	115	110
Jones	116	107	124	108
West	105	106	101	104
Morris	80	109	81	106

Two things to notice in the above table:

1. Lots of Hawks exceeded their career averages (last season inclusive) during the 2008-09 season. I think it's fair to expect the young players (Horford, Williams, Smith) to continue outperform their career averages even if they might not improve upon or even repeat their 2008-09 numbers. I think it's fair to expect the older players (Bibby, Crawford, Evans, Pachulia) to perform closer to their career averages in 2009-10. As for Joe Johnson, he's posted (in chronological order, 2005-2009) Offensive Ratings of 109, 109, 109, 110 and Defensive Ratings of 114, 111, 112, 110 in his four seasons in Atlanta. I suspect he'll post similar rates next season.
2. Notice the similarity between Flip Murray's 2008-09 and Jamal Crawford's career. I still don't think that Crawford is likely to provide an upgrade over what Flip Murray produced last season.

There are a couple of extra steps to projecting a record from individual ratings. I estimated each players minutes per game (eMPG) for 2009-10, multiplied their ORtg and DRtg by (eMPG/48), added up the results, divided both sums by 5 to get estimated Offensive and Defensive Efficiencies, and then used those to figure pythagorean wins. The estimates below resulted in an Offensive Efficiency of 109.4, a Defensive Efficiency of 108.2, and 44.3 wins.

Name	MPG	ORtg	DRtg
Bibby	33	108	110
Johnson	38	110	110
Williams	29	114	109
Smith	32.5	103	103
Horford	31	114	104
Crawford	24	108	114
Pachulia	17	109	107
Evans	18	113	110
Teague	8.5	99	109
Jones	6	116	107
West	3	105	106
Morris	0	80	109

Now, as to whether these objective measures confirm my suspicions that the Hawks have merely re-constituted last season's team (assuming they re-sign Marvin Williams) or whether this post just confirms that, before the fact, I can only conceive of avenues of inquiry which confirm my suspicions, I'm essentially neutral. What say you?