Predicting the Raptors' 2017-18 Win Total

[Demographic Shift]

East falls into 3 groupings.

The good teams (win both at home and on the road) are Raps, Cleveland, Boston, Washington, and maybe the Bucks.
The average teams (win at home but lose lots on the road)are comprised of Miami, Detroit, Charlotte, maybe Philly if they get some health luck.
The crappy teams (lose at home and on the road) are looking like Atlanta, Chicago, Nets, Knicks, Orlando and Indy.

If the Raps
A. play 500 ball against the good teams in conference plus one they can get 9 wins ..
B. Play 600 ball against the average on any given Sunday teams they should rack up 10 wins..
C. Play 700 ball against the east's lowest of the low that's 17 wins.
D. Play 500 plus 1 against the West conf that's 16 wins.

That's 52...
maybe they don't do as well against the west and it flips to 14/16 ..which would be 50 wins.

Prediction: Raps win 51 games this year.

[tDotted]

They are high on espn as well. I feel like they're going to get eaten alive out west, griffin is too injury prone and they don't have a playmaker.

They signed some European guy who's supposed to be Nash-lite. Griffin's also a pretty good playmaker for his size.

[KeonClark]

I'm stunned the Clippers are rated so high

They are high on espn as well. I feel like they're going to get eaten alive out west, griffin is too injury prone and they don't have a playmaker.

[tDotted]

55 wins. Another Conference Finals appearance. Quote me later.

[Hotshot]

Not high on the Raptors next season, too many question marks.

48-45 wins 4th-6th seed in the East.

[DanH]

3 current Raptor PG's in top 10 DRPM-only.

1 former one at #66 - CoJo. One spot ahead of Kyrie.

CoJo had a hell of a down year. Part of why I don't think we'll miss him much, at least relative to last season. We already missed the CoJo that played the year before (and made a lovely, if too brief, appearance in that end of season run while Lowry was hurt).

[Mess]

It's crazy to me that three recent ex-Raptors were in the top 10 for RPM at power forward: Amir, JJ, and now Patman.

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/r...RPM/position/6

But FWIW Pelton had us at 49 last year which means we outperformed his projections for four consecutive years. 43 seems low to me unless we get injured or Ibaka really shits the bed.

3 current Raptor PG's in top 10 DRPM-only.

1 former one at #66 - CoJo. One spot ahead of Kyrie.

[Scraptor]

It's crazy to me that three recent ex-Raptors were in the top 10 for RPM at power forward: Amir, JJ, and now Patman.

http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/r...RPM/position/6

But FWIW Pelton had us at 49 last year which means we outperformed his projections for four consecutive years. 43 seems low to me unless we get injured or Ibaka really shits the bed.

[Mess]

Projected 2017-18 records and standings for every NBA team - Kevin Pelton

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...2017-18-season

To help answer these questions and more, here's an early look at 2017-18 NBA projections using ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM).

6.(in just the EC) Toronto Raptors
Projected wins: 43.4

Perhaps the most surprising projection in the league, the Raptors suffer because of the loss of Patterson. RPM rates him as a more valuable contributor while on the court than starting power forward Serge Ibaka. RPM projects Toronto to drop to 12th in both offense and defense after ranking in the top 10 in both categories last season.

Yeah that is surprising. PP's departure costing so many wins is a slight overvalution I'd say. But I take pure stat based projections with a sprinkling of salt for flavour.

[Cody73]

I'm stunned the Clippers are rated so high

[Abbas]

Raps - 57 wins
Bos - 54 Wins
Cavs - 53 wins
Wizs - 48 wins
Bucks - 48 wins
Heat - 45 wins
Horts - 41 wins
6ers - 36 wins

Raps > 6ers in 5
Boston > Horents in 6
Cavs > Heat in 5
Wizs < Bucks in 7

Raps > Bucks in 6
Cavs > Bos in 7

Raps > Cavs in 7

GSW > Raps in 4

[ogi]

Yeah, last year's model had two issues that I didn't bother with until this year. First, I didn't have a minutes cap on it (which put Lowry's minutes way above what he could possibly play, and he's a huge driver for the team's success), and second, I didn't adjust the win totals to make the league average 41 - so every team had an overprediction of 2-3 wins just from that alone. The other factor is that using WORP as I did there tends to overpredict wins for some reason, while using BPM/RPM (the source for WORP) tends to underpredict a little bit. It's part of why two years ago (when I used a method like the above method for the RPM stat) I underpredicted the win total, and last year I overpredicted (even applying the common sense minutes cap and correcting league wide win totals, the Raptors would have been predicted at 54 wins).

True. And it obviously can't account for trades and injuries which were both plentiful last year

[ogi]

Hey all

I just posted an article on Raps HQ with my annual statistical projection for the Raptors, plus projections for every team in the league. Feel free to go read it in full for a more detailed explanation of the process, but I'll put all the necessary info here anyway.

https://www.raptorshq.com/2017/8/1/1...ns-projections

The process is much the same as most years I do this, with a couple of tweaks. The goal, as ever, is to build this up with as little manual modification as possible - so none of my own opinion on rotations, minutes, roster construction comes into play at all. Player usage on each team is completely controlled by their minutes last year. And no assumptions are made on my part in terms of age decline, or young players getting better. Everyone is assumed to be the same player as last year, with the same usage, with only their minutes increased or decreased based on the team around them adding or removing high minutes players from last year.

1) Pull 2016-17 data for every player in league: total minutes played, WS/48, BPM, RPM
2) Compile team rosters (as of July 26th in this case) and check team minutes total against 19,800 (5x48x82).
3) Pro-rate player minutes to get correct minutes total for each team. Individual player cap at 3000 MP.
4) Multiply MP x WS/48 then divide by 48 to get total WS for each player.
5) Sum player WS's for each team to get team WS total.
6) Multiply BPM by MP for each player, divide by team MP, sum all player values for team average BPM.
7) Same for RPM.
8) Use pythagorean wins calculation using BPMx5 (and RPMx5) as point differential.
9) Calculate average win total for the entire league, adjust all teams up or down to ensure 41 win average.
10) Profit!

This results in 3 win predictions for each team. I'll present the Raptors in detail, and for league standings will use an average win total for each team with the three results equally weighted.

So, here is the individual player data for the Raptors.



Those numbers result in win predictions of 56 wins (by WS), 52 wins (by BPM), and 49 wins (by RPM).

As for the league as a whole:



Some of that seems right, other bits are somewhat whacky. I've got explanations for some outliers (Cavs in particular) in the piece, if you are interested. Or we can just discuss them here.

My big takeaways - if the Cavs do implode because of Kyrie, the Raptors seem as poised as anyone in the East to jump in to fill the void. And the East is awful - with 12 of the 15 West teams projected to finish with a better record than the 8th seed Knicks - and the Kings are soooo close to making it 13 of 15.

Great stuff always enjoy reading these each year. I think there's a chance that the cavs do take a small step back in the regular season due to the loss of kyrie (obviously dependent on what they get back for him). But on a separate note, is this the year lebron finally shows some semblance of declining? It's absolutely insane that he's managed to play at such a high level for so long without a single serious injury to sideline him. We all know it's going to have to happen eventually and probably sometime soon.

[DanH]

The link from last year is in the article. The model last year came up with 58 wins.

Yeah, last year's model had two issues that I didn't bother with until this year. First, I didn't have a minutes cap on it (which put Lowry's minutes way above what he could possibly play, and he's a huge driver for the team's success), and second, I didn't adjust the win totals to make the league average 41 - so every team had an overprediction of 2-3 wins just from that alone. The other factor is that using WORP as I did there tends to overpredict wins for some reason, while using BPM/RPM (the source for WORP) tends to underpredict a little bit. It's part of why two years ago (when I used a method like the above method for the RPM stat) I underpredicted the win total, and last year I overpredicted (even applying the common sense minutes cap and correcting league wide win totals, the Raptors would have been predicted at 54 wins).

[ogi]

I remember you did this last year. I'd be curious to find the link to last year's results and see how close it came!

The link from last year is in the article. The model last year came up with 58 wins.