Raptors 2014-15 Projected Wins

[Superjudge]

Warning: This post contains math and basically just uses stats.

Hi all.

Thought I'd take a quick run at trying to see where this team projects going into this year using a few statistical methods. The primary rotation seems to be pretty set at this point, and any third string PG or backup C won't skew these numbers too much, I don't think.

For all of these methods, I need to make assumptions on the minutes distribution. To do this, I first set an ideal rotation based on my personal preferences (which I think are reasonable). See below.

PG: Kyle Lowry (30), Greivis Vasquez (18)
SG: DeMar DeRozan (30), Vasquez (6), Louis Williams (12)
SF: Terrence Ross (30), DeRozan (6), James Johnson (12)
PF: Amir Johnson (18), Patrick Patterson (30)
C: Jonas Valanciunas (32), Amir (10), Chuck Hayes (6)

Leaving the following minutes breakdown:

Lowry: 30
DD: 36
Ross: 30
Amir: 28
JV: 32
Vasquez: 24
Patterson: 30
Williams: 12
JJ: 12
Hayes: 6

But that is a perfect scenario. The reality is, games will be missed due to injury, and our backups and third stringers will see an increased role. So the next step was estimating the number of games to be missed. This is a complete crapshoot of course. But to get a good guess, I took the average number of games played over the past 3 seasons (yes, correcting for the 66 game season in 2011-12) and used that as the number of games played for the primary rotation. Then I assigned the backup minutes accordingly to fill in the gaps (assigned entirely to 3rd stringers, to be conservative). The result can be seen below.



The third strings like Fields and Hansbrough end up with a lot of minutes due to my assigning them all the injury minutes. I built this using WS at first, and this was the most conservative approach (and the simplest) so I stuck with it. You'll be able to see the impact in the win totals in each section. BeBe and Bruno I just used for cleaning up minutes from rounding elsewhere - they contribute 0 wins in all the models (except xRAPM, where they contribute average wins).

----

Win Shares:

So, using last year's WS/48 numbers, and the total minutes I approximated above, we can get a WS projection for this coming season.



Total WS predicted: 53 wins. 53-29 record. Very nice.

-----

Wins Produced:

Again, using last year's WP/48 numbers, and the total minutes I approximated above, we can get a WP projection for this coming season.



Total WP predicted: 55 wins. 55-27 record. Even nicer.

-----

xRAPM:

A little more complicated this one. First, we grab all the offensive and defensive xRAPM numbers for each player (that's an adjusted plus-minus in terms of impact on the team regardless of teammates, opponents, team effects). They are presented in a points per 100 possessions impact. So a net impact on offense, and one on defense. We then apply to these the pace the Raptors played at, so get each player's impact over the length of a game (48 minutes). The Raptors played at a 91.5 pace last year. So that suppresses the numbers somewhat. Then you take that points/48 minutes number, and add the impact to the league average points per game (101). That gives each player an ORTG and DRTG based on xRAPM. Then we can apply pythagorean wins to predict the wins generated by each player per game.



Total RAPM wins predicted: 47 wins. 47-35 record. Not as nice as the other two. But still a very nice low water mark.

-----

Final prediction: I'll just use a simple average of the three systems. That means 51-31. 50 wins here we come.

lucky if they make 43

[Kuh]

Wow this is great man, and tbh it's a pretty objective and statistically supported method.

How accurate are WS and WP generally in predicting records?

I don't know about WS, but generally WP is pretty good.

Typically, a player's WP are quite stable year-to-year. You should expect improvements from the rookies (i.e., TRoss and Jonas should hopefully see their WP rise), and veterans fall off, especially after 31 (no worries there). Every so often there is a surprise, like Demar improving his assist rate dramatically last year, which brought up his WP. That's unusual. The general rule is that what a player is doesn't change after their first couple of years.

The big thing that can screw you up in predicting team scores is a change in minutes allocation, whether due to coaching or due to injury.

For instance, if Bebe and Bruno get played a bunch more minutes than planned, that will drag things down. Or if something happens to Kyle, and Greivis gets his minutes, we're in big trouble - maybe 5 games worse. Or maybe JJ gets his act together and doubles his minutes at the expense of Landry and TRoss, which will make us a couple of games better.

[chch166]

72-10 book it

Why not 82-0

[thead]

Why not 82-0

not quite there yet...2015/16 seems more reasonable for a perfect season

[Sam17]

not quite there yet...2015/16 seems more reasonable for a perfect season

Lol

[iblastoff]

i'm going with 44-46 wins at most. i don't think lowry/ppat/vasquez are going to play as well as they did last year. other teams now know what we can do, and we were terrible at the end of last season defensively for whatever reason.

[raptors999]

i'm going with 44-46 wins at most. i don't think lowry/ppat/vasquez are going to play as well as they did last year. other teams now know what we can do, and we were terrible at the end of last season defensively for whatever reason.

Position was locked no reason to win. NBA regular season is too long. Defense suffers without any intensity.

[GLF]

i'm going with 44-46 wins at most. i don't think lowry/ppat/vasquez are going to play as well as they did last year. other teams now know what we can do, and we were terrible at the end of last season defensively for whatever reason.

LOL I love how us playing bad defensively to end the season is now one of your biggest reasons why we won't be as good this season but when I was worried about that during the year you got at me the most LOL. I said as a young team we needed to go into the season playing good basketball because we don't have the experience and it will be hard for us to just turn it on but you kept saying I was just being my negative self. It's like we switched bodies or something. You are a completely different person now than you were during the season. I'm not saying any of your doubts are wrong but I would have never thought YOU of all people would be so negative all offseason like you have been. I call it being a realist though because you do make some good points.

[iblastoff]

LOL I love how us playing bad defensively to end the season is now one of your biggest reasons why we won't be as good this season but when I was worried about that during the year you got at me the most LOL. I said as a young team we needed to go into the season playing good basketball because we don't have the experience and it will be hard for us to just turn it on but you kept saying I was just being my negative self. It's like we switched bodies or something. You are a completely different person now than you were during the season. I'm not saying any of your doubts are wrong but I would have never thought YOU of all people would be so negative all offseason like you have been. I call it being a realist though because you do make some good points.

44-46 wins is being negative? That'd be around 3rd highest wins in franchise history.

Statistically, contract year players play worse the following year. Patterson and vasquez 3 point shots were both career highs in Toronto, which definitely helped us win games. I don't think they're gonna shoot like that next season.

We'll see what Lou Williams can bring to the table. I don't think he made much of an impact in Atlanta and his near 6th man award back in Philly days coincided with being a contract year, of which his stats have not been matched since. (possibly due to being injured a lot afterwards)

[Scraptor]

i'm going with 44-46 wins at most. i don't think lowry/ppat/vasquez are going to play as well as they did last year. other teams now know what we can do, and we were terrible at the end of last season defensively for whatever reason.

That's fair.

Potential positives this year:
Val/Ross improvements
James Johnson big upgrade for defense on wing

Potential negatives this year:
Stronger Eastern conference
Likely to be more injured than last year
Lowry/PPat/Vasquez may not duplicate various parts of their performance
We are lacking a big beard for the first time in a long time

I think we hover at 48 or slightly lower. A big year from Val pushes us over 50.

[GLF]

44-46 wins is being negative? That'd be around 3rd highest wins in franchise history.

Statistically, contract year players play worse the following year. Patterson and vasquez 3 point shots were both career highs in Toronto, which definitely helped us win games. I don't think they're gonna shoot like that next season.

We'll see what Lou Williams can bring to the table. I don't think he made much of an impact in Atlanta and his near 6th man award back in Philly days coincided with being a contract year, of which his stats have not been matched since. (possibly due to being injured a lot afterwards)

That's true 44-46 wins isn't bad. And your worries about Patterson, Vasquez and Lou are all valid and could come true. But to look on the positive side Vasquez was never 100% healthy when he was with us. Him having an offseason to work on his game and come into training camp healthy should help him keep his level of play up. Patterson is still very young and people forget that she he still has growing to do just like Ross, Valanciunas and Derozan. So my hope is he continues to work on his game and comes back with something new added to take that next step. Then with Lou supposedly that injury takes about a year to completely heal. He also wouldn't have had a training camp with the team last year and I believe they got a new coach and a couple new players so he really needed to adjust to the team all over again. Also to me Lou doesn't need to go back to his Phili days for him to be valuable to us. What he did last year wasn't that much worse than his career averages and he's had a pretty solid career as a backup. Also with an offseason to train some more and being ready and healthy for training camp to me should for sure make him at least a bit better than last season. But this is just me being positive. We shall see. Your predictions are just as likely to come to fruition as mine are.

[BigCamB]

Good to see you being positive
His worries are valid, but also don't mention the potential improvement of Ross, JV and potentially even DeMar, and the bench looks pretty good, so yeah. I'm thinking the raptors will be a better team overall, but the conference will be a bit tougher so I'm expecting about the same as last year, 46-49ish.

[special1]

That's true 44-46 wins isn't bad. And your worries about Patterson, Vasquez and Lou are all valid and could come true. But to look on the positive side Vasquez was never 100% healthy when he was with us. Him having an offseason to work on his game and come into training camp healthy should help him keep his level of play up. Patterson is still very young and people forget that she he still has growing to do just like Ross, Valanciunas and Derozan. So my hope is he continues to work on his game and comes back with something new added to take that next step. Then with Lou supposedly that injury takes about a year to completely heal. He also wouldn't have had a training camp with the team last year and I believe they got a new coach and a couple new players so he really needed to adjust to the team all over again. Also to me Lou doesn't need to go back to his Phili days for him to be valuable to us. What he did last year wasn't that much worse than his career averages and he's had a pretty solid career as a backup. Also with an offseason to train some more and being ready and healthy for training camp to me should for sure make him at least a bit better than last season. But this is just me being positive. We shall see. Your predictions are just as likely to come to fruition as mine are.

Also, keep in mind that this upcoming season would be a contract year for Lou Williams....

[c_bcm]

Spectacular post man. Well done.

I think Lowry will be less of a firebrand this year, and the team will lose an edge. I still think we will be competitive and "in" a lot of tough games. I predict 46 wins this year.

[feet85]

@DanH i'm just curious are you a math major?