The NBA regular season kicks off in less than forty-eight hours! Cleveland plays the very first game this year’s slate!! Basketball!!!
Unfortunately, I did not post this yesterday when I first authored it. My James Harden-for-Kevin Martin prediction would have blown minds. Anyways, I am a glutton for punishment as it relates to proffering prognostications from my crystal ball. With that:
Here's a bonus prediction, free of charge. The Cavs will not win the 2013 Larry O'Brien Trophy.
- There will be one prediction for each projected Cleveland win this season. So, this is the first of 33 knowledge gems.
- The Cavs will defeat a top-5 NBA team, on the road, by double-digits.
- They will lose to a bottom-5 NBA team, at home, by twenty.
- CJ Miles finishes second on the team at 13.8 points per game
- His PER also registers at 13.
- Actually, all of Cleveland’s wings produce player-efficiency-ratings between 13 and 14: a return to Sactown levels for Omri, an improvement for A-Gee, and a reasonably promising rookie campaign for Dion
- What about Boobie? Oh, his PER will be 11.2, but for a fifth time in his career, he surpasses forty-percent from long range
- Until a trade deadline deal sends him packing to a pseudo-contender
- Kyrie Irving receives four points in MVP voting
- Thanks to yearly averages of twenty point and seven assists, combined with 57% true shooting
- Some combination of injuries and Samardo / Leuer doghouse-inhabitance results in Luke Harangody drilling 17 three-pointers, besting his career high
- Tristan nears a double-double, posting an 11 & 9
- Shooting percentages though, still reach only a marginal 47% from the field and 57% from the charity stripe
- If the combination of Pargo, Sloan, or any other random PG plays 800 minutes; Kevin Hetrick will be disappointed, as this indicates that either Kyrie suffered an injury or the D-Wait / Gibson back-court was not given the reins to the second-string offense
- Dion averages 9.5 points & 2.6 assists in 23 minutes per game. Although debates about him still rage; I talk myself into this as a definite positive.
- There will be three games when he plays less than ten minutes due to upsetting Byron Scott.
- Still though, Coach Scott retains the faith in Dion’s ability that placed him fourth on the team’s Draft-day Big Board.
- For the fourth consecutive year, Omri Casspi starts at least 25 games
- His three point shooting returns to 36 – 37% range, providing valuable floor spacing with the first unit
- Jon Leuer mixes nights of surprising athleticism and deadly shooting with other games featuring a distinct inability to effectively bang down low.
- Cleveland brings him back for 2013 – 2014
- This season is Samardo Samuels last in Cleveland
- Anderson Varejao stays with the team all year, playing 73 games
- He pays $15000 in flopping fines due to three penalties. To Cavs fans, at least one purported transgression seems based on Andy’s reputation more than any intended trickery.
- Cavs fans finally quit talking about trading him, as Playoffs-2014 becomes a universally reasonable goal.
- Tyler Zeller averages 10 & 6 with 54% true shooting.
- He makes second-team all-rookie
- ESPN’s daily top-ten includes Alonzo Gee seven times
- And Kyrie Irving, 27 times
- Cleveland comes up repeatedly at the trade deadline as a third team in big deals. Luke Walton’s expiring deal and draft picks are the draw. No transaction is made though.
- Their draft picks end up falling at 9, 26, 35 and 39
- For a second consecutive year, a draft-day deal inherits fewer, but better selections.
- The minimum salary floor for a team in 2013 – 2014 will be 90% of the salary cap, or approximately $55 million. With two new first-round contracts in 2013, Cleveland employs 9 players for $33 million in 2013 – 2014. They include Varejao, Irving, Tristan, Dion, A-Gee, Miles and Zeller. There is $22 million that must be spent. Even if they bring some combination of Gibson, Casspi, Leuer and Samuels back; the number likely sits above $15 million. So this is really a CBA-mandate as opposed to a prediction, but a significant trade or free agent acquisition will occur in the next ten months. As a side note, if Cleveland trades Varejao, up to $30 million of new salary would inhabit the 2013 – 2014 roster compared to the opening-night-2012 crew.
Certainly an interesting season. Let’s get it started.
Good stuff though I can’t help but think Dion will be better than you predict. Not much, mind you. But better. I have nothing to base this on other than my unbelievable basketball mind. Carry on…
Some bonus fearless predictions about Dion:
He will have a game where he goes scoreless on six or more attempts.
He will have a game where he scores 25 or more points on 15 or fewer attempts.
The Harden deal is a harbinger of things to come. Under the new CBA, teams simply cannot afford 4 stars unless they play in a megamarket like LA or NY, if they want to be profitable. Daryl Morey did a decent job of getting Harden, who is one of the top four 2-Guards in the league, and the youngest of those top four guards. (Manu, Kobe, and Wade being the others). Morey collected draft picks and players and leveraged them to get a promising young star. There are going to be guys out there like this over the next two seasons. I was hoping the Cavs could make this move, but while we could match the picks, we don’t have a scorer to trade like Martin. This deal gets the Thunder decent value now, and good value in the future with the picks and young players. Did Morey give up too much? Probably… especially if Lamb ends up being a good player.
Bill Simmons came up with a decent analysis of NBA trades. Players are worth Dollars, Fifty Cent Pieces, Quarters, Dimes, Nickles, and Pennies. Superstars are dollars, all stars are fifty cent pieces, players like Martin are quarters. Draft picks are Nickles to quarters, depending on range. Rarely do you see Dollars traded for four quarters, etc… The question here is, is James Harden a dollar or a fifty cent piece? If OKC got a quarter and three dimes for Harden, then it was a decent trade. If Harden is a dollar, then Houston got a steal.
How many times was A Gee in the top 10 last year? I feel like more than 7, felt like the dude had at least 1 crazy dunk per week.
I don’t think Kyrie will earn any MVP votes. There are going to be a slew of playoff teams with all-star point guards: CP3, Rondo, Nash, Parker, Westbrook and they will take away any potential votes that Kyrie would receive because the Cavs will not make the playoffs. So even if Kyrie is better (and he’s not quite there yet) he won’t get those votes.
23 minutes per game seems low for Waiters. I’d put it at 30.
I’m actually a little nervous that Kyrie might have a sophomore slup type year. And that was even before he has come out shooting terribly in the preseason. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Fortunately I get to see them opening night at the Q!
Tsunami,
You never know how writer’s will use their 5th place votes for MVP. If Kyrie has a great season for a slightly better than expected Cavs team, I could see him picking up a handful of 5th place nods.
It is possible my highly complex predictive model for ESPN-top-five plays needs calibrating.
I prefer Waiters to play 24 minutes per game this year. He’s only 20 right now. Miles, Gee, Casspi and Gibson will (and probably should) see minutes in the wing rotation, too.
I think we’ll see two very different versions of Dion this season. I think the first part of the season we’ll be complaining and ‘bust’ will be mentioned along with ‘patience’ and ‘Barnes’. Later in the season we’ll be cheering for him as he figures things out and seems like a potential star some games and a complete mess others, but he’ll be a lot more consistent and statements like ‘grant was right’ or ‘i told you so’ will be common place about Dion.
I predict/expect that we’ll be talking about trying to resign Casspi too. He’ll prove to be at least a viable SF and he’ll earn an extension north of what Gee is getting.
I also predict that TT get’s benched or very limited minutes with TZ starting at C and Andy starting at PF. We’ll see Samardo and Leure get addtional PF minutes and TT playing less often. The word ‘raw’ when describing TT’s game/potential will start to be replaced with ‘bust’ and more cavs fans will start looking at Raptors games and start wondering why we didn’t draft JV.
Kyrie makes the all-star team this year, TZ is our best rookie and Casspi gets votes for most improved player in the league.
kevin – yeah there’s always a rogue voter or two, but I think we DO now how people vote MVP. For better or worse, they look at: Team Success, reputation (which requires some longevity), and a good “story”.
This is in the only reason Rose won an MVP at such a young age: Bulls had the best record and it was a good story against LeBron.
The Cavs are not going to be even .500, Kyrie is a second year player so even if he is better than D Rose, CP3, Rondo, Nash, D Will, TP, and Westbrook (last year I would say he wasn’t discernibly “better” than any of these players) he will have create a lot of statistical separation to overcome the reputations of these players which comes from winning in the playoffs. So I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think any PGs will win MVP next year, and I think if someone wants to mix in a PG or two along with LeBron, Durant, Howard, Love, Kobe, Wade, Dirk it’s going to be from the existing franchise PGs due to their teams winning + their reputation.
I could have summed up all my feelings on this by saying: even if Kyrie is the best PG in the NBA this year (low probability this happens) I don’t think he can overcome all the “mvp factors” that he certainly won’t have going for him. If I’m wrong, I’ll eat crow. But I think that might be your prediction least likely to occur.
I would be shocked if TT gets fewer minutes this season…he put up excellent numbers in the preseason, and looks just as improved as people around the organization said he was.
Why are we not talking about playoffs this year (assuming healthy andy/kyrie)? Last year we were hovering around the 8th seed and I have to think the Miles, Waiters, & Zeller additions outweigh the loss of Parker/Jamison. Kyrie should be better, Thompson should be better, etc. I know the 7th/8th seed is NBA purgatory, but we have the assets to make draft day deals or add another piece even if we miss the lottery. I would rather see a “winning precedent” established.
Am I off base?
Why rob? http://espn.go.com/nba/powerrankings The Cavs are ranked 28th in preseason polls, and I can’t really argue with the ranking outside of a couple spots. The Cavs could have made a lot of roster moves to get a mid-level team together. They chose not to. Baron Davis’s amnesty salary is what’s getting us to the salary floor. They have some promising young players, but they don’t want to be better this season. They have four picks next year, and a ton of cap room. They want another top ten pick and leverage the other picks into another rookie, and or veterans.
Everyone says borderline playoff team, and I just don’t see it. They have too many defensively weak perimeter players. Waiters will be hit or miss on D, Boobie is too short, Miles is just average, and Gee is good, but not great. And Kyrie is… the worst defensive player in the NBA, who’ll be playing no less than 36 minutes a night. Aside from Kyrie, they have a lot of good but not great outside shooters, and also just plain bad outside shooters. The offense is going to bog down because of this.
Nupe, As for TT, I don’t think TZ will displace him. TZ is a nice player but he’s not ever going to be the defensive stopper that Thompson could be. The Cavs have committed to him as their PF/C of the future. I’d be shocked if he didn’t get every opportunity to do that. They want him to be a more offensively skilled Ben Wallace.
rob,
There are so many new/young pieces, that it may take a while for it to gel. Especially in the front-court. I think they would have to get a little lucky to land an 8th seed.
As long as were making predictions, I’ll throw in one….The Cavs sign Andrew Bynum to a max contract after this season. Yes, that’s a pretty fearless prediction. But if Philly doesn’t do well this season, Bynum may look to leave. And if Kyrie continues his development, he might like the idea of playing next to a 20 yr old all star pg.
Rob, I also don’t get it. I think most cavs fans continually forget about how good Verajoa is. (hence the constant trade talk for our only defensive post presence and a guy on a below value contract because he’s a whopping 30 years old)
Parker was a non-factor and his loss doesn’t mean much. As for Jameson, Miles, Dion, Zeller, and 10 more minutes out of an improved Kyrie will take up the shots we’ll miss from Jameson, and they can’t be much less efficient than Jameson’s 48 TS%. Also, I’m pretty sure Waiters can guard the PF position as well as Jameson did. From what I’ve seen having Zeller in there is about 10 times better than having Antawn on defense (although that’s not saying much. Did I mention Antawn is awful at defense?)
If Kyrie or Andy miss a ton of time, or TT AND Dion are just ginormous busts (like Dion shooting <40% with bad D and not much positive, and TT regresses – hard to do worse than he did last year, another view that seems to put me in small company as a cavs fan) then we can start talking about lottery picks. Until any of those things seem likely (which none now do, sure all real possibilities, but none of them likely), the focus should only be on competing for a playoff spot.
Rob – yep you overly optimistic.
Here are win shares from last year that are no longer on the team:
Jamison – 3.1 (2011)
Sessions – 1.8 (2011)
Parker – 1.4 (2011)
Harris – 0.3 (2011)
Erden – 0.4 (2011)
Hollins – 0.1 (2011)
Hudson – 0.2 (2011)
Total: 7.3 Wins
They are being replaced by:
CJ Miles – 1.5 (2011)
Jon Leur – 1.4 (2011)
Jeremy Pargo – negative .8 (2011)
Dion Waiters – Rookie [0.9]
Tyler Zeller – Rookie [0.9]
Kevin Jones – Rookie [0.9]
Now, I averaged all the WS from rookies since the Blake Griffin Rookie season (2007-2008) to get 1.059951. I think this is a fair expected value since we are balancing a lotto pick, a fringe 1st round/2nd round pick, and an undrafted rookie. Now we have to take that and scale it by 66/82 to show what their 2011-2012 replacement expected value is. That equals 0.85.
That gives us: 4.8 Wins (in 2011-2012 terms). So comparing the players out vs the players in for 2011-2012 would put the Cavs at negative 2.5 wins. They missed the playoffs last year by 14 games.
So, the burden of proof is on you and all your fellow optimists to explain to me how the Cavs are going to squeeze at least 14 more wins out of “assuming health” and “rookie to sophomore growth”. This is not to say the Cavs may not have better health this season or that rookies won’t be better in year 2 than year 1. But >14 wins better? Recall that the Kevin Durant Thunder went from 20 wins to 23 wins, the Derrick Rose Bulls went from 41 to 41 wins, the John Wall wizards went from 23 wins to 20(less possible games in the 20 though), Blake Griffin’s Clips went from 32 wins in 2010-2011 to 40 in the shortened season which was is more like 50 wins for a net gain of +18 wins. Of course, they added a guy named Chris Paul that may have made a difference too…
Tsunami, you’re missing an important point- The Cavs didn’t want to win last year. That metric could arguably give us a net loss of 2.5 wins, but what about the 20 or so games Kyrie missed? What about the fact that we will have Andy back for presumably much of the season? I cannot imagine that this team will be any worse than last years. Also, your method offers no improvement numbers for our players. Nearly everyone who writes about the NBA exects Kyrie to make a big statistical leap this year.
Dani – the “didn’t want to win” goes both ways. At least 5 teams engaged in the some egregious tanking last season.
You can argue all day long that they’ll be healthier (a total unknown) and that young players will make huge statistical leaps (Irving, Thompson, Leuer). What I am saying is that teams don’t get 14 wins better in 1 season without acquiring a stud. The Cavs didn’t do that. If they had added Andrew Bynum I’d say that yes, they’d be competing for the playoffs already in year 2 of the Kyrie Irving era.
Also, prediction “big statistical leaps” is a pretty inexact science. It requires that a player improve facets of his game. For many players, this comes in the form of shooting efficiency. If Kyrie makes a “big statistical leap” in shooting efficiency then he will be the best shooter in the history of the NBA. The areas I see him improving are assists and turnovers. I’d actually be surprised if his shooting efficiencies are as otherworldly as they were last year. 51 games doesn’t cause you to hit the rookie wall.
I agree Tsunami. I would be thrilled if we won 7 moe games than last year, which might be possible because our overall talent level is undeniably higher. Yet, it’s far younger.
I see them finishing somewhere between 24-33 wins. 33 if Andy and Irving each play 70 plus games. Grant has no trouble with tanking towards long term success. If they are in the 10th or 11th seed in the East near the trade deadline and Andy is healthy… I’m kind of bummed that the Cavs rebuilding process is going to miss the Wiggens/Parker 2014 wing bonanza.
I’m still on board with Waiters and completely agree with your projections on him. He will get better as time goes on and he will have a couple dust ups with Scott. I think he’ll average more than 9 a game though. A lot of 18+ nights and many -5 nights.
The Harden trade is a foreshadowing of a lot of future trade activity. The Cavs are a mid market team, but Gilbert is willing to spend more than most. A full arena will spill into Horseshoe and offset his luxury tax payments in the future. Grant will make a move within the next two seasons for player (Rudy Gay?) from another midmarket squad.
@Nate Smith-I like Simmon’s trade values. I see Harden as a 50 cent piece. There aren’t a lot of dollars in the league. Maybe 10 at the most. I really liked the deal for the Thunder.
Tsunami, you will probably be getting a ton more minutes out of the guys that had the most win shares, Andy and Kyrie. Sure they might get hurt, but you can say that about anyone, whats the point. They both would have played a lot more last year if we weren’t actively tanking, they are likely to play a lot more this year.
As for missing Jameson’s win shares, the guy got 3 wins playing just about the most minutes of anyone on the team last year, I don’t think thats above replacement level. Oh and most stats, including win shares, have a difficult time measuring defensive value, something Jameson quite obviously is terrible at.
Tyler Zeller is in no possible way a fringe 1st/2nd round pick, and Leuer won’t get many minutes if we stay healthy, and Dion is the 4th pick in the draft, so projecting completely average production from rookies who’s minutes will skew toward the 10th pick in the draft is a bit pessimistic, no?
Look, your clearly a jaded cleveland fan, and thats cool, its probably the smart thing to do. But take off your “God Hates Cleveland” blinders for two seconds, and there is no reason we can’t be competing with the Milwaukee bucks and Knicks of the world (why are they supposed to be better this year again?)
Kyrie – you have to go back in time a bit to see what my “God Hates cleveland blinders” do to my posts. I am in no way shape or form inducing any emotion into these posts – I just think people are getting ahead of themselves. I could see it last year as they wrote off the production from guys that weren’t part of the future. It’s the same reason I was one of the few people saying we got fleeced in the Sessions trade (along with Hollinger and a few others). The thinking among most fans was “Sessions is terrible – we’re lucky to get any draft pick out of him”. But what they didn’t realize is that their subconscious realized that Sessions wasn’t part of the long term plan so they decided that he wasn’t worth his weight in grass clippings. Which is just objectively not true. And don’t tell me he played like ass in the playoffs. James Harden crapped his pants in the finals and he’s about to get a max deal. The point is, the Cavs are better positioned going forward, but they may not make huge leaps in actual WINS this year. It’s just like the Browns. I got laughed at for predicting 4 wins this season and that might not be far off at all. The Browns added talent but it takes time for young players to learn how to win at this level consistently and in the case of the Cavs they lost a lot of production from last season that is being replaced by unknowns.
As to a few of your specific comments – you are ignoring evidence that you don’t like. If you are so concerned about what wins shares doesn’t show, like defensive value, then you should be frightened that Kyrie is going to have to play MORE MINUTES this year, and that he’s not going to be flanked by a veteran defender in Anthony Parker. Statistically he was the worst defender in the NBA last season. As for assessing Zeller/Waiters? Here’s the skinny: Waiters projects to be a potential star, Zeller doesn’t. If you look at their college resume one guy had issues with the coach, conditioning issues, and came off the bench, another guy was one of the steadiest, most productive players in the country. You can’t ignore Waiter’s issues and only think of his potential and simultaneously only think about Zeller in the context of his college resume and now how a player of that age and production projects at the NBA level. Tristan Thompson was a #4 pick and produced 1.1 win shares last season.
So what are you expecting? Waiters is going to be a Kyrie-level stud in year one, Zeller is going to be as talented as Zydrunas was, Leuer is going to prove the world wrong for not resigning him to his minimum salary and Andy/Kyrie are going to play 164 games and Alonzo Gee is going to NOT be a fluke rule candidate? Ok, in that case, the Cavs will fight for the 8 seed, yes. I don’t see ALL those things happening.
Also, the Varejao phenomenon is outrageous. I’d really like to point out that I have never ONCE advocated for trading him as I believe he is CRIMINALLY undervalued in the NBA. He is an all-star and doesn’t get ANY recognition. He brings to the table the same tenacity and skill defensively as Ben Wallace did in his prime (albeit in different areas of defense) and he is 20x the offensive player, and while Ben will go to the HoF, Andy will never make an all-star team. He is the REAL moneyball player, the Battiest of Collisons. And all last year I had to fend of friend, foe, and troll calling for him to be traded. Again, “not part of the future” sneaking into the subconscious. Now that it’s apparent he’s staying everyone is so excited about our 2nd best player coming back to bring us the 8 seed. I love it.
True Kyrie will have to play more minutes, and his D is terrible, but defense at the point is much less important than defense in the post. And as iffy as Dion has looked so far, his defense has been pretty solid, I don’t see a drop off from him and Parker.
As for TT’s 1.1 win shares, you won’t find any bigger critic of TT’s game last year than I. The guy is elite at Offensive Rebounds (though probably 30-50% of them came off his own misses), is a slightly above average blocker, and well below average to terrible at pretty much everything else, be it defensive awareness/rebounds, shooting, free throws, d boards, finishing at the rim, catching passes, you name it. I hope he gets better, but do seriously question if he’ll ever get minutes on a contender without huge improvement. If not Zeller and maybe Leuer should eat into his minutes, and Zeller looks like a pretty solid if unspectacular rookie who has got the fundamentals down and can space the floor a little for Andy and our wings.
Ramon will be missed, but he wasn’t resigning with the cavs for reasonable backup PG money to play second fiddle to Kyrie (he ended up taking a starting job on a truely terrible charlotte, to give you the kind of idea of how desperate he is for minutes. The trade was good at the time, I advocated for it, but I don’t think too many people think we were not getting significantly worse by doing it. I don’t think we got fleeced either, since we got tyler zeller and potentially improved position in the draft next year for essentially a couple extra losses in a tanking half year (losing sessions 30 games early). This year Dion will be playing the backup pg role for the most part, and it should be better than sloan running the show, though probably not as good as sessions.
Back to the upcoming year, if Waiters was an absolute stud this year, Zeller was Z in his prime, and Gee and miles hold down the SF spot with a 15 PER and Andy and Kyrie play all their games we would be competing and probably winning against Boston to be the second best team in the east. That’s not whats going to happen, and that’s not at all what I’m projecting.