APBRmetrics

Mountain · Joined: 13 Mar 2007 Posts: 1527

Analysis from the Basketball-Reference.com blog
http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/

http://tinyurl.com/5z8nmr

More on the value of small early samples (at least for the very hottest out of the gate):

"All told, the correlation of a team’s November SRS and its final winning % is 0.81, and the correlation of November SRS and final SRS is 0.84, which isn’t bad at all for just a month’s worth of games (it also backs up what we observed earlier in terms of each month’s predictive value). This is good news for Laker fans, as it basically ensures (barring injury) that Los Angeles will be a title favorite by season’s end — in NBA history, 84% of the teams leading the NBA in SRS after November went on to finish in the top 3 in final SRS, and 55% finished #1 overall. In other words, this is definitely one case where a small sample can tell you a lot about the NBA’s big picture."

NickS · Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 384

I hate to admit it, since I'm not a Lakers fan, but what's not to like about the Lakers?

They're well coached, they have a star player who can win games in the 4th quarter. They're big and athletic. They're deep. The have solid 3-point shooting. They have a core of players that have experience playing together, but they aren't an old team.

They look scary this year.

deepak · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 664

He says that the correlation between Nov. SRS and the final win% is 0.81.

What about Nov. win% and final win%?

**Neil Paine** · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

deepak · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 664

**Neil Paine** · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 774 Location: Atlanta, GA

I think it speaks more to the fact that the schedule a team faces in November is representative of the schedule they'll face all season long.

Ilardi · Joined: 15 May 2008 Posts: 263 Location: Lawrence, KS

For what it's worth, I decided to see how well last season's adjusted plus-minus ratings (http://82games.com/ilardi2.htm) would predict the Lakers' team efficiency this season, based on the actual player minutes distributed through the team's first 13 games. Assuming no improvement (or decline) for any player from 07-08, we get a projected per-game point differential of roughly +10.1 ppg, which is considerably below the team's actual margin of +14.3 ppg. However, given that players tend, on average, to improve up until roughly age 25 (and to decline starting around age 30), we could expect improvement this year from Bynum, Ariza, Farmar, and Vujucic (and decline from Fisher) . . . depending upon our assumptions there, we might get an adjusted projected ppg differential for the Lakers of up to +11 ppg. And, given an inevitable "regression to the mean" effect for the team over the next 69 games (there's no way they'll actually sustain a margin of +14.3 ppg), this projection (an aggregate margin of somewhere between +10 and +11 ppg) sounds just about right to me.

gabefarkas · Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1313 Location: Durham, NC

Ilardi · Joined: 15 May 2008 Posts: 263 Location: Lawrence, KS