Unreason: WoW revised the Knicks up from the #2 to the #1 seed over Miami for the 2012-13 season. Wow is right.

In case this wasn’t clear: I’m not saying they’re right. I’m saying “wow”.

I’m not familiar with WoW and I haven’t looked into the methods for these projections. Glancing over this page, though, I really like the effort to be transparent.

Any chance the usual discussion re WP & other advanced stats could shift to ideas about how to improve them? The beauty of freely expressed, fermentation-enhanced ideas strains against the gravitational force of hoops identity politics (who deserves respect because they’re for or against my camp). Some of your better angels could use a boost IMO.

I don’t begrudge anyone the fun of keeping another poster’s ego in check, especially if they’re not viscous and don’t take themselves too seriously. Minimize that tendency, though, and the exchanges might get more productive and fun by building on the things there is broad agreement on.

For example, I bet there’s broad agreement that
1) some judgments and decisions should be informed by analysis of hoops data
2) WP and other current approaches aren’t perfect and can be improved.

There’s lots of smart posters here who’ve thought a lot about this stuff and I bet several have interesting ideas about what an improved approach might look like or about the questions that have to be answered to start to define an improved approach.

They might be more willing to risk posting such an idea here for discussion, if they didn’t suspect it would be ridiculed right off the bat.

(1) Amare is a big question mark… he’s allegedly missing 6-8 weeks (it’ll probably be longer given Knicks history of accurately predicting injury time out).
(2) Shump is injured until Dec/Jan/Feb
(3) TD was TERRIBLE…truly terrible, but not sure you can write off the 8-15 start on just him and guys being out of shape… we shot too many threes, shot a low % and had little flow on offense — signs which have reared its ugly head in preseason…

Having said all that I do think, largely depending on #1, that we should be 8-12 games over .500. My prediction is a rough start to the season and then we pick it up in the 2nd half (similar to last year)

max fisher-cohen:
I’m gonna take out the pre-Linsanity 8-15 start as guys were out of shape (although in fairness, so were opponents) and because TD was our starting point guard. I’m also gonna take out our 5 game win streak post D’Antoni because that seemed built on an adrenaline high. that leaves NY’s record last year at 23-15, a win% of 60.8%, 49-33 over an entire season. If you base pythagorean wins just on that portion of the season, you get 51.2 wins over an 82 game season.

If we say Felton, Kidd, Prigioni = Davis/Lin/Bibby in that period (which includes Linsanity)

2012 Shumpert + Brewer

2012 Smith > 2011 Smith (he had an off year)

2012 Novak = 2011 Novak

Kurt ThomasJorts/Jordan

2012 Chandler < 2011 Chandler (TC had a career year in terms of health and stats)

We probably want to knock a few games off that 51 win pace, so 45-49 wins seems reasonable to me.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/41776/courtvision-is-this-what-carmelo-anthonys-prime-looks-like?njk

Carmelo may be an elite scorer, but he is not an elite mid-range shooter. This may be the root of what irks Knicks fans about modern-day Melo. If there’s a problem with Melo’s game it’s that he’s too active there, and not active enough in the post and near the rim. This isn’t entirely his fault; schemes, sets, and personnel are also to blame. Regardless, nearly every mid-range shot he takes is a misplaced opportunity. In the same way that a Steve Novak floater is less optimal than a Steve Novak 3-pointer, a Carmelo mid-range jumper is less optimal than a Carmelo post move.

If we say Felton, Kidd, Prigioni = Davis/Lin/Bibby in that period (which includes Linsanity)

2012 Shumpert + Brewer

2012 Smith > 2011 Smith (he had an off year)

2012 Novak = 2011 Novak

Kurt Thomas Jorts/Jordan

2012 Chandler < 2011 Chandler (TC had a career year in terms of health and stats)

We probably want to knock a few games off that 51 win pace, so 45-49 wins seems reasonable to me.

ess-dog:
I’m predicting 47 wins.We’ll be improved, but not greatly.

47 wins is a step back from last year.