Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Oklahoma City Thunder

Coach: Scott Brooks

2010 Summary:
Record: 50-32, Finished 3rd in NBA Northwest Division
Pythagorean W-L: 51-31 (10th of 30)
SRS: 3.55 (9th of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 93.1 (12th of 30)
Offensive Rating: 108.3 (12th of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 104.6 (9th of 30)

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Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Minnesota Timberwolves

Coach: Kurt Rambis

2010 Summary:
Record: 15-67, Finished 5th in NBA Northwest Division
Pythagorean W-L: 17-65 (29th of 30)
SRS: -9.06 (30th of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 96.1 (3rd of 30)
Offensive Rating: 101.7 (29th of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 111.6 (28th of 30)

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Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Houston Rockets

Coach: Rick Adelman

2010 Summary:
Record: 42-40, Finished 3rd in NBA Southwest Division
Pythagorean W-L: 40-42 (16th of 30)
SRS: -0.01 (16th of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 94.0 (6th of 30)
Offensive Rating: 107.6 (16th of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 108.0 (17th of 30)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Detroit Pistons

Coach: John Kuester

2010 Summary:
Record: 27-55, Finished 5th in NBA Central Division
Pythagorean W-L: 26-56 (27th of 30)
SRS: -5.02 (27th of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 88.5 (29th of 30)
Offensive Rating: 105.6 (21st of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 111.4 (26th of 30)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Milwaukee Bucks

Coach: Scott Skiles

2010 Summary:
Record: 46-36, Finished 2nd in NBA Central Division
Pythagorean W-L: 46-36 (14th of 30)
SRS: 1.38 (14th of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 91.7 (19th of 30)
Offensive Rating: 104.9 (23rd of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 103.1 (2nd of 30)

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our 2010-11 NBA Blogosphere Previews, in which we contact the finest team bloggers on the web and ask them to contribute their thoughts on the squad they cover. What follows is their take, along with the team's depth chart (courtesy of ESPN.com), projected 2011 stats via our Simple Projection System, and polls where you get to have your say. Enjoy!

Utah Jazz

Coach: Jerry Sloan

2010 Summary:
Record: 53-29, Finished 1st in NBA Northwest Division
Pythagorean W-L: 55-27 (3rd of 30)
SRS: 5.33 (3rd of 30) ▪ Pace Factor: 93.8 (9th of 30)
Offensive Rating: 110.7 (8th of 30) ▪ Defensive Rating: 105.0 (10th of 30)

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You probably didn't know this (I admit we didn't exactly advertise it... at all, really), but our Simple Projection System (SPS) has been updated to produce projected stats for the upcoming 2010-11 season. That's good, because today I'm going to use those numbers tocome up with rudimentary "skill indices" for every projected player in the database, if for no other reason than to get a broad view of what each player is good at and how they fit in on their 2011 teams.

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Lots of interesting material in the NBA's annual GM survey this week, but I want to focus on one particular item:

"Kevin Durant (56 percent) was voted as the top player GMs would sign to start an NBA franchise."

You can write this off as LeBron James backlash if you want (the GMs also predicted James wouldn't win the 2011 MVP -- though I actually happen to agree there), but 68% of GMs said James was the game's best small forward right now, so I don't think that's it.

Instead, they're essentially saying that LeBron is better now, but they would prefer the total value added by the rest of Durant's career (he's age 22 this season) over the value from the rest of LeBron's career (he'll be 26 this year). Is this the rational choice? Are those extra four years going to push KD's expected rest-of-career value over James', or should you side with LeBron because of his superior track record thus far (and, hence, greater expected peak production)?

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For every bargain pickup in today's NBA, there's always going to be another player whose weak performance bears little connection to his outsized salary. A few weeks ago, we linked to Marc Normandin's Basketball Prospectus article about potential summer steals, so it's only fitting that we link again to his follow-up: offseason acquisitions whose compensation is not commensurate with their SCHOENE projections.

Click here for the Eastern Conference Preview

After many months of projections, it's finally time to unveil our official preseason forecast. They're based on our Win Shares projection system, with rosters/depth charts current as of Sunday, October 25, 2009. We used Win Shares to establish a base team strength rating for each squad, and then plugged those into the handy log5 formula and ran another 10,000-season simulation. What follows are the rosters (newcomers are highlighted in yellow), projected per-minute stats from our Simple Projection System, projected WS, the results of our 10,000-season sim, and my brief (200-words-or-fewer) thoughts on each team. So let's start the show, in reverse order, beginning with…

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