Good News For Timberwolves Fans!

Well, I've been griping about the Wolves situation for a while now. I've been essentially calling this a rebuilding season and had almost essentially given up on the Wolves before they even started.

I've been starting to crunch some numbers here in my quest for the future evaluation of teams and I've run across some rather interesting numbers. I'm trying to evaluate the addition and subtraction of team points per game by player for players that have changed teams, left the NBA, or players who are likely to see many more or many fewer minutes than they had last year. I won't go to much into my methodology, but it's largely based on the numbers at 82games.com.

Here are my results for the Wolves:

Name	Team	OPPG	DPPG	Minutes
Eddie Griffin	Minnesota	0.54	0.02	5.0
Ervin Johnson	Minnesota	1.90	-0.47	-9.8
Fred Hoiberg	Minnesota	-2.89	-0.32	-16.7
Latrell Sprewell	Minnesota	3.72	0.12	-30.6
Lionel Chalmers	Minnesota	2.08	1.43	15.0
Marko Jaric	Minnesota	2.58	-0.57	33.1
Rookies	Minnesota	-2.00	-1.00	22.8
Sam Cassell	Minnesota	-0.69	0.69	-25.8
Tskitishvili	Minnesota	-0.49	-0.36	7.0

This amounts to a net 4.8 points more per game than last season and 0.5 ppg less on defense.

The things you might notice are that Eddie Griffin is included in the list. I figured he'll play a large part in replacing Ervin. The Wolves will lack some depth in the front court as well, and I'm hoping at least that he'll take that role over Kandi.

Next, you'll notice that there is a player called "Rookies". There were quite a few minutes that needed to be filled to make up the void left by Sprewell et al. I figure most of this time will go to rookies and others (Ndudi?) who haven't seen much PT in the past. I just had to guess how much it was worth, so I said -2 on offense and -1 on defense.

If these numbers are correct (and I have the utmost confidence that they aren't) the Wolves will score around 101.5 ppg next year while allowing 95 ppg. If they actually did this, they would probably win around 54 games next season!

But even though the numbers are slightly off, I have some faith that they're not completely meaningless either. I'll try to give some logical interpretation to what the numbers are saying.

Basically, Sprewell and Johnson were terrible offensively last year. Sprewell in particular was extraordinarily bad. With him on the court, the Wolves averaged 6.5 points less per 100 possessions. On defense, he was slightly above average, but not much. We only allowed 0.2 points/100 fewer with him on the court. When I discovered the number, I was a bit surprised but not entirely. It basically confirms what I had suspected all along--that he was sabotaging the team (whether he did it intentionally or not is unclear) when he was on the court.

On the flip side of the coin, we've added a solid PG to our team in Marko Jaric. As you can see, he was an asset both offensively and defensively to the Clippers last season, and I see no reason he won't feel right at home here in Minnesota. Chalmers was a solid offensive player last season, but his defense was pretty bad. I haven't gotten a chance to see him play very much, so it's hard for me to say how bad this problem will be and if it's correctable or not.

Those are sort of the main points in all this. Zoidberg will be missed. Despite his limited minutes, you can really see what an asset he was to the team last year. Tskitishvili will be a below average player, but he won't be as bad as Johnson and he's still young so we might hold out some hope that he'll still turn into something.

Season Totals

Pinnacle release their season win totals today, and as far as I know, they're the first sports book to do it. As the other books start releasing these odds, it will be interesting to see how they compare and to possibly look for scalping/middling opportunities.

Anyway, Here they are (in a rather crude format):

Team	Total	Over Price	Under Price
Char	19.5	-134	124
Bos	42	126	-136
Phil	41.5	-102	-108
NJ	46.5	-122	112
Tor	29.5	100	-110
Detroit	52.5	-105	-105
Chicago	44.5	103	-113
Indiana	52	-117	107
Cleveland	47	-109	-101
Milw	35	-112	102
Miami	57.5	-106	-104
Wash	41	-102	-108
Orlando	33.5	-120	110
Atlanta	19	-105	-105
Seattle	44.5	-108	-102
Denver	49.5	-108	-102
Minnesota	44.5	-102	-108
Portland	29	-105	-105
Utah	32	-123	113
Phoenix	54.5	110	-120
Sac	49.5	-105	-105
LAC	37	-105	-105
LAL	41.5	-114	104
GS	40	-123	113
SAS	57.5	104	-114
Dallas	52.5	-110	100
Houston	53.5	-101	-109
Memphis	42.5	108	-118
NO	20.5	-105	-105
NY	37	-105	-105

I haven't done any thorough analysis yet, but my initial reaction was to bet the under on almost everybody. This reaction tells me that I should probably be a bit more computative in my prognosis. If you add up the numbers, you'll get a total of 1246.5 wins, which is just slightly higher than the 1230 wins that will be had in the NBA this year, so the unders are probably slightly better, but certainly not as much as my intuition would lead me to believe.

My general toughts are that you should generally bet under on good teams who have listed totals similar to last season and similarly, to bet the over on bad teams from last season. In addition, there has been a slight shift of power to the East this off season, so it might also be a good idea to bet over on mediocre teams in the West and under on mediocre teams in the East.

Now for my thoughts on why you should bet under on everybody (with some counterpoints thrown in there):

Minnesota Timberwolves Under 44.5 wins (-108)

Which do you think it more likely, that the Wolves will win 40 games, or that they'll win 49? As I predicted, the Wolves line is slightly higher than it should be. They could go for 49, but I see it as much more likely that they'll fall slightly under the .500 mark. On the other hand, they still have KG. They've dumped off the cancerous Cassell and Sprewell and picked up a solid new PG in Jaric along with a load of young players that have huge question marks attached to their names. With a slight shift of power to the East and all the stars aligning, the Wolves just might find a way to 45.

Charlotte Sting Under 19.5 wins (+124)

Ok, I know they're actually the Bobcats. The funny thing is, Pinnacle didn't seem to know this when they first released the lines, accidentally listing them by the name of their WNBA counterparts (who have about a 0% chance of winning 20 games next season). When I first looked at this line, I kinda liked the over. They won 18 games last year and normally with a team that bad, you'd expect to see significant improvement the next season. However, their team still looks god awful, and their 18 wins from last season was a huge overachievement.

Miami Heat Under 57.5 wins (-104)

Probably the most overrated team in the NBA right now. Their trade for Walker will prove to be quite menacing when he starts jacking up threes and Shaq and Dwyane don't ever get to touch the ball on offense. When they traded for him, I pretty much assumed that they were planning on retrading him to a non-contender. That they haven't done this yet is baffling. They also have Shaq, who has a tendency to coast through the regular season and not turn it on until the playoffs. This team wins 53 games tops.

Golden State Warriors Under 40 wins (+113)

If there's anything Petey has taught me about his hometown crew, it's that they're one of the most horribly mismanaged teams in all of sports. Even if they have the talent to make it to the playoffs, there's no way they'll actually do it. Baron Davis should just start demanding a trade now.

Philadelphia 76ers Under 41.5 wins (-102)

This is a team that's based around Chris Webber and Allen Iverson--two of the most injury prone players in the NBA (and they're not getting any younger). Come mid-January, this team will be lucky to win a game when the two of them are sidelined. If there's an over bet to be made on this team, it's on how many injuries Iverson will sustain.

What have we learned?

I could go on like this and actually give you reasons why the under is a good bet for each and every team in the league, but I've restricted it to a few I thought would be interesting/humorous. Conversely, I could also probably give good reasons to bet the over on any team in the league.

The truth is, if your betting scheme relies entirely on verbal arguments, it's probably not very good. If you're not careful, you can talk yourself into making a bad bet for reasons that just aren't very good. That's why I feel that any modern sports-betting system has to have some sort of mathematical model behind it. Once you do the math, you can adjust your predictions ever so slightly to adjust for things that it doesn't account for. Right up front, can you really tell me if the Warriors Under 40 wins is a good bet at +113? What about +120? Or even money?