ESPN’s Win Projections puts Dallas in a strong spot in the Western Conference
Earlier today, Kevin Pelton released his annual win projections for all 30 teams (ESPN Insider Subscription is required), throwing up a few surprises and possible discussion points.
One thing to note here is that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the Win Totals themselves. Pelton’s system looks at Average wins (and Average Health Luck as he puts it) which almost always skews more towards a .500 Win Total rather than what the final standings turn out to be. For example, Pelton’s Win Totals last season projected only Boston as a 50-win team.
What the projection does decently enough though, is establish a possible pecking order.
Pelton’s projection for the West looks like this (Disclosure – Win totals are rounded up from the article):
- Oklahoma City Thunder: 54 wins
- Memphis Grizzlies: 51 wins
- Dallas Mavericks: 50 wins
- Sacramento Kings: 49 wins
- Denver Nuggets: 47 wins
- Phoenix Suns: 45 wins
- Golden State Warriors: 45 wins
- Minnesota Timberwolves: 43 wins
- New Orleans Pelicans: 42 wins
- LA Lakers: 41 wins
- Houston Rockets: 40 wins
- LA Clippers: 36 wins
- San Antonio Spurs: 34 wins
- Portland Trailblazers: 33 wins
- Utah Jazz: 29 wins
Looking at this, the biggest surprise would be the Wolves being down in 8th with just 43 wins. Pelton says that the Wolves projection surprised him more than anything else but contends that this is likely since the Wolves are betting on youth (there is some commonality with Denver in the thought process here with former Nuggets exec Tim Connelly running the show in Minnesota) with only eight players on their roster having played at least 500 minutes last season – a league low. Also, he cites more injury possibilities as a factor.
The other surprise here would be the Kings being up there in 4th. The best guess is that Pelton’s projection rates the addition of Demar Derozan very highly as it places a heavy emphasis on minutes played over the past 3 seasons.
Other than the Wolves & Kings anomalies, everything largely makes sense based on how the teams performed last season and how they may have improved/deteriorated based on their respective off seasons. One could quibble about how 6th-13th could shake out in the West considering how stacked the conference is from a talent standpoint, but this seems reasonable.
Any jump from Houston and San Antonio into proper playoff contention would depend on their superstars making sizeable jumps. If that doesn’t materialize, they could be fighting for the tail end of play-in contention like last season.
The Clippers’ projection might seem like an outlier being down in 12th with 36 wins, but it makes sense based on Pelton’s model considering that Kawhi Leonard is almost always injured (This season’s already started off on the wrong foot on that account) and their tumultuous offseason involving Paul George departing in Free Agency.
Portland and Utah bringing up the rear would be correct as it’s obvious that both teams are tanking in the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes.
On the other side of the NBA in the East, Pelton’s projections are:
- Boston: 53 wins
- Cleveland: 51 wins
- Milwaukee: 47 wins
- Indiana: 47 wins
- Philadelphia: 45 wins
- New York: 45 wins
- Miami: 45 wins
- Orlando: 44 wins
- Brooklyn: 37 wins
- Toronto: 34 wins
- Atlanta: 32 wins
- Chicago: 32 wins
- Charlotte: 29 wins
- Detroit: 29 wins
- Washington: 24 wins
The big surprise here would be Philadelphia and New York being 5th & 6th behind Cleveland, Milwaukee and Indiana in the projections. Both teams went all in this offseason – Philadelphia signed Paul George in addition to inking Tyrese Maxey & Joel Embiid to max. extensions while New York traded for Mikal Bridges to complete the Villanova friends club in addition to resigning OG Anunoby. These teams will probably be the closest challengers to Boston this upcoming season.
Cleveland did well in ensuring continuity by resigning their main players to extensions but are not remotely on the same level as the 76ers or the Knicks if both teams stay relatively injury-free. Milwaukee, though, is one of the oldest rosters in the league and is one losing streak away from completely falling apart.
Apart from these big surprises, the projections largely check out, except for Brooklyn being in 9th. Pelton does add a qualifier for this, speculating that this is a roster with a lot of decent NBA talent and that it could look dramatically different after the trade deadline.
It does tell us though that the bottom of the East is a complete dumpster fire with at least 7 teams fighting for ping-pong balls rather than playoff contention.
What can we probably takeaway from this as Mavericks fans?
From a statistics standpoint, the Mavericks roster should comfortably be a top 4 seed even in a stacked Western Conference. The closest challengers to that top 4 would be the Thunder, Grizzlies & Kings (I would include the Wolves also in this) and they should play seriously enough to gain that top 4 seeding as the fight for 5th-8th seeds looks to be a blender that would exhaust teams enough to deter them from any extended playoff run.
If the Mavericks live up to predictions and replicate their playoff success from last season, they’d most probably play Boston in the Finals again with a chance for revenge.
Now the only matter is whether reality matches the projection.