The (Not So) Long Road to 36.5 Wins?
When I first saw the article putting the Lakers over/under at 36.5 wins I, like the author and many readers, scoffed.
How could the Lakers improve THAT much after losing Young, Williams, and Russell? Even with an improvement at the 5 in Brook Lopez, they still have a young roster and more new pieces to integrate -- 36.5 wins seems like a HUGE stretch. I even dismissed it as a "teaser" meant to lure subscribers to an online gambling site.
But then it turned out to be a slow day at work, so I got to thinking....how many games could the Lakers reasonably win? To determine that, I broke down the NBA scheduling formula team by team and I came up with (drum-roll please):
- assumes Lakers with win/lose some games they shouldn't
- assumes Lakers will not tank (i.e. nothing to gain by it)
- estimating which non-division teams they only play 3x based on last 4 seasons' schedules
That's not quite 36, but it's still a lot more than I thought I'd be able to find. After all: GSW, SAS, PDX and MEM stayed the same and HOU, MIN, OKC and even SAC seem to have improved quite a bit. PHX is still a wildcard - they should improve but probably won't be any worse.
But then I remembered: there's still the East, which may be as weak as any conference in NBA history - outside of the top 4 teams, there's a massive drop off. Not only that, but LAC and UT both took major steps backward. That makes the road to 36.5 a lot more do-able then I first thought.
What say you? is 32 wins too much, too little or about right?
Worksheet is here if you need it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CJVNCcQJ95GXMmolKygZzjT7MkFTuCTADZwCXLVicvw/edit?usp=sharing