Five Thirty Eight RAPTORS

[Drom John]

"New Improved" rating system. After umpteen tweakings, bigs are down, perimeters are up.
Spurs up to 39 wins, 25% making playoffs.

Net/Offense/Defense
+1.0/+0.2/+0.8 Team (109-108)

+3.0/+0.9/+2.1 Derrick White
+1.4/-0.3/+1.7 Dejounte Murray
+1.2/-0.1/+1.3 Jakob Poeltl
+1.1/-0.1/+1.2 LaMarcus Aldridge
+0.6/+0.1/+0.5 Rudy Gay
-0.3/+0.7/-1.0 Patty Mills
-0.4/+1.1/-1.5 DeMar DeRozan
-1.3/-1.0/-0.3 DeMarre Carroll
-1.7/-0.1/-1.6 Bryn Forbes
-1.8/-1.0/-0.8 Trey Lyles
-1.9/-1.1/-0.8 Lonnie Walker IV
-2.2/0.0/-2.2 Marco Belinelli
-2.2/-1.4/-0.8 Quinndary Weatherspoon
-3.2/-2.3/-0.9 Luka Samanic
-3.2/-2.6/-0.6 Drew Eubanks
-3.4/-2.0/-1.4 Keldon Johnson
-3.5/-3.5/0.0 Chimezie Metu

[SAGirl]

^ Look at Derozan. No way should he be extended. Spurs would probably be better trading for a vet placeholder forward who could shoot the 3 this season and then look at other possibilities for the future.
Also, I think Murray has a chance to improve his offensive impact, turning him into the team's most impactful player. I don't want to jinx him, but his shooting improvement is very encouraging. Derozan does nothing for Murray at this point.

[Genovaswitness]

derozan having a career-ending injury opening night would be the best thing for the team tbh. tearing his Achilles on one of his five second hold post up fade-away bricks would be an auspicious start to the year tbh

[TDomination]

Are these numbers based on last year?

[Drom John]

These numbers are based on career including college and foreign.

[FkLA]

Looks legit. Best defender and best PG on the team sitting pretty at the top. :tu

[ZeusWillJudge]

The problems with all these systems are always the same. We don't need a system to tell us that Steph and Kawhi are good. They do a half-ass job, at best, of dealing with the guys in the middle. And they aren't worth a damn at predicting when guys are going to break out or decline, until they've already done it - or at least started to. So basically they do a really good job of telling us what we already know - the more obvious it is, the better they show it.


Those numbers say this Spurs team isn't very good. I think most of us had already come to that conclusion. The '14 and '15 RAPTOR numbers appear to value Danny Green and Patty Mills higher than Tim Duncan. If you're one of the people who think Tim wouldn't have been as useful in the "New NBA", you'll probably agree with Derrick White being valued more than Aldridge, too. I like White, but I didn't like what I saw from him this summer, or so far this preseason. It's still a coin toss whether he'll be able to repeat last season's performance, now that he's drawing more attention.

[Genovaswitness]

The problems with all these systems are always the same. We don't need a system to tell us that Steph and Kawhi are good. They do a half-ass job, at best, of dealing with the guys in the middle. And they aren't worth a damn at predicting when guys are going to break out or decline, until they've already done it - or at least started to. So basically they do a really good job of telling us what we already know - the more obvious it is, the better they show it.


Those numbers say this Spurs team isn't very good. I think most of us had already come to that conclusion. The '14 and '15 RAPTOR numbers appear to value Danny Green and Patty Mills higher than Tim Duncan. If you're one of the people who think Tim wouldn't have been as useful in the "New NBA", you'll probably agree with Derrick White being valued more than Aldridge, too. I like White, but I didn't like what I saw from him this summer, or so far this preseason. It's still a coin toss whether he'll be able to repeat last season's performance, now that he's drawing more attention.

Spoiler: he won’t. can’t even handle adversity when he’s gifted olympics spots and playing time he doesn’t deserve :lmao

[RC_Drunkford]

the problem with White is that he has the mental toughness of a Kyle Anderson while being far more skilled

[FkLA]

I like White, but I didn't like the boxscores I saw from him this summer, or so far this preseason.

You didn't actually watch the games so FIFY :tu

[Allan Rowe vs Wade]

39 wins? cmon

and then mav and okc at 46/47 wins

better go recalibrate those calculators boyz

[TimDunkem]

39 wins? cmon

and then mav and okc at 46/47 wins

better go recalibrate those calculators boyz

This team just isn't very good although I would agree that the Mavs and OKC probably aren't that good either.

[Chinook]

The Spurs are a better team than last year. I don't think it's reasonable to argue otherwise. Pop will eventually realize that starting a bunch of non-shooters doesn't work, and the offense will get back to being respectable. The defense will improve from better personnel and chemistry. Indeed, the West is better now, so maybe they'd miss the playoffs. But 538 recently has projected the Spurs low for a bit now, and they keep having to ratchet up their rankings "as they get more information". While every model will get better with more data, folks are too inclined to give popular models like these a pass and just assume they've already been rigorously tested. Have RAPTORS or any other other stupid acryonyms correctly predicted non-obvious results this far in advance? If not, maybe they shouldn't release them until mid-season or whenever they become accurate.

And no, even the player rankings aren't correct. These advanced stats have yet to appropriately contextualize role-players. It should be part of the brute quantitative results that stars are more important to winning than role-players. You shouldn't look at a list and wonder, "Who's more important, Aldridge or Poeltl." It's fucking Aldridge, by a mile. And you should be like, "Is DeRozan less helpful than Mills?" Of course he's not. And that may seem like a trivial complaint, but if they factored in the "star boost", then their models would be more accurate.

[Allan Rowe vs Wade]

This team just isn't very good although I would agree that the Mavs and OKC probably aren't that good either.

spursies won 48 last year with massive injury problems. with djm back and ddr in year 2 they should clear 50 barring further injuries and/or acute onset of tosbism

[TimDunkem]

spursies won 48 last year with massive injury problems. with djm back and ddr in year 2 they should clear 50 barring further injuries and/or acute onset of tosbism

Rest assured Pop's TOSB crew will have something to say about that. Also, let's stop acting as if the Spurs are the only team in the West. There are other teams and almost all of them got better too. There won't be very many easy games this year, and it's not hard to see how Pop's 1 single 3pt shooter starting lineup is going to struggle in some of them.

[Collins21]

The Spurs are a better team than last year. I don't think it's reasonable to argue otherwise. Pop will eventually realize that starting a bunch of non-shooters doesn't work, and the offense will get back to being respectable. The defense will improve from better personnel and chemistry. Indeed, the West is better now, so maybe they'd miss the playoffs. But 538 recently has projected the Spurs low for a bit now, and they keep having to ratchet up their rankings "as they get more information". While every model will get better with more data, folks are too inclined to give popular models like these a pass and just assume they've already been rigorously tested. Have RAPTORS or any other other stupid acryonyms correctly predicted non-obvious results this far in advance? If not, maybe they shouldn't release them until mid-season or whenever they become accurate.

And no, even the player rankings aren't correct. These advanced stats have yet to appropriately contextualize role-players. It should be part of the brute quantitative results that stars are more important to winning than role-players. You shouldn't look at a list and wonder, "Who's more important, Aldridge or Poeltl." It's fucking Aldridge, by a mile. And you should be like, "Is DeRozan less helpful than Mills?" Of course he's not. And that may seem like a trivial complaint, but if they factored in the "star boost", then their models would be more accurate.

"Is DeRozan less helpful than Mills?" This is the reason why I don't take these rating systems seriously. Anything that would say that Patty Mills is more helpful or better than DeMar at any point is flawed at best. I agree with your post completely.

[RC_Drunkford]

39 wins? cmon

and then mav and okc at 46/47 wins

better go recalibrate those calculators boyz

At this point I could see them win 39 games. Somehow I got the feeling that this years team is worse than last years although it's better on paper. It just seems to me that this group combined with Pops retarded line ups won't make it to the playoffs. I hope I'm wrong though

[Yogatti]

Looks legit. Best defender and best PG on the team sitting pretty at the top. :tu

:lol

[TDomination]

At this point I could see them win 39 games. Somehow I got the feeling that this years team is worse than last years although it's better on paper. It just seems to me that this group combined with Pops retarded line ups won't make it to the playoffs. I hope I'm wrong though
It all has to do with effort and willingness to give 100%

If the team can at least give true effort, that will amount to wins. But lackadaisical play and giving up quickly will lead to plenty of losses

[SAGirl]

spursies won 48 last year with massive injury problems. with djm back and ddr in year 2 they should clear 50 barring further injuries and/or acute onset of tosbism
They didn’t have massive injuries.
They got more or less a typical season relative to everyone else.
Murray missed a season but everyone else was available with some periods of either rest or minor injuries.
I wouldn’t even assume this season will be completely uneventful on the injury department. Someone will invariably get hurt.

Is Murray the difference maker some of us think he can be is basically the question. But make no mistake there will be some games missed by some guys due to rest and injuries.

[Allan Rowe vs Wade]

They didn’t have massive injuries.
They got more or less a typical season relative to everyone else.
Murray missed a season but everyone else was available with some periods of either rest or minor injuries.
I wouldn’t even assume this season will be completely uneventful on the injury department. Someone will invariably get hurt.

Is Murray the difference maker some of us think he can be is basically the question. But make no mistake there will be some games missed by some guys due to rest and injuries.

ok so spurs only lost their starting pg for the whole year and then the backup pg (white) for the beginning of the year, and
also lonnie at the beginning if the year

[Uriel]

Keep in mind that the model only looks at players, not the quality of coaching. Maybe the Spurs would end up with 39 wins with a league average coach. But it's been said that having a great coach is the equivalent of adding another all-star to the roster.