FanPost

Rough estimate of Suns 2012-13 wins

I know basing predictions on stats will cause endless arguments here. Screw it, I'll do it anyways. Basing the outlook purely on WP48 numbers and minimal tweaking produces a not so rosy outlook. Look at it this way, I don't think Gordon at max contract would have made any difference. Anyways there could be 100 disclaimers to go with this. I know WP48 doesn't fully document defense nor does past results take into account what improvements could come to a player from better teammates or a better system (or a worst situation for the player). This is merely an estimation so here goes....

First estimation which is very rudimentary and could be tweaked a bit is assume each position is taken by 2 players with the starter getting 65% of the playing time and the backup getting 35% of the playing time and just basic guesses at who the 10 player rotation would be. Could be tweaked a bit of course with players playing multiple positions or adjusting playing percentages, but once again this is an estimation.

So the stats are (WP48 Past season/WP Two seasons ago/WP estimate this year....Total WP expected)

Center

Gortat: 0.19/0.176/0.18...9.6

Frye: 0.058/0.017/0.04....1.1

PF

Scola: -0.015/0.034/0.02...1.1

Morris: -0.023/DNP/0.00....0.0

SF

Beasley: -0.014/-0.046/0.02...1.1

Dudley: 0.162/0.173/0.17...4.9

SG

Brown: 0.038/0.056/0.04....2.1

Redd (or similar): -0.019/DNP/0.00...0.0

PG

Dragic: 0.155/0.017/0.15...8.0

Telfair: -0.011/-0.037/-0.01...-0.3

Total wins projected: 27.3

Seems in line with my personal expectation of about a 30-52 season. I hope I am wrong but people are likely to see the additions of Scola and Beasley are not the answer. I show Nash worth almost 7 wins more than Dragic over an 82 game season and if Dudley was a starter and Beasley came off the bench the team would see wins projected go up by almost 5. Those two changes right there would make this a 42-40 team almost exactly in line with what we saw last year.

So where do we get better than expected production this year to make the numbers come out better?