Monday, August 09, 2010

ESPN.com: NBA Summer Forecast: Predicted Eastern Conference Standings

I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which is the greater folly: trying to predict team records for the upcoming season in mid-July or my inclusion in a poll of "92 of ESPN's best basketball minds."

Either way, the consensus prediction for the Atlanta Hawks proved to be 48 wins, fifth-best in the East. From the editors:
Amazingly, Atlanta has improved for five straight seasons, but our panel says the streak ends here. The Hawks are a solid team that seems stuck in no man's land, having failed to make the conference finals for 40 years -- since the Lakers swept them in the 1970 Western Division finals -- and that probably won't change in 2011.
For what it's worth, seven Eastern Conference teams are predicted to finish between 31 and 39 wins (and none to win fewer than 27). That's the nature of this sort of thing. Some team is probably going to win fewer than 20 games in the East but it's difficult to predict which team that will be especially amidst the optimism over off-season acquisitions and the assumption* of good health.

My own first draft of predictions totaled almost 1300 wins (or about 70 too many should there again be just one winner of each NBA game next season). Upon completing and submitting a plausible set of predictions, it turns out I was within a game of the common wisdom for 7 of the East's 15 teams. Interesting? Perhaps. Meaningless? almost certainly.

*
I suspect injuries will go a long toward stratifying teams in the Eastern Conference this season.

UPDATE (1:10pm): There is an accompanying poll up now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Last year ESPN.com predicted the Hawks would win 44 games.

Rufus1 said...

Little more perspective

More sports writer disrespecting the Hawks and drinking the Bulls KOOLAIDE. The Bulls won't win 50 games and the Hawks will finish with the 3rd best record in the east. Boozer and Korver are not enough to be better than the Hawks....they played with a better PG, head coach and team last years and we demolished them. Go look at Boozers # against the Hawks, Josh Smith EATS HIS LUNCH!!! They are better than the Hawks at one position PG...THAT IS IT.

I know the Hawks are not SEXY, but 2 Allstars, 6th MOY and 2nd place Defensive player of the years should never be disrespected this much.....The Bulls were and 8th seed last year.

They are probably those writer who thought the Wizards would be good last year as well....

PS Hawks vs Boston 4-0 Hawks vs Bulls 3-1 Hawks vs Jazz 2-0