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SALT LAKE CITY — The NBA season is upon us and with it, every writer's predictions of how every NBA team will perform this season. I've already given my rankings of the Western Conference, but how does it stack up against the other experts in the NBA?
I wanted to find some NBA publications' predictions of how the Jazz would do this season. But maybe more worthwhile are the statistical projections: how do the computers think the Jazz will fare? Here's the full list.
Predictions
ESPN Forecast Panel: 44 wins
ESPN asked 44 of their NBA experts to give a projected win total for every team in the league. "The Jazz lost Gordon Hayward, but our panel doesn't see them losing out on a playoff spot this season," ESPN says.
USAToday's conference preview: 42 wins
USAToday staff writer AJ Neuharth-Keusch projected the Jazz to win 42 games. "Hayward or no Hayward, the Jazz still have a roster that can reach the postseason." That being said, Neuharth-Keusch has the Jazz ending up ninth, just outside of the playoff picture.
Sports Illustrated's predictions: 6th in the Western Conference
While Ben Golliver doesn't predict win totals for each team, he does predict the Jazz to be sixth in the Western Conference. "Usually when an All-Star like Gordon Hayward departs, everyone asks, 'What will they look like?' No need to bother with that question in Utah, where Rudy Gobert will lead a deliberate, defense-first approach."
Washington Post predictions: 8th in the Western Conference
The Washington Post's Tim Bontemps is one of the most connected NBA reporters working for a local paper. He predicts the Jazz to finish at the bottom of the Northwest Division, but still eighth in the Western Conference.
Projections
Kevin Pelton's ESPN Projections using RPM: 44.7 wins
Real Plus-Minus is a system that uses how players impact the score while they're on the court (adjusted for who they're playing with and against using ridge regression) to adjust a box-score ranking prior.
RPM's projections have the Jazz winning 44.7 games this season, good for eighth in the Western Conference.
FiveThirtyEight.com projections using CARM-Elo: 46 wins
FiveThirtyEight uses its own CARM-Elo projection system to project the performance of each individual player on every NBA roster, then simulates the outcome of every NBA game with the rosters competing, and including factors like home-court advantage and travel fatigue. It then does this 50,000 times and averages the results.
FiveThirtyEight has the Jazz as the ninth best team in the NBA and the eighth best team in the Western Conference. Conference imbalance, anyone?
CBS Sportsline projections: 38 wins
No methodology is given for CBS Sportsline projections made by its "data scientist" Stephen Oh, but his system predicts the Jazz will win just 38 games this season and miss the playoffs.
Nylon Calculus "Highly Plausible" win projections: 41 wins
Nylon Calculus' Andrew Johnson releases these projections every year. I'll let him explain: "The basis of the projections is a blend of my own player rating called Player Tracking Plus Minus (PT-PM), a combo of box score stats and SportVU, and Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus (RAPM)." It has the Jazz sneaking into the playoffs and earning the eighth seed.
Deseret News' Jared Bray: 44 wins
Bray, a contributor for the Deseret News, has a simple projections system he uses. "My forecast formula takes into account three year’s worth of Basketball-Reference’s Win Shares Per 48 Minutes stat, an aging curve and estimated minutes based, in part, on last year’s playing time." He even breaks down who he thinks will be adding those wins:
Josiah Brady's clustering model relies on an estimate of a team's offensive and defensive ratings to produce these win projections. To be honest, his projection of Utah's offensive skill this season is probably a bit high.
NBA Couchside's Win Projections: 41 wins
Kevin Ferrigan used a 65 percent RAPM and 35 percent box score stat projection model to predict each individual player's performance, then used minute projections to see how much each of those players would play. The result: a Jazz win total around 41 wins.
