Finding the upset: week 3

Last week’s first edition of upset spotting worked so well that the streets demand a new episode. Well, not exactly – I just really like doing these. New week, new probabilities!

My two upset picks went 2-0 this Saturday both on ridiculous finishes, with Central Michigan winning on a play that shouldn’t have happened and Arkansas using a wide receiver pass to get to overtime to beat TCU. I don’t know that we’ll need that much luck again, but we’ll see.

Anyway: out of the Top 25 teams, eight are playing each other, which leaves 17 teams that will be playing unranked teams. ESPN’s FPI system ran back at me with the following: based on their win probabilities, 13.19 of these 17 teams will defeat their (likely) underdog opponents. Bill Connelly’s S&P+ sees almost the exact same, coming in at 13.38. This week, we’re going to use the Massey Ratings as well, which I use for lots of prediction work. They roll in with a prediction of 13.17 games won out of 17, which makes every system in near-harmonious agreement. Just like last week, we’ll merge the metrics for a group of ~3.75 teams that will lose this weekend. The odds of all 17 teams going 17-0 this weekend are hilariously miniscule: 0.8%. Upsets are coming.

The trick: finding what 3.75 (alternately, four) of these teams will lose.

This week’s categories of victory likelihood, per the merged metrics:

• 40-49%: #17 Texas A&M (at Auburn) (43.2%), #22 Oregon (at Nebraska) (45.6%)
• 50-59%: #11 Texas (at California) (51.7%), #25 Miami (at Appalachian State) (59.7%)
• 60-69%: #6 Houston (at Cincinnati) (61%), #16 Georgia (at Missouri) (64.3%), #7 Stanford (vs. USC) (64.5%)
• 70-79%: #20 LSU (vs. Mississippi State) (76.1%)
• 80-89%: #13 Iowa (vs. North Dakota State) (86.6%)
• 90-99%: #4 Michigan (vs. Colorado) (91.3%), #21 Baylor (at Rice) (95.2%), #9 Wisconsin (vs. Georgia State) (95.8%), #15 Tennessee (vs. Ohio) (95.9%), #24 Arkansas (vs. Texas State) (97.1%), #8 Washington (vs. Portland State) (98.5%), #23 Florida (vs. North Texas) (98.6%), #5 Clemson (vs. South Carolina State) (99.9%)

Now, the number of games that each of these groups would win on average:

• 40-49%: 0.888 of 2 (19.7% of winning both)
• 50-59%: 1.114 of 2 (30.1% of winning both)
• 60-69%: 1.898 of 3 (25.3% of going 3-0)
• 70-79%: 0.761 of 1 (76.1% of winning)
• 80-89%: 0.866 of 1 (86.6% of winning)
• 90-99%: 7.723 of 8 (75.2% of going 8-0)

Based on this, we can expect to see at least three upsets, one from each of the three least confident percentage lines. Based on the odds, I’m not sure we will see a ground-shaking upset by the numbers, but anything can happen. To achieve a fourth, we’ll have to reach a bit from one of these groups, but we can get to that later.

Our initial upset picks for week 3 are as follows: Nebraska over #22 Oregon from the 40-49% group, California over #11 Texas from 50-59%, and Cincinnati over #6 Houston from 60-69%.

My reasoning for each, starting with Nebraska: Oregon’s defensive efficiency against two very poor offenses and teams (2-9 in FCS UC Davis and a Virginia team that just lost to an FCS team) has come in at an unadjusted 84th in America per ESPN. Tommy Armstrong is unbelievably frustrating, but the odds on him having a strong game here are very high. Another key stat: under head coach Mike Helfrich, the Ducks are 2-5 (0-3 OOC) in games where they have between a 40-60% chance to win, suggesting a lack of consistent ability to win close games. The projections expect almost exactly one loss on average from teams ranked 21-25 this week, and Oregon has far and away the worst odds of winning their game from that group.

California is a less certain pick for me, as my friend Harrison knows very well of my considerable disdain for one Sonny Dykes. I think he’s a smart offensive coach who has zero idea how to win at a Pac-12 program, simply because he has zero idea what he wants defensively. I’ll set that aside for this week alone, because their 48.3% odds of winning are both alarming and eye-opening. I do like QB Davis Webb a lot, but this comes from projection systems being very skeptical of one home win against a poor Notre Dame offense meaning the true comeback of Texas football. Also, Charlie Strong is 2-4 in his career in September road games against Power 5 opponents. For teams ranked 11-20, the projection systems anticipate a 4.178-1.822 record, and Texas’s odds were the worst of the 50-59% range.

Cincinnati over Houston will appear to be a very bizarre pick to just about everyone, but the projection systems were unusually strong in pushing back against a Top 10 team: neither FPI nor S&P+ give Houston greater than a 58% chance to win, and Massey’s 72% even comes with the caveat that they expect it to be a one-touchdown defeat for a pesky Cincinnati team. But: the collected projections anticipate around 0.89 losses from the six Top 10 teams playing this week against unranked opponents, and it was either Cincinnati on a Thursday night in a weird spot for Houston or expecting USC to win a big game after two very disappointing performances. My comfort in this pick comes from a combination of this being a terrible situation for Houston (four days rest, a near seven-hour game this past Saturday, Ward Jr. battling shoulder issues, and a long travel week from Houston to Cincinnati) and of Cincinnati’s surprisingly strong offense, anchored by QB Hayden Moore (7.7 YPA, 147.5 QBR) and a solid rushing game. The fun part: Cincinnati allowed six yards per play to Purdue, but has picked off opposing quarterbacks seven times through two games. I look forward to seeing if Tommy Tuberville has the capability left to force Greg Ward, Jr. into tough situations. I would also prefer to take Missouri over Georgia here, but this is a test for these systems and for my own subjective biases.

There’s the three big picks I’m making this week. Now, let’s get a little weird for the fourth.

Percentage-wise, the Top 11-20 is much more likely to lose twice than once this week, so our fourth upset is most likely to come out of this group. Here’s where it gets wild: the chances of all ten 70-99.9% teams going undefeated are just 49.6% (still high, but more likely that one loses than doesn’t), the number of games this group wins on average is 9.35 of 10, and the number of upsets expected from the 40-69% range is 3.1, which means we’ve exhausted our supply there. To find the fourth .65 of an upset, we’re going big. Keeping it in the Top 11-20 range, this means eliminating #11 Texas (who we’ve already picked against), #16 Georgia, and #17 Texas A&M. Congrats! That leaves us with the following three schools to pick from for a giant loss: #13 Iowa (vs. North Dakota State), #15 Tennessee (vs. Ohio), and #20 LSU (vs. Mississippi State).

Tennessee has by far the best odds of beating their opponent, and I feel confident and unbiased in ruling them out from an earth-shattering loss. Teams that were underdogs to Kansas do not beat good teams, sorry. So, let’s pick from Iowa or LSU for the stretch upset. There are solid cases for both this weekend: Iowa was nowhere near as good as the polls suggested last season (finished 47th on Football Outsiders) and still isn’t very trusted by advanced metrics this year, polling at 35th on FO and 25th on ESPN’s FPI. LSU had an unbelievably bad loss to Wisconsin to open up the season and still doesn’t have a quarterback. They actually both have similar odds on ESPN to defeat their lower-tier opponent: LSU at 86.4% for a Mississippi State team that lost to South Alabama, Iowa at 90.9% for FCS powerhouse North Dakota State, who would be ranked above 46 FBS teams right now. I expect neither of these upsets to happen, if I’m being honest.

But: when my hand is forced and I have to pick one to happen, why not North Dakota State over #13 Iowa? Do you really trust Iowa? Do you really think they’re going to do the undefeated thing again? Have you watched Kirk Ferentz football at any point before 2015? (A reminder that an 11-2 Iowa team came within a blocked field goal of losing to FCS Northern Iowa in 2009.) Also, NDSU has won five in a row against FBS opponents, is coming off of their fifth straight FCS national championship, and Iowa has not gone undefeated in out of conference play in the Kirk Ferentz era. Again, I don’t anticipate this happens – I have much more faith in #17 Texas A&M losing to Auburn – but this is worth a flyer.

As a reminder, last week’s picks were Central Michigan over #22 Oklahoma State and Arkansas over #15 TCU, both of which came through. At 2-0 on the season, we’ll roll the dice with Nebraska over #22 Oregon, North Dakota State over #13 Iowa (stretch pick), California over #11 Texas, and Cincinnati over #6 Houston.

Finding the upset: Week 2

The following is true, at least as true as something can be based on a computer model: Bill Connelly’s S&P+ picks and rankings say that on an average weekend with these matchups, 2.571 of the 23 Top 25 teams playing this weekend would lose. That would normally seem pretty fair if the following weren’t also true: 22 of the 23 are playing in games with win probabilities of 66% or higher (TCU at 51% over Arkansas). Per similar Football Performance Index (FPI) metrics on ESPN, the same games spit out odds of 1.313 teams playing this weekend losing. As you can tell, S&P+ is typically more aggressive, FPI more conservative. Merging the two, 1.942 of these 23 teams will lose this weekend, which seems fair. It’s time to figure out what two games these systems could be referring to and to figure out how there’s just a 24.2% chance the Top 25 teams playing this week go 23-0.

The odds of all five of the current Top 5 teams in America winning their leisurely waltz games is a solid 84.7%, so we won’t even touch those. Ditto that of the AP Top 10, of which nine teams are playing. There’s a 79.5% chance that those teams go 9-0, which is very high. As much as Wisconsin being ranked #10 makes me laugh, it won’t be Akron that unseats them. (Though perhaps one or two of these teams will struggle with their inferior opponents.) But 11-20 has a high chance of bearing at least one loss: the odds of the nine teams in this group playing this weekend going 9-0 are just 41.9%. Still high, but it’s more likely than not that at least one of these teams will lose. TCU has by far the lowest chance of victory in the top ten this week: 69.4% on FPI, 51% on S&P. Removing them from the equation shows that the other 8 teams have a 60.3% chance of going 8-0.

By the numbers and thanks to a spectacularly awful defensive performance last week – 41 points allowed to FCS South Dakota State – I’ll bite the bullet and roll with Arkansas over #15 TCU in one of the rarest cases of Septembert happening.

If we’re looking for a second upset, there’s no obvious contender. Louisville is around a 75% favorite over Syracuse and Tennessee about 77%, but the odds of both teams winning are around 57.8%. I tend to favor FPI’s idea that we’re looking at just one upset this weekend. If there’s going to be a second upset, it will be one well off the beaten path and a true shocker, which is why I’m willing to roll some rather extreme dice here: Central Michigan over #22 Oklahoma State.

Why this game? Simple probabilities. I was inclined to take one of #13 Louisville, #16 Iowa, or #17 Tennessee as a loser, but the three combine for around a 65.6% chance of going 3-0 per the more accurate FPI metric (for Week 1’s results, anyway; S&P+ says 34% and a 2-1 record). Alternately, I have no desire to pick Syracuse or Iowa State to do anything of importance and Virginia Tech is in the second game of a new coaching regime following an okay-ish performance against Liberty. There are no 70-79% or <60% win categories for teams this week, which made the unfortunate TCU at 69.4% this week’s semi-lock. But amongst the 90% and above crowd, there’s an astounding 19 teams with odds higher than 90.1% to win their game. The odds of this group going 19-0 stand at just 53%, which means they’re more likely than not going to do so, but that gives them a total of 18.39 games won out of 19. Basically: there’s a 47% chance that a 90% or higher favorite loses on Saturday. 90% or higher favorites on the S&P+ model won more than 96% of their games last season (6 losses total, and one of those was Baylor playing with a wide receiver at quarterback), which sounds about right, but with the same 162 game sample and the average of a 95% win probability (around what it was in this category in 2015), this suggests that they overachieved a bit: the average result would be 8 losses in 162 games, and if 2016 regresses to the mean, you’ll see more shock upsets. (You might also want to note that both 60-69% and 70-79% favorites overachieved their expected value in the regular season by an astounding +10 and +12 games after going -12 (a 22 game swing!) and +1 in 2014, respectively. Upsets are coming, and these are very volatile.)

Somewhat useful tangent having been achieved, I’m rolling with Central Michigan for the following reasons: they have the second-highest shot out of the 90% club to beat their favored opponent (7.9% on ESPN, 14.9% on S&P+), they’re unusually high in rankings for a MAC school (63rd/2nd in MAC on FPI), and in OOC games where Oklahoma State was favored by 20 or more in the last three years (they are currently favored by 20.5 in this game), they’re 2-4 ATS with one of those spread losses coming just last year at Central Michigan (23 point favorite, won 24-13). Also, for some less quantifiable factors: Cooper Rush (CMU QB) is likely the best Group of Five quarterback (2015: 66.3% completion rate, 25 TD/11 INT, 7.87 YPA, 13th in ESPN’s Expected Points Added metric), Central Michigan very nearly Did It last year (led in third quarter, trailed by four entering fourth), and Oklahoma State was unable to top four yards per carry against Southeastern Louisiana, which bodes…not well. (Garbage time factors in, of course, but Oklahoma State also posted 5.44 yards per play against an FCS team.)

We’ll see if these come to fruition, of course. The point of this is to exploit supposedly easy schedules and probabilities, because nothing is 100% guaranteed to happen in college football. You’ll see at least one upset this weekend and quite possibly another. Keep your apps ready.

The 2016 college football stock market

Recently, when my day job hasn’t swallowed up my waking life and my other blog‘s musical questions don’t get to me too much, I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a faux-stock market for college football. Finances and football go hand-in-hand, essentially: you can create your own luck, have awful luck, watch violent outbursts, and either feel very rich or very poor at the end of a season.

With regards to this and regards to my beloved pseudoscience tag, I’ve taken the task of trying to figure out how to mix finances and football in a half-baked stock market. My idea was this: take a system that uses advanced statistics and a mathematical basis to find a ranking of 1-128 teams in 2015, then follow that up with the same projection system for 2016 plus Phil Steele’s 2016 Power Poll, which is based on nine different calculations.

The larger issue was figuring out what sort of purpose this serves. I didn’t know what monetary value to start the top teams at, but giving the #1 team 40% of the market seemed wise for now, especially when it was Alabama. The top few teams are relatively close together in an attempt to give the elites in the market true power, just like you would in real life. (College football is a very capitalist sport.)

After that, I gave the market’s projected bottom feeders and unimportant teams monetary values that reflected their status. Much like you would give a $1 value in fantasy football third-string bench-warmer who would see the field if multiple people broke their ankles or other things broke his or her way, I’m giving that value to someone like Texas-San Antonio, who is not the worst team in football this year but will not matter in any serious way.

Also, I’ve created a game: you have $100 to use on this poll. You have to pick five teams – no more, no less. Whoever has the most successful roster of five teams at the end of 2016 wins…something. Probably nothing. (This is very similar to the Solid Verbal’s 40 wins or less game, where you pick five teams from the previous year who combined for 40 or fewer wins and see who has the most successful roster by the end of the new season.)

Alternately, you could play an actual stock market game, starting the season with $10,000 and buying at least 100 stocks of any one team with a similar five-team limit at any given time. This is basically the same idea as above, but throughout the season you can buy and sell your stock in any one of your five teams and buy/sell stock in another. It allows freedom and adaptability throughout the course of a season.

So, without any further words taking up reading space, your 2016 College Football Stock Market:

1. Alabama ($40)
2. Clemson ($39)
3. Oklahoma ($38)
4. Florida State ($38)
5. LSU ($38)
6. Mississippi ($36)
7. Michigan ($36)
8. Ohio State ($36)
9. Washington ($35)
10. Notre Dame ($35)
11. Stanford ($34)
12. Tennessee ($34)
13. USC ($33)
14. Baylor ($33)
15. UCLA ($31)
16. Michigan State ($31)
17. Florida ($30)
18. Arkansas ($30)
19. Oregon ($29)
20. TCU ($29)
21. Louisville ($28)
22. Mississippi State ($28)
23. Georgia ($27)
24. Auburn ($27)
25. North Carolina ($27)
26. Oklahoma State ($25)
27. Texas A&M ($25)
28. Penn State ($24)
29. Utah ($24)
30. Miami (FL) ($24)
31. West Virginia ($23)
32. Pittsburgh ($23)
33. Nebraska ($23)
34. Wisconsin ($23)
35. Iowa ($22)
36. Boise State ($22)
37. BYU ($21)
38. Western Kentucky ($20)
39. NC State ($19)
40. Houston ($19)
41. South Florida ($19)
42. Virginia Tech ($19)
43. Texas ($19)
44. California ($18)
45. Minnesota ($17)
46. Northwestern ($16)
47. San Diego State ($16)
48. Toledo ($15)
49. Arizona State ($15)
50. Washington State ($13)
51. Bowling Green ($13)
52. Georgia Southern ($13)
53. Navy ($13)
54. Appalachian State ($12)
55. Boston College ($12)
56. Georgia Tech ($12)
57. Temple ($11)
58. Western Michigan ($11)
59. Texas Tech ($11)
60. Indiana ($11)
61. Air Force ($10)
62. Memphis ($9)
63. Duke ($9)
64. Kansas State ($8)
65. Arizona ($8)
66. Missouri ($8)
67. Cincinnati ($7)
68. Marshall ($7)
69. Utah State ($7)
70. Virginia ($6)
71. Syracuse ($6)
72. Southern Miss ($6)
73. Maryland ($5)
74. Iowa State ($5)
75. Northern Illinois ($4)
76. Illinois ($4)
77. Vanderbilt ($3)
78. South Carolina ($3)
79. Arkansas State ($3)
80. Colorado ($2)
81. Louisiana Tech ($2)
82. Central Michigan ($2)
83. Middle Tennessee ($2)
84. Connecticut ($2)
85. Wake Forest ($2)
86. Ohio ($2)
87. Kentucky ($2)
88. East Carolina ($2)
89. Purdue ($1)
90. San Jose State ($1)
91. Akron ($1)
92. Colorado State ($1)
93. Tulsa ($1)
94. Nevada ($1)
95. Rutgers ($1)
96. Oregon State ($1)
97. New Mexico ($1)
98. FAU ($1)
99. Troy ($1)
100. Fresno State ($1)
101. UL-Lafayette ($1)
102. Georgia State ($1)
103. SMU ($1)
104. Buffalo ($1)
105. Kent State ($1)
106. UNLV ($1)
107. Old Dominion ($1)
108. FIU ($1)
109. Idaho ($1)
110. Ball State ($1)
111. UCF ($1)
112. South Alabama ($1)
113. Wyoming ($1)
114. Rice ($1)
115. Army ($1)
116. Miami (OH) ($1)
117. Kansas ($1)
118. UMass ($1)
119. UTSA ($1)
120. Eastern Michigan ($1)
121. Hawaii ($1)
122. UTEP ($1)
123. New Mexico State ($1)
124. Texas State ($1)
125. Charlotte ($1)
126. Tulane ($1)
127. UL-Monroe ($1)
128. North Texas ($1)

I’m excited to see how this unfolds this year. My roster for both games to start the season: Florida State ($38), Nebraska ($23), Boise State ($22), Western Michigan ($11), and Arkansas State ($3).

Projecting the best viewing weekends of the 2016 college football season

There are some disclaimers that probably should be noted at the top of this post: the tagline you see on the site says ‘170 days of NBALP,’ or NBA League Pass. I love the NBA and primarily write about basketball, because it comes much easier for me. Writing about my other favorite sport, college football, has proven to be near impossible for me at times; the mythology and coverage of the sport is such that I’m afraid of mishandling it much more than I am confident in providing an original viewpoint.

Lucky for me, writing about college football schedules is no major frame of art on the level of a Picasso or a Kanye West; perhaps more on the level of a Tame Impala openly ripping off others to make a flaccid and mildly agreeable recipe. (Sorry, fans of this band who I have been subjected to excess marketing of for four years now. It is not your fault.) To make sure I tried to get the best of both stories, I used both a subjective and an objective take, neither my own view: Phil Steele’s end-of-year Top 40 rankings and Bill Connelly’s freely available S&P rankings.

To my joy and surprise, both came back with enough variance that I can provide both rankings. The top two weeks as judged by Connelly’s stats ranked fifth and seventh in the Steele rankings, while Steele’s #1 and #2 came in third and fifth with S&P. I have no idea why this makes me so fascinated, but I also plan out my weekends months in advance during football season so as to avoid unnecessary circumstances in which an important moment can be missed.

For the final calculation of weeks, I used a simple equation: Tier One games + 0.5(Tier Two games) = result. Tier One games are any game featuring two projected Top 25 opponents facing each other; Tier Two games are:

• Any game between projected Top 21-40 opponents
• A top 26-40 team playing a Top 25 team on the road
• A Top 50 home dog playing a Top 30 team within 7 projected points

Basically, Tier Two games are all about low-end Top 25 teams or teams solidly located in the Others Receiving Votes category. These games are still watchable, but certainly not on the level of the Tier One games.

Finally, I averaged the two calculations together to try and give you an average picture of what the best weeks of this season should end up being. This inspired an idea that I’ll go into on a subsequent post: what are the best weeks of college football (as judged by the AP Poll Archive) since 2005 (the last season that Matt Sarzyniak‘s site goes back to)? The three readers of this site will see that soon, with any luck.

Your weeks are ranked in ascending order below, so as to make an inverted pyramid as I was taught in high school and college journalism classes and so as to show that I learned something from said classes. Tiers are in parentheses, and (T1/T2) represents where one system believed a game was Tier One and the other determined Tier Two.

1. Week 13, November 22-26 (Average rating: 8.5 good or better games)

Phil Steele: 8.5, S&P: 8.5

I think Week 13 and Week 5 are the only two weeks that both systems came up with the same number of viewable games for, which makes sense to me. One week is agreeably great by everyone’s standards; the other is agreeably mediocre. Anyway, Week 13 is awesome and has a lot of awesome games spread throughout its long, Thanksgiving weekend:

• LSU at Texas A&M (T1), Thursday
• NC State at North Carolina (T2), Friday
• Arkansas at Missouri (T2), Friday
• TCU at Texas (T1/T2), Friday
• Nebraska at Iowa (T1/T2), Friday
• Florida at Florida State (T1), Saturday
• Michigan at Ohio State (T1), Saturday
• Michigan State at Penn State (T2), Saturday
• Notre Dame at USC (T1), Saturday
• Auburn at Alabama (T1), Saturday
• Mississippi State at Ole Miss (T1/T2), Saturday

That’s eleven games total worth watching in a 48-ish hour span, with 5 absolutely must-watch games and four of those occurring in one day. What a great weekend to be alive.

2. Week 11, November 8-12 (Average rating: 8)

Phil Steele: 9, S&P: 7

There are no true brightly-blinking MARQUEE GAMES!!! at this point in time, but it seems like there are about 12 A-minus games. Also, huge week for the Pac-12!

• Utah at Arizona State (T2), Thursday
• Michigan at Iowa (T1/T2), Saturday
• Pittsburgh at Clemson (T2), Saturday
• Baylor at Oklahoma (T1), Saturday
• West Virginia at Texas (T2), Saturday
• Stanford at Oregon (T1), Saturday
• USC at Washington (T1), Saturday
• Auburn at Georgia (T1), Saturday
• Mississippi State at Alabama (T1/T2), Saturday
• LSU at Arkansas (T1/T2), Saturday
• Ole Miss at Texas A&M (T1), Saturday

Also eleven games worth watching and five must-watch games, but the best game of this week (either Stanford at Oregon or USC at Washington) would be about the third-best game of Week 13.

3. Week 3, September 15-17 (Average rating: 7.75)

Phil Steele: 6.5, S&P: 9

There’s a lot of good games that could become great here as well, but there is a ton of name power to be found.

• Florida State at Louisville (T1), Saturday
• Alabama at Ole Miss (T1), Saturday
• Oregon at Nebraska (T1/T2), Saturday
• Pittsburgh at Oklahoma State (T2), Saturday
• Texas A&M at Auburn (T1), Saturday
• Mississippi State at LSU (T1/T2), Saturday
• Michigan State at Notre Dame (T1), Saturday
• Ohio State at Oklahoma (T1), Saturday
• USC at Stanford (T1), Saturday
• UCLA at BYU (T2), Saturday

Look at all those high-profile and very important games! Six Tier One games, which I believe is the most of any week. If nothing else, this will be my personal favorite week of the year…that I have to miss for a wedding between two people I love very much. Can’t win them all.

4. Week 1, September 1-5 (Average rating: 7.75)

Phil Steele: 8, S&P: 7.5

It’s very remarkable that an opening weekend called one of the greatest weekends of all time slots fourth in these rankings, but some context is required. In my friend group, there was instant surprise to the announcement of Oklahoma-Houston, a game between two 2015 top ten teams, being a noon game. However: neither ranking system I used seems to particularly buy into Houston very much (Phil Steele 30th in Power Poll, S&P 54th) and both really love Oklahoma as a legitimate top 5 team, which may lend some credence to my growing thought that this is a blowout-in-waiting. The other factor in this being a somewhat overhyped weekend: there are no Tier One or Two games until Saturday at noon, only Oklahoma-Houston in the noon slot is really worth watching, and games like Notre Dame-Texas and BYU-Arizona (I’m serious) are suffering from just a little too much name recognition. But! It’s still a very good schedule.

• Oklahoma vs. Houston (T2), Saturday
• LSU vs. Wisconsin (T2), Saturday
• UCLA at Texas A&M (T1), Saturday
• North Carolina vs. Georgia (T1/T2), Saturday
• USC vs. Alabama (T1), Saturday
• Clemson at Auburn (T1), Saturday
• Notre Dame at Texas (T1/T2), Sunday
• Florida State vs. Ole Miss (T1), Monday

5. Week 4, September 22-24 (Average rating: 7.25)

Phil Steele: 5.5, S&P: 9

This week had easily the largest variance in rankings, and I think the explanation of why lacks much difficulty. Look at the below list of games and tell me how many you could go from “somewhat interested” to “very interested” in depending on the results of prior games:

• USC at Utah (T2), Friday
• Nebraska at Northwestern (T2), Saturday
• Pittsburgh at North Carolina (T2), Saturday
• Oklahoma State at Baylor (T1/T2), Saturday
• BYU vs. West Virginia (T2), Saturday
• Penn State at Michigan (T2), Saturday
• Wisconsin at Michigan State (T2), Sautrday
• Stanford at UCLA (T1), Saturday
• Florida at Tennessee (T1), Saturday
• LSU at Auburn (T1), Saturday
• Georgia at Ole Miss (T1), Saturday
• Arkansas vs. Texas A&M (T1/T2), Saturday

There are a lot of games just prior to these that have massive implications on this week’s national importance: USC-Alabama, USC-Stanford, Nebraska-Oregon, North Carolina-Georgia, Oklahoma State-Pittsburgh (yes), Penn State-Pittsburgh (also yes), LSU-Wisconsin, Michigan State-Notre Dame, UCLA-Texas A&M, Tennessee-Virginia Tech, Clemson-Auburn, Florida State-Ole Miss, Arkansas-TCU. This weekend could be one of the greatest of the last decade, or it could be Just Another Weekend. I have no idea how this shakes out right now, but a Saturday in October (otherwise a dead month) with a potential six Top 25 vs. Top 25 matchups is a fantastic thing to hope for.

6. Week 6, October 5-8 (Average rating: 6.5)

Phil Steele: 7, S&P: 6

This one, in comparison, looks easy to see the highs and lows of.

• Texas vs. Oklahoma (T1/T2), Saturday
• Notre Dame at NC State (T2), Saturday
• Florida State at Miami (T1/T2), Saturday
• Virginia Tech at North Carolina (T2), Saturday
• BYU at Michigan State (T2), Saturday
• Washington at Oregon (T1), Saturday
• UCLA at Arizona State (T2), Saturday
• LSU at Florida (T1), Saturday
• Alabama at Arkansas (T1/T2), Saturday
• Auburn at Mississippi State (T1/T2), Saturday
• Tennessee at Texas A&M (T1), Saturday

A massive Saturday for the SEC West. (And the East too, if you think about it.) Also a good Saturday for could-be-very-important ACC games!

7. Week 10, November 1-5 (Average rating: 5.75)

Phil Steele: 6, S&P: 5.5

One massively important game to the entire college football landscape and then a lot of A-minus games. However, they could be pretty important if the ball bounces their way.

• Iowa at Penn State (T2), Saturday
• Nebraska at Ohio State (T2), Saturday
• Florida State at NC State (T2), Saturday
• Pittsburgh at Miami (T2), Saturday
• TCU at Baylor (T1/T2), Saturday
• Oregon at USC (T1), Saturday
• Florida at Arkansas (T1/T2), Saturday
• Alabama at LSU (T1), Saturday
• Texas A&M at Mississippi State (T1/T2), Saturday

The misfortune of CBS typically demanding (correctly so) that Alabama-LSU be broadcast in 8 PM Eastern prime time is the likelihood of Oregon-USC being a direct competitor at 8 PM that night on ABC. This isn’t going to be USC’s year of a return to dominance, but for them to be 6-2 and in the top 15 facing a top 8 Oregon team at 7-1 and in direct and heated competition for the Pac-12 North title would be a very important game for many teams. PlusThe solution: multiple televisions, or a laptop.

8. Week 9, October 27-29 (Average rating: 5.75)

Phil Steele: 5.5, S&P: 6

Less exciting than the next week, but more exciting than the previous…I think. This is generally what your average week will look like this season:

• Virginia Tech at Pittsburgh (T2), Thursday
• Miami (FL) at Notre Dame (T1/T2), Saturday
• Georgia vs. Florida (T1/T2), Saturday
• Nebraska at Wisconsin (T2), Saturday
• Clemson at Florida State (T1), Saturday
• West Virginia at Oklahoma State (T2), Saturday
• Baylor at Texas (T1/T2, Saturday)
• Michigan at Michigan State (T1), Saturday
• Washington at Utah (T2), Saturday
• Auburn at Ole Miss (T1), Saturday

It’s really almost perfect: decent ACC game on Thursday? Check. Presumably freezing Tier Two Big Ten game late in the day for no reason? Check. Historically competitive rivalries with at least one of the two teams underperforming their projected talent? Double check! Likely late-night overload of promising games between likely Top 15 (or 10) teams that have strong humiliation potential for one or both teams involved? CHECK!!!!!! Oh, and multiple Big 12 games throughout the day that go down to the last possession and shed years off of the lives of devoted fans? Check and check. West Virginia-Oklahoma State is this year’s dark horse candidate for best Vine game.

9. Week 8, October 20-22 (Average rating: 5.25)

Phil Steele: 4.5, S&P: 6

Oddly good Thursday slate to be found here, plus some other solid viewing experiences.

• Miami at Virginia Tech (T2), Thursday
• BYU at Boise State (T2), Thursday
• Ohio State at Penn State (T2), Saturday
• TCU at West Virginia (T2), Saturday
• Wisconsin at Iowa (T2), Saturday
• Utah at UCLA (T2), Saturday
• Texas A&M at Alabama (T1), Saturday
• Arkansas at Auburn (T1/T2), Saturday
• Ole Miss at LSU (T1), Saturday

Thanks to the SEC West for saving this week. Not sure what we’d do without you! There’s something oddly fascinating about a likely 7 PM LSU start where Hugh Freeze beats an undefeated Tigers team then loses at home to Auburn a week later. Subjectively, this would rank in my bottom three.

10. Week 12, November 15-19 (Average rating: 5.25)

Phil Steele: 5, S&P: 5.5

Blah week. I don’t have much to say about these, honestly.

• Louisville at Houston (T2), Thursday
• Virginia Tech at Notre Dame (T2), Saturday
• Miami at NC State (T2), Saturday
• Oklahoma State at TCU (T2), Saturday
• Oklahoma at West Virginia (T2), Saturday
• Ohio State at Michigan State (T1), Saturday
• USC at UCLA (T1), Saturday
• Oregon at Utah (T2), Saturday
• Arkansas at Mississippi State (T1/T2), Saturday

11. Week 5, September 29-October 1 (Average rating: 5)

Phil Steele: 5, S&P: 5

As a Tennessee fan, it gives me great joy (and great concern) to report that Tennessee’s three most visible games will be on the three worst weeks of the season. Better not screw it up. Someone please tell Butch Jones to hire a fourth-down coach.

• Stanford at Washington (T1), Friday
• Louisville at Clemson (T1), Saturday
• North Carolina at Florida State (T2), Saturday
• Texas at Oklahoma State (T2), Saturday
• Oklahoma at TCU (T1/T2), Saturday
• Wisconsin at Michigan (T2), Saturday
• Tennessee at Georgia (T1/T2), Saturday

What I’m saying is that if you have to get married in the fall and your team is not playing in one of these seven games…I won’t hold it totally against you. But I will also allow those in the audience to check their phones throughout the night in a semi-polite manner.

12. Week 7, October 13-15 (Average rating: 3.75)

Phil Steele: 3, S&P: 4.5

This is a good example of a weekend that looks very thrilling on the surface – three of these games will directly affect the national title race – but you’ll be very bored otherwise, especially at noon. A good weekend to actually go to a game, in case you’ve forgotten that’s doable.

• Mississippi State at BYU (T2), Friday
• Stanford at Notre Dame (T1), Saturday
• Ohio State at Wisconsin (T1), Saturday
• North Carolina at Virginia Tech (T2), Saturday
• Alabama at Tennessee (T1), Saturday
• Ole Miss at Arkansas (T1/T2), Saturday

Outside of the obvious three (and maybe a fourth with OM-Arkansas), not much to get excited about here. A couple games outside the national realm that could be fun but were solid Tier Three games: Western Kentucky at Middle Tennessee (Saturday) and West Virginia at Texas Tech (Saturday).

13. Week 2, September 8-10 (Average rating: 2.5)

Phil Steele: 3, S&P: 2

This is simply horrific, and probably a crime against someone to follow up a very good opening weekend with easily the worst week of the season.

• Penn State at Pittsburgh (T2), Saturday
• Arkansas at TCU (T2), Saturday
• BYU at Utah (T2), Saturday
• Virginia Tech vs. Tennessee (T2), Saturday

By my personal system, VT-Tennessee is the only game that could be reasonably pushed to Tier One…and it’s only because it’s in the middle of a NASCAR track. But the actual game will be poor – people are underestimating the effects that the distance of the stands and the overall odd layout of the field and track will have on quarterbacks. The team that runs better wins…which is very obviously Tennessee. Anyway, that’s beside my ultimate point: this week is horrid, skip it if you need to.

The aforementioned top 10 weeks ranking of the last 10 seasons will come soon.

The 15 best 23-and-under players in the NBA

I think about my own youth pretty often – I’m 22 hinging on 23, and it seems crazy to me to think about what I already am but also the fact that I have a long, long road of growth and development ahead. I would prefer to think this is not at all dissimilar with the current wave of great young players in the NBA. Thanks to free time, I’ve ranked the 15 best 23 and under players in the NBA based on several past performance metrics combined with future WARP projections based on 538’s CARMELO tool.

Of course, you’ll notice that there are a lot of problems with this formula. I am no mathematician. My best answer to give you is a mostly-unbiased look into what the statistics are telling me, and mostly it’ll line up with your own eyes. Past performance stats don’t necessarily give you the best picture of where a player is going, though: that’s why we need metrics to measure out those predictions.

There were two imperfect answers to this assignment:

1. Using past performance metrics such as VORP, RPM, WARP, On/Off ratings, etc.;
2. Using predictive metrics such as 538’s CARMELO tool.

So, in imperfect mathematical fashion, I’ve merged both answers with preferences to the future predictions to see what they could be as opposed to what they already are. However: this is a ranking that features both. The rankings for each past and future are provided here and here. The three rules for this assignment:

1. All players listed must be 23 years of age or younger on October 1st, 2016. (I was willing to fudge a few days here or there.)
2. Each player must have played at least 1000 minutes in 2015-16.
3. They also must have a Usage Rate of 15% or higher, to rule out offensive albatrosses.

Lastly, some honorable mentions of near-misses who could very well jump onto this list by next summer: Gary Harris, Clint Capela, Myles Turner, Trey Lyles, and Zach LaVine.

15. Evan Fournier, SG/SF, Orlando Magic (5 years, $85 million), 23 years old

Never Google is a happy addition to this list and was one of a slim few reasons to watch the Magic after December. The franchise itself is a management disaster, now on their fourth coach in two years and now having traded possibly their two most talented players in Tobias Harris and Victor Oladipo. As a fully intended consequence, this freed up more shots for NG, despite unwilling doofus Scott Skiles bringing him off the bench for eight games in January and February. NG was fun before the All-Star break (44.5% FG, 39.8% 3s, 14/3/3 statline in 31.5 MPG), but after, he was capable of some very exciting performances (such as this) en route to the following: an 18/3/3 statline on 49% from the field, including 40.3% from 3 and a 61.1 TS%. Those are pretty good stats, and any time you end up on the same small list as Stephen Curry, you’re doing well.

14. Bradley Beal, SG, Washington Wizards (5 years, $128 million), 23

This is pretty easily the player and contract I dislike the most on this list. The Beal max deal was a terrible decision from Wizards management from the moment it was signed, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they’re trying to find a trade-deadline taker on him by 2019. But: with all that said, Beal is still a good basketball player. He’s just never healthy. Beal has missed 81 games over his four years in Washington so far, and while there’s only so much that can be done about that, it’s an alarming thing to miss 25% of your team’s games on average. But, again: Beal can do some amazing things as evidenced in the video above, and, when available, he is absolutely capable of helping John Wall carry a poor Wizards roster to the #8 seed or a little better. (Again, not his fault.) Plus, last year, he finally decided to cut down the long twos (36.1% of his attempts in 2013-14, 17.9% last season) and shoot more threes (career 39.7% rate), which is a very positive step in the right direction. Just don’t make me watch him or the Wizards play more than twice a year.

13. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, SG, Detroit Pistons (1 year, $3.7 million), 23

Caldwell-Pope seems like an obvious candidate for a huge salary upgrade next summer, and regardless of if it’s with Detroit or not, he probably deserves it. Few players in the league seem to be more quietly important than KCP, who has a career On/Off rating of +7.2 per 100 possessions and is Detroit’s best perimeter defender by a significant margin. That’s almost more of a compliment to the Pistons, who are building what should be a very tough defense to beat over the next three years. It would be a missed opportunity to not recognize KCP’s importance in shutting down key opponents such as the ones you’ll see in the video above. He still isn’t really a good shooter (30.9% from 3 last year on 369 attempts), but he’s 23, so there’s time. (As a Pistons fan, time cannot move fast enough for me.)

12. Cody Zeller, C, Charlotte Hornets (1 year, $5.3 million), 23

Obviously the most shocking inclusion on this list by a wide margin. I can’t remember a single Cody Zeller play for the life of me other than when he got his ass kicked in the Sweet 16 by Syracuse when he was at Indiana. But – and I’m just as shocked by this as you are – he’s a huge benefit for the Hornets on the floor (+7.0 and +3.2 On/Off ratings the last two seasons), his defense has always been very stout (1.8 DRPM or better all three seasons), and look how often his name pops up in the Hornets’ best lineups. His PER has steadily climbed from 13.1 to 14.1 to 16.1. He skated in past my 15% Usage rule with a 15.4% Usage Rate, so he’s still a bit invisible offensively. But I don’t know if it matters much: he runs the pick-and-roll with Kemba well, his rim protection is strong for a team that needs it, and he’s reliable at almost everything on the court. He’s the perfect Just Another Guy to have on your 4 seed.

11. Rodney Hood, SG, Utah Jazz (2 years, $3.8 million), 23

This dude is AWESOME. I could watch Rodney Hood play basketball for hours at a time – he just makes it look like so much fun! He was the best offensive player behind Gordon Hayward on last year’s snake-bit Jazz team that, when we’re in 2019 and this team is a perennial 2 or 3 seed, will seem confounding that they didn’t make the playoffs. Hood is already a solid, reliable shooter from all areas of the court (as you’ll see in the Lakers highlights above), and he quietly seems like a super-dark horse contender for the hallowed 50/40/90 club: Hood went 47/36/86 last year and he’s still just 23. Would I like to see him drive the ball even more and become a more diverse offensive player? Absolutely. But he’ll probably do that anyway regardless of my advice.

10. Andrew Wiggins, SG/SF, Minnesota Timberwolves (2 years, $13.5 million), 21

Subjectively, I would put Wiggins significantly higher on this list: I think he has most of the tools required to be a very good player in the modern NBA. But objectively, I totally understand the criticisms: he’s still a poor three-point shooter (30.4% career), he’s atrocious defensively (-2.1 career DRPM), and while he took a solid step up from his rookie year, he still takes way too many twos outside the paint (37.5% of his shots) and his rim efficiency actually went down last season (66.5% to 64.8%). So there are strong reasons to be skeptical of Wiggins and his future. But…look what he’s doing here. Not many players above the age of 23 can do some of the offensive moves he does. It’s all about putting the complete package together, and when he does, I’d imagine he’ll jump towards the top of this list. He’s got a phenomenal pull-up stroke already – just fill out the rest!

9. Otto Porter, Jr., SF, Washington Wizards (1 year, $5.9 million), 23

The summary of that video is pretty accurate to how Otto Porter can be summed up: “Is it because he kind of looks and plays like a savvy veteran already? Or because he plays for the Wizards? Maybe it’s due to the fact that he was only ever supposed to be a role player and now that he is one people have decided that they want something more out of a top 5 pick? Let’s go with ‘All of the above’ on this one.” Porter fills his role extremely well and did indeed put together the season of a quality role player this year: a 47/37/75 statline from the field, 1.8 RPM, strong defense (105 steals in 75 games and a 1.0 DRPM), and his first positive On/Off rating (+2.7). Porter feels destined to either be underappreciated by the impotent Wizards front office and released to a better team with better management in free agency or to get a 5 year, $100+ million contract from Washington that many will ridicule. Regardless, I hope he ends up in a role appropriate to his playing style: the fourth scoring option on a contender where he’s allowed to guard multiple positions. Basically, this is the modern NBA’s Derrick McKey, if slightly lesser.

8. Steven Adams, C, Oklahoma City Thunder (1 year, $3.1 million), 23

Like several other players on this list, Steven Adams is due to get a massive bump in pay next summer, and for good reason. The Thunder don’t come within four minutes of knocking a 73-win team out of the playoffs without him, and for most of the Warriors-Thunder series, Golden State struggled mightily to stop the pick-and-rolls he ran with Russell Westbrook and others. He was also phenomenal defensively in that series and gave Draymond Green all sorts of struggles, both internally and externally. Adams is pretty limited in his offensive versatility – 72% of his shots come at the rim – but he was a huge part of a better-than-they-looked Thunder team all year long (+7.8 On/Off) and was their best interior defender by a healthy margin. His next development will be to get better at free throws (55.1% career) and to get better at boxing out; his rebounding numbers are oddly average for such a strong rim protector. But without a doubt, this is a max-contract guy in summer 2017, and it will make sense.

7. Aaron Gordon, SF/PF, Orlando Magic (2 years, $9.8 million), 20

If you’re a casual NBA fan, you know Aaron Gordon for one thing: dunking. That’s okay, because Aaron Gordon is easily the second-best dunker in the NBA. (Congrats, Zach LaVine – you’re non-frustratingly good at something!) It’s also okay because at this point, Gordon has started a total of 45 games in two seasons. But it’s not okay if we don’t mention that he’s had four coaches in two years, his GM (Rob Hannigan) might be in over his head, and his team blew up around him without him having any say in it. Now, he’s a 6’9″ power forward forced to play the 3 because his GM decided a frontcourt of Serge Ibaka and Nikola Vucevic was what was necessary to get a 35-win team to the playoffs. (Spoiler: it is not.) So please, root for Aaron Gordon to get out of this situation, because he is rapidly shooting towards being a top-25 player in the league by 2020, when he’ll be 24 and hopefully on the team of his choice. Please watch this awesome performance of his.

6. Nerlens Noel, PF/C, Philadelphia 76ers (1 year, $4.4 million), 22

Wait, I’ve got something for this guy somewhere…where is it…

Ahhhhh. There it is! Terrible offensive player, future Defensive Player of the Year. Eventually he’ll have to figure out how to make shots, but maybe he’ll do that when he’s traded to a playoff team next year. God, I can’t wait.

5. Kristaps Porzingis, PF/C, New York Knicks (3 years, $14.5 million), 21

If you are reading about the NBA on a little-read blog, you have watched Kristaps Porzingis play basketball. Multiple times, probably. So why waste the time of readers who already know this man’s appeal? Porzingis can already do the following things:

• Be 7’3″ and hit 81 threes in his rookie season
• Hold the best On/Off rating of any player on his team not named Carmelo Anthony (+5.2 v. Melo’s +5.4)
• Have the 5th best Block% in the NBA (5.0%)
• Average nearly two blocks per game

And when his body fills out, he will be able to do even more: draw fouls seemingly every other possession, hit threes with average regularity (I anticipate a career 3P% of around 35-36%), and get even more offensive rebounds. Instantly one of the most valuable players in the entire league after one year of basketball.

4. Giannis Antetokounmpo, PG/SG/SF/PF, Milwaukee Bucks (1 year, $3 million), 21

It’s very difficult to put into words how Giannis makes the devoted NBA fan feel when he’s playing well: excited, jubilant, overjoyed, in awe, afraid. I can’t think of any recent player who could reasonably be described as a 6’11” point guard, unless you want to call Kevin Durant that. No one’s physical abilities are more astounding than Giannis right now. There isn’t a player I enjoy watching more when he’s playing well. And yet…he still can’t hit threes (25.7% in 2015-16), he struggles with fouls (3.3 per 36 minutes), and his free throw rate has dropped steadily since his rookie year (though it’s still high at 40.4%). In reverse: his PER has jumped from 10.8 to 18.8 from 2014 to now, he’s the best defender and best offensive player on his team, he was the only reason to watch the Bucks last year, he’s already a top-30ish player by almost any metric you choose, and he’ll be 21 until December. The only reason he’s stuck here at fourth is because the next three players are truly that impressive.

3. Nikola Jokic, C, Denver Nuggets (3 years, $4.2 million), 21

This dude is amazing. There isn’t a better passing frontcourt player in the game already. I’m able to say this after year one because he’s backed it up already – this video will tell you more. (Nick Sciria also did a great thread on Jokic recently.) He has the best contract value of anyone on this list, being worth nearly $217 million over the next five years while earning just $4.2 million. I’m not sure how, but everyone just kind of collectively missed on this kid except for Denver, and they are forever better off for it. He was already the second-best rookie in a strong upper tier behind Karl-Anthony Towns last year; Porzingis just got the better media coverage for very obvious reasons. Also, there’s weirdly several reasons to watch the Nuggets now: Jokic, Emmanuel Mudiay developing, Gary Harris, Will Barton, an interesting coach in Mike Malone. I nearly forgot: pretty good TV guys as well.

2. Karl-Anthony Towns, C, Minnesota Timberwolves (3 years, $20 million), 20

This dude is even more amazing. He’ll be one of the five best players in the league (if not three) by the end of the decade if not before. I can’t believe Minnesota has all these assets.

1. Anthony Davis, PF/C, New Orleans Pelicans (5 years, $119.5 million), 23

A few notes on Anthony Davis: it is not Anthony Davis’s fault that he now officially has the most incompetent management in all of basketball. It is not Anthony Davis’s fault that he is on a roster with zero other quality NBA players. It is even less of his fault that he is required to score 30 points and bag 15 rebounds in order for the Pelicans to beat a team on the fringe of the playoffs. It is even less of his fault that 40 and 20 is required to beat a contender, and even that doesn’t work sometimes. This is the biggest waste of superstar talent since Tracy McGrady in early-2000s Orlando, and possibly since Kevin Garnett in Minnesota, and even more possibly since LeBron James in Cleveland the first time around. They are actively hindering Davis’s development by putting him on a 76ers-level roster. What’s amazing is I still think Davis can drag a healthy 76ers roster to the playoffs. He’s that amazing, and if he gets back on track after a disappointing 2015-16, he’ll be the best player in the world by 2019. Anything less would be a crime to his talents.

Thanks for reading – if you have any further suggestions for lists or articles I can write up, leave them in the comments.

Predicting the 2016-17 NBA season using projected starting lineups

As a note up front, this is entirely unscientific and was only done for me to get an early cut at what I think might happen in the NBA this winter. I love this sport and am grateful for the predictive metrics that have come to the forefront over the last few years. One of these – though an extremely imperfect science and tool – is 538’s CARMELO ratings.

I’m intrigued by these because they seem to be one of the few freely-available tools to measure a player’s future performance that essentially everyone with some form of basketball knowledge can understand. They’re far from perfect and I much prefer Nathan Walker (@bbstats) and @NBAcouchside‘s RAPM/RPM/BPM work on Twitter and other sites, but this is what someone who isn’t that great at Excel can develop. (Not much.)

Anyway, I wanted a rational first look at what the NBA standings might look like next fall. I did this in a quick amount of time and am looking forward to better versions of this, but some of the results were interesting enough that I thought writing them out may help. I took the probable starting lineups for each team, used their projected RPM from 538, and measured out who has the best five players. This is imperfect for the following reasons:

• This is no way measures team depth;
• The projections are very imperfect, as they only really measure box-score stats and not player tracking or movement;
• There are no projections for international players like Dragan Bender;
• All but three lineups were projected in positive plus-minus. This seems odd to me and the Basketball-Reference Lineup Tool is down at the moment to confirm or deny my suspicions.

But:

• This gives a reasonable expectation for each team’s somewhat-likely starting lineup;
• All the answers that I came up with made a lot of sense, surprisingly;
• I had little else to do on a Thursday, and college football doesn’t start for nearly two months.

So, without further waste of words, here’s the Eastern Conference by projected starting lineup RPM. This is a first cut, and actual win projections won’t come for some time, but I’ll see what I can do.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

1. Cleveland (13.4)
2. Boston (8.1)
3. Toronto (7.9)
4. Charlotte (7.2)
5. Chicago (5.5)
6. Washington (5.1)
7. Detroit (3.8)
8. New York (3.3)
9. Atlanta (3.1)
10. Orlando (2.9)
11. Miami (2.7)
12. Indiana (2.1)
13. Milwaukee (2)
14. Philadelphia (-2.6)
15. Brooklyn (-5.5)

This confirmed my general thoughts about the Eastern Conference: there is a clear #1 and a clear bottom two, though I was surprised at how much worse Brooklyn’s lineup was than Philly’s. (CARMELO is hanging a lot on Ben Simmons developing quickly, which I’m questionable of.) The obvious shockers are Chicago and their embarrassing offseason rolling in as the #5 seed and Washington’s very weird roster at #6. These are hard to defend, but then again I would’ve told you last year that the Pelicans seemed like a lock for the #6 seed or higher and Dallas had little chance of a playoff bid. Who knows?

I’m also surprised at how close Charlotte is to the Boston/Toronto race for #2, though they have a very solid roster with good players nearly all around. Plus, getting rid of Jeremy Lin was a mild upgrade, actually. There’s something perfect about this for the East – just four teams seem like safe playoff picks.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

1. Golden State (22.8)
2. San Antonio (12.4)
3. Los Angeles Clippers (11.8)
4. Utah (11)
5. Oklahoma City (8.8)
6. Houston (7.4)
7. Portland (6.4)
8. Minnesota (4.8)
9. New Orleans (4.6)
10. Memphis (4.3)
11. Dallas (3.4)
12. Denver (3.4)
13. Sacramento (1.7)
14. Phoenix (0.9)
15. Los Angeles Lakers (-3.9)

This was much less surprising. Golden State reigns supreme; San Antonio and the Clippers will fight it out for #2 depending on health of each individual roster; Utah is a playoff lock even though the rapid rise to #4 is a little unusual; Oklahoma City’s roster is still good; Houston can’t possibly be worse than last year; Portland faces an uphill climb but still has the third-best coach in the conference and the second-best backcourt. What fascinates me is the potential five-team race for one spot – the #8 seed. I had Minnesota barely beating out New Orleans (a ton hinges on Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine), but all five teams had good cases: New Orleans can’t possibly have that many injuries again, Memphis added Chandler Parsons, Dallas has Rick Carlisle, and Denver’s roster appears to be on the rise.