We’ve spent a significant amount of time looking at statistical projections for this season. One of them, FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO system, predicts the Celtics will win nearly 50 games and be the second seed in the East. Here, I’ll let them explain the system themselves:
FiveThirtyEight’s Career-Arc Regression Model Estimator with Local Optimization (CARMELO) is a system that forecasts a player’s future performance. The similarity score is an index measuring how comparable one player is to another, scaled such that a score of zero is average similarity and 100 is the highest possible degree of similarity. Plus-minus is the number of points per 100 possessions that a player contributed to his team, relative to an average NBA player. All player ages are as of Feb. 1, 2016. Minutes played is prorated to 82 games.
Sounds impressive enough. They seem to be generally accurate with it. But… it’s missing something.
What about one’s gut?
What about the eye test?
What about the subjective… the speculative… the intuitive?
Have no fear. We here at Red’s Army have come up with a system that takes all that into account. And today, on the ninth anniversary of our fearless leader’s passing, we are proud to unveil that new system named in his honor.
We present to you, the AUERBACH system of evaluating basketball. The Auerbach system, or Augmented User-Envisioned Reality Basketball Assumption and Categorization Hypotheses, is a completely feel-based system in which we use our eyes to watch basketball and then give a detailed analysis based solely on what we see.
Let’s put this baby into use, huh? Since we’ve said all there is about the Celtics, let’s throw the NBA preseason into the Hoops-o-tron 2000 and see what the AUERBACH system gives us.
Cleveland’s winning the East (AUERBACH score: 91.42)
The AUERBACH system is off the charts here, even if it would prefer to be otherwise. You can hate LeBron all you want, but they still have Kyrie Irving coming back and Kevin Love getting more comfortable. Beyond that, no other East team has the horses to challenge them for overall supremacy. It’s the Cavs’ conference to lose.
This guy is your MVP: (AUERBACH SCORE 94.114)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG3MW_UwOj8]Westbrook is a goddamn weirdo. He’s also gonna be the MVP. He’ll be the new king of the triple double this season and the Thunder are on a mission. This freakish son of a bitch is going to bring them to the conference finals….
The Clippers will blow it again (AUERBACH score: 1049.1)
They’re good, but something just feels off about the whole thing. Chris Paul will go down as the best point guard to barely win anything in the playoffs. Yeah, Paul Pierce might help tie things together for a while, but… something still feels off about them.
San Antonio is winning it all (AUERBACH score: 59.1)
A: They’re the Spurs
B: They upgraded exactly where they needed to
C: They have Pop
D: BECAUSE THEY’RE THE FREAKIN’ SPURS, MAN!
Mitigating factors: Anyone in the top 6 of the West can win it all, so this isn’t a lock. Tony Parker is starting to fade. But Tim Duncan is undead, and THEY’RE THE MOTHERF’ING SPURS SO I WON’T BET AGAINST THEM AFTER GETTING TWO HUGE UPGRADES!
Other NBA Awards:
Rookie of the Year: Karl-Anthony Towns – big minutes on a bad team = good chance to win ROY. Unlike Okafor in Philly, Mudiay in Denver, or Russell in Los Angeles, all of whom will get big minutes on bad teams, Towns has better teammates. He’s also got KG mentoring him. (AUERBACH score: 84.12)
DPOY: Anthony Davis – The Brow is an MVP candidate. I think he gets it next year. This is his appetizer (AUERBACH score: 99.9999)
Sixth Man: Isaiah Thomas – Full season in a system that earned him 2nd place last year. This is a lock of locks. (AUERBACH score: 450234.0)
Most Improved: Bradley Beal – Don’t discount the lessons he learned from Paul Pierce. He’s standing on the edge of being really good. Pierce gave him the blueprint. Beal takes it and runs with it to be 1A to John Wall’s 1 in Washington. (AUERBACH score: 60.22)
Coach of the Year: Brad Stevens – Because people will be sick of giving it to Gregg Popovich (AUERBACH score: 83.47)
Finally:
This guy will be your next Commish:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahG95s5_YE](AUERBACH score: 50.00001)
…………… this system is still a work in progress.
Hope you enjoyed the debut of the AUERBACH system. We look forward to seeing what this baby can do this year.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
