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Insider: Heat check - Miami new outlook.

Data: 2010-07-27 09:19:20
Autor: Leszczur
Insider: Heat check - Miami new outlook.
Heat check: New Miami outlook
After adding help in free agency, how many games will new-look Heat
win next season?

Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive

Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron JamesMarc Serota/Getty
ImagesExpectations for the Big Three-led Heat rose after more free
agents joined the party in South Beach.

Three weeks ago, I took a quick look at how a team with LeBron James,
Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh might fare if the three were to join
forces.

Now, after the shadiest summer in league history concluded with those
three all on the same roster (not to mention the apparent shenanigans
with James Jones and Richard Jefferson opting out from and then
returning to the Heat and Spurs, respectively), that question has
moved from a hypothetical "what if?" to a very real "it did."

Thus, it's time for a second, closer look at the same question.

In the first exercise, I plugged the trio into a lineup with 10
replacement-level players (those are the guys any team can pluck off
the scrap heap) and came away with a figure of 61 wins for the
imaginary Team Trinity. My assumptions for that exercise included a
PER of 29 for James, 26 for Wade and 23 for Bosh, with James playing
3,100 minutes, Wade playing 2,850 and Bosh playing 2,600.

For the real Miami Heat? Let's revisit those assumptions.

First of all, the supporting cast is significantly better than we had
projected. We had assumed the Heat would need to clear the decks
salarywise, but because Bosh, James and Wade all took less money than
they could have, it allowed the Heat to keep another decent player
(Mario Chalmers) and sign two more solid contributors as free agents
(Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem). Those three are significantly better
than replacement-level, or at least they were last season, and so that
should improve Miami's projection significantly.

From there, the players the Heat have filled out their roster with --
Joel Anthony, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jamaal Magloire, Carlos Arroyo,
Juwan Howard, Jones and Dexter Pittman -- are more in line with the
type of minimum-contract flotsam we'd expected them to land in the
first exercise, so they don't change the outcome of our projection
much.

But before we get to our answer, we have two other adjustments to
make. The first is a technical one involving Bosh, Wade and James.
Thanks to a bit of digging by ESPN researcher Keith Goldner, we have a
much better idea about how the interplay of Bosh, Wade and James might
work.

I had estimated earlier that each of Miami's big three would lose
about 5 percent of his total possessions this season but could only
speculate as to how that might impact their efficiency. Based on
Goldner's work with the players' skill curves (a concept created by
Denver Nuggets stat guru Dean Oliver that shows how players'
efficiency changes with more or fewer touches), we can now estimate
what might happen.

Looking at their skill curves for the past three seasons, we'd expect
James' efficiency to increase by 1.19 points per 100 possessions,
Wade's by 0.70, and Bosh's by 0.29.

Of course, they could also redistribute the possessions to optimize
their efficiency. In that case, instead of reducing all three players
by 5 percent, the correct strategy would be to diminish Bosh's touches
severely, diminish James' touches slightly, and actually increase the
touches by Wade -- up to a usage rate of about 40, he shows virtually
no loss of effectiveness.

Because this scenario stretches the bounds of feasibility -- it's
nearly inconceivable that Wade would have more touches than he did
when he was basically playing 1-on-5 last season -- I won't dwell on
it in this projection.

Besides, they're fearsome enough without such a severe adjustment.
Pumping those changes into last season's numbers, one gets Bosh with a
PER of 24.16, Wade with a PER of 27.39 and James at a robust 31.04.
Basically, they wouldn't lose a thing.

Of course, they won't be playing with last season's Bosh-Wade-James
tandem, but next season's version. This is an important distinction --
their numbers would have been likely to diminish slightly even if they
had stayed on their own teams, simply because there isn't much room
left for them to go up. My projection tool had James at a PER of
29.12, Wade at 26.31 and Bosh at 23.88 if each had stayed put.

Throwing in the skill-curve adjustment from above, we end up with
James at 28.97, Wade at 25.60 and Bosh at 22.93. As noted above, my
back-of-the-envelope estimate from three weeks ago had James at 29,
Wade at 26 and Bosh at 23. Score one for the envelope.

Now there's still the matter of plugging in the rest of the roster. I
ran all of them through my projection system and estimated minutes for
the rest of the crew -- 2,000 each for Miller and Haslem, with
Chalmers and Arroyo splitting the point duties and about 500 minutes
left over for a "no-point" offense, and spot duty for the others.
After two other slight adjustments -- putting my finger on the scale
to improve what I felt was an unusually pessimistic projection for
Miller, and replacing Jones (who rated far south of replacement level)
with a randomly selected civilian, the answer it spat out was ...

68 wins.

Well, 68.3 to be exact, but it's not clear to me where the Heat will
get the extra 0.3.

Of course, there's one other important factor to consider here: The
Heat probably don't need to win 68 games. My model assumes they'll
play their best players as much as they can, but any such projection
system breaks down a bit with elite teams that can coast at the end of
the regular season. Most likely, the Heat will need to win only 63 or
so to clinch home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. If they hit
that mark with six or seven games to play, you can bet all the
sugarcane in Florida that Wade, James and Bosh will see very little of
the court.

As a result, the most realistic estimate for this team is more like 65
wins.

More importantly, it isn't 70 or 72 -- the targets that everybody
might be talking about during the season if Miami appears on track to
challenge the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' all-time record of 72-10. To
achieve the 70-win plateau, the Heat not only would have to be
interested enough to play their starters during some meaningless April
games but also would need better-than-average health from their three
stars and/or surprise seasons from at least a couple of the role
players.

But whether it's 65, 68.3, 70 or 72, the overriding conclusion is the
same: Miami is now the favorite to win it all. With three stars and
just enough role-playing talent around them to fill in the cracks, a
Miami-L.A. Lakers Finals next June almost seems preordained.

Now if we could just get this pesky regular season out of the way ...

Insider: Heat check - Miami new outlook.

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