The lockout is over! As part of our coverage of the rapidly incoming season, Aaron is doing three-point previews (pre free agency) on every team in the NBA. We're splitting it up by divisions, in what will be the first and last time we look at NBA divisions this season. Seriously. Nobody really cares about divisions. Regardless, today's division is home to the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, and Detroit Pistons.

• • •

CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, surprisingly, don't have much in the way of ever-present amnesty targets. Our worst contract is Baron Davis. Personally? I'd let him go, regardless of how "good" he made the team at the end of last year. He isn't a great influence, our backcourt is too crowded already, and with Byron Scott's track record? Keeping him on the team is kind of dangerous. Byron Scott has a mixed record of playing rookies -- only two rookies have ever averaged more than 25 MPG under Scott (Chris Paul and Kenyon Martin) and those were the only two rookies under Scott to start every game they played in their rookie years. He played J.R. Smith and Richard Jefferson just under 25 MPG, but held them out occasionally for practice scuff-ups. If he does the same with Kyrie and TT, I'd think that's a big mistake. Both of them should be getting around 27-30 minutes a game and starting, because frankly, the Cavs are going nowhere fast right now and it's in our best interest to give both of their star-potential rookies as much time as possible to figure out the NBA game. Regardless. Another subtraction SHOULD be Anthony Parker -- while we don't have any other SG prospects on the roster with the exception of The Great Skyenga, Parker is at his core a chucker with poor defensive instincts. Keeping him on the team means they're going to continue calling iso-Parker possessions, and gives fewer possessions to TT and Kyrie -- it's a lose-lose situation. As a Cavs fan, I hope to God they don't resign him. And if they do? It has to be a one year deal. Simply has to be.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Overall, relatively good. The Cavs are going to most likely be a large beneficiary of the revenue sharing system, whatever it ends up being. The CBA aspects meant to keep free agents from leaving (the new sign-and-trade and extend-and-trade rules, namely, but also the strengthening of Bird Rights) is mostly designed for the future, and may in turn help the Cavs when the time comes to re-sign Kyrie, TT, or the incoming lottery pick the Cavs will sign this season. Beyond the parts of the CBA that help prevent a LeBron situation, amnesty will most likely help the Cavs in the next two years by clearing a lot of cap space right around the time Gilbert will have the cash to try and attract a few small-time talents. Plus, if Chris Grant can keep the cap situation in good standing, the Cavs project to be rid of their current bad contracts in a few years -- making the Cavs a big trade destination if the core develops and Gilbert is still willing to spend to build a true winner. The lockout doesn't fix what happened to the franchise last summer, but the Cavs are well-set to weather the storms of the future with an owner that doesn't balk at spending and a relatively bare cupboard with a promising young core.

3: Overall season outlook.

Unfortunately for Cavs fans, while the future looks reasonably solid, the present is bleak. Even if Kyrie turns out to be the next incarnation of Chris Paul, chances are low that he'll have a revolutionary effect on the team in his first season, and Tristan Thompson is one of the most raw players taken in the top 5 in the last decade. He may be really good, but it's going to take him a while to do it. For the future of the team, it's probably best to have another bad season or two, accumulate lottery picks, and hope that the 2014 Cavs are finally ready to contend again. If the Cavs can swing Kidd-Gilchrist in the draft this year and a SG prospect in the 2013 draft, they'll have a strong roster entering the 2014 season. That's the plan the franchise has to be looking at right now, and the main reason you don't see Gilbert's name mentioned in any of the trade acquisition rumors that have been rolling around. Why angle for Iggy or Gasol if the team can't use either for two or three years, you know? Regardless. With Kyrie and TT in tow, the team shouldn't be quite as shiftless as last year, but it's still going to lead to some unentertaining, losing basketball. But they need the lottery pick, so I suppose we'll simply have to handle it. I'm going with 15-20 wins, right around what I pegged for the Raptors. Better than last year's horror show, but not by that much.

• • •

MILWAUKEE BUCKS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Hey, a team with actual additions! The Bucks pulled a quasi-blockbuster three-team trade last year before the draft, giving up the horrifying contracts of John Salmons and Corey Maggette in exchange for moving down 9 picks in the draft (from #10 to #19, where they picked up Tobias Harris), Stephen Jackson, Beno Udrih, and Shaun Livingston. Livingston, while known primarily for his horrifying injury, was beginning to return to "serviceable NBA backup" level in Charlotte last year, so I don't think that was a particularly bad move -- not after Jennings missed virtually half a season to injury and the Bucks lose Boykins to free agency. Udrih has been at the serviceable backup level for years, now, so the Bucks went from having little talent behind Jennings to being four deep in serviceable points. Not too shabby. They also exchanged the massive albatross known as Corey Maggette for Stephen Jackson, a player who (while aging) is still one of the better defensive guards in the league and a large upgrade over the scoring "threat" posed by either Maggette and Salmons. Add Tobias Harris

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Can it be both? The lockout has a positive basketball impact on the Bucks -- if my findings in my recent report on the 1999 lockout's effects on the team hold for this season, the Bucks are one of the teams that would most benefit from a leaguewide pace slowdown. They've been a low-pace team for the last two seasons, bottom 5 in 2011 and bottom 10 in 2010. As Bogut has gotten better and better, the Bucks have been more and more defined by his limitations -- can't really run up the court, can only dominate on offense with Jennings to set him up, et cetera. But that's immaterial here -- the point is, if the 1999 trend holds, the Bucks are likely going to be one of the teams improving this year. And that's a positive lockout impact. Beyond that? The Bucks will be getting one of the largest shares of the revenue sharing revenue, and amnesty should let them scrub Gooden or Udrih from their books the next time they look to have the cap space to acquire new players in a trade. Or free agency, but, I mean... it's the Bucks. Herb Kohl wanted a full-on redesign of the NBA's system, and he didn't get it. So, realistically, THAT'S the main impact. The Bucks are one of the few teams who even with this massively owner-friendly deal will probably still remain completely unprofitable. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if Kohl voted against the deal, and while I don't blame him, I'm pretty glad the Bucks will be one of only a few franchises in that position post-deal.

3: Overall season outlook.

The Bucks look like a much improved team from last year's edition, even if you're just counting the additions of Harris and Jackson. Before last season, I was one of the few who gave the Bucks 50-50 odds to win the Central division -- I was extremely impressed by the Bucks in 2010, and figured they were on the way up. But Bogut's time off from injury proved way, way too much for that team to overcome. As well as their lack of offense. Adding Jackson and Harris (a standout freshman for the Tennessee Vols last season whose general lack of a consistent weapon led to him falling in the draft but whose stats project relatively well to adapt in the NBA) probably won't fix all the Bucks' problems on offense. But I'd expect it to improve their offense, and a team as defensively solid as the Bucks (Mbah a Moute + Bogut is one of the greatest two-man defensive duos in the league -- did you know that Bogut, in isolation, held his man to 0.60 PPP last season?) simply needs the offense to get to "borderline competent" if they want to be a playoff team in the East. And they may very well get there. I'd project them as a 0.500 or better team this season, so long as Bogut plays 55 or more games and Jennings continues to improve. Their core isn't lighting the world on fire, but Bogut is a transcendent enough defensive player that a nearly-full season from him combined with a Skiles defense should have the Bucks in the mix for one of the bottom three spots in the playoffs, and a trendy upset pick if they get a favorable draw and get hot at the right time.

• • •

DETROIT PISTONS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Where do you start? The prevailing sentiment on Joe Dumars in the last few years has been that he's accomplished the heretofore impossible task of completely reversing every positive thing he did in the Pistons' title years through horrific mismanagement. Not quite accurate, because nothing really erases how brilliant he was in keeping the Pistons contender franchises well oiled, but not as far off as you'd perhaps think. Dumars has been an unmitigated DISASTER in the last few years, and he's pretty lucky amnesty is going to give him a chance to undo at least one of his big mistakes. My guess? Villanueva gets the cut -- he's been fully healthy the last few years and has still been one of the worst rotation players in the league. Gordon's been sieged by injury, and still has some upside if he can return to his Bulls form. Beyond that, the Pistons picked up Brandon Knight in the draft and he'll play with them immediately. They also drafted Kyle Singler, whose upside has gone up considerably since he was drafted but who won't be playing with them this season for the same reason he's better regarded -- he played star-level ball in the Euroleague and has chosen to defer joining the NBA for at least one season to allow him to finish out his term with Real Madrid. Stuckey may be gone, as well -- he's a restricted free agent but he's one of the better point guards on the market and my guess is someone signs him to a contract that's too rich for the Pistons to warrant spending when they have Knight waiting in the wings.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Decent. As they're miles from title contention right now, the Pistons will be building a contender for the future, and the restricted player rules that are going to make the Bulls serious favorites to keep Rose for the duration of his career will keep the Pistons in the drivers seat for keeping Monroe and Knight, the two key players in their core. Without details of how revenue sharing works it's hard to say, but it's a solid bet that the Pistons will make a bit of money from the system. The city of Detroit has been an awful place for most industry, but the Lions and the Pistons have been profitable when they contend, and assuming the Pistons can return to competence on Monroe's back, they'll be in a good spot to capitalize on it someday. They also have new ownership -- Dan Gilbert was unsuccessful in his attempts to own two teams, but wealthy private equity magnate Tom Gores is there to pick up the slack. A nice thing about Gores is that for all intensive purposes he's trying to modernize the Pistons organization -- he's already hired the first stat guy in organizational history, and is trying to beef up their scouting. I've heard nothing but good things about what Gores is doing for the team, and Pistons fans should be glad to have an owner like him.

3: Overall season outlook.

Far be it from me to suggest they'll be a contender, but I think the general consensus on the Pistons future is far bleaker than the reality. Greg Monroe was the second best rookie in the league last year, and improved exceptionally well as the year went on. They had to play all of last season without Jonas Jerebko, their surprising impact rookie from 2009's class, and have a quality lottery pick coming to replace Rodney Stuckey, the current free agent who never quite worked out in Detroit. Add in the fact that they'll have a coach who can cut it at an NBA level this time (R.I.P., John Kuester's coaching career), they play at one of the slowest paces in the league (again, see yesterday's post), and that they may be able to trade Rip Hamilton for some assets? I could easily see this Pistons team surprising and being in the running late for an eastern playoff spot. Which, you know, probably is only going to take 27-30 wins. So, not a huge improvement from last year's team, but enough to get people talking, and enough that adding one more lottery pick and an improved Euro-convert Kyle Singler could get this team back on the right track in the next few years. While I think they'll fall a bit short, I definitely see them closer to the playoffs than the absolute bottom of the east.

• • •

INDIANA PACERS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

One of the biggest additions of any team here, actually -- the Pacers traded their sub-lottery first rounder for George Hill, the artificial point guard. While I've never been as big a fan of George as most of my Spurs-loving comrades, I don't deny his talent -- he's a tenacious defender (though he took a step back on defense last year) and he's in the last few years he's learned how to imitate a point guard for stretches, making him a very versatile player. His shot could still use some work, but with Danny Granger to help him improve, I can see him making some pretty big leaps. Beyond that, the Pacers lose a lot of dead weight in Dunleavy, T.J. Ford, and Josh McRoberts. They'll also have Jeff Foster on the deck as a free agent, though smart money says that a team as thin up front as the Pacers is going to pull out all the stops to retain him. In the draft, the Pacers picked up... oh wait, George Hill, they traded their pick. Whoops. Oh well. In terms of amnesty? Posey or Dahntay Jones, both relatively poor contracts given their production, are two big targets. Pacers will probably use it, as they need the space.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Not great. The Pacers were in an enviable cap position before the lockout. They're still in a good position, but now they aren't alone. Let me explain. First major problem is that the Pacers had navigated the previous CBA like pros -- they have no particularly strong amnesty candidates (Jones and Posey are poor contracts relative to their production, but hardly cap killers) and they've spent years being frugal to keep costs down and ensure they'd be one of 3 or 4 teams with max room in 2012 and 2013. Now, though? The amnesty mulligan takes away that competitive advantage, and makes the Pacers one of 10-15 teams with max room. Hardly the most attractive of those 10-15, either. The revenue sharing will help, but the Pacers were in a perfect position before and the amnesty mulligan seriously damages their prospects of landing a top tier free agent. And, as with the Bucks, 50-50 may not be enough for the Pacers to make a profit this season. Sad trombone, for sure.

3: Overall season outlook.

I think the Central is definitively the second best division in the eastern conference right now -- and I think almost every single one of their teams is better than their counterpart in the Northeast. Celtics under Bulls, Raptors under Cavs, Nets under Pistons, Sixers under Bucks. Pacers over the Knicks, though? Don't see that. I see the Pacers falling back to earth a little bit this season, flirting with 0.500 and falling just short. I don't really want to go too in depth over this, though, because of all the teams in the league I think the Pacers are one of the few who are going to look a lot different come the season. Their cap space notwithstanding, the Pacers have a decent young core and are in a position to contend as their young guns get better. Picking up Tyson Chandler, Marc Gasol, or Nene isn't going to make them one of the four best teams in the East, but when Paul George and George Hill peak, they'll have a title shot. And in a place as starved for playoff action as Indiana, that's a good thing. So, baseline expectation? About 27-33 wins. But I expect that'll change significantly as we enter the season, post free agency.

• • •

CHICAGO BULLS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Free agency is kind to the Bulls this year -- their only ones are Brian Scalabrine, Rasual Butler, and Kurt Thomas. While losing Big Sexy and the Irish Jordan may damage the entertainment value of garbage time for Bulls fans, the team that won 62 games despite injury troubles remains intact. In terms of amnesty candidates? I'd look for the Bulls to sit on it for a while. Amnesty provides them a way out later if Boozer continues to deteriorate and they need to get under the cap line, and much like the Knicks, none of their current contracts are really bad enough that they're worth blowing their amnesty on it now. In the draft, the Bulls picked up Malcolm Lee of UCLA and Nikola Mirotic of the Euroleague. Mirotic is a classic Spurs stash pick -- great player who isn't coming over to the NBA anytime soon, and sets the Bulls up to have a serious talent flux at big forward spot if he ever makes it over. If not, well, they have a contender right now. There are few minutes for giving minutes to forwards with inherent risk -- by stashing a good player who may not even come over, they eliminate the risk AND make sure they don't have to pay their pick for a few years (important for reasons I'll get into shortly). As for Butler, he was good at Marquette -- I liked him a lot as a college player, but I don't see him being a big contributor on this Bulls squad. He's one of the dreaded tweener-types -- not big enough to bang at the 4, not quick or athletic enough to hang with wings. Decent defender in college, though, so he could be a gritty roleplaying type. We'll see.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Relatively poor. Chicago is going to be a big giver into the revenue sharing system regardless of whether it's by profit or market. With an owner as generally stingy as Reinsdorf, I could see that coming back to bite them when Reinsdorf balks at spending more on a team that isn't making him as much as it used to. Chances are high the Bulls have to dip into the luxury tax starting in 2013, and chances are made even higher by the fact that the new "designated player" clause ensures that MVP-level players immediately are eligible for huge home team bonuses as a "designated player" for the team. Over the course of Derrick Rose's next contract, the clause is going to make him almost $15 million more, and cost the Bulls the same. Adding a huge Rose deal to Boozer, Noah, and Deng's big contracts was expected, but the fact that post-lockout the contract is actually going to be MORE than it would've been before the lockout? Unexpected to say the least, and a cripplingly bad lockout haul to say the worst. Few teams are more hurt by this CBA than Chicago. Plus side? Rose is definitely going to be a Bull for the next 5-6 years on account of the designated player clause that gets him his huge raise. And that's big. But he probably wasn't going anywhere anyway, and while he's making a fairer contract now, it's definitely going to hurt the team's bottom line and ability to compete going forward.

3: Overall season outlook.

Honestly? Very good, I think. The Bulls were a slowdown team with a strong system, and despite their gaudy win total, they played with a skeleton roster for much of the year. Of course, the fact that they have without question the two of the best backup big men in the league right now (Asik and Gibson) helps. But Boozer's absence and Noah's absence/injury-riddled play provides two key opportunities for this Bulls team to be even better than it was last year. Add in Rose improving (which, frankly, it's still reasonable to expect) and you have a crafty squad with an incredible defensive system playing it slow in a slow man's world. Will it lead to more playoff success? That, I'm dubious of. I'm of the view the Bulls are a far stronger regular season team than a playoff team, much like the late 2000s Cavs. When defenses key in on their scorers (see: Rose), the Bulls offense grinds to a halt and essentially gives up on getting good shots. Picking up a free agent like Afflalo or Redd should help their offense a bit, but it's really on Coach Thibs more than anyone else that they get so disorganized when the going gets tough. Still, don't want this to sound too down -- Thibs has proven to be a relatively amazing coach so far, and the offense can build with time. With a full season of Boozer and some offensive improvement from Taj Gibson, the Bulls will be one of about 5-6 teams with a legitimate title shot. And that's all you can really ask for, at the end of the day. Very interested to see what they do for their shooting guard position, and given all my dithering about Reinsdorf, I think the way he approaches it is going to be reflective of how he approaches the next few years. Does he go with some crummy bottom-feeding minimum guy? Or does he put in a serious offer for the Afflalos on the market? Should be fun. All that said, I'm really looking forward to watching this team this season, Asik and Gibson are essentially religion.

• • •

Given that we essentially took the weekend off, I've left myself having to do one of these per day. This could be problematic. We'll see if I can get all these off the table by the time free agency starts -- I'll try the good try, but dear god, these things clock in at almost 4,000 words apiece. I'm a writer, not a robot... wait, I don't know that. I might be a robot. Can someone link me to a quick Turing test? Thanks.

Til next time, folks.

Continue reading

About a week ago, Zach Lowe reached out to his followers on twitter to ask if we'd run some numbers for him. I decided to follow through on it -- he wanted to see some simple correlations between team win percentage and the offensive and defensive four factors. He used the numbers to back his main claim in a piece that dropped earlier this week where he came to the well-supported conclusion that we have no real idea what kinds of teams a compressed season helps or hurts, and at this point, we may as well assume the season proceeds as normal because we don't know what predicts performance in a shortened season. I essentially told him that, although there were some tertiary trends that seemed marginally predictive, the stats weren't telling us anything valuable. There weren't any jarringly common statistical differences between teams that did well in the lockout season and teams that did poorly.

Something about those specious, tertiary trends bugged me, though. I thought there might be more to it than the numbers were showing. So I expanded the amount of data I was working with, did some spreadsheet wrangling, and tried to tease out a few more predictive metrics for figuring out the win percentage in a lockout season versus the win percentage in a non-lockout season. This post walks through my analysis, shares the data, and comes to a few key conclusions that supplement Zach's excellent piece. So, dally no longer. Let's dig in. All sheet/cell references are in reference to the main spreadsheet I made for the analysis, which I've uploaded to Google Docs for your reading pleasure. You know. If you like that sort of thing.

• • •

Part I: Correlations within seasons.

For this part, turn to Sheet "C1" in the spreadsheet.

This was where it all started. Zach's initial request was for some within-season correlations, between a team's win percentage and the four factors, for the lockout-compressed 1999 season. He also wanted a few years around it, attempting to see if anything was more or less predictive in 1999 than it was for other years. A fair question. There are more years here than there were when I initially gave Zach the results (in my attempts to broaden the dataset for part two of this analysis), but the basic trend is the same. Nothing really stands out all that much. To wit, compare 1999 correlations with the average correlations among all other years in the sample:

               --------- OFFENSIVE ---------   --------- DEFENSIVE ---------
       Pace    eFG%    TOV%    ORB%    FT/FG   eFG%    TOV%    DRB%    FT/FG
 AVG  -0.151   0.689  -0.417   0.018   0.224  -0.685   0.093   0.440  -0.270
1999  -0.286   0.553   0.051   0.034   0.374  -0.738  -0.139   0.483  -0.448

See what I mean? Every one of 1999's values that falls two standard deviations or more outside the population average is highlighted in red. That's right -- offensive turnover percentage is the only one. And I admit, it's a bit strange -- in 1999, offensive turnover percentage was positively correlated with win percentage, which means that having a high turnover percentage actually led to more wins. A very odd result. But not really a notable one, without any further context. Probably worth looking into (as I eventually did), but not really worth calling the be-all and end-all of lockout impacts. At this point, I sent the analysis to Zach and he used it as support for his article.

Then, this week, I got a little bit deeper.

Part II: Comparing season averages.

For this part, turn to Sheet "AVG" in the spreadsheet.

I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the statistics. So I decided to ignore correlations to win percentage for a bit, and see if there are any key differences between season averages. This is a more customary analysis, and there are many people who have done quite well at it themselves. Here, though, I was just looking for some basic numbers. There was a little more to go on in terms of isolating 1999's differentiating factors here, though not much. To wit, let's again compare the averages for several key statistics between non-1999 seasons and 1999:

               --------- OFFENSIVE ---------   --------- DEFENSIVE ---------
       Pace    eFG%    TOV%    ORB%    FT/FG   eFG%    TOV%    DRB%    FT/FG
 AVG  91.683   0.488   0.140   0.291   0.236   0.488   0.140   0.709   0.236
1999  88.917   0.466   0.146   0.301   0.241   0.465   0.146   0.698   0.241

Same deal -- numbers outside two standard deviations of the population average are highlighted in red. While eFG% is the only "true" outlier here, pace should probably be highlighted too. If you remove the two outlier fast-paced years of 1992 and 1993 (96.6 and 96.7 respectively) from the analysis, pace is well beyond the 2 standard deviation threshhold. Which fits expectations: 1999 is without any real comparison in terms of how slow it was -- it's over a full possession slower than any other year in the dataset. I'd also turn your attention to turnover percentage, which is insignificantly above the average for the other years -- this isn't particularly important, but does sort of point to one of the reasons why basketball was so odd and nigh-unwatchable in 1999 (if the games I've seen from that season are any indication). Everyone, even good teams that weren't usually associated with doing so, was turning the ball over at a slightly larger rate than usual. Which wouldn't make basketball unwatchable on its face.

Usually, though, the majority of the high turnover teams were the singularly bad teams in the league. In 1999, that wasn't necessarily the case. You had the crummy ball control usually kept solely to the lower-tier teams being played by upper tier teams as well. I mean, hell -- the New York Knicks had the 3rd highest turnover rate in the league, and they made the finals. The Utah Jazz had the highest, and they won 70% of their games! Both odd in a normal season, but entirely par for the course in 1999. Hence, the difference in the average wasn't huge, but the distribution of what teams were turning the ball over more often was skewed far more towards teams that got TV air-time and playoff dap than in any other season. This contributes a lot to the general consensus that 1999 had the worst basketball ever played. And while it may not be entirely accurate on an aggregated leaguewide level, there's no doubting that the distribution of teams with the traits of crummy teams was skewed in such a way that the best teams in the league were sharing traits that the crummy teams usually kept to themselves.

This isn't really relevant to the broader analysis here at all, but I think it's interesting and worth noting. What is relevant to the analysis at this point is that even though pace was barely within the two standard deviation threshhold, I had some intuition here. I was curious if we could be seeing something of a joint effect between the relatively high (though within range) correlation between slow pace and winning in 1999 and the raw average pace being so incredibly low. So, I followed up on that.

Part III: Correlations between seasons.

For this part, turn to Sheet "C2" in the spreadsheet.

Here's the meat of the post -- the correlation structure that made me go "eureka" and start cleaning this up to post-quality levels. In this part, I realized that within-season correlations, while useful, aren't really what we're going for here. What we actually want? We're trying to get predictive analytics -- we want to find the key barometers of a successful or unsuccessful lockout team from the season before. So in this part, what I did was find the correlations between the four factors from the season before, and win percentage in the current season. I excluded 1996 and 2005 (expansion years for the Raptors, Grizzlies, and Bobcats) from the analysis because I didn't particularly want to bias the results towards the mean for those years, and I did all of this in excel where my usual missing data tricks are less easy to use. Anyway. As from before, here's a table comparing the average values among correlations for non-1999 seasons and the correlations in 1999. Lo and behold, we finally get something useful.

               --------- OFFENSIVE ---------   --------- DEFENSIVE ---------
       Pace    eFG%    TOV%    ORB%    FT/FG   eFG%    TOV%    DRB%    FT/FG
 AVG  -0.103   0.568  -0.348   0.015   0.163  -0.575   0.069   0.338  -0.248
1999  -0.455   0.413   0.127  -0.081   0.475  -0.584  -0.197   0.433  -0.173

And here's the big reveal. Two correlations were well outside the aggregate interval for 1999 -- pace, and turnover percentage. Meaning the effect that a team's performance in 1998 on the 1999 season was markedly different than in previous and future seasons -- in the case of pace, quite a bit more intense. And in the case of turnover percentage? Completely the opposite direction. Teams that were slow paced in 1998 were far better than expected in 1999, while teams that were fast paced were for the most part worse. Looking at the raw data confirms this and actually makes the correlation factor here look like an understatement. Because there's two big outliers (the 1999 Sacramento Kings and the 1999 Chicago Bulls) that have a lot of leverage on the results, here. Take those two out, and the correlation factor balloons beyond -0.6, which is pushing beyond eFG% range in terms of predictive value.

Even if you don't exclude those two outliers, though, the numbers look pretty stark. If you take one stat away from this post, make it this one: of the 14 teams that played at an above-average pace in 1998, a full 10 of them had a decreased winning percentage in the 1999 season. And of the 15 teams who played at a below-average pace in 1998? A_ full 12 of them___ had the same or better win percentage in 1999.

That's a big factor, and it points to (quite possibly) the defining effect of season compression: in 1999's compressed season, the type of basketball your team was used to playing was important. Run-and-gun offenses were harmed by the compression, while slowdown offenses prospered in adapting to the generalized decrease in speed of the game caused by the compression. Compounding this, there's the strange turnover percentage correlation. I was really confused about this at first, but realized after a while that it could be a result of the 1998 Bulls losing Jordan. The 1998 Bulls had a turnover percentage of 0.133 and a winning percentage of 0.756, while the 1999 Bulls had a turnover percentage of 0.151 to a winning percentage of 0.260. A pretty big difference, that.

To test what kind of effect eliminating the explicable Jordan-caused outlier would have, I changed the 1998 Bulls to a turnover percentage of 0.151 (dang, MJ, stop losin' the ball!) in an alternate spreadsheet and checked the correlations. It's still positive and well outside the standard deviation, but it's a more reasonable 0.026, indicating that turnover percentage isn't wildly positively correlated, just slightly. Which makes a bit more sense. You see tics like that all the time in odd datasets like this, but the initial result (a 0.127 POSITIVE correlation?) was simply too weird to not have some kind of strange outlier effecting the result. I'd also note that taking out the Bulls actually makes the pace factor slightly larger -- the Bulls were one of only three 1998 below-pace teams that got worse in 1999, so removing them from the dataset actually raises the correlation to -0.521. I would've put the Jordan-lacking numbers in the comparison, but I felt it would be better to explain why I took them out with the context of what I was seeing rather than just stating it as a prior fact. Throwing away data is bad, folks.

Part IV: Conclusion & Followups

So, overall takeaway? Zach isn't really wrong in his excellent post, let's start with that. This lockout may create a new trend, and the lessons of the past aren't strictly prescriptive. While 66 games crammed into the window of December 25th to May 1st is pretty bad, I'm not positive it's as bad as the insane pace the 1999 season was played at. It's comparable, but certainly not worse and possibly not on the same order of magnitude as bad, if they set up the schedule correctly. My analysis here doesn't even begin to touch the way that prevailing sentiment somehow says that the lockout will advantage the following types of teams:

1. Young teams, because they have "young legs."
2. Old teams, because they have "experience."
3. Strong systems, because they "don't need training camp."
4. Weak systems with talented players, because they "don't need training camp."
5. Samardo Samuels, because he "went to St. Benedicts."

In short, depending on who you ask, the lockout is either going to irrevocably destroy every team in the league's mojo or grant them infinite advantages over everyone else. Not contradictory in the slightest! But honestly, short answer is that we honestly don't know what exogenous factors are going to prove to be the defining things that advantage and disadvantage teams in this lockout. Zach is absolutely right about this.

But by looking a bit deeper into what happened directly before the lockout, we can tease out one big conclusion. Teams with high pace last season (the Raptors, Knicks, and Suns are big offenders here) have a reasonably good chance of starting day one at a disadvantage over teams that operated at a slow pace. We're going to see some outliers to this rule, because they're always there, but in the last lockout this was a relatively hard and fast rule. Teams that played fast in 1998 played worse in 1999. Teams that played slow in 1998 played better in 1999. Not hard to understand, nor is it altogether unintuitive -- fast paced teams generally do worse on back-to-backs, traditionally, and the compressed season means less recovery time between games for teams that try to push the pace.

Regardless, we probably could use a bit more analysis here. In particular, I'd like to do a ridge regression predicting season stats from the previous season's four factors stats -- there's enough data for it, and using the lockout data for a test sample could help put in context any joint effects among the covariates. But that's enough for today. This result is useful enough to post without having done the regressions yet, I think.

• • •

Feel free to poke around the sheet, comment on the conclusions, and note the things I've forgotten to mention. Because this is unfortunately a pretty slipshod analysis right now, and there's plenty of room to critique the methodology here. But I think it's useful, and worth a look. Please let me know if you have any followup questions in the comments, because I'll probably take a revised look at this sheet and the data this weekend with R and get some higher order models built for the sake of teasing out any joint effects. Until then? Keep it real, readers.

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The lockout is over! As part of our coverage of the rapidly incoming season, Aaron is doing three-point previews (pre free agency) on every team in the NBA. We're splitting it up by divisions, in what will be the first and last time we look at NBA divisions this season. Seriously. Nobody really cares about divisions. Regardless, today's division is home to (if you don't remember, it's been a while) the Boston Celtics, the Philadelphia 76ers, the New Jersey Nets, the New York Knicks, and the Toronto Raptors.

Programming note, here -- all this week (and most likely for the next few weeks), I'm going to be at Fear the Sword working with Conrad Kaczmarek on a new series profiling all the Cavs players on this year's team. Monday we did Daniel Gibson, yesterday we did Ramon Sessions, and today we did Antawn Jamison. Tomorrow? A mystery, one worth checking out! Anyway. As a further programming note, my Kawhi Leonard post was linked in Truehoop's Wednesday bullets this week. If you're one of the new readers who stumbled upon us from the Truehoop post, welcome! We have a peculiar way of doing things, around here, but we hope you'll like what you see. There's going to be a lot of ridiculous stuff coming from Alex and I in the coming weeks, and it's our hope you'll stick around for it. And enjoy it. It'd hardly be worth sticking around for if you didn't enjoy it, you know? Regardless. Let's get thee to this preview.

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TORONTO RAPTORS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

The Raptors are one of the few teams with no strong impact targets for the use of the amnesty clause. Their two worst contracts are Calderon and Bargnani, but they're the two of best players on this current incarnation of the Raptors, and it's quite possible they decide to keep them together. After all, with a new coach in Dwane Casey, the organization is most likely going to aim for the playoffs. Not a particularly strong chance they make it there, but the Raptors have always been a "hope springs eternal" type franchise. If they don't amnesty Bargnani or Calderon, they'll most likely consider applying it to Linas Kleiza, their embarrassingly bad "impact" free agent signing from 2010 that turned out to be a massively overpaid bust. In terms of additions, the Raptors have only so far added the #5 pick in the 2011 NBA draft, Jonas Valanciunas. He's going to be good, most likely, but he's also not going to be around this season. Which isn't quite so hot. Still, they're on a crash course for another high lottery pick, so whenever they have the ability to add Valanciunas, they should have a decent young core waiting for him.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

I'm not really sure how the lockout is going to impact Toronto. On the CBA side, it could be a negative. While the details haven't leaked on revenue sharing yet, if it's based solely on market size, the Raptors are going to be at a severe disadvantage and may get none of the money they put in the sharing pot -- Toronto is a huge market, even if it's a middling NBA-type locale. Teams like the Raptors that underperform relative to their market size could get screwed in the revenue sharing deal, so we'll have to wait and see how that goes. On the basketball side, the numbers don't look very good for the Raptors. In the last lockout-shortened season, teams that played at a fast pace and had poor defense in 1998 fared somewhat poorly relative to expectations in 1999, as you might see in more detail in a followup and clarification post to Zach Lowe's recent lockout piece that I'll be sharing soon. I did some stats for that piece, and I think it'd be cool to share them. But that's for another day.

3: Overall season outlook.

Exceedingly poor. For Raps fans, they can expect more of the same from last year, which was a pretty poor time to be a Raps fan. They have the young guns in DeRozan and Davis to eventually make some noise, but I'm not very high on DeRozan as an NBA star (guards with games as scoring-limited as him aren't usually championship starters). Davis has been really good so far, though, and with any luck Casey will stop trying to play Bargnani out of position where he can't operate. I'm going to go with 12 to 18 wins in a 66 game season, equivalent to a 15-22 win season in a full 82 games. In other words, marginally worse than last year. Long-term outlook? Dim, but getting brighter. Getting Triano the hell out of there is a great start, and bringing in Casey should be a great hire. We'll have to see, though -- I thought Kuester was really going to tear things up in Detroit.

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NEW JERSEY NETS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

No key additions -- yet. Quite a few key POTENTIAL additions, though, and they're going to need to exhaust every single possibility if they intend to keep Deron Williams. When you trade for a fringe top-10 player in the league and rid your cupboard of every quality young asset to do it, you don't usually do it for the player to up and leave less than 82 games later. That's a very possible fate for these Nets, if Deron doesn't get surrounded by a team that can actually contend. They may have more time than you'd initially think, though -- the new CBA makes it most profitable, if I'm reading it right, for Deron to take his player option for 2013 and have his future salary/raises based on his over $17.8 mil 2013 salary rather than his $16.3 mil 2012 salary. That would give the Nets a good two years to build. It could help. In terms of subtractions and amnesty targets, it's basically "pin the tail on the summer 2010 contract" over in Newark. They'd probably like to get back all three of the contracts they signed -- Morrow has been atrocious, Petro's been worse, and there's not a single player in the league who was more disappointing than Travis Outlaw last season. The first digit of his salary ($7 million) was very nearly larger than his PER (8.80), and while I don't like using a metric as a catch all, a PER of 8.80 with awful defense is barely deserving of a contract in the league at all, let alone a $7 million dollar one. One of the few teams that will probably use their amnesty in the first few days of free agency.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

It was reported in whispers throughout the lockout that Prokhorov was one of the hardline owners. Not because he wanted competitive balance or revenue sharing (after the Brooklyn move, the Nets will be putting a ton of money into the system), but because a lost season would eliminate the Nets last season in Newark and give the Nets a unique chance to do a full-scale rebrand in 2013. Honestly, though? That was always a very risky strategy. While I'm working off the assumption I just laid out that Deron is going to want to take his player option, there's a non-negligible chance he doesn't. If that happened, and they lost the 2012 season, Deron could've opted out of his player option once the 2013 season began. He would've gone directly to free agency, and left the Nets nothing but 20 games of an injured Deron Williams for the investment of Derrick Favors, Devin Harris, an unrestricted lottery pick and a lightly restricted late lottery pick, and cash. That would be a catastrophic setback for a franchise desperately needing to take a step forward, and a 2012 season ensures that Deron is going to have at least one full year in Newark. I don't see any way that's a bad thing for New Jersey. The other CBA aspects -- revenue sharing, hurting luxury tax teams, etc -- are going to hurt the Nets in the future, but they're so moribund as a franchise right now it's doubtful to have a big impact for 2 or 3 seasons at the least. By the time the Nets are starting to really feel the impact of the CBA, a new CBA will be 2 or 3 years down the road. So, not too huge.

3: Overall season outlook.

Not as bad as the Raptors (by a long shot), but not all that great either. The Nets enter free agency with three players who played league average or better ball last year -- Deron Williams, Brook Lopez, and Kris Humphries. Humphries is a free agent who's likely to leave the team, leaving Lopez and Deron as the only two pieces worth starting on any other team in the league. And Deron was injured late last season. While he's been great overseas, we have to temper enthusiasm a little -- this isn't Deron coming off the height of his powers, this is Deron coming from a bad finish and trying to recoup. Lopez was atrocious defensively last year, rating among the worst centers in the league on defending the pick and roll. He stays back on his heels when he needs to contest, and he has a marked hesitation atop his generally lacking lateral quickness. He completely loses defenders when they get close enough to the basket, and he doesn't have the ability to stay on rotations. And his rebounding? Don't get me started -- despite playing a ton of minutes per game, Brook somehow managed to have more games with five or fewer rebounds than games with six or more. Abhorrent. Out of any other player in the league, the Nets most need Dwight Howard. A Dwight-Lopez-Deron core could potentially be decent enough to contend in the East, with the added bonus of experimenting with Brook as a power forward. I don't know if they get Dwight, but they really need him. Without him, their season is going to be a massively underwhelming disappointment unless they pick up the right bunch of bargain free agents to improve the team. If they keep last year's roster with minor additions? I honestly don't see them making the playoffs or even sniffing them. Their outlook is a wait-and-see prospect right now. So, we wait.

• • •

PHILADELPHIA 76ERS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Amnesty and the Sixers is a funny combination. Word has gotten out that they don't intend to amnesty Elton Brand, given that he's only got a few seasons left and he's their only big man that's even remotely close to "quality" right now. That makes sense, and starts to get at why there probably won't be more than 4 or 5 amnesties this year. They don't want to waste amnesty on Nocioni when they don't have any free agent targets, so they're sitting on it until a better opportunity arises. In the draft, the Sixers picked up Nicolas Vucevic, who may in the long term be the most important big man of the future in Philly -- he was the tallest player taken this year and projects out to be a quality NBA big man. He has a well defined post game, and is underrated in his ability to affect a game with one-on-one offense. He gives most of that back with his infuriating obsession with proving himself as a shooter (he's simply not a good pick and pop player, and he lessens his gifts when he spends half the game trying to be Pau Gasol) and turning the ball over like it's nobody's business. But he's a solid prospect who's easily going to be their 2nd best big man from day one, and may end the season as their best. That's a good pick, and even if it doesn't bring them back to the playoffs this season, it should help immeasurably in the years to come.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Probably a net positive, overall. One of the very few teams that can say that. The Sixers may be the single most positively affected team by the supposition that amnesty won't be of the vintage 2005 "use it or lose it" type. Because they can wait and see. If Vucevic gets better and Elton Brand is poor this year, they can amnesty him right before next summer and enter the 2012 free agency period with quite a lot of cap room (well over $20 million), enough to potentially entice a max free agent to call Philly home and fill in the team with a few decent guys around them. The contract sizes mean they're less likely to get roped into another Elton Brand type contract, and they're just on the cusp where they won't be required to forfeit much to the revenue sharing but they aren't in bad enough shape that they explicitly needed a stronger system. Given Iggy, Brand, and their litany of not-great contracts, they aren't going to be scrambling to get to the minimum any time soon either. A good situation for them going forward.

3: Overall season outlook.

While they're one of the better positioned teams to navigate the post-lockout CBA, one can't really say the same about their team on a basketball level. Not for next season. Last season's Sixers were an overachieving bunch that were able to succeed on their general grit, Iggy's defense, and the most inconceivable of bounce-back seasons for one Elton Brand. I don't see that carrying over to this season, as Brand's season was (in all possible respects) incredibly flukish. Lou Williams and Thad Young will continue to be straight decent, Jrue Holiday will continue to improve, and perhaps Evan Turner can stop being useless. But unless Vucevic is an instant star and Brand avoids the dropoff that usually comes after a fluke season late in a player's career? They have no big man rotation whatsoever. Spencer Hawes may see serious minutes. That's their situation. And because of that, they probably won't quite make it into the playoffs again, barring injury to the myriad of lower-tier east teams (namely the Bucks, Pistons, New Jersey) that stand to get a lot better this season. Then again, this is a team that may look totally different after free agency. Check back with us after that goes down.

• • •

NEW YORK KNICKS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Amnesty came just slightly too late for the Knicks to get value out of it -- they have no strong candidates for the clause, for the first time in almost 10 years. Really. I'm not going to go into it, but go onto Basketball Reference and look at all the Knicks rosters from 2000-2010. Pretty much at least one player per season who would be a good candidate for amnesty. Now, though, the closest is Roger Mason Jr. Who makes virtually nothing, cap-wise. The key for them is really in Amare's contract -- amnesty gives them a get-out-of-cap-hell-free card to play if his knees blow up sometime in the next four years. Always a good card to have in your bag. Additions are headlined by Iman Shumpert, the physically gifted standout from Georgia Tech whose somewhat unsatisfying college career can be virtually ignored because, after all, he went to Georgia Tech. Paul Hewitt is notorious for completely masking the draft potential of his players by running the worst systems in the history of the human race. Shumpert may be no exception. Regardless, I thought it was something of a misguided choice. The Knicks have Fields, Douglas, Rautins, and Billups manning the guard slots right now, and fill-in stopgap guards aren't hard to find. They're depressing the playing time of those three while ignoring their gaping holes in the middle. Kenneth Faried would've been a better pick, I think. Shumpert should be a good rookie, probably top 10, and a decent workaday player in the league. But they needed a big, and a great one was sitting at their fingertips. Poor decisions all around.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Bad. Very, actually. As I mentioned earlier, the only use amnesty really holds for the Knicks is as an insurance policy for Amare's knees. The general consensus among the hysterical New York media gaggle is that the lockout had no effect on free agency and the Knicks remain in perfect shape to land Dwight or Chris Paul. This is about as untrue as possible. The Knicks have left themselves with no assets whatsoever from the deck-clearing they went through for the Carmelo trade, and as I discussed in my discussion of the previous CBA proposal, the CBA generally will cut down on free agent acquisition in favor of Deron-type superstar trades. The best way to get CP3 or Dwight in this CBA's environment? Trade for them and entice them to stay. The Knicks have no assets whatsoever to offer -- every player they have of any value is either on a one year contract at this point (Fields, Douglas, Rautins), too old to contribute (Billups), or is one of their core two (Melo/Amare). They NEED to acquire CP3 or Dwight in free agency, and there's no particularly good way to see that happening short of either choosing to take an insanely large paycut (and, more importantly, a 4 year contract compared to a 5 year contract) to play in New York. Impossible? Not at all. But I'd put the odds well under 10% that it goes through, far lower than they would be if we were still under the last CBA. And top that off with the strengthened luxury tax that makes it harder than ever to simply outspend your competitors? The lockout hurt the Knicks. Don't think otherwise.

3: Overall season outlook.

I'm relatively down on them this season, pre free agency. You have a rather incredible one-two scoring punch with Melo and Amare, a decent starting-quality talent in Fields, and an aging chucker in Chauncey. Beyond that? Virtually nothing. As good as Turiaf makes them when he's on the court, he's exactly the sort of player who crumbles on back to backs and exactly the sort who's more susceptible to injury in a compressed season. Not to mention pace -- in the 1999 season, pace took a steep nosedive from 1998, and of the teams with extremely high pace in 1998 only one of them actually improved -- the Sacramento Kings, midway through a renaissance led by a young Chris Webber. I don't think the lockout shortened season is going to force the Knicks into being an awful team. But I do think the lack of training camp, lack of defense, and the general lack of depth to absorb injuries is going to lead them to be essentially the same team they were at the end of last year. Around 0.500, consistently described as "a threat", falls toothlessly in the night to a better team when the playoffs begin. Sorry, Knicks fans. Maybe if you signed Grover. Hey, speaking of the playoffs...

• • •

BOSTON CELTICS

1: Key additions, subtractions, and amnesty targets.

Frankly, there's no way to know what's what with the Celtics for additions and subtractions. If they decide to resign Jeff Green (a good bet, given that refusing to sign him means you traded Kendrick Perkins away for Nenad Kristic alone), they aren't going to have the space for any free agents that aren't acquired through trade. There are many potential avenues for improvement on their bench (Delonte West getting back to his natural position, Troy Murphy shaping up, et cetera) but in terms of new player additions the Celtics are going to be relegated to the Telfairs and Gadzurics of the world if they want to add new faces. As for rookies, last year the Celts drafted JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore, both out of Purdue -- I'm not very familiar with them, but if JaJuan is even remotely servicable it'll be an improvement over the Shelden Williams experiment they used to be rolling with. Glen Davis realistically isn't a good player and isn't a player they want to pay, but they're lacking in other options so they'll probably try the college try to resign him.

2: Lockout impacts, bad or good?

Well, they probably won't be building a star team on the fly like they did in 2008 anytime soon. The restrictions on trading would have most likely prevented the Celtics from picking up Ray Allen for the 2008 title run, thus making the 2008 Celtics merely a big two with a puncher's chance at a title but not an overwhelming favorite. But that all happened in the past, and going forward, they're not well off. Could be worse, but still not good. While it's true that the Celtics will be putting money into the revenue sharing pot, they'll be in full-rebuild mode in two years when the tax provisions really start kicking in and destroying the lives of GMs everywhere. The only real amnesty candidate, ironically, is Paul Pierce. Hardly a player the Celtics are ever going to consider using the clause on. It is worth noting that it looks like they're somewhat cursed in that they simply can't add pieces without flipping Rondo at this point -- resigning Green alone may very well take them over the MLE level, leaving them with min contracts and the mini-MLE for roster-building purposes. That's going to hurt a team already severely lacking in bench depth. So overall? Future-looking bad, present-looking bad. Not a great CBA for the Boston Celtics.

3: Overall season outlook.

As with this entire division, really, I'm not very up on them. This is a very weak division this year, barring some major explosions from young players on the teams in it. The Celtics are an aging team whose primary stars are all on the dark side of 33 -- by the time next year's playoffs start, KG will be well over 35 years old. I'm not one to doubt that KG won't be as batshit insane when next year's playoffs start, but you'd be a fool to honestly expect them to maintain the level of play they had last season. And with the CBA harming their ability to augment their depth... how do they improve? I don't really see it. Their best chance for any improvement lies in their bench shaping up behind Delonte West and Jeff Green reinventing himself as a useful basketball player. I'm dubious on both. And you may call me a homer all you want, but I'd take a 29 year old Tony, 34 year old Manu, and a 35 year old Duncan entering next year's playoffs over a 34 year old Pierce, 35 year old KG, and a 37 year old Ray. Especially considering the potential of the Spurs supporting cast over the Celtics supporting cast. No, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that although the Celtics do have a title shot this year, it's the smallest and least realistic among any of the KG years -- a strong second round performance would be a blessing, with this crew. But in this division? Weak on a broader scale or not, they'll win the division handily, and probably get a top 3 seed in the East. But even if all goes right, I just can't see them stepping beyond the ECF, I don't think -- this team is going to have to scrap and fight and overcome the process of aging simply to contend at all, and imagining a team like that winning four series in a row takes a lot of stretching.

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