NBA Preseason Projections 2015-16: Review & Highlights

NBA Preseason Projections 2015-16: Review & Highlights

October 26, 2015 – by David Hess

The 2015 NBA season starts Tuesday with LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, and Derrick Rose all in action.

The NBA season tip, along with the World Series starting that same night, means we’ll have one week with the NFL, NBA, and MLB all in season. And if there’s no World Series sweep, Sunday (November 1st) will feature games from all three leagues. Make your sports bar reservations now.

The start of the NBA season also means it’s time for our 2015-16 NBA preseason projections.

We recently rolled out our preseason NBA predictive rankings and our 2015-16 NBA projected standings. Those pages will be updated every single day until the end of the season. This post will serve as a preseason snapshot of the projections, plus we’ll briefly discuss some highlights.

2015-16 NBA Preseason Projections & Projected Standings

Below are our NBA season projections, based on our preseason predictive ratings and thousands of computer simulations of the 2015 season.

As mentioned above, we update these projections every single day; below is what they were on Sunday, October 25, 2015.

As they do every season, key player injuries, suspensions and other unexpected events that occur as the season goes on are likely to derail a few of these initial forecasts. (That’s also part of why we incorporate variance into our season simulations.)

Eastern Conference Predictions and Projected Standings For 2015-16

Eastern Conference Projections 2015
ATLANTIC	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	Top Seed	NBA Champs
Toronto	46.4	35.6	75.3%	51.5%	7.5%	2.7%
Boston	44.3	37.7	68.7%	39.3%	5.7%	1.7%
Brooklyn	28.0	54.0	14.5%	4.5%	0.3%	0.0%
New York	27.4	54.6	12.5%	3.7%	0.1%	0.0%
Philadelphia	21.7	60.3	4.5%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%
CENTRAL	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	1 Seed	NBA Champs
Cleveland	56.0	26.0	94.3%	52.3%	32.3%	12.6%
Chicago	51.5	30.5	88.1%	30.2%	17.6%	6.4%
Milwaukee	41.4	40.6	58.4%	7.2%	3.1%	1.0%
Indiana	41.1	40.9	58.0%	7.5%	3.4%	1.1%
Detroit	35.2	46.8	34.9%	2.8%	1.2%	0.3%
SOUTHEAST	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	1 Seed	NBA Champs
Atlanta	48.5	33.5	80.1%	35.0%	10.6%	3.9%
Miami	46.7	35.3	75.5%	28.1%	8.7%	3.0%
Washington	46.4	35.6	76.0%	27.6%	8.1%	3.0%
Charlotte	34.9	47.1	34.3%	5.7%	0.9%	0.3%
Orlando	32.1	49.9	24.8%	3.6%	0.5%	0.2%

Most Likely Division Winners: Cleveland (52%), Toronto (52%), Atlanta (35%)

Best NBA Championship Win Odds: The Cleveland Cavaliers were hoping to have a full season of good health for their Big Three, but they’re getting off on the wrong foot, with both Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving expected to miss the season opener. The nagging injuries did lead us to slightly reduce Cleveland’s preseason rating, but the Cavs are still our favorites in the East, with a roughly 13% chance to win the NBA title.

Despite the health issues, odds as of October 25 are much more optimistic about the Cavaliers, who were +244 (29.1% break even odds) to win it all at the time we wrote this. The Bulls are the only other Eastern Conference team with greater than 5% odds; we have them at 6.4%, which roughly matches their line of +1445.

Expected To Improve: The New York Knicks are projected with an average of 27.4 wins, a change of +10.4 from last year’s 17 wins. Among teams with a decent shot at the playoffs, the Miami Heat are projected with the biggest increase, from 37 last year to 46.7 this year (+9.7). That’s partly thanks to Chris Bosh recovering from his blood clots.

Biggest Loser: If we didn’t have Philadelphia as the worst team in the league, we’d have had to assume we had a bug in our code somewhere. The Sixers are projected to win only 21.7 games.

Western Conference Predictions and Projected Standings for 2015-16

Western Conference Projections 2015
NORTHWEST	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	1 Seed	NBA Champs
Okla City	55.0	27.0	92.6%	78.7%	14.3%	9.0%
Utah	41.3	40.7	53.3%	16.2%	1.1%	0.8%
Portland	29.7	52.3	15.0%	2.6%	0.1%	0.0%
Minnesota	27.3	54.7	10.4%	1.6%	0.0%	0.0%
Denver	25.5	56.5	7.5%	1.0%	0.0%	0.0%
PACIFIC	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	1 Seed	NBA Champs
Golden State	59.3	22.7	97.1%	58.8%	29.2%	18.0%
LA Clippers	55.5	26.5	92.4%	37.2%	15.5%	10.0%
Phoenix	36.4	45.6	35.1%	2.2%	0.5%	0.3%
Sacramento	35.8	46.2	33.8%	1.8%	0.4%	0.3%
LA Lakers	24.6	57.4	6.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
SOUTHWEST	W	L	Playoffs	Win Div	1 Seed	NBA Champs
San Antonio	56.3	25.7	93.9%	43.2%	19.1%	12.0%
Houston	53.5	28.5	89.1%	31.4%	12.2%	8.1%
Memphis	49.3	32.7	81.4%	16.7%	5.3%	3.5%
New Orleans	43.8	38.2	62.2%	7.4%	1.9%	1.4%
Dallas	35.1	46.9	30.3%	1.4%	0.3%	0.3%

Most Likely Division Winners: Oklahoma City (79%), Golden State (59%), San Antonio (43%)

Note: The Thunder are hit the hardest by this year’s change to the playoff seeding rules. Under the old system, they’d be looking at about an 80% chance of a top-four seed, because of the relatively weak competition in the Northwest Division. But now that the seeding is done purely by record, with no preferential treatment for division winners, the Thunder only have a 59% chance of nabbing a top-four seed.

Best NBA Championship Win Odds: The Warriors are our projected favorites to win the NBA title, with an 18% chance. We’re more optimistic about Golden State’s chance than the betting markets are, as their current NBA title futures line is +502 (16.6% break even odds). The odds actually have San Antonio as the favorite to come out of the West, with a +432 NBA title line (18.8% break even odds), but our projections have the Spurs with only an 11.5% chance.

We project three other Western Conference teams with title odds above 5%: the Clippers (10.2%), Thunder (9.5%), and Rockets (7.6%). Compared to our projections, the betting markets are more pessimistic about the Clippers (+1059, 8.6% break even odds) and Rockets (+1528, 6.1% break even odds), and more optimistic about the Thunder (+731, 12.0% break even odds).

Expected To Improve: The biggest projected increase in wins is +11.3 for Minnesota, from 16 up to 27.3. A big part of their projected rating increase is due to having the top draft picks from the past two drafts, meaning they’ve got an influx of young and/or improving talent. Another notable projected increase is Oklahoma City’s bump from 45 wins up to a projected 55.0 (+10). That’s mostly thanks to Kevin Durant returning from injury.

Biggest Loser: There are three main contenders for this crown — the Lakers (24.6 projected wins), Nuggets (25.5), and Timberwolves (27.3). Our numbers are fairly down on both the Lakers and the Nuggets compared to the betting markets, but in closer agreement on Minnesota.

Wrapping Up…

Enjoy the 2015-16 NBA season, and remember, plenty of these projections will end up being wrong, for lots of possible reasons. Our goal is the overall accuracy of the system, and even if the system as a whole ends up being more accurate this year than other prediction methods, the projections for any one specific team could still be way off.

The value we bring to the table is a sophisticated, systematic season projection model that can precisely evaluate dynamics (like the impacts of schedule strength and variance) that human experts are generally terrible at understanding — a system that is not driven by subjective opinions, but by objective data that we can demonstrate has predictive value.

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