NBA historical season predictions (Geeks & freaks)

[Eric M VAN]

I used to grab all the NBA PRE-Season glossies back in the day (Lindy, Sporting News Etc) to read the rundowns and predictions for the upcoming year. I'd pour over them at the magazine rack and spend what little cash I had on the issue that made me happiest about how my team would do.

The interwebs boil over with pundits now and while those old magazines rot in a landfill somewhere, the net is forever and it's difficult for any predictions to disappear into the ozone. For me, that allows for going back and seeing who was completely full of Edited.  Profanity and masked profanity are against forum rules and may result in discipline.e and who was in the ballpark.

Michael ‘wiLQ’ Wilczynski has a blog that has put a comparison of some of the predictors predictions from 2012-2013 (and earlier) and "spread sheeted" them.
and compared them to actual results by Root Mean Square Deviation which is essentially average difference between each prediction and result in terms of absolute value.

Is this the be all and end all of who's the best at predicting next seasons record? I don't think so, but it's an interesting starting point for me, while I continue to search for something better or in addition to.

http://weaksideawareness.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/checking-2012-13-nba-win-predictions-projections/

The spreadsheet and source data is included so you can argue away at it with numbers or feel free to spit and ignore it.

Hollinger seems to have a pretty good track record according to this

Just for fun, here were some of Zach Lowes predictions from Grantland
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8540932/the-miami-heat-offense-james-harden-contract-more-bold-predictions-2012-13-nba-season

and a Reggie Miller comment for the statistical Luddites
http://thebiglead.com/2012/10/26/reggie-miller-on-nba-stat-guys-lab-geek-rats-those-geeks-never-played-a-game-in-their-life/
“Lab geek rats that are somewhere with their pocket squares on their little laptop computer, punching numbers … those things don’t play basketball games for you! Humans play basketball for you! Those geeks, I’m telling you, never played a game in their life!”.