Smart's projected W.A.R is 5.1 this Year

[KG Living Legend]

 Wins above replacement is a fascinating stat.
 Five Thirty eight Is projecting a huge jump from 2.5 to 5.1 second on the team behind Horfords 5.7 which is down from 8.9 last year with the Hawks.

 Thomas lead the Celtics with 7.3 last year followed by Crowder at 6.1 both are projected to make a dip down this year becuase of Horford.

 Thoughts on this, read the whole article from Sean Penny on the home page.

[Clench123]

What is W.A.R?

[vjcsmoke]

WAR = Wins above replacement.  So assuming if you have an absolutely average player, versus the player that you plug in, plugging in the player with the +WAR means that your team is projected to win X more amount of games.   Obviously, that also means that there are players with 0 WAR, meaning they are league average, and those with negative WAR, which means they make their team worse when they are on the floor.


I briefly mentioned about this topic in another thread, but it's worth recapping:

CARMELO stat projections LOVE Marcus Smart!

It is projecting his WAR to be 5+ for the next 5-6 years.

This translate into Smart having a winning value of over 150 million dollars over that time period!
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/marcus-smart/

If Smart lives up to the projections he would be the second most valuable player on the Celtics behind only Al Horford this next season!

Just to give you an idea,  CARMELO likes Marcus Smart better than Blake Griffin or Okafor over the next 5 years.  Only Westbrook represents an upgrade in terms of winning value according to that metric!

Griffin projected WAR:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/blake-griffin/

Okafor projected WAR:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/jahlil-okafor/

Basically, Smart is projected to have higher WAR over the next 5 years than Griffin OR Okafor which gives pause to the idea of dumping Smart for peanuts.  He shouldn't be moved unless we are getting a true jigsaw puzzle piece that puts us over the top.  For example trading Smart for Okafor is seen as a net loss as far as WAR, and for Griffin would be a wash, but for Westbrook would be an improvement.

Westbrook projected WAR:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/russell-westbrook/

[Lucky17]

What is W.A.R?

Wins above replacement

More importantly, what is it good for?

[/obligatory]

[vjcsmoke]

Put simply, it's a stat that helps you judge the value of a player to an organization winning games.

In baseball it is already a well established metric.

For example in baseball, Xander Bogaerts posted a WAR of 4.6 last season, and just a little over halfway mark has posted a war of 2.7.  Mookie Betts had a WAR of 6.0 last season, and sits at 4.2 WAR currently.

So if you take Bogaerts and Betts off the Red Sox would they conceivably be 10 wins worse?  Yeah, I think that's a reasonable projection.  A useful metric to look at.  It doesn't tell you everything about the player but it's pretty useful.

So if the Cavs lost Lebron, let's say he gets hurt, for next season, and could only get a league-average SF replacement would they be 11 wins worse?  I'd say at the very least, yes.

Lebron WAR:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/lebron-james/

What is W.A.R?

Wins above replacement

More importantly, what is it good for?

[/obligatory]

[LarBrd33]

i saw that.  It's pretty interesting.  Seems a lot of analytic systems expect him to make a leap next year.   Players often make leaps in Year 3 so I really hope it happens.

[loco_91]

There's definitely a chance. Stats models always love guys who get tons of steals, and I think Smart is also getting credit for the fact that he's gotten lots of minutes on a good team as a first and second-year player. That said, the model thought Smart was going to be a top-twenty player this past year, and he wasn't. Moreover, I'm skeptical of the 538 model, which doesn't have much in the way of performance validation.

[Beat LA]

i saw that.  It's pretty interesting.  Seems a lot of analytic systems expect him to make a leap next year.   Players often make leaps in Year 3 so I really hope it happens.

True, but then again, the guys who do make that third year jump typically don't regress from their first to second years, lol . At least, I think so, anyway, but we'll see what happens .

[ImShakHeIsShaq]

Cavs would be 11 wins worse without LBJ? Haha no, they would struggle to make the playoffs! Weren't we in the range of 11 wins less than them last season? No way on Earth are the Cavs a top 3 EC team without LBJ. They teeter on collapse without him even though they have more top talent than most teams.

[tarheelsxxiii]

i saw that.  It's pretty interesting.  Seems a lot of analytic systems expect him to make a leap next year.   Players often make leaps in Year 3 so I really hope it happens.

True, but then again, the guys who do make that third year jump typically don't regress from their first to second years, lol . At least, I think so, anyway, but we'll see what happens .

Lol. Both good points. I'll be happy to eat crow re: Smart, too.

[snively]

The problem with getting excited about CARMELO's Smart rating is that the same model is predicting regression from IT/AB/Jae and a pretty significant drop from ET to Rozier/Brown.

The overall negatives actually outweigh the Smart leap and the Sully-to-Horford bump, suggesting a slightly worse overall team.

[alldaboston]

There's definitely a chance. Stats models always love guys who get tons of steals, and I think Smart is also getting credit for the fact that he's gotten lots of minutes on a good team as a first and second-year player. That said, the model thought Smart was going to be a top-twenty player this past year, and he wasn't. Moreover, I'm skeptical of the 538 model, which doesn't have much in the way of performance validation.

Yeah. Marcus is an analytics darling. He had one of the highest analytical ratings of his draft class (and the past few classes) apparently. I read that in the ESPN article about how bad Brown was analytically.
But, despite the fact that he's favored analytically, we haven't really seen it so far. I hope that changes, so let's wait and see.

[timpiker]

I'm not sure we'll be better because of the loss of Turner. 

[Beat LA]

i saw that.  It's pretty interesting.  Seems a lot of analytic systems expect him to make a leap next year.   Players often make leaps in Year 3 so I really hope it happens.

True, but then again, the guys who do make that third year jump typically don't regress from their first to second years, lol . At least, I think so, anyway, but we'll see what happens .

Lol. Both good points. I'll be happy to eat crow re: Smart, too.

Same .

[chambers]

A lot of this will have to do with Smart picking up Turner's minutes.
It also shows how big of an impact Smart has defensively.