POLL: CELTICS FANS PLAY IT SAFE WITH WIN TOTAL PREDICTION

http://www.csnne.com/boston-celtics/boston-celtics-fans-play-it-safe-in-twitter-poll-predicting-2016-17-win-total








POLL: CELTICS FANS PLAY IT SAFE WITH WIN TOTAL PREDICTION



By CSN Staff August 19, 2016 2:31 PM




CSN recently ran a Twitter poll asking Celtics fans to predict how many games the C’s will win this season. After combing through the data, we’ve come to some startling conclusions. Of the 2,262 people who voted, 23 percent are haters (3 percent voted for 40-45 wins, 20 percent for 46-50 wins), 58 percent are afraid of failure (played it safe with 51-55 wins) and just 19 percent are true believers in the Brad Stevens doctrine (56+ wins).

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How many games will the Celtics win this season?
10:09 AM - 17 Aug 2016
3% 40-45
20% 46-50
58% 51-55
19% 56+
2,262 votes • Final results
 16 16 Retweets   15 15 likes


As Tom Hardy’s character in Inception said, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling.” He was obviously referring to this specific poll, and the man has a point; however, you don’t need to go eight dreams deep to get it. This is pretty basic stuff.

With the edition of Al Horford, we can all agree the Celtics definitely aren’t worse than the team that won 48 games last season (although one responder wrote in a vote for 20 wins or fewer). Assuming that, the Celtics have all the markings of a team primed to take a substantial jump.

A look at how the Celtics have fared against teams with winning records and teams with losing records over the last three seasons shows the kind of growth young teams make before breaking out. Over the last 10 years there have been nine teams that won 56-plus games a season after winning fewer than 50. For our purposes, let’s remove the teams that added transcendent superstars in the offseason (2007-08 Celtics, 2010-11 Heat) and call it seven teams.

Six of those seven teams had a .600-plus winning percentage against teams with losing records the season before their spike in wins. Despite a few painful losses to terrible teams, the Celtics trashed bad teams last season, finishing the year 25-9 (.735) vs teams under .500.

You see, it’s science!



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Check out the Celtics progression under Brad Stevens. Can they continue the climb this season? #CelticsTalk
11:56 AM - 11 Aug 2016
 39 39 Retweets   93 93 likes


And finally, the Celtics are coached by Brad Stevens, the Optimus Prime of NBA coaches.

Need we say more?


bob
MY NOTE:  The right side of the picture was cut off.  It said

............................vs teams .500+
2013-14..................7-36
2014-2015...............12-27
2015-2016...............23-25

If, with the addition of Horford and maturation by our returning players gets us up to only 25-25 vs teams .500+, and we lose just 2 fewer games vs bad teams, we are a 52 win team.  That's all it would take.  Two fewer losses against teams we shouldn't lose to in the first place, something organic growth alone should give us, and Horford being worth two high-value wins.  Swish pointed out that, historically, teams with under .600 records do not go on to win the Championship the next year.  Setting aside the fact that each year is independent of every other year and are not weighed down by previous season's/decade's results, 52 wins would give us a .634 winning %.  In fact, 50 wins would give us a .609 %.  That's how close we are to Swish's threshold.  2 wins.


.

even 50 is what I think

beat

As long as we are a top 4 seed in the east and above that all are healthy we can compete


AND that is based on the team as it stands now. With some major move I reserve the right to add to the total

56 wins

53

Hi,
I put Celtics in the 53-55 range.

AK

With the bulk of the games being played against Eastern Conference teams - I wonder if any one has taken the time to analyze the relative prospects of the other conference teams in relation to their previous years performances?


swish

It is too early to predict season win totals, but that is just my opinion. I imagine we will have a poll on this very topic towards the end of training camp. By then, we will all have seen a couple of preseason games. Besides, who is to say that this is the team that even opens the season?

gyso

55 wins seems about right.

That's a +7.

Dboss

I normally jump at the chance to make a prediction.  I'm not touching this one.

Too many things still up in the air, including with opponents.  The season opening roster, as it's shaping up, should be an improvement over last year; I'll leave it at that.  

For now.

Lots of reasons to wait until the pre season is over to make a prediction about wins, but I am going to forget all such reasons and go with an August 23rd prediction of 56 wins for our team in the 2017 season.

56 wins could end up giving us a second or third place east finish with Cleveland and maybe Toronto still being better, but Horford is going to be worth about five wins and the returning core is going to easily be worth three or more wins over last year.  

Horford is going to be a leader on and off the court and maybe even more important will be his offensive consistency as I doubt that he will have games of 22 followed very often by games of 7 points.  Last year's team was much better than the year before with an eight game improvement, but did so pretty much with only Thomas being the only consistent scorer night to night.  Many of the other guys were good scorers on some nights, but often followed good scoring games (say 18) with games of eight points. The better teams in every basketball league almost always have three guys who do not vary much above or below their scoring capacity potential. In my opinion, such consistency allows the "role" (other) players to play with less pressure which usually allows them to play better on a more regular basis.