Note: This was originally posted on my old blog on Tuesday, October 13, 2009
In June I said that I was going to be working on two major projects to post on this blog. One of the two, the NBA Genesis draft, I completed. The other, roster analyses of every NBA team, I hardly even started, much less finished. Shortly after beginning to work on the first of these roster analyses, I realized that in order to do a good job and produce something that someone would want to read I would have to put in way more work than I was prepared to put in. I also realized that throughout the time that I was working on this, teams would be changing due to free agency, etc. This would make this project even harder. So sometime near the end of the summer I realized that I would not be able to produce all of these roster analyses before the NBA season started.
Recently though, my desire to do something like this has resurfaced. Being as I am pretty busy right now with school and basketball and everything I decided to abbreviate the analysis quite a bit. I came up with a pretty elementary rating system to rate certain elements of each team's roster that resulted in a nice, neat chart that tells you everything you need to know about every team's roster. OK, so it might not tell you everything, but it does do a pretty good job of summarizing the various strengths and weaknesses of each team's roster.
I came up with six different characteristics of a roster that I think are the most important. I weighted the different categories based on how indicative of success I think a high rating in these categories is. The first two categories—top level talent and depth of talent—are out of seven. So the best score a team can receive in this category is a seven. The next three categories—fit, balance, and experience—are out of five. Th e last category—mileage—is out of three. I weighted these categories this way for a reason. There is no doubt that in order to be a good NBA team you have to have good players, hence the two talent ratings being out of seven. The fit, balance, and experience ratings are all important, but can be overcome if the team is very good in lots of other ways. The mileage rating is only out of three because the amount of mileage on a team’s players may or may not effect how their season turns out. It is much more of a potential problem then it is a definite one.
In June I said that I was going to be working on two major projects to post on this blog. One of the two, the NBA Genesis draft, I completed. The other, roster analyses of every NBA team, I hardly even started, much less finished. Shortly after beginning to work on the first of these roster analyses, I realized that in order to do a good job and produce something that someone would want to read I would have to put in way more work than I was prepared to put in. I also realized that throughout the time that I was working on this, teams would be changing due to free agency, etc. This would make this project even harder. So sometime near the end of the summer I realized that I would not be able to produce all of these roster analyses before the NBA season started.
Recently though, my desire to do something like this has resurfaced. Being as I am pretty busy right now with school and basketball and everything I decided to abbreviate the analysis quite a bit. I came up with a pretty elementary rating system to rate certain elements of each team's roster that resulted in a nice, neat chart that tells you everything you need to know about every team's roster. OK, so it might not tell you everything, but it does do a pretty good job of summarizing the various strengths and weaknesses of each team's roster.
I came up with six different characteristics of a roster that I think are the most important. I weighted the different categories based on how indicative of success I think a high rating in these categories is. The first two categories—top level talent and depth of talent—are out of seven. So the best score a team can receive in this category is a seven. The next three categories—fit, balance, and experience—are out of five. Th e last category—mileage—is out of three. I weighted these categories this way for a reason. There is no doubt that in order to be a good NBA team you have to have good players, hence the two talent ratings being out of seven. The fit, balance, and experience ratings are all important, but can be overcome if the team is very good in lots of other ways. The mileage rating is only out of three because the amount of mileage on a team’s players may or may not effect how their season turns out. It is much more of a potential problem then it is a definite one.
Some of these ratings are pretty self-explanatory, but a little clarification shouldn’t hurt.
- Top level talent (out of 7): This rating answers the question, "How good are this team's best players?" To score high in this rating (i.e. 6 or 7) you basically have to have multiple all-stars. But this rating isn't just based on the number of all-stars, but also on the quality of those all-stars. For example, the Heat only have one all-star, but that all-star is one of the best five players in the game. Because of that, their rating in this category is a little above average—a 5.
- Depth of talent (out of 7): This rating answers the question, "How many good players does this team have?" To score high in this rating (i.e. 6 or 7) you have to have more than just a few good players. The highest rated teams in this category have multiple all-star caliber players and above average players who come off the bench. Again I will use the Heat as an example. Besides Dwyane Wade they don't have any other all-star caliber players and have a pretty mediocre roster overall. So even though their top level talent rating was a 5, they received only a 3 in the depth of talent category.
- Fit (out of 5): This rating answers the question, “How well do the players on this roster complement each other?” To score high in this rating (i.e. 4 or 5) you have to have a roster full of players that make each other better by having complementary skills. A common reason for getting a low score in this rating is having a team with too many scorers or players who have to have the ball to be effective.
- Balance (out of 5): This rating answers the question, “How big of a difference is there between the best and worst elements of a team?” To score high in this rating (i.e. 4 or 5) you have to have a roster that has a good balance of outside and inside talent, starters and reserves, stars and role players, etc.
- Experience (out of 5): This rating answers the question, “How much playoff experience do the players on your roster have?” Good teams have talented, balanced rosters, but in order to be a great team that can truly contend for an NBA title, you have to have experience. That is why I include this rating.
- Mileage (out of 3): This rating answers the question, “How much mileage do the players on this roster have on them?” Basically this rating is the flip side of having a lot of experience. Experience is great to have, but it comes with the higher risk of the older players wearing down or getting injured over the course of the season. I made this rating the least important (only out of 3) because often a team’s collective mileage never ends up being a problem, but it can be an issue so I decided to include it.
Also, after rating each team in each of the six categories I totaled up the scores to give an overall rating.
So here is my 2009 preseason roster ratings chart.
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