With the NBA season on the horizon, ESPN is doing their annual projections for the upcoming season. The most recent projection takes a look at who the top ten shooting guards in the league will be based on Wins Above Replacement (WARP) during the 2014-15 NBA season.
The system basically takes a player, and calculates how many more wins they give their team over an average player based on a multitude of factors. It’s nerdy, and if you’re interested in it odds are you already know how it works. If not, you can find a nice description here.
Unsurprisingly, sitting atop the list is Houston Rockets guard James Harden, projected to give the Rox 16.7 WARP this upcoming season. After Harden, things get interesting. You can take a look at the full list on ESPN here (Insider only), but here are some of the highlights.
The most glaring omission on the list is Laker guard Kobe Bryant. The five-time champion is not projected by ESPN to be a top ten shooting guard this year. Seriously.
As for Bryant, his playing-time forecast is predictably suppressed, but even if it weren’t, his projected winning percentage would just barely get him into the top 10.
So basically, Kobe is expected to play reduced minutes, but even if he wasn’t he would barely crack ESPN’s top ten. Yeah, okay.
This isn’t the first time this off-season ESPN has piled on the Los Angeles Lakers. The company also picked the Lakers to finish 12th in the West and named them the official Team Turmoil of the upcoming season. Yikes.
Other interesting notes from ESPN’s list include Dwyane Wade being projected to be the second best shooting guard in the league this upcoming season. Yes, that Dwyane Wade, the one that could last be seen struggling to score during the NBA Finals.
The list also has Monta Ellis third, Dion Waiters fifth and Tyreke Evans sixth, ahead of names like Klay Thompson, Lance Stephenson, DeMar DeRozan and Bradley Beal. Speaking of DeRozan and Beal, they were also left out of the top ten.
Needless to say, the calculations behind this list differ just a little bit from the actual on-court production fans see.