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There are reasons Danny Ferry built the Cavs around James the way he did with 2 way strong players (outside) and vet or vet-like (inside). Pritchard went younger in Portland now trying to adjust with Miller, didn't successfully get as much defense yet and has to get it from Oden, not a sure or necessarily soon thing.

core "of" cores.

Durant isn't core of core to the Spurs design. In that scheme he is sort of a super-Finley. He is core of core of the Thunder design. What really makes sense around that? Got to have more defense but more offense too. More 2 way strong players in the top of the rotation. And vets who really know how to fill a role, rather than tons of young'uns trying to learn the game and rack up individual stats.

It could be more actually. I haven't done the calculation for this hypothetical. But it is clearly large to date, a major major departure from the San Antonio model. One of many. Unless Green becomes a defensive anchor I don't think you can really say the Thunder design is a close version of the Spurs design because that is the core or cores of that design.

Adjust for help defense impact the way I describe and the swap of Jeff Green for Tim Duncan would be up around 10 games.

Using the method as is, Swap Jeff Green for Tim Duncan and Duncan guards his man but contributes nothing in terms of help defense to the rest of team defense efficiency as the calculation uses the help defense environment of the Thunder before he gets to OKC. Thus a large part of Duncan's impact is missed. As is. Hence my recommended improvement.

@Brett
Brett, it's seriously awesome though. You're a wizard my man. You're Brett the White.

Thanks everyone for checking it out and the feedback. I do think I have the kinks worked out so that it should work for everyone (it did seem to be an issue with how IE was handling javascript). If you are still having issues, please email me at qchoops(at)gmail(dot)com, because I do want to get those resolved.

As for the shifting outcomes - I have made a few tweaks, and one was the mentioned tweak for low usage players, which did hit Tyson. I'll continue to update it and hopefully make it more useful (and thorough). Thanks again.

@Jax Raging Bile Duct
Well dang. Now I look silly.

Hainline did tweak it. He said there was an error in the assignment of extra possessions for low usage players. The way it works now is to spread the extra possessions among the other teammates, rather than assume the low usage player will take the possession himself.

That's the only tweak I know of, but he's probably made others as the users continue to test it.

Yeah, it's new and could have had some kinks. There is no way statistically for 1 player to increase a team by 14 wins--unless they are a top 5 player in efficiency differential.

The concept is good, but rather shallow. I would like to see adjusted +/- instead of "efficiencies"--they measure the same thing, but more APM is more accurate.

@DSMok1
Hmm. Strange because it honestly was different yesterday for me. Maybe Hainline tweaked it.

Yes, I think you're a little off here.

Swapping Nenad for Chandler:

Actual Efficiency for each player shows that player's personal efficiency & Pythagorean record. The next two lines establish the baseline for each team with the specific players subtracted and the slack taken up by the rest of the team.

Then: "Oklahoma City Efficiency Stats With Tyson Chandler replacing Nenad Krstic"

The first line has the OKC efficiency with TC on the court. The resulting record is "30.5 - 51.5". That is WITH CHANDLER ON THE COURT. In other words, if he played EVERY MINUTE, that is what their record would be.

Currently, OKC's pythag is about 26-56. If Krstic was off the team and Chandler played every minute of the season, he would still add only 4 wins. If he played a more reasonable 1500 minutes, they gain only 2 wins.

Got it?

@DSMok1
I just used the original pythagorean record for the 14 win jump. There are different variables to get different numbers.

Royce... are you sure you did the comparisons right? I didn't get improvement anywhere near as big as you did with Tyson Chandler being added... more like a 5 game improvement.

@Bryan
Ooo, very good idea.

Or better yet, I wonder what happens when you replace Thabo Sefolosha with Manu Genobli, er, um, James Harden's best case scenario.

yeah... my office computer uses explorer. I need to download firefox anyway.

I really just wanted to compare Westbrook to some other point gaurds and Green to some of the other power forwards (I'm a fan of both, don't get me wrong).

The author thinks it might be related to internet explorer and that he is checking or working on it. Works for me using Firefox.

@Bryan
Are you in Internet Explorer? I had trouble getting it to work there too.

I must be an idiot or something... cuz I can't seem to get anything but zeros to come up when I use the sim... what am I doing wrong?

It is completely possible that you could have a roster of Sessions (free agent), Lawson (available for sale), Harden, D West, Weaver, Sefolosha or Gelabale at 40% of the cost or Batum (instead of Ibaka), Durant, Landry (draft), White, B Lopez or K Love (instead of Westbrook), Cunningham or Pendergraph or Blair or Llull (instead of Mullens), Noah (instead of Green), Collison and maybe Krstic but probably cheaper then or waiting til this summer. Do Allen or Lewis differently or anything else and you could be even better.

According to their stats, Chandler is worth a lot more than Okafor because Chandler has a much higher offensive rating while having the same defensive rating. I think we would be a playoff team for sure if we replaced Kristic with Okafor, even if our wins don't go up enough to say so.

See my top dozen lineup list in the Wed. bolt thread and if you want check it against what they actually do on lineup adjusted at basketballvalue.com.

See if I'd add wins or not.

Ok, if you want to rumble, swap anyone for Presti and would they have won much less than they did in year 1 or 2? And what if it ends up <30 in year 3? Or perhaps even less than 25?

As for star player intangibles, in the commentary at Queen City Hoops I outlined how help defense could be properly incorporated into the model using defensive adjusted +/-. Offense might need some work too, but it is a start.

Somehow it's a less than perfect scenario. Which Tyson Chandler are we talking about? The Tyson from '08-09 or the Tyson from '07-'08. There is a pretty stark difference.

@Jax Raging Bile Duct

He's in OKC homie. I texted him though and told him to get the updates goin.

@Kevin

Dang! See what you can do to get Nick's twitter update quota up to at least once or twice a day. He's holding out on me lately. There are only a few sources where you can get dry wit via twitter.

@Jax Raging Bile Duct

Yeah, I could totally see that. He would produce more than any of the current Sonic bigmen.

Though I love Collison, he's my boy, we kicked a couple times over the summer.

@Kevin

The simulation must have chosen those 14 games we lost by 4 points or less.

At least, that's what I'd say if I made that sim.

How does adding a guy who plays 14 games a year add 14 wins a year?

@Cody Thrasher
Exactly.

These things are always interesting to try out, but they never take into consideration the intangibles the star players bring to the table. A Tim Duncan or Kobe Bryant would do so much more than bring good numbers to a team. Either guy would make the Thunder a contender for 45 or 50 wins.

Nonetheless, it's still fun to flip flop players and see the results.

@Royce
You went there. hahaha

@Nix
I wish there was a machine to show how many wins we'd improve if you had a different coach. Or general manager.

Swap Crow for Sam Presti.... OKC improves 250 wins.

Apparently you can't trade KD for me straight up within the machine.

It's flawed.

But I projected an added 5 wins if I was a starter.