The New York Knicks finished a rather fluky 54-27 last season, good enough for the #2 seed in Eastern Conference. And while they weren’t expected to perform quite as well this season (Las Vegas had their over/under pegged at 48.5 wins), nobody could have predicted a precipitous 17-game drop-off — well, except Kevin Pelton’s SCHOENE projection system. The ESPN stat guru noted three factors that would contribute to the Knicks’ decline: lack of three-point shooting, cramped spacing, and an old team just being one year older. While that is sound, non-technical reasoning — all of which came to bear — the idea of a computer predicting the Knicks’ record was something team personnel scoffed at:
Carmelo Anthony: “Sometimes there’s glitches in the computer. That’s all I got to say.”
Head Coach Mike Woodson: “Do they play? It’s a computer system. So I don’t think computers run up and down the floor. You still gotta play the game. I don’t get caught up into that. Bottom line is we take it one game at a time and put our best foot forward and we try to win. That’s what it’s all about. I have no control over the computers, I really don’t. All I can control is our team and how we play, and that’s all I’m going to try to do.”
Well, try as hard as they might, the Knicks finished 37-54, exactly as Pelton’s model predicted. However, Woodson can take solace in the fact that he’s right about computers: they don’t run up and down the floor, and you still gotta play the game. Case in point: the Phoenix Suns, who were picked by everyone to compete for ping-pong balls, rather than a playoff berth. They managed to finish 28 games above their 20-win projection, while also also causing 19 teams to come in below their Vegas over/under predictions.
[ESPN]
