Hollinger Projects Heat Win 68 Games

Three weeks ago, I took a quick look at how a team with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh might fare if the three were to join forces.



Now, after the shadiest summer in league history concluded with those three all on the same roster (not to mention the apparent shenanigans with James Jones and Richard Jefferson opting out from and then returning to the Heat and Spurs, respectively), that question has moved from a hypothetical "what if?" to a very real "it did."



Thus, it's time for a second, closer look at the same question.



In the first exercise, I plugged the trio into a lineup with 10 replacement-level players (those are the guys any team can pluck off the scrap heap) and came away with a figure of 61 wins for the imaginary Team Trinity. My assumptions for that exercise included a PER of 29 for James, 26 for Wade and 23 for Bosh, with James playing 3,100 minutes, Wade playing 2,850 and Bosh playing 2,600.



For the real Miami Heat? Let's revisit those assumptions.




[+] EnlargeNed Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images
The Heat's season looks brighter after signing free agents like Mike Miller (above) and Udonis Haslem.


First of all, the supporting cast is significantly better than we had projected. We had assumed the Heat would need to clear the decks salarywise, but because Bosh, James and Wade all took less money than they could have, it allowed the Heat to keep another decent player (Mario Chalmers) and sign two more solid contributors as free agents (Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem). Those three are significantly better than replacement-level, or at least they were last season, and so that should improve Miami's projection significantly.



From there, the players the Heat have filled out their roster with -- Joel Anthony, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jamaal Magloire, Carlos Arroyo, Juwan Howard, Jones and Dexter Pittman -- are more in line with the type of minimum-contract flotsam we'd expected them to land in the first exercise, so they don't change the outcome of our projection much.



But before we get to our answer, we have two other adjustments to make. The first is a technical one involving Bosh, Wade and James. Thanks to a bit of digging by ESPN researcher Keith Goldner, we have a much better idea about how the interplay of Bosh, Wade and James might work.



I had estimated earlier that each of Miami's big three would lose about 5 percent of his total possessions this season but could only speculate as to how that might impact their efficiency. Based on Goldner's work with the players' skill curves (a concept created by Denver Nuggets stat guru Dean Oliver that shows how players' efficiency changes with more or fewer touches), we can now estimate what might happen.



Looking at their skill curves for the past three seasons, we'd expect James' efficiency to increase by 1.19 points per 100 possessions, Wade's by 0.70, and Bosh's by 0.29.



Of course, they could also redistribute the possessions to optimize their efficiency. In that case, instead of reducing all three players by 5 percent, the correct strategy would be to diminish Bosh's touches severely, diminish James' touches slightly, and actually increase the touches by Wade -- up to a usage rate of about 40, he shows virtually no loss of effectiveness.



Because this scenario stretches the bounds of feasibility -- it's nearly inconceivable that Wade would have more touches than he did when he was basically playing 1-on-5 last season -- I won't dwell on it in this projection.



Besides, they're fearsome enough without such a severe adjustment. Pumping those changes into last season's numbers, one gets Bosh with a PER of 24.16, Wade with a PER of 27.39 and James at a robust 31.04. Basically, they wouldn't lose a thing.



Of course, they won't be playing with last season's Bosh-Wade-James tandem, but next season's version. This is an important distinction -- their numbers would have been likely to diminish slightly even if they had stayed on their own teams, simply because there isn't much room left for them to go up. My projection tool had James at a PER of 29.12, Wade at 26.31 and Bosh at 23.88 if each had stayed put.




[+] EnlargeAndrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images
The Heat will be good, but good enough to challenge the record 72 wins set by MJ's Bulls in 1995-96?


Throwing in the skill-curve adjustment from above, we end up with James at 28.97, Wade at 25.60 and Bosh at 22.93. As noted above, my back-of-the-envelope estimate from three weeks ago had James at 29, Wade at 26 and Bosh at 23. Score one for the envelope.

Now there's still the matter of plugging in the rest of the roster. I ran all of them through my projection system and estimated minutes for the rest of the crew -- 2,000 each for Miller and Haslem, with Chalmers and Arroyo splitting the point duties and about 500 minutes left over for a "no-point" offense, and spot duty for the others. After two other slight adjustments -- putting my finger on the scale to improve what I felt was an unusually pessimistic projection for Miller, and replacing Jones (who rated far south of replacement level) with a randomly selected civilian, the answer it spat out was ...



68 wins.



Well, 68.3 to be exact, but it's not clear to me where the Heat will get the extra 0.3.



Of course, there's one other important factor to consider here: The Heat probably don't need to win 68 games. My model assumes they'll play their best players as much as they can, but any such projection system breaks down a bit with elite teams that can coast at the end of the regular season. Most likely, the Heat will need to win only 63 or so to clinch home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. If they hit that mark with six or seven games to play, you can bet all the sugarcane in Florida that Wade, James and Bosh will see very little of the court.



As a result, the most realistic estimate for this team is more like 65 wins.



More importantly, it isn't 70 or 72 -- the targets that everybody might be talking about during the season if Miami appears on track to challenge the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' all-time record of 72-10. To achieve the 70-win plateau, the Heat not only would have to be interested enough to play their starters during some meaningless April games but also would need better-than-average health from their three stars and/or surprise seasons from at least a couple of the role players.



But whether it's 65, 68.3, 70 or 72, the overriding conclusion is the same: Miami is now the favorite to win it all. With three stars and just enough role-playing talent around them to fill in the cracks, a Miami-L.A. Lakers Finals next June almost seems preordained.



Now if we could just get this pesky regular season out of the way ...