I discussed the trade of James Harden to Houston in big-picture terms over the weekend, but now we need to break down the nitty-gritty. In terms of wins and losses for this season, how does this impact the Rockets and Thunder?
The more important estimate, obviously, regards the Thunder, as the trade potentially opens up the Western Conference race much more for other rivals.
For starters, I think we can safely assume that the pieces these teams landed are by and large the ones that will play all season for them. Harden, clearly, isn't going anywhere -- he'll have a five-year max deal by the time you're done handing out candy on Wednesday. The other pieces Houston received are fungible and have no impact on its projection. Similarly, Jeremy Lamb isn't moving anytime soon, and Kevin Martin seems unlikely to relocate without a Godfather-type offer from another club.
(And for those talking up the idea of the Thunder repackaging Martin's expiring contract and the draft picks for another big-name piece, whom did you have in mind? James Harden? The Thunder just made the inverse of said trade for a reason).
As a result, we can fairly cleanly analyze the difference pre- and post-trade. Before the trade, my model had the Thunder winning 58 games. Taking Harden and Daequan Cook out of the Thunder rotation and adding in Lamb and Martin takes them down a peg, even though I projected Martin to do better in Oklahoma City than I had him doing in Houston. (This is subjective, but I do think he'll be better; he was second in the league in points per minute two seasons ago before Kevin McHale's system took the ball out of his hands, and he should have the rock more as a go-to guy for the Thunder's second unit.)
Keeping Martin's other adjustments the same (dings for injury proneness and defense), using my standard rookie score for Jeremy Lamb (here, I leave my ad-libs out of it and estimate a performance based purely on draft position) and tweaking minutes for other players to adjust for the Thunder likely playing a bit more smallball, and I end up at 54 wins for the Thunder.
That's a four-win drop, and at the margin you can see the impact this might have on their title chances -- 58 wins screams contender, while 54 hints more meekly at the chance of a deep playoff run. While it doesn't affect their projected seeding at all, the Thunder grade out as a less-formidable regular-season outfit, and that carries over to how well they project for the postseason, too.
All of which makes sense. You don't make a trade like this, largely motivated by cap considerations and draft picks, without taking a step back in the short term.
As a result, I have to revise my earlier projection that the Thunder would come out of the West in the postseason. I now would rate San Antonio and the Lakers as having a better chance, and with L.A. getting annihilated every night in preseason I would give the upper hand to San Antonio. Yes, I'm going with the Spurs to win the West, topping the Thunder in a revenge-tinged conference finals. (And yes, I know L.A.'s preseason has several mitigating factors, starting with the fact it's, you know, preseason. Still, not a great omen.)
So if I have the Thunder dropping four wins, you might assume I have Houston gaining four. You'd be wrong. These things aren't always linear -- depending on which players are replaced and how minutes are redistributed, trades can have non-matching outcomes.
Like this one, for instance. I plugged in Harden as a starting shooting guard with a full complement of minutes, upped Carlos Delfino's minutes with Lamb gone and threw in an end-of-rotation wing from Houston's many choices (I'd originally gone with Gary Forbes, but apparently the Rockets plan to cut him, so now it's Marcus Morris -- it scarcely matters whether it's one of those two, or Toney Douglas or Daequan Cook or Sam Hinkie that gets these limited minutes).
The result? Houston bumps all the way up to 37 wins from my initial projection of 27, as adding a full minutes complement of All-Star-caliber wing play represents a major upgrade from Martin's projection (both in minutes and quality). Also, a small portion of the projected improvement comes from a tanking tweak in my model -- basically, the Rockets project to stay in the playoff race long enough that they'll still give a crap in March and April, and that adds a win to their total.
Alas, our work is not done. Since I have Houston adding 10 wins and the Thunder dropping only four, there's some housekeeping that needs to happen to even things out. I had to grab six wins back from the league's other 28 teams to even the league out at a combined 1230 wins and 1230 losses.
In practice, I did this by sucking 6/28th of a win from every club's projection. After that, five teams ended up with their win total rounded down rather than up and lost a win; in other words, Minnesota's projection went from 43.6 to 43.3, so after rounding it kicks the Wolves down from 44 wins to 43. Sacramento, Brooklyn, New York and Milwaukee all suffered similar dings.
With one win left to reclaim and Philadelphia's Andrew Bynum yet to take the court, that seemed like an obvious choice to grab a final win away and even the till.
Finally, in the process of revising the estimates for Houston and Oklahoma City, I discovered that my initial set of projections had inadvertently jobbed the Magic out of a win. Break out the champagne, Orlando: You're now No. 29.
As a result, my revised predicted standings now look like this: