The Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks will be closely examined next to each other this season. How good and valuable is Amar’e? Is he one of the best power forwards in the game or were his eye-popping stats just a result of Steve Nash MVP seasons filled with alley-oops? Would Karl Malone have been as dominant without John Stockton? Honestly, I don’t really know. Game 3 against the Lakers in the Western Conference finals when Amar’e put up 42 and 11 makes me believe Amar’e truly is a second tier level star in this league and therefore, according to my formula established earlier in the Cleveland article, Amar’e should be worth 19 wins. So let’s look at the win loss records for the Suns and Knicks last season:
Phoenix Suns 54-28
New York Knicks 29-53
According to the Superstar Formula the 2010-2011 season should look this way:
Phoenix Suns: 35-47
New York Knicks: 48-34
After seeing these number I immediately became uncomfortable with the idea of the Knicks nearing 50 wins and the Suns dropping down to sub .500 range. So I constructed the “Nash Impact” formula or better named the “Dirk & Diaw Formula.” Here’s how it works:
Take the years when Nash played for the Mavericks dishing to Dirk and find the average wins per season:
52.4 Nash Era
Then the wins in the years since he left for Phoenix:
56.8 Nashless Era
Next the Diaw part. Boris Diaw had a few statistical bump seasons getting fed by Steve Nash on a consistent basis. Take the Suns record when Diaw played for them.
56.6666 Diaw Suns
Then the average record Diaw has had with the Bobcats without Steve Nash as his point guard:
39.5 Diaw record with Bobcats
Now that you have these numbers you set up the full Dirk & Diaw formula:
[(Average games won with Steve Nash as point guard in Dallas) – (Average games won after Steve Nash left and new point guards filled in for Dirk)] + [(Average games won with Steve Nash as the point guard for Boris Diaw) – (Average games won by Diaw without Nash spoon feeds)] / 2
[(52.8) – (56.8) ] + [(56.66) – (39.5) ] / 2
(-4) + (17.16) / 2
For Dirk he actually had a 4 game improvement without Nash, but for Diaw his average wins went down 17.16. So add the -4 to the 17.16 and divide by two and the result is:
6.58
Now round 6.58 up to 7 for the same English major posing as mathematician rule as before and I believe that Steve Nash is responsible for 7 of Amar’e’s (trying to add a possessive apostrophe to Amar’e is near impossible) 19 game, 2nd tier superstar impact. Meaning, instead of adding 19 wins to the Knicks, add 12, and take 12 wins away from the Suns. Here’s the new 2010-2011 records:
Phoenix Suns: 42-40
New York Knicks: 41-41
Amazingly the two are only separated by one win and that is why I have separated them by one ranking.
Danilo Gallinari- Remember the name. This will be his breakout season in New York. His development will directly impact whether they go for Carmelo or Chris Paul in the upcoming years.
Hakim Warrick- I strangely think he will thrive in whatever minutes he receives at power forward.
Hedo Turka(spelling)- What if he taps into his 2009 Orlando Magic self?
Ronny Turiaf- I hope he develops into a 25 minute a game guy because the occasional Turiaf shot block is awesome to watch and he may be the only Gonzaga alumni (besides Stockton) that I actually like.
No comments:
Post a Comment