WFNY Roundtable: Weak and weary, hoping Browns vs. Ravens is not dreary
October 9, 2015Justin Gilbert talks about surprise “move to offense”
October 10, 2015Nate Silver’s statistics-driven website FiveThirtyEight.com has taken on the game of predicting the careers of each and every player currently in the NBA. In doing so, they utilized a forecasting algorithm they’ve dubbed “CARMELO,” a system that identifies similar players based on skill set—vitals, tendencies, efficiency— and prior statistics and models out how those careers panned out in subsequent seasons. It takes a slew of this information, throws it into the statistical hopper, mixes in a dash of probabilities, and BAM: A clearly depicted career arc complete with win-based value numerology.
Similar to PECOTA in baseball, CARMELO breaks each player down into categories like “MVP Candidate,” “All-Star,” “rotation player” and the like. It’s somewhat crazy to think that even during LeBron James’ last years in the league, he will still be worth four more wins than the average, or “replacement” player, though the range of potential variation in 2017 may raise some eyebrows.
While we recommend checking out the what, why and how as laid out by Silver, we’ve made it a point to show you the charts and comparable for the 12 players currently under guaranteed contract in addition to the one who is not. Enjoy.
3 Comments
Thank you for another example of why some statistics should have been left in the closet.
Amazing to look at how dissimilar Lebron is to the others that are compared to him. Goes to show that a player of that caliber is both rare and unpredictable.