SI projects the Celtics at 47 win (shares)

The other day I was whining on Twitter about how the rebuild wasn’t quite moving along as I had hoped. Judging by the poll on this site, I’m clearly in the minority.

Today I stumbled upon SI’s standings projections based on win shares. It has the Celtics 5th in the East with 47 win shares. What the hell is a win share?

This exercise will be guided by Win Shares, a statistic that aims to quantify how many wins each player contributes to his team in a given season. A team’s collective Win Shares doesn’t always exactly add up to its actual win total, but it’s usually quite close—since the 1962-63 season, the average margin of error is 2.74 wins.

I typically roll my eyes at statistics of this nature, but when they thrust the Celtics into the 5th seed in the East, I pay close attention:

Boston Celtics
2014-15 record (win shares): 40-42 (41.0)
Key players gained: Amir Johnson (5.1), David Lee (3.2), full seasons of Isaiah Thomas (+4.0) and Jonas Jerebko (+1.9)
Key players lost: Brandon Bass (5.3), Jeff Green (2.0)
Projected 2015-16 win shares (record): 47.4 (47-35)

The rebuilding job at the Garden continues to zoom along without a hitch. The Celtics will be a ton of fun to watch in 2015-16, and should expect to improve on their playoff seeding from last season.

Acquiring Lee gives Boston some much-needed scoring down low, as well as a respected, team-first veteran with championship experience. And it’s somewhat of a miracle that Danny Ainge was able to convince Johnson to sign for two years and $16 million after the power forward had earned himself a more ludicrous deal in Toronto.

Toronto, Cleveland, Chicago and Atlanta round out the top 4 in the East. Those same teams, albeit in different order, were top 4 last year. I’m puzzled why the Heat (8th) aren’t higher, given they’ll have a full season of Chris Bosh and Goran Dragic. Two guys at Sheridan Hoops believe the Heat will bump the Celtics out of the playoffs.

Also of note, Brooklyn is projected to finish with the 5th worst win share in the league. I think we all know which teams owns the Nets pick in 2016.