SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz won 51 games en route to their first postseason appearance since 2012 last year.
They should make the playoffs again this season, but just barely.
According to a projection system based on Win Shares, the Jazz will win 44 games — enough, perhaps, for the No. 8 seed.
Win Shares is an all-encompassing metric that attempts to divide and distribute credit for a team’s success to its individual players. Thus, the sum of a team’s player Win Shares is roughly equal to its win total.
My forecast formula takes into account three year’s worth of Basketball-Reference’s Win Shares Per 48 Minutes stat, an aging curve and estimated minutes based, in part, on last year’s playing time.
The system is simple yet accurate. For the past three seasons, it predicted the Jazz to collect 34, 45 and 49 wins, respectively, before the team went on to finish those campaigns with 38, 40 and 51.
How will the Jazz accumulate 44 victories this year? Here’s what the algorithm produced.
Projected Win SharesInfogramAccording to ESPN, a 44-38 record should net the Jazz the final playoff spot in the West, but it’s no guarantee. Up-and-coming teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Portland Trailblazers will likely battle for the Nos. 6–8 seeds, too.
A number of internal factors could also make the Jazz’s path to the postseason difficult to navigate.
Who, for example, will pick up the slack left behind by Gordon Hayward? Can Ekpe Udoh and Tony Bradley back up Rudy Gobert? Will former lottery picks Dante Exum and Alec Burks live up to their potential?
These are questions the projection system can’t answer.
But right now, the math is on the Jazz’s side.
Jared Bray is a contributing writer for the Deseret News. He also reports in English and Tagalog (a language he learned while serving a two-year church mission in the Philippines) for Balitang America, a nightly news program for The Filipino Channel.