A few days ago, the won-loss predictions of the Wages of Wins Network were reviewed. Today we want to review predictions for post season awards. Andres Alvarez – at Nerd Numbers the Blog – has collected these predictions. And his post reviewing these predictons is offered below.
Make sure to check out the actual picks here
Wages of Wins Network 2011 Stat Smackdown
In exciting news Arturo inadvertently left out Nene from his predictions. When he put Nene back in his projection of the Nuggets improved. I will try and update the range tables in the near future. However, today is about the Players and the awards they may win.
Most Valuable Player (Media)
- Players Picked: Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade
- General Consensus: Kevin Durant
A lot of people have this pegged to be Kevin Durant’s year. He was right on Lebron’s heels last year and the King’s off-season decision has not helped his popularity with the writers. Some fun dark horses are Brandon Roy (getting credit for Portland’s season if it plays out) and Kobe winning in a rivalry duel of East and West.
Most Valuable Player (Wins Produced)
- Players Picked: Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard
- General Consensus: Lebron James
The city of Cleveland and the writers may feel hurt by Lebron’s choice to take his talents to south beach. However, the Wages of Wins Network analysts are aware Lebron has been a top two player for this award the last two years. In fact we’re all pretty boring picking from the top three under 30 players from last year’s MVP list.
Rookie of the Year (Media)
- Players Picked: John Wall, Blake Griffin
- General Consensus: Blake Griffin
There wasn’t much ambiguity in this pick. It should also be noted that no analysts thinks the Clippers or Wizards will crack 30 wins. We’ll see if the main stream media can reconcile that, but it worked for Durant. With that said the question will be which 20 point scorer the writers go for. So far Blake Griffin is meeting expectations!
Rookie of the Year (Wins Produced)
- Players Picked: DeMarcus Cousins, Blake Griffin
- General Consensus: Blake Griffin
John Wall is pegged as one of the most explosive talents coming out of this year’s draft. As such it is no surprise that every single analyst chose to pick someone else! Blake Griffin pretty much sweeps this with a few analysts fearing injury and wisely picking the next best big man in DeMarcus Cousins.
Most Improved Player (Media)
- Players Picked: Roy Hibbert, Derrick Rose, Stephen Curry, Javale McGee, Michael Beasly, Robin Lopez, Kevin Love, D.J. Augustin
- General Consensus: ??
No clear consensus and yet I love many of these picks. Personally I’m rooting for Kevin Love, although that is almost a back handed compliment. I think Beasley is an excellent choice as well. The only really bad choice in my mind is my own with Derrick Rose. I could see the media going for any of these players; let’s hope the Wages of Wins Network gets this one right with the shot gun approach.
Most Improved Player (Wins Produced)
- Players Picked: James Hardan, Chris Kaman, Dujain Blair, Monta Ellis, Kevin Love, Javale McGee, Trevor Ariza, Andris Biedrins
- General Consensus: Kevin Love
A few analysts went the route of picking good players likely to increase their minutes (Blair, Love and Biedrins), others picked good players that had off seasons (Ariza, Ellis and Kaman). Others picked young players that should show a leap (McGee and Harden). Which strategy will win? We’ll find out in a few short months. If Monta keeps it up though, we may have to crown Evan winner of this one.
Sixth Man of the Year (Media)
- Players Picked: Antawn Jamison, Manu Ginobli, Jason Tery, Rodrigue Beaubois, Udonis Haslem, Marcus Thornton, Shaq
- General Consensus: Udonis Haslem or Manu Ginobli
We’ll have to wait and see on this one. Thus far many of these players have actually started. I think Haslem or Ginobli are both excellent picks and Haslem is one of the few players on Miami with a good reputation right now. Antawn Jamison and Shaq are excellent choices. We’ll have to see how the writers feel. I think all of the analysts will be sad if Crawford takes it again however.
Sixth Man of the Year (Wins Produced)
- Players Picked: Manu Ginobli, Lamar Odom, Samuel Dalembert, James Harden
- General Consensus: Lamar Odom
Ginobli and Odom (former winners) are heavy favorites for this one. James Harden shows up on this list as well, which may happen if he has a break out year. Samuel Dalembert could very well get this award if he ends up off the bench in Sacramento.
I think these awards are much harder to peg than team records, but we’ll have to see. I’m excited about the prospect of a lot of these picks and think our analysts showed some good creativity. Good luck!
-Dre
P.S.
As we are on the subject of recognition I did want to call out two commenters for their contributions. Sportfanatic is an amazing editor and has been amazingly polite in catching errors in posts, which in turn make this blog better. Peter has been an amazing trivia contestant and I apologize realizing I forgot to update him as the winner for two of the prior trivia challenges. This list is by no means exhaustive and I want to thank you readers for being so great with your feedback.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Michael
October 31, 2010
Nice post. Kudos on singling out a couple of the good performers so far, personally I would love to see more of that as the season progresses :-)
Gil Meriken
November 1, 2010
I know it’s early in the season, but I looked at Lebron’s WS/48 through three games at basketball-reference.com, and it’s a meager 0.095 … obviously, I expect that to increase, but even if he lands somewhere in the 0.200-.230 range by the end of the season, does that imply he somehow got worse simply by changing teams? Or is it your expectation that he will eventually get back to 0.300 range, since WS/48 should be a stable indicator of productivity regardless of who your teammates are?
anon
November 1, 2010
CHRIS PAUL will lead the league in Wins Produced. Obviously the media won’t give him the MVP but come on! Give the man some respect and give him WoW MVP!
Michael
November 1, 2010
Lebron will get better. Theres no way he averages that many turnovers for the entire season.
reservoirgod
November 1, 2010
Gil:
I touched on LeBron’s slow start & improvement on my blog (click my name) and specifically in my last two Game Recaps of Heat vs. Nets & Magic. He’s posted better numbers each game as the season has gone along. He finally posted a typical LeBron game against the Nets w/ 0.413 WP48. His turnovers were still too high in that game, though. He’s above average in every category except steals, turnovers & net possessions. He’s getting close in steals and I would agree w/ Michael – the turnovers have to come down.
kevin
November 2, 2010
I acutually think the media generally knows how good LeBron is. Now, they might say kobe is better or Kobe is just as good. But all that means is they overestimate how good Kobe is.
There may have been some backlash on LeBron for “betraying” his hometown team but, all in all, I think the media has been fair to him. It’s the fans who I think are being a little unfair. The fans always expect the players to be magnaminous, unselfish and self-effacing. But pro-athletes aren’t any of those things. They’re self-centered, vain and egotistical. That’s what makes them good,a nd what drives them to be good, to be “better” than everyone else.
Tommy_Grand
November 2, 2010
6th man of the year:
I suspect Manu may be DQed for this award: too many starts.
Gil Meriken
November 2, 2010
I’m finding the Lebron switch of teams and roles to be all sorts of interesting: today, Lebron finished with zero rebounds for the first time since his rookie season. It’s one game, obviously, but you have to concede this isn’t just a random occurrence, it’s simply a consequence of his role on this new team. So the troll in me wants to state “Lebron is now a worse rebounder than last year!”, but I know this just means “Lebron is a less productive rebounder because of the dynamics of his team”. Curious to see what all of your takes are on this fascinating experiment of a big superstar changing teams and also changing his role (not in magnitude, but in terms of what the team needs from him). We’ve seen previous examples like Jason Kidd, and other stars, but for the most part they were expected to do pretty much what they were doing on their old teams.
Daniel
November 3, 2010
A few misspellings… Dwayne = Dwyane, Lebron = LeBron, Hardan = Harden, Dujain = DeJuan, Javale = JaVale, Tery = Terry, Ginobli = Ginobili.