What If We Had Been Injury-Free?

[1kingzfan]

Naturally, no team goes the whole season without some measure of injuries, but this one should be interesting. How many more wins do you think the Kings would have had without Artest's injuries/suspension, Martin's injury, and Bibby's injury (until traded)?

Do you think we would have had the same or less wins, 1-6 more wins, 7-12 more wins, or 12+ wins (ie, playoff team)?

I think it would have been in the 7-12 more wins range. Over .500 showing, but still not quite good enough to be a playoff team which would have taken 50 or 51 wins this season.

 

[fnordius]

If we'd had no major injuries to starters, I would think I was watching the wrong franchise.

 

[upinsmoke]

For sure still missed the playoffs but with a healthy Bibby I would think close to 10 more W's

 

[PurpleHaze]

I've sort of forgotten exactly how many tons of games Bibby missed along with I think it was 17 by Martin and something like 8 at beginning of the season due to suspension by Artest. Not to mention various games missed by other Kings including a few by Miller, plus the entire season by Raheem. Mikki Moore should get some kind of Kings iron man award for playing in all 82 games! I really can't measure and it would only be a guess how many more games the Kings "could" have won if there had not had so many personnel on the shelf with all the assorted starting line-ups.

I think most of what happened was Coach Theus personally willing and motivating the 38 wins scratched out due to hard play. He always had clear goals and convinced most of the players to buy in. First it was make the playoffs which we now see would have taken 50 wins in the west and then it was get to .500 and go from there. I have little doubt 41-41 would have happened, but not sure how many more wins could have been realistically tacked on. I'm ready and wanting to think about next season. Maybe 3-4 or more new players on the roster via trades, draft, free agents, and especially if K. Thomas and SAR miraculously disappear.

 

[1kingzfan]

Overall Record 38-44

Just a few tidbits for your consideration about the Kings' record this season when...

Bibby Out 15-21
(until he was traded)

Bibby Starting 8-7 (also had Moore, Martin, Artest, Miller available for all but one of those games - when Brad sliced his index finger...a loss, so...)

All 5 Kings Pre-Season Starters Starting 8-6

Artest Out 8-17

Miller Out 3-7

Martin Out 7-10

Udrih Out 7-11
(includes beginning of season and 1 low-minute game stint)

In the end, not too much is telling from these individual record compilations, except that with Ron out the Kings were worse than their overall season record and the Kings' designated starters in camp got to play just 14 games all together and went 8-6.

What is important, though, is that with so many players headed in and out, there was significant disruption to the flow and chemistry of the team...on both ends....and throughout most of the season. Tougher to coach under this scenario as well.

 

[Bricklayer]

So the question being asked is if we were teh only franchise inthe league who never lost a player all season long to anything, how many more games would we win if we had Bibby and therefore had never signed Beno, and had Martin & Artest all year and therefore Salmons had just stumbled about rotting on the bench and squeezing Cisco into 15min a game?

I am going to say maybe an extra 5 wins, but of course it depends whether we are the only team that gets to be magically healthy, or whether we have to run into the Lakers with Bynum, Mihm, Kobe with a good hand etc., Houston with Yao, Portalnd with Oden, Denver with Nene, the Clippers with Brand etc.

Bibby missing half the year here was the only really out of character injury, and the direct result of that was the acquisition of Beno, who was nearly as good as later day Bibby has been anyway. When Ron was out, Salmons morphed into an 18ppg scorer etc. We really did not lose that much.

 

[1kingzfan]

So the question being asked is if we were teh only franchise inthe league who never lost a player all season long to anything, how many more games would we win if we had Bibby and therefore had never signed Beno, and had Martin & Artest all year and therefore Salmons had just stumbled about rotting on the bench and squeezing Cisco into 15min a game?

I am going to say maybe an extra 5 wins, but of course it depends whether we are the only team that gets to be magically healthy, or whether we have to run into the Lakers with Bynum, Mihm, Kobe with a good hand etc., Houston with Yao, Portalnd with Oden, Denver with Nene, the Clippers with Brand etc.

Bibby missing half the year here was the only really out of character injury, and the direct result of that was the acquisition of Beno, who was nearly as good as later day Bibby has been anyway. When Ron was out, Salmons morphed into an 18ppg scorer etc. We really did not lose that much.

I mostly agree with you, but my number was actually 8 rather than 5.

Other players stepped up and often played very well to give us wins when we had one or multiple starters sidelined. Most teams had some sort of key player going down for some period of time this season, but we seemed to be playing the musical chairs injury game with various starters. In the end, as it turned out, several players were allowed to develop more than had there been no injuries, and so perhaps that is a positive outcome of this campaign that may not have occurred with an injury-free starter run that would have still fallen short of the playoffs.

 

[vfettke]

I don't see us winning many more games with Bibby. He and Artest never did well on court together. Bibby would've also taken away a lot more of Martin's shots.

However, had Martin and Artest not missed many games I think we might have been much better off and would've finished a few games above .500

 

[Superman]

I said 7-12, and I think it would be somewhere around 8 or 9 extra wins with no major injuries.

Of course, I didn't take into account the fact that Bibby's injury resulted directly in us acquiring Beno, but since we're fantasizing, I'm just going to assume that we would have gotten Beno anyway.

I also understand that 8 more wins means that we finish 46-36, which seems nuts for a team like ours in the Western conference. I might be inclined to lower my vote down to the 1-6 range, but I believe that we were destined to do as much as we could this season to hurt our lottery prospects, and there's nothing less attractive than a 46 win lottery team with the 14th pick in the Draft.

Even perfectly healthy, we still don't make the playoffs in the West, though we could have finished 4th in the East. And that's why our Draft prospects are so bad right now, because even though we are the 2nd worst team in our division, there's actually a playoff team in the East with a worse record than ours.

 

[fnordius]

Just a few tidbits for your consideration about the Kings' record this season when...

Bibby Out 15-21
(until he was traded)

Bibby Starting 8-7 (also had Moore, Martin, Artest, Miller available for all but one of those games - when Brad sliced his index finger...a loss, so...)

All 5 Kings Pre-Season Starters Starting 8-6

Artest Out 8-17

Miller Out 3-7

Martin Out 7-10

Udrih Out 7-11
(includes beginning of season and 1 low-minute game stint)

In the end, not too much is telling from these individual record compilations, except that with Ron out the Kings were worse than their overall season record and the Kings' designated starters in camp got to play just 14 games all together and went 8-6.

It gets very tricky trying to come to any conclusions based on those numbers, though...

Yes, we went 7-10 with Martin out, but our average for the year would be around 7.5-9.5 anyway, so there we're looking at a difference of only half a game, which can't be called statistically significant. A messier problem is trying to figure out what's going on when there's overlap. For example, IIRC there were 7 games where we had no Ron, no Bibby, and no Beno. Those 7 games get triple-counted in the above stats, and because we absolutely stunk with no PG at all and no Ron, it makes each of the three absences look worse than they would otherwise.

Which was why I didn't even attempt a statistical analysis of the injury situation.

 

[GeorgeofSacramento]

I still think Arco was built over some ancient burial grounds and we've envoked the wrath of the spirits over the years.

 

[fnordius]

I still think Arco was built over some ancient burial grounds and we've envoked the wrath of the spirits over the years.

Probably some Lakers jersey buried in the foundation.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-yankees-cursefoiled&prov=ap&type=lgns

 

[Jechtsphere]

I never really thought the injury's made a huge difference so I said 1-6 wins...

 

[SacTownKid]

About .500 which is about the limit this team is capable a giving anyway.

 

[1kingzfan]

It gets very tricky trying to come to any conclusions based on those numbers, though...

Yes, we went 7-10 with Martin out, but our average for the year would be around 7.5-9.5 anyway, so there we're looking at a difference of only half a game, which can't be called statistically significant. A messier problem is trying to figure out what's going on when there's overlap. For example, IIRC there were 7 games where we had no Ron, no Bibby, and no Beno. Those 7 games get triple-counted in the above stats, and because we absolutely stunk with no PG at all and no Ron, it makes each of the three absences look worse than they would otherwise.

Which was why I didn't even attempt a statistical analysis of the injury situation.

The numbers were put out there for KF.com consumption, as I was bored the other evening and just wanted to see what they were, not to make a case for one player or another having more impact when he was around or was not. As I said in that post..."In the end, not too much is telling from these individual record compilations..."

On the games without Bibby (when he was here), Ron, and Beno, there were actually only 6 of those, the 5 at the season start and the 1st game at PHX when Beno sat with a quad injury, the Kings record in those games was 1-5.

Other trifecta absences resulted in the following:

MIA: Bibby, Artest, Udrih 1-5
MIA: Bibby, Artest, Miller 0-1
MIA: Bibby, Artest, Martin 3-4
MIA: Artest, Miller, Udrih 1-1
MIA: Artest, Martin, Miller 0-2

Moral of the story? Nothing more than it's a tough road in the NBA without 3 of your 5 starters. Not particularly earth-shattering.

One more of note:

MIA: Artest, Martin 3-6

 

[Oscar]

Naturally, no team goes the whole season without some measure of injuries, but this one should be interesting. How many more wins do you think the Kings would have had without Artest's injuries/suspension, Martin's injury, and Bibby's injury (until traded)?

Do you think we would have had the same or less wins, 1-6 more wins, 7-12 more wins, or 12+ wins (ie, playoff team)?

I think it would have been in the 7-12 more wins range. Over .500 showing, but still not quite good enough to be a playoff team which would have taken 50 or 51 wins this season.

You're assuming that things would have stay the same with the rest of the league if the Kings were healthy during the season. The NBA is a fluid situation - it reacts accordingly to the conditions put in front of it. By that matter, how would the Lakers have done if they stayed healthy? Or the Rockets if Yao Ming wasn't injured, etc. Of course there are extremes and exceptions - Miami was decimated with injuries and won only 15 games. However, I'm a big proponent of the scoreboard - it doesn't lie and it almost always gives you the accurate bottom line.

 

[1kingzfan]

You're assuming that things would have stay the same with the rest of the league if the Kings were healthy during the season.

I didn't assume anything, except what was stated. Nothing more.

You assumed what I was assuming.

 

[fnordius]

"How many games would we have won if the NBA were injury-free" would be a different poll with a dramatically different result, I would think.

Here we're only hypothesizing about what it would be like if we were immune from reality and nobody else was.

 

[1kingzfan]

Absolutely.

You can assign your own assumptions as you see fit...

Maybe if Bibby is not injured, we don't pick up Beno.
Maybe Cisco, Hawes, et al don't develop as much with lesser minutes.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...

The poll was for fun to assess what folks thought about the impact of the injuries to 3 (not all) of our team's starters (note: not injury free), and, as stated in my post to start the thread, it was not ignoring of the fact that other teams have injuries, too.

 

[fnordius]

Of course there are extremes and exceptions - Miami was decimated with injuries and won only 15 games.

I'd bet that Clips fans are really crying, too. With Brand and Livingston in top form all year, they would very likely have won twice as many games as they did, and had a shot at the playoffs. Instead, they barely managed to beat anyone but us.

Although I suppose they'll be laughing again this summer with the #6 pick.