Predicted Lakers Stats for Next Season

Fisher shot 38.9% on 2P shots last season and took 5.4 per 36 minutes. He also shot 34.8% on 3P while taking 3.6 per 36 minutes. For the upcoming season I don’t see his 2P% increasing and will likely decrease slightly as he continues to age and won’t be able to finish inside but I think he will take sightly fewer attempts too (probably 5.2 per 36 minutes). I have his 3P% increasing to 37% as last year was a down year for him. I have no change in the number of 3pt attempts per 36 minutes though. Take those numbers and percentages and adjust them to 24 minutes per game and you have what I posted above.

As for Sasha, he is tough to predict. He could struggle with his shot again and then fall out of the rotation and then be traded before the deadline to save on luxury taxes… or he could regain his form from his last contract year where he contected on 43.7% of his 3’s. If he does that then he will likely get more minutes (meaning less for Brown though) and will certainly put up better stats than I have predicted above. But if he does struggle and is traded then the stats above could be too optimistic. Sasha is one of the toughest players to predict this season.

I actually have Kobe shooting better on 2P shots (50% this year compared to 48.4% last year), better on 3P shots (35% compared to 32.9%), and better on FTs (85% compared to 81.1%). I think he will be more efficient since he won’t be dealing with the hand injury as much. I also have him taking 20.5 shots per 36 minutes, up from the 19.9 he took last year. I have a slight drop in FTA from 6.9 per 36 minutes to 6.5 as he continues to age a little. The result is that I have his points per 36 minutes going up from 25.0 last year to 26.2 this year, but I have his minutes droping from almost 39 down to 34. That is the reason he won’t hit 27 to 28 points… He would have to play 37 to 38 minutes to do so.

As for Fisher, he scored 9.9 points per 36 minutes last year and I have him projected to be at 9.6 this year due to taking fewer shots (specifically pull up jumpers early in the shot clock). Even if he reverted back to 12.0 points per 36 minutes like in the prior year when he hit 39.7% from behind the arc, if he only plays 24 minutes then the most points he will score is 8.

The issue (if you can call it that) is that the Lakers are very deep with talent. Because of this there just isn’t enough minutes in the game to give everyone the playing tame they normally would get. For example… Derek Fisher and Steve Blake both played 27 minutes per game. They obviously can’t do that this season as that would be 54 minutes per game! The result is that everyone gets a slight reduction in minutes and thus their per game stats decrease.

The thing to focus on is the team totals. I have the Lakers at 103.4 pts per game, an increase of 1.7 from last season. I have them at 44.1 rebounds per game which is a slight drop from the 44.3 last season, however the drop is coming solely from offensive rebounds as the Lakers won’t have as many as their shooting effiency is increasing. Assists are 22.4 compared to 21.1 last year. The rest of the stats are almost identical to last year. So the totals add up, it is just that there are the same number of minutes now being split by more talent and so everyone’s per game stats take a hit.

I have Gasol coming in at 9.5 rebounds in 33 minutes. Given the lakers pace this translates into a rebound rate of 16.2. This is much closer to is career high of 17.1 than his career average of 14.4 so it seems reasonable. In fact, the last time Gasol had a jump of roughly 3% in rebound rate in one year he followed it up with a 3% drop back down to his career average.

I originally thought the same thing as you with regards to Bynum… he should improve right? Well, in 2009 he scored 17.8 points per 36 minutes, in 2010 guess what he scored? 17.8 again… no change. How about rebounding? 9.9 per 36 minutes in 2009 and then 9.9 in 2010. His FG% in 2009 was 56%, in 2010 it was 57% (I have it increasing again to 58%). The point is… he really didn’t improve (at least in the traditional box score) between 2009 an 2010 so I don’t see him making any significant leaps this year. He has improved on defense though which isn’t in the box score. I didn’t increase his minutes over last year only because last year he played a significant number of minutes when Gasol was out. If Gasol stays healthier (I have him missing 8 games instead of 17), then Bynum won’t play as many minutes.

As for Ebanks and Caracter… I basically used their position and player types as a guide. Ebanks is probably similar to Artest and Barnes, and Caracter is closer to a traditional PF (think Odom without the assists and worse 3p shooting). I based it on those players and then adjusted for typical rookie things like, “foul prone”, “turnover prone”, etc… For minutes and games I used Josh Powell as a guide.