New Standings Projection For Atlanta Would Be A Major Surprise After Their Big Offseason

While most projections place the Hawks amongst the top four teams in the Eastern Conference, ESPN's Kevin Pelton and his projection model are giving the Hawks 44 wins and projecting them to finish 7th in the East, behind Cleveland, Orlando, New York, Indiana, Boston, and Milwaukee:

"The hype might be getting a little heavy for the Hawks, whose offseason was undoubtedly positive but perhaps not transformative in the short term. I'm higher than the model on Atlanta's chances of avoiding the play-in, but I would still be surprised if they finish in the East's top four."

Here is how Pelton calculates his projections:

"Based on the scoring of projections at the APBRmetrics forum, my recalibrated forecast had the second-lowest root mean squared error, a method that heavily penalizes bad misses. It also had the strongest correlation to actual wins and losses.

To project teams, I start with player ratings based on a combination of my SCHOENE stats-based projections and luck-adjusted regularized adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) provided by Krishna Narsu that covers the past three seasons. For each team, I project games played based on those missed to injury over the past three years and current absences then subjectively guess at the distribution of playing time.

The result is an expected wins total given average health, which is comparable to teams' over/under season win totals at ESPN BET. In addition to ranking each conference's teams 1 to 15, I've also tried to explain why my projections are higher or lower than those totals."

Where will the Hawks finish?

I would be pretty surprised if the Hawks finished behind the Pacers and the Celtics in the standings, if they manage to stay healthy, which is probably the biggest question mark surrounding the Hawks considering that Kristaps Porzingis and Jalen Johnson have struggled to stay healthy.

The Pacers are of course going to be missing Tyrese Haliburton this season, but losing Myles Turner is also going to be a problem for them. Rick Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the league and I suspect this team is going to overachieve and not fall off a cliff, but finishing fourth in the Eastern Conference seems a bit much.

The same goes for the Celtics. Jaylen Brown and Derrick White are tremendous players, as is Payton Pritchard, but the frontcourt is going to give them problems in a number of games this season. This is a well coached team and I don't think they are suddenly going to fall off of a cliff, but I also don't think they are going to be one of the top five teams in the conference either.

Milwaukee is another team that I would not project to be better than Atlanta. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player in the Eastern Conference, but the rest of that team leaves a lot to be desired. If they get off to a poor enough start, will the trade speculation start with Antetokounmpo?

The Hawks are not without their flaws, but I like their odds to be better than either the Pacers, Celtics, or Bucks this season.

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