HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors

Way back in early October, I made 50 predictions for the 2010-2011 NBA season just like I do every year, and just like I do every year, I revisit those predictions to see how well (and/or how poorly) I did with my guesswork.

Enjoy, and feel free to berate.  Trust me when I say I’ve done plenty of it myself.

Statistics & Individual Predictions

#1 – Kevin Durant will lead the league in scoring with over 31 points per game.

WRONG – Well, Durant won the scoring title, but at 27.7 ppg, he fell quite a bit short of the 31 ppg I seemed to have been expecting.  I’m not sure at the time I expected Russell Westbrook to be as supplementary as he’s been.  Either way, hard to call this one a victory, even though it’s partially correct.

#2 – Neither LeBron James nor Dwyane Wade will average 26 points per game or higher.

WRONG – LeBron James ended up finishing with 26.7 ppg, but D-Wade did fall underneath 26 ppg, finishing with 25.5.  Even though it was LeBron’s lowest season scoring averages since his rookie year, and the lowest for Wade in three seasons, it’s still not completely right.  Close, but not quite.

#3 – Danny Granger will creep into the top five scorers in the league.

WRONG – Granger finished 16th in the league with 20.5 ppg, behind all the guys you’d expect, but immediately behind LaMarcus Aldridge, Russell Westbrook, and Andrea Bargnani.

#4 – Chris Paul will take back the league lead for assists per game.

WRONG – Try fourth, behind Deron Williams, Rajon Rondo, and the ageless Steve Nash.

#5 – Last season, five players averaged 11 rebounds per game or more, but this season fewer players will accomplish that feat.

RIGHT – There were only four this season: Kevin Love (15.2 rpg), Dwight Howard (14.1 rpg), Zach Randolph (12.2 rpg), and Blake Griffin (12.1 rpg).

#6 – Michael Beasley will average a career-high for points per game now that he’s a Timberwolf (his previous best is 16.4ppg).

RIGHT – Beasley definitely found himself this season, scoring a career-high 19.2 ppg.

#7 – Carlos Boozer’s broken hand and 15-20 missed games to start the season will not be the only extended time he misses as a Chicago a Bull. He’ll have at least one other stretch this season where he misses at least five consecutive games.

RIGHT – Boozer missed a five-game stretch in March with a sprained ankle.  Other than that, though, he’s been surprisingly solid since coming back in December from that initial injury.

#8 – Joe Johnson will see a slight decrease in his scoring average this season.

RIGHT – After four consecutive seasons in which Johnson scored 21 ppg or more, Johnson dropped well below that this last season, finishing with 18.2 ppg.

#9 – O.J. Mayo will average more than five assists per game for the first time in his career.

WRONG – Mayo finished the season with only 2.0 apg, which is obviously quite a bit short of what I was predicting.  I seem to remember there being some talk during the preseason that Mayo would be playing more point guard for the Grizzlies.  Instead, Mike Conley had himself a solid year, while Mayo struggled.

#10 – Marcus Camby, after averaging the second-most rebounds per game last season, will drop out of the top five this season.

RIGHT – Camby finished the year averaging a respectable 10.3 rpg in only 26 minutes a night, but that put him in sixth place, right behind New Jersey’s Kris Humphries.

#11 – Rajon Rondo will once again lead the league in steals.

WRONG – Not quite.  While Rondo got the one-up on Chris Paul for assists, Paul (2.35 spg) nipped Rondo (2.25 spg) in the steals department.

#12 – Roy Hibbert will crack two blocks per game.

WRONG – While 1.8 bpg was a career-high for Hibbert, it wasn’t 2 per game.  Even Darko Milicic was able to average 2 bpg.  Come on Roy! Throw me a bone, here!

#13 – Dwight Howard will finish in the top three in the league in rebounds, blocks, fouls, and turnovers.

WRONG – Dwight finished 2nd in rebounds, 3rd in blocks, 3rd in turnovers, and… 8th in personal fouls.  So close, yet so far away.  If only I’d stipulated technical fouls instead of personal fouls, I would’ve had this one.  But alas, I did not.

#14 – Last season, Elton Brand averaged fewer than 10rpg. That will not happen again in 2010-2011.

WRONG – While Brand led his team with 8.3 rpg, he still fell short of that double digit average.  Elton had a better year, but the rebounding numbers didn’t improve much.  I’m sure he’d trade that for a solid playoff appearance any day of the week, though.

Team Predictions

#15 – The Oklahoma City will not win the Northwest Division, despite strong play by Durant and the rest of his strong supporting case.

WRONG – It ended up being a pretty tough division, but the Thunder handled it, going 13-3 in divisional play and winning the Northwest by a relatively handy marigin.

#16 – In fact, both Utah and Portland will finish with better records than the Thunder.

WRONG – Neither team even finished better than the Denver Nuggets, who was the second-best team in the Northwest.

#17 – The Chicago Bulls will win the Central Division despite playing without Carlos Boozer for the first month of the season and facing strong competition from the Milwaukee Bucks.

{AUTHOR_BOX}RIGHT – Chicago’s success this year is very well-documented, and they ended up winning the Central Division with a 25-game lead over the 2nd place Pacers and a 43-game lead over the last place Cavaliers.  They only lost one game out of 16 to a division opponent.  So yeah, the Bulls won the Central.  But all that nonsense about “strong competition from the Milwaukee Bucks”?  Yeah, not so much…

#18 – The Toronto Raptors will have the worst record in the Eastern Conference.

WRONG – I’m trying to figure out how I forgot about the Cleveland Cavaliers when I wrote this thing.  I had to know they were going to be atrocious.  That said, Toronto did have the second-worst record in the conference, so I wasn’t completely off on that particularly prediction.

#19 – Despite all the optimism that the trade for Darren Collison has brought to the fans of the Indiana Pacers, they still will fall short of making the postseason in 2011.

WRONG – I honestly had hoped I’d be wrong about this one, and I was.  Indy snuck into the postseason as an 8 seed.  The midseason coaching change had a lot to do with that; had they held on to Jim O’Brien all season, this one may have been right.

#20 – The Golden State Warriors will be in the top three in the league for points scored per game.

WRONG – They finished seventh in this category with 103.4 ppg, behind the Spurs, Thunder, Suns, Rockets, Knicks, and Nuggets, who topped the category with 107.5 ppg.

#21 – However, they will also be in the bottom three in the league for points allowed per game.

WRONG – In terms of real heart-breakers on this list, this one wins the prize.  The Warriors finished fourth in this category, a mere 2/100th’s of a point behind the New York Knicks.

#22 – New Jersey will see the biggest jump in number of wins from last year to this year.

WRONG – The Chicago Bulls went from 41 wins last year to 62 this year, a jump of a whopping 21 games.

#23 – As a team, the Charlotte Bobcats will lead the league in turnovers.

WRONG – They ended up finishing 8th.  Nobody was more careless with the ball than the Minnesota Timberwolves, who as a team averaged 17 TO per game.

#24 – Utah will see no more than a five-game drop in total wins this year despite so much turnover in personnel this past offseason.

WRONG – Utah went from 53 wins in 2009-2010 to 39 wins this past year, a difference of 14 games.  That’s not even close to what I was thinking, but I was putting my faith in a full season of Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan.  When both left right around the trade deadline, the team appeared to abandon all hope.

#25 – The Minnesota Timberwolves will be better than they were last season, but not markedly so. Their number of wins will increase by no more than eight.

RIGHT – It’s not hard to improve upon a 15-win season, and the Timberwolves did.  By a paltry two games.  Congratulations on 17 wins, guys!

There will be 25 more predictions (trades, rookies, and postseason) that run tomorrow, so check back in the morning for more!