AD's Year 3 Pels vs KD, CP3 and LBJ

Broski sent me down an advanced stats rabbit hole last night comparing AD to year 3 of other recent Super Stars who made the playoffs in year 3 and a few things are obvious.

1) Close shouldn't count for Monty and Demps. I think most of us already feel this way, but if a Benson or Loomis intern sees this, someone as good as AD should give you enough of a head start to guarantee a playoff spot. It's playoffs or bust if they want to keep their jobs.

2) Tyreke needs to get his shite together if this team is going to make the playoffs. Trading him for productive bench players might also work out.

While AD is a good enough foundation to guarantee a playoff spot, it's still a team game. None of these other stars did it by themselves. To see how much help they had I focused on Win Shares which is an advanced stat that tries to calculate how many wins a player contributed to their team. The top 10 in Win Shares per 48 minutes last year:

KD
CP3
LeBron
Kevin Love
Steph Curry
Harden
AD
Blake Griffin
Dirk
Kyle Lowry

Judging by the results the stat seems pretty reasonable. I listed everyone that contributed at least 1 win share.

05-06 LeBron Cavs. LeBron, Z, Gooden and enough meh to add up to 50 wins

LeBron James 16.3
Zydrunas Ilgauskas 8.7
Drew Gooden 6.6
Donyell Marshall 4.2
Damon Jones 3.4
Anderson Varejao 2.3
Eric Snow 2.1
Larry Hughes 1.8
Ronald Murray 1.3
Alan Henderson 1.3

07-08 CP3 Hornets 4 studs that grabbed the #2 seed

Chris Paul 17.8
Tyson Chandler 10
David West 8.4
Peja Stojakovic 8.1
Morris Peterson 3.8
Bobby Jackson 1.9
Julian Wright 1.7
Ryan Bown 1.5
Rasual Butler 1.2
Jannero Pargo 1.1

09-10 KD Thunder KD, Green, Westbrook, and solid role players

Kevin Durant 16.1
Jeff Green 6.6
Russell Westbrook 6.1
Nick Collison 4.7
James Harden 4.5
Nenad Krstic 4.2
Thabo Sefolosha 4
Serge Ibaka 3.7
Eric Maynor 1.5

13-14 AD Pelicans AD, Jrue, Asik, Ryno, and a bad bench. Right now they look like they're 1 good starter or several good bench players short of the playoffs.

Anthony Davis 18.5
Jrue Holiday 8.0
Omer Asik 6.0
Ryan Anderson 4.7
Alexis Ajinca 2.9
Austin Rivers 1.4
Tyreke Evans 1.3
Luke Babbit 1.2
Jeff Withey 1.05
Eric Gordon 0.6

For the Pelicans I made projections assuming no further injuries (ie 82 games for AD, 78 for Asik). That obviously won't happen but seemed like the most reasonable projection to make. I did assume 60 games for Gordon and prorated Ajinca to 58 and Withey to 41 based on what they've played so far since they'll probably still get quite a few DNPs. I think Cunningham will make this list in the end, he just hasn't produced enough to register.

We already knew our bench wasn't very good, but I had no idea Tyreke was playing this poorly. If you could trade him for a Jarrett Jack type who had 5.6 WS coming off the bench in Golden State, that alone might be enough to put the team over the top.