Charlotte Hornets '97-98

First of all, their two best players, Glen Rice and Anthony Mason, had their best seasons last year at the age of 30 and are unlikely to outdo them. Though they may stay at the same level, that won't be good enough...

...Because the same level isn't worth a 54 win season. The Hornets exceeded their expected win total (based on the number of points scored and allowed) by more than any team in the NBA. The Hornets should have won 46 games last season and the last time I saw this large a discrepancy between wins and expected wins was the '86-87 Warriors who won 42 and should have won only 34. In '87-88, the Warriors won only 20. The Charlotte Hornets could easily fall off 22 games if Rice or Mason gets hurt.

Another interesting thing I have thought about, but only tracked recently, is that teams whose coaches win Coach of the Year struggle the following season. To be technically correct, Charlotte coach Dave Cowens did not win the award last year -- Miami coach Pat Riley did and his team is guaranteed to lose more this year with Alonzo Mourning out of the lineup for the first two months. But Cowens was second. My theory is that the press votes for the coach of the team which wins more than they think it should have, regardless of whether the coach was the reason or whether luck was the reason. In Riley's case, the coach was the reason, but I think Cowens got lucky.

Since coaches are so hard to evaluate, the press has had a string of poor votes since the award was inaugurated in 1963. In the 34 years of the award, only 7 times has the team with the winning coach won more the following year. The average winning percentage of the teams whose coaches win the award is 65%. Their average winning percentage the following year is 58%.

If you read The Power of Parity, you know that it is normal for a good team to lose more the following season. If you remember the details, though, you know that a team that wins 65% of their games is only expected to slip to 61% the following season. Though the difference between 58% and 61% may not sound like much, it is significant. There is something about winning the Coach of the Year Award that implies a decline the following season.

I can think of two big reasons for this. One is, as I mentioned above, that coaches are given credit for success when other reasons are not obvious, like luck. Those reasons disappear the following season. The second is more interesting and something I came across as I looked at the individual winners: there seem to be more injuries on teams whose coaches win the award. Perhaps Coaches of the Year try to get too much out of their players and the players get hurt later. Perhaps Coaches of the Year win the award with a team that has players playing on chronic injuries that wear on them by the following season.

I honestly don't know for sure why this happens, but I do think that it applies to the Hornets. Dave Cowens received a lot of praise as a coach last year for no good reason that I could see. In Cowens' previous coaching experience, he won 27 of 68 games with the pre-Bird Celtics. Though my official prediction is higher, I think this team is very fragile and highly susceptible to a record not unlike that of Cowens' first coaching job.