Okay so I finally got around to this thing I’ve been meaning to try for weeks. Been watching Cade Cunningham absolutely cook this season for the Pistons – dude’s averaging like 25 points and almost 10 assists? Crazy numbers. Started wondering, what’s next? What’s he gonna put up next year? Stats nerd in me got itchy.
First thing, I knew I needed some actual numbers to play with, right? Couldn’t just guess. Pulled up a buncha articles and game logs (thank you, internet). Focused on this season’s full stats – points, rebounds, assists, those shooting percentages everyone talks about. Wrote all that crap down on my ancient laptop. Manually typed it into a spreadsheet program. Yeah, felt old school.
Then came the tricky part: figuring out how to guess next season. Saw all this stuff online about fancy prediction models, AI blah blah blah. Sounds complicated. Like those patent summaries talking about transformers and neural nets. Who’s got time for that?
My “deep learning”? More like “deep Googling”.
Found this basic free thing online – no clue what it runs on underneath, honestly don’t care – that lets you feed in past stats and it kinda tries to predict what comes next. Sounded perfect for my lazy brain. Just dumped the numbers I collected into it.
Clicked some buttons. Hit ‘calculate’. Held my breath. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. Waited for the spinner to stop spinning.
BOOM. First set of projections spat out. Numbers looked… weird. Like, crazy high rebounds? Felt off. Remembered reading something about him being 3rd in assists recently and that back-to-the-basket stuff changing the game. Those projections didn’t vibe with that at all.
Back to the Drawing Board
Okay, maybe just tossing numbers in wasn’t cutting it. Needed to think like the analysts a bit, even if I couldn’t do the complex math. What was trending up? What felt sustainable?
- Assists: Everyone talks about his vision, that passing is elite and only getting better. Those articles kept stressing his playmaking. Definitely upped that prediction.
- Scoring: Points might climb a bit as the team gets better around him? But maybe not a massive jump if he keeps feeding teammates.
- Rebounds: Stable. Not really expecting a huge leap there.
- Shooting Efficiency: He’s been getting smarter about his shots. Gave those percentages a slight nudge up.
- The Team Effect: Pistons finally winning games! Winning ball means different pressure, maybe less forcing plays?
Went back into that basic tool. Fed the original stats again, but this time, I kinda nudged the sliders around where I thought those trends were going based on all the stuff I read about his game. Tried to account for his development path. Hit calculate again.
And there it was. The projections looked way more realistic. Still showed growth, especially in assists and overall impact, but nothing ridiculous. Looked like the next step for this dude everyone says is turning into a franchise cornerstone.
Printed it out. Stuck it on my desk next to a picture of the dude dunking. Feels like a solid gut check, based on real numbers and the vibe everyone’s putting out there about him. Guess we’ll see this time next year if my tinkering was on point!
