Orlando Magic News for August 5th: Final Look At The Magic's Schedule; A Jason Williams Report

The New NBA Schedule
Bradford Dootlitte of Basketball Prospectus examines the 2009-2010 NBA regular season schedule. In it, the favorite to win the title is revealed, as well as the fact the Orlando Magic have one of the easiest schedules. 

Just before last season began, I ran some numbers to look at strength-of-schedule factors for each team, using final 2007-08 records as my baseline. I've done the same with the new schedule, only instead of plugging in last year's records, I've used the current projected records my system, NBAPET, is spitting out based on rosters as of today. Hopefully, that will give us a little bit more of an indication of which teams face tough roads and which don't. 

We should also be able to get an indication of which conference appears to be stronger. In the recent past, Western Conference teams have tended to have slates with a higher degree of difficulty because that conference has been much stronger than the East has been. Last season, that gap more or less disappeared. Of course, that depends on how you want to look at the issue. The East won more games head-to-head, but the heavily-stratified West had more good teams.

Could Jason Williams end up in Orlando?
Tania Ganguli posits whether or not Jason Williams will sign with Orlando to be the team's third point guard.

Cavaliers, Lakers, Celtics highlight gems of 2009-10 NBA schedule
Paul Forrester of Sports Illustrated takes a look at the schedule and points out the most interesting games in the upcoming year. The Magic make the list.

Ten Summer Stories to Watch
Henry Abbott of TrueHoop expands upon the ten summer stories to watch in the NBA before games are played in October. Seems so far away.

The Underpaid and Overpaid in 2008-09
UPDATE: Dave Berri of The Wages of Win Journal analyzes which players were underpaid and overpaid during the 2008-2009 season.

We have a measure of how many wins each player created (i.e. Wins Produced). And if teams spent $2.2 billion on players, and these players produced 1,230 regular season wins, we can argue that each win is worth $1.755 million. With a value of win in hand, all we need to do is to multiply the value of a win by each player’s Wins Produced. This calculation gives us a measure of what a team could have paid for a player’s productivity; a measure which can be easily compared to a player’s salary. Once again, players who produced more than they were paid are, by definition, exploited or underpaid.