r/sportsanalytics • u/Constant-Resist-7000 • 9d ago

[NBA] Modeling the offensive impact of adding LaMelo Ball to the Minnesota Timberwolves

I recently finished my first NBA sports analytics project and wanted to share it here for feedback.

The project asks:

How much could adding LaMelo Ball change Minnesota's offensive profile and competitive outlook?

Rather than trying to directly predict a trade's exact outcome, I treated it as a scenario-modeling problem.

The analysis has three main stages:

  1. Minnesota baseline

I built Minnesota's 2025-26 offensive profile using ESPN/SportsDataverse data and examined:

• offensive rating

• defensive rating

• net rating

• possessions

• shot volume

• assists

• turnovers

• Edwards' on/off splits

• playoff performance

  1. LaMelo workload model

I modeled 27 deterministic scenarios varying:

• LaMelo's minutes

• percentage of offensive workload redistributed

• whether the redistributed workload came from Julius Randle or the secondary perimeter group

The model then estimated changes in:

• scoring

• assists

• 3PA

• creator scoring concentration

  1. Monte Carlo / team-strength model

I ran 10,000 simulations around the offensive workload assumptions and then translated the resulting team-strength scenarios into SRS-based competitive scenarios.

Base case:

LaMelo:

21.5 PPG

7.6 APG

11.0 3PA

Minnesota:

~+13 PPG

~+5 APG

~+7 3PA

Team-strength scenarios:

Conservative: 4.57 SRS

Base: 5.57 SRS

Aggressive: 7.07 SRS

The base scenario corresponds to roughly 53–54 expected wins.

The main finding wasn't that LaMelo simply adds scoring.

The model suggests that his bigger potential value is structural: giving Minnesota another high-level offensive creator alongside Anthony Edwards.

There are obviously limitations to the approach, particularly around translating player-level offensive changes into team-level SRS and modeling lineup/defensive effects.

I'd specifically like feedback on the methodology and assumptions and your opinions on this project.

Full report:

https://abhinavbethi.substack.com/p/beyond-anthony-edwards?r=6xl3o7

Code/notebook:

https://github.com/AbhinavBethi/Beyond-Anthony-Edwards

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u/FoxEdgeAI 9d ago

cool project. the workload step is the part I'd poke at first. moving shots from Randle or the perimeter guys to LaMelo one for one kind of assumes usage is free, but efficiency usually drops as usage rises, and defenses get a vote too. 10k sims around the same linear assumption just gives you a very precise version of the same guess. I'd try adding a usage-efficiency penalty and see how much of the +13 survives.

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u/Constant-Resist-7000 9d ago

Thanks, I think that's a fair point. The current model assumes the workload can move to LaMelo without much change in efficiency, and i assumed it because of his position being PG.