What would it be like if OKC had Tyson Chandler? Well let me tell you

Brett Hainline from Queen City Hoops, who is to statistical analysis what William Wallace is to freedom, has put together his own spin on ESPN’s Trade Machine. Basically, he’s got a program that lets you swap a player straight up for ANY other player and his formula tells you how much better your team would be with the new guy.

So ever wondered what it would be like if OKC had Tim Duncan? Or Kobe Bryant? Or what if that Tyson Chandler deal would have stuck? Now we have a better idea than ever before.

Swap Jeff Green for Tim Duncan: the Thunder wins four more games. (That honestly was somewhat surprising. I figured that number would have shot up to 10.)

Swap Thabo Sefolosha for Kobe Bryant: the Thunder wins 12 more games.

Swap Nenad Krstic for a (healthy) Tyson Chandler: Brace yourselves… Oklahoma City improves by almost 14 games. If you trade Chris Wilcox for Chandler, OKC’s “wins” go up to 47, or 30 if Chandler just played Wilcox’s minutes or 34 if Chandler played his usual minutes. For Joe Smith, the numbers are 34, 27 and 28.

You can go all day with this stuff. Now there’s different results based on assuming for example Chandler plays Krstic’s minutes or if Chandler plays his usual minutes. I’d recommend reading this post from TrueHoop to better understand the machine as well. While the wins change, it doesn’t necessarily mean that would be the actual result in the standings. It’s just a formula spitting out numbers. So keep that in mind. But give it a whirl. Brett acknowledges it’s not perfect, but I’d say it’s pretty darn entertaining regardless.

UPDATE: Hainline tweaked his formula a bit so if you’re getting different results, that’s why.