If you missed Part I of my NBA preview, you can find it
here or on the front page. In Part I, I covered all of the lottery teams, so in
Part II, I’m going to cover my 16 projected playoff teams.
After I went through and predicted the records of all 30
teams, I realized that of last year’s 16 playoff teams, the only one that I
picked to miss the playoffs was New Orleans, and that was only because they
traded their best player. Most seasons there are at least three teams that
reach the playoffs that weren’t there the year before – last season there were
five (New York, Philly, Indiana, Memphis, and New Orleans), so let’s just say
that my prediction of a 94% retention rate among playoff teams has about a
snowball’s chance in hell of coming to fruition.
Either way, let’s power through it. Like I did in Part I,
I’ve listed each team’s record, as well as what that record would correspond to
with an 82-game schedule. I’ve organized the teams in the order of ascending
record, but because these are the playoff teams, I’ve also included what that
ranking corresponds to in terms of my prediction for playoff seedings.
16. Atlanta (33-33)
Translated to 82
games: (41-41)
#8 Seed in East
On one hand, the Hawks went 10-17 after the All-Star
break last year and finished with the scoring differential of a 39-win team,
not a 44-win team. Since then, they lost Jamal Crawford and replaced him with
Tracy McGrady.
On the other hand, they upset Orlando in Round 1, played
pretty competitively with Chicago in Round 2 (including a win on the road in
Game 1) and saw Jeff Teague blossom into a legitimate starting point guard.
In other words, there are reasons to expect some pretty
severe regressions, but there are also reasons to be optimistic. I’m going to
split the difference and pick them to finish about where they did last season.
15. Indiana (35-31)
Translated to 82
games: (43-49)
#7 Seed in East
Why does everyone think Indiana is going to blow the
doors off the East this season?
Let’s get this straight. Indiana was 37-45 last season.
Their only notable roster additions were David West (who tore his ACL in March)
and George Hill (who is a good third guard and nothing more). Meanwhile, they
lost three guys from their rotation, two of whom were actually good (Josh
McRoberts and Mike Dunleavy). To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that David
West with a surgically repaired knee (that isn’t even close to 100% yet) is
better than Josh McRoberts. I’m really not. Compare their numbers (Per 36
Minutes) from last season:
McRoberts: 12.0 PPG, 8.6 RPG, 3.4 APG, 2.4 B/SPG, 54.7
FG%, 60.8 TS%, 16.0 PER
West: 19.4 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 2.4 APG, 1.9 B/SPG, 50.8 FG%,
55.8 TS%, 20.4 PER
So West scores more (but less efficiently), and rebounds
less, generates fewer assists, and is worse defensive. Also, David West TORE
HIS ACL less than nine months ago, and can probably only play about 25 minutes
a game for the first few months of the season. Are we sure he’s THAT much
better than McRoberts?
So again, a team that finished 37-45 and made no real
noticeable roster upgrades is supposed to improve by the shortened-season
equivalent of 15 wins? It’s not like they’re the 2010 Thunder who had Kevin
Durant rounding into MVP-caliber form. Assuming West is an improvement over
McRoberts (questionable), and George Hill is an improvement over Brandon Rush
(more conclusive), and we see improvement out of Paul George and Roy Hibbert
(some, but probably not substantial), where does that leave them? They aren’t
that much better, right? I’m bumping them six wins from last season, and that’s
all you’re getting out of me.
14. Portland (36-30)
Translated to 82
games: (45-37)
#8 Seed in West
On the NBA Tragedy Scale (ranging from 1 to Len Bias),
Brandon Roy’s retirement ranks somewhere between a 7 and Grant Hill’s ankle
problems. In a way, it’s almost a good thing that he retired, because I think
both sides just needed a clean break, as it was clear that he wasn’t going to
be a part of Portland’s future plans any longer.
Now they’re moving on without him, and it looks like they
have a pretty good team. They have all the makings of a squad that can push
tempo and take advantage of teams on tired legs (which there will be plenty).
Trading Andre Miller for Ray Felton was a no-brainer decision, but it remains
to be seen whether Nate McMillan will let them run. During McMillan’s tenure as
head coach, Portland has finished 28th, 29th, 29th,
30th, 30th, and 30th in the NBA in pace
factor. With Ray Felton at point guard and so much athleticism at seemingly
every position, it would seem criminal if this team had to play a slow,
plodding pace. I’m penciling them in for a slight regression from last season
because I think their roster isn’t suited to play the style that they’ll
probably end up playing, and guys like Felton and Jamal Crawford might have
trouble adjusting.
13. Philadelphia
(37-29)
Translated to 82
games: (46-36)
#6 Seed in East
They brought back basically the entire team they had last
year, only Thaddeus Young, Jrue Holliday, Evan Turner, and Marreese Speights
should all improve from last season.
That being said, I don’t like how they didn’t address
their biggest offensive need (shooting) or their biggest defensive need (size).
Doug Collins also has a history of having teams turn on him fairly quickly
(especially young teams), so if things start poorly for Philly, the honeymoon
phase could end real quick.
I think all of the players that I mentioned above will
see improvement, but I’m not sure that the team is going to see a corresponding
improvement. It’s a funky team and not all of the pieces fit together in any
coherent way, so things could get a bit chaotic as some guys develop and others
regress.
12. Denver (39-27)
Translated to 82
games: (49-33)
#7 Seed in West
Denver was 32-25 with Carmelo last season, and 18-7
without him. Prorated to 82-game records, they were a 46-36 team with him, and
a 59-23 team without him. That’s what happens when you receiver four legitimate
rotation players in exchange for one guy. Now, I had to scale their record back
a bit, because Wilson Chandler, J.R. Smith, and Kenyon Martin, each of whom saw
significant playing time in the playoffs last year, are stuck in China until
March. They’ve been replaced by Rudy Fernandez, Ronnie Brewer, and two rookies
(Jordan Hamilton and Kenneth Faried), so I would expect some regression there.
I’d also expect some regression because of the Andre
Miller/Ray Felton swap. Denver loves to play at breakneck pace, which Felton is
much better suited for, but I would expect that Ty Lawson will see a bump in
minutes to ensure that the offense stays up-tempo.
Here’s Denver’s trump card – their depth is going to help
them on three different levels this year. First, the most obvious example –
having depth is better than not having depth. Secondly, they’re a deep team
that plays their home games at altitude, so when other teams are sucking wind
even worse than normal, Denver can just sub in guys and not see any real
regression. Third, they’re a deep team that plays their home games at altitude
during a season with a compressed schedule. Teams would already be gassed just
from playing at altitude. But a gassed team playing at altitude that also
happens to be playing their fifth game in six nights? Game over. Denver should
clean up at home this season, which they’ll ride all the way to the playoffs.
11. Boston (40-26)
Translated to 82
games: (50-32)
#5 Seed in East
Is there anything new to write about this team? It’s
going to be the same nucleus for the fifth straight year. The loss of Jeff
Green will hurt their depth, but their bench isn’t any worse than New York’s or
LA’s or Miami’s. However, because of their age, the goofy schedule will
probably hurt them more than any other team in the league, so there’s going to
be some regression.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this team
going forward. GM Danny Ainge has no qualms about shaking up his team if he
doesn’t like what he sees, and my guess is that he knows that, given the
landscape of the East, the Celtics don’t have a realistic shot at the title
this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rondo traded for a few small pieces
(with a young point guard involved, obviously) to try to set them up for a free
agent run next summer.
10. Orlando (40-26)
Translated to 82
games: (50-32)
#4 Seed in East
The dumbest ranking of the year, because if they trade Dwight
Howard during the season, their team falls apart. This is a bit of a dilemma
for Orlando, because Howard is going to walk away this summer regardless, and
everyone knows this. Making matters worse is Brook Lopez’s foot injury, which
takes away Orlando’s preferred trade partner until Lopez is healthy, which
might not be until after the season.
So, let’s operate under the assumption that Howard stays
in town all year. If that’s the case, Orlando will still be a strong team. Ryan
Anderson will (hopefully) play more, Redick will see a bump in minutes with the
departure of Gilbert Arenas, and odds say that Quentin Richardson will likely
shoot better than 34% from the floor.
Defensively, they’ll be near the top of the league simply
because of Howard. Over the last three years, they’ve been 3rd, 3rd,
and 1st in defensive efficiency without even really one other
above-average defensive player. If Howard is at his best, Orlando can still
hang their hat on defense, which will be enough to get them into the playoffs.
9. LA Lakers
(41-25)
Translated to 82
games: (51-31)
#6 Seed in West
The LA rollercoaster is slowing down. I would have
dropped them in the standings even BEFORE they gave away Lamar Odom for
nothing, but after that trade, I just can’t see them keeping up with the rest
of the conference.
They have three good players. Two of them are 31 or over,
the other has two bad knees and is suspended for the first five games of the
season. Everyone else on the team ranges from “barely above league average” to
“unmitigated disaster.” They have no depth, a new coach, and Kobe is already
banged up with a torn ligament in his wrist. I just see red flags all over the
place.
The only thing that could save LA’s season would be a trade
for Dwight Howard, but at this point it’s pretty clear that (1) LA isn’t
willing to give up Gasol AND Bynum to get him, or (B) Orlando is afraid of
Bynum’s knees and doesn’t want to take that risk, or (C) both.
If they get into the playoffs healthy, obviously anything
can happen, but I see the Lakers seriously struggling in the regular season.
8. New York (42-24)
Translated to 82
games: (52-30)
#3 Seed in East
Every time I wanted to push this team closer to the upper
echelon of the Eastern Conference, I kept coming back to the fact that they
were 42-40 last season, and only 14-14 after the Carmelo Anthony trade. Sure,
they swapped Chauncey Billups for Tyson Chandler (which will improve their
defense), but their depth isn’t any better (Mike Bibby, Jared Jeffries, Renaldo
Balkman, and Jerome Jordan are prominently involved in their rotation) and they
won’t have a natural point guard until Baron Davis is in playing shape again
(which will be a while). When Mike D’Antoni doesn’t have a point guard, things
go badly.
The other thing that concerns me is that D’Antoni has a
long, storied history of running his players into the ground. This season, with
the schedule the way it is (the “compressed schedule” horse has been dead for
two weeks, but I can’t stop beating it – it’s something that has to be factored
in – that’s just the way it is), and Amar’e already having balky knees, that
could spell trouble.
7. San Antonio (43-23)
Translated to 82
games: (53-29)
#5 Seed in West
It’s amazing how many times people write off San Antonio.
Everyone wrote them off last season and they finished with the #1 seed in the
West (and very well could have made the Finals had Ginobili not sprained his
elbow a week before the playoffs started). Now it seems like everyone is
writing them off again because they’re “too old.”
Well, don’t look now, but this team isn’t that old.
DeJuan Blair is 22. James Anderson (last year’s #1 pick who tore his ACL) is
22. Kawhi Leonard, the #15 pick in this draft, is 20. Cory Joseph, San
Antonio’s other 1st-rounder this year, is also 20. Gary Neal is 27,
but this is only his 2nd NBA season. Tiago Splitter is 26. They have
young legs at every position that will help them spell minutes for the
geriatrics during those tough stretches of the schedule.
If not for the compressed schedule, I would have pushed
the Spurs even higher, but knowing Gregg Popovic, he’s liable to just not bring
Ginobili or Duncan on one of those short “@Phoenix, day off, @Utah, @Denver the
next night” trips, so I dropped them a few spots.
6. Dallas (43-23)
Translated to 82
games: (53-29)
#4 Seed in West
A lot of people that I have been talking to seem to think
that Dallas is still the best team in the West. I’m having a lot of trouble
believing that. They swapped DeShawn Stevenson and Caron Butler for Vince
Carter, Tyson Chandler for Lamar Odom, and J.J. Barea for a (still injured)
Rodrigue Beaubois. If you ask me, those are all steps backwards.
They’ve gotten significantly worse defensively with the
loss of Chandler and defensive guru Dwayne Casey (the addition of Vince Carter
isn’t helping things either), and they didn’t inject any youth into an aging
team about to confront a severely compressed schedule. They’re deep and they’re
versatile, but I just can’t see them having the horses to compete with the top
three teams in the West.
5. Memphis (44-22)
Translated to 82
games: (55-27)
#3 Seed in West
Memphis should ride the momentum they found in the
playoffs last year into a lot of success this year. As for the people saying
that Rudy Gay’s return will screw up their chemistry, I would beg them to go
back and watch the tape from the Oklahoma City series and count how many wasted
possessions they had when they couldn’t get the ball to Randolph or Gasol and
were stuck with no alternative when their perimeter guys couldn’t create
offense.
The injury to Darrell Arthur will hurt their frontcourt
depth, but they’ve bolstered their backcourt depth with the addition of Josh
Selby (who has real sleeper potential), and Xavier Henry should improve over
his train wreck season last year. An injury to either Randolph or Gasol would
be curtains, but if they stay healthy, this is a top-3 team in the West.
4. LA Clippers
(46-20)
Translated to 82
games: (57-25)
#2 Seed in West
Oh yes, I’m all-in on this Chris Paul Clippers team. I’ll be a
bit worried in the playoffs, because they don’t match up well against a few of
the other teams in the West, mostly because their lack of a natural shooting
guard – Ginobili would eat them alive if they squared off in May. But for now,
I really think they’re the 2nd-best team in the West. We’ve already
seen it in the preseason games –the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin pick-and-roll game
is going to be the most dynamic in the entire league – better than Wade and
Bosh, better than LeBron and Bosh, better than Rose and Boozer, better than
Terry and Dirk. Only teams like Miami and Chicago, who have impeccable
screen-roll coverage, will be able to contain them.
Defensively, they’re still a work in progress. Any
perimeter player with size that can create off the dribble is going to kill
them. They don’t have much depth up front, so if DeAndre Jordan gets in foul
trouble (which he does – 4.5 fouls per 36 minutes last year), they’ll be left
without anyone to protect the rim unless Trey Thompkins makes an immediate
impact.
Also, there’s the whole Vinny Del Negro part, but I don’t
see that catching up to them until the Playoffs, if it does at all.
3. Chicago (46-20)
Translated to 82
games: (58-24)
#2 Seed in East
I don’t see Chicago being that much different than they
were last season. Yes, they upgraded their shooting guard, but not in the right
way. They already had swingmen that could knock down open shots – Keith Bogans
shot 38% from three and Kyle Korver shot 41.5%. What they needed (and still
need) is a perimeter player that can create off the dribble to take pressure
off of Derrick Rose.
Look back at all the successful teams of the last seven
or eight years. They all had multiple perimeter players that could penetrate,
play pick-and-roll, and create shots for teammates. San Antonio has Parker and
Ginobili. Boston has Rondo and Pierce. Miami has LeBron and Wade. Dallas has
Kidd and Terry, and they had Barea and Devin Harris mixed in in past years
also. The only exception to this rule is the Lakers, but they ran the triangle,
and that’s not an option for Chicago because it would completely shackle
Derrick Rose.
One of the biggest things that held back LeBron’s
Cleveland teams, and even the Steve Nash Phoenix teams (to an extent) was that
everything depended on one guy creating every shot in crunch time, and that’s
not a model that will work.
Chicago will be in the mix because of their defense, but
if they run into Miami again, it’s probably going to be the same result. Wade
or LeBron will be able to swallow up Rose, and Chicago won’t have a Plan B.
2. Oklahoma City
(48-18)
Translated to 82
games: (60-22)
#1 Seed in West
First of all, I’m tired of the Durant/Westbrook
relationship being compared to Avon and Stringer from The Wire. There is absolutely no chance that Durant hires Kobe and
Ron Artest (I don’t know, you try coming up with an NBA equivalents of Avon and
Brother Mouzzone) to murder Westbrook in an abandoned office building. It’s not
happening.
I’m expecting big things out of OKC this year. Growing
pains happen, and teams either grow out of them (like Jordan and Pippen) or say
“fuck it, we’re winning anyway” (like Shaq and Kobe). There really aren’t any
examples of two stars failing to coexist to the point that one had to be
traded. There was Shaq and Penny, but Shaq still walked away on his own (and
wanted to play in a big market anyway), and there was the Jamal Mashburn/Jimmy
Jackson rift, but at that point, come on, it’s fucking Jamal Mashburn and Jim
Jackson. It’s not even close to being the same magnitude.
Assuming Durant and Westbrook figure out how to play
together, and we see big improvements out of James Harden (I’m expecting HUGE
things from him this year) and Serge Ibaka, OKC should be a juggernaut in the
West.
1. Miami (52-14)
Translated to 82
games: (65-17)
#1 Seed in East
Here’s why Miami is going to go ham on the entire NBA:
They aren’t going to screw around with their chemistry any more. Last season,
three different point guards and there different centers started at least 11
games for the Heat last year, which seems insane when you consider that they
didn’t have a major injury at either position. Carlos Arroyo started 42 games
for Miami last year, and he got waived after the trade deadline to make room
for Mike Bibby. Zydrunas Ilgauskas started 51 games in the regular season, and
then didn’t even get on the floor against Chicago or Dallas in the playoffs.
This year, they’re going to start Chalmers and Joel
Anthony alongside Wade, James, and Bosh, with Udonis Haslem, Shane Battier,
James Jones, Mike Miller, rookie Norris Cole, and Random Big Man X (Eddy Curry?
Dexter Pittman?) filling out the rotation. That’s pretty much set in stone.
Chalmers should benefit from being the starter, as he shot over 9% better from
the floor last season when he was in the starting lineup, and seemingly gained
a lot of confidence over the course of the Dallas series.
The other reason? That hiccup at the start of last season
when they started 9-8 isn’t going to happen again. They have a full year under
their belts, so they aren’t going to have to be learning to play together on
the fly like they were last year, which clearly was affecting them in a few
games (opening night against Boston and the overtime game against Utah both
come to mind). This year, the open the season with a pretty easy schedule –
they have Charlotte, Minnesota, Charlotte, Atlanta, Indiana, Atlanta, New
Jersey, and Golden State all in a row between December 28th and
January 10th. I wouldn’t be shocked to see them sweep those 8 games
and ride the momentum from there.
Coming tomorrow: Part III
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