Here is Part 2 of my NBA Preview. There’s only one part after this. I’m writing this spilling cabbage on my computer and listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for the first time in my life. I’m having trouble cleaning my glasses.
20. Detroit Pistons
I gave myself a day to “figure out” some way that the Pistons could be a winning team this year with an offensive core of Josh Smith, Andre Drummond, Brandon Jennings and Greg Monroe after they so abjectly failed last year.
But my life is hard and I didn’t sleep much, and I just can’t do it, and I don’t think Stan Van Gundy can either.
One tangential thing about Van Gundy of limited interest. Van Gundy is a good NBA coach but he was an absolute human atrocity as a college basketball coach going 14-15 in ’94-’95 at the University of Wisconsin with a nucleus of Michael Finley and Rashard Griffith. That Griffith, a 7-footer who was the top HS player in the country and went to mighty Martin Luther King, a Chicago public high school basketball factory in the 80s and 90s, never played an NBA game is one of the more stunning, inexplicable pieces of basketball arcana. And it’s maybe partly Stan Van Gundy’s fault.
19. Minnesota Timberwolves
I like the Timberwolves as much as any sober-minded, reasonably-knowledgeable-basketball human being could possibly like the Timberwolves.
I really liked the Kevin Love trade for them. Unlike Philly, Orlando and Utah who have taken the suddenly conventional path of being as bad as possible today in order to get theoretically good five years from now, Minnesota is taking what I think is the wiser path of rebuilding while being competitive.
Rickey Rubio, Thaddeus Young, Kevin Martin, Nikola Pekovic – these are all flawed but overall good players. It’s a veteran foundation that allows Andrew Wiggins to not have to take on too many responsibilities at once.
And I like trading for Anthony Bennett as part of the Love trade and getting Zach LeVine. Bennett and LeVine both make sense as big-upside/but-could-do-nothing gambles, with Wiggins projected as more of a sure thing.
I mean I didn’t watch Kansas last year, so I don’t know about Wiggins. But I think he’s actually in a surprisingly good environment to succeed.
While it’s hard to see them making the playoffs in the West, I think they could surprise.
18. Denver Nuggets
In an indefensible move even in the context of “preparing for the NBA season,” I re-watched the NBA Draft Lottery last week. The only redeeming insight I gleamed was the extreme depression washed over Nuggets coach Brian Shaw’s face.
Why is Brian Shaw sad? Maybe because his team no identity. The Nuggets are a collection of okay to pretty good players that lack a collective identity, or simply a hierarchy of players.
The Nuggets are welcoming back a few quality, talented players — foremost Danilo Galinari — back from injury this year. This gives them a legit shot to surprise but it furthers the problem of developing coherency as a team.
This was the perfect team for Coach George Karl, a great ‘system’ coach who could impose his considerable ego and will onto the team.
Really, the last thing this team needs is a product of the Phil Jackson school of coaching. They should get a charismatic college coach, the Rick Pitino of this generation or maybe just Rick Pitino himself. That or they should trade four or five of their good players for Carmelo Anthony.
17. Brooklyn Nets
Congratulations, Brooklyn! They are the first team I’m ranking who will make the playoffs even though I have them faring worse than the 9th best team in the West.
My ignorance is oozing through all these attempts to say something about each NBA team. But nowhere more than with the Nets. Here is what we know:
1. Brooklyn started last season with one of the most expensive payrolls in NBA history with Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett….and started 10-21!
2. The team became good not great when center and leading scorer Brook Lopez got hurt. In this moment of crisis – Lopez out and the team 10-21 – Coach Jason Kidd inventively went with a “small ball” starting lineup featuring Shaun Livingston and Paul Pierce. They ended up over .500 and made the second round of the playoffs
3. Now Lopez is back but Kidd, Pierce and Livingston are all gone
…So I mean, I don’t know what to base this prediction on. The new coach is former Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins who ran a post-up centric offense with Zach Randolph in Memphis. So maybe he’ll do the same with Lopez here?
I guess I think the Nets won’t be very good because Williams, Johnson and Garnett keep getting worse. Also, the Nets have the blandest name and uniforms in the league, a marked contrast to Brooklyn’s flashiness.
16. Miami Heat
During game 5 of the NBA Finals, Dave Rader, a friend of mine dating back to the Clinton administration, obnoxiously observed that San Antonio Spur reserve guard Patty Mills is better than Dwayne Wade.
Dave’s obnoxiousness became prescience and astuteness by the end of Game 5, which is probably as good a reason as any why LeBron James left Miami: Dwayne Wade is aging in dog years. That means he’s aging seven years for every year over the last three years, meaning he’s 51 right now – the oldest player by far in NBA history.
I like Wade, and since we’re the same age his demise is personally painful. But there’s very little from the last two seasons to indicate he can physically rise to the challenge of James’ absence.
The Heat will run the offense around Chris Bosh, and, while I think Bosh can continue to be an all-star, he can’t keep Miami on an elite level.
The Heat’s REAL problem, though, isn’t Wade’s demise or Bosh’s inability to be a superstar. If you rank the teams in the East strictly based on their top three players, Miami’s Bosh-Wade-Luol Deng trio is in the top four. But, 4-12, they are the absolute pits. Josh McRoberts is their fourth best player. Mario Chalmers — who was laughed off the court in the NBA Finals — is their fifth best. Erik Spoelstra will be earnestly saying things during the season like, “it’s really important for us that Norris Cole sets the pace early” and “We needed more tonight from Danny Granger.”
Finally, the fact that there’s a widely released movie called “Birdman” has undoubtedly fractured Chris Anderson’s fragile psyche.
15. Charlotte Hornets
Steve Clifford was my coach of the year last year. This team will be a little better this year because they were young last year, and added Lance Stephenson. But Michael Kidd-Gilchrst still hasn’t proven much and if you grabbed me by my shirt, then threw me over the balcony of the 8th floor of the Beverly Hills Shopping Center right over the Bed, Bath, and Beyond reserved parking and said, “Tell me the Charlotte Hornets starting power forward this season, or I’m throwing you over” my splattered body would soon be inconveniencing Bed Bath & Beyond shoppers.
So 45 wins is a realistic goal.
14. New Orleans Pelicans
Anthony Davis will become one of the top ten players in the game this year, Omer Asik is a great fit, and I’m a Jrue Holiday fan. Still, there are enough “bad vibes” — does this organization know what they’re doing? Can an NBA team with Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon legally post a winning record? Wasn’t Monty Williams the guy who starred at Notre Dame when Notre Dame became suddenly bad at basketball? — that I don’t have them cracking the NBA playoffs.
That said, I bet I watch more New Orleans games than all but about five NBA teams.
13. Atlanta Hawks
On the positive side, the Hawks are welcoming back their all-star centerpiece, Al Horford. On the negative side, their GM turns out to be a latent racist.
The fact that Danny Ferry was a bad basketball player never seemed to distract much from winning teams Ferry was on in Cleveland and San Antonio. So I don’t his likely resignation will hurt the team too much.
Seriously, front office/ownership disarray during the season is always listed as a reason for a team that disappoints, but it really doesn’t make sense that there’s a strong correlation between the management and the actual team during the season. The Hawks have a really good coach, Mike Budenholzer, and a team of perimeter shooters to complement Horford. With Horford and Paul Milsap, they could have two players on this year’s Eastern Conference All-Stars.
Jeff Teague is an above average point guard. And Pero Antic has nowhere to go but up.
Ferry situation or no, this is a team actively looking to shake things up and they totally whiffed this summer on free agent upgrades – so a trade could be made during the season. But the roster + coach as presently constituted give the Hawks a chance to make a run in the East playoffs.
12. Houston Rockets
This is my second wild and crazy prediction ranking the Rockets this low. Here’s the defense on this one
1. Every night the Rockets are going to have the match-up advantage at shooting guard (James Harden) and center (Dwight Howard) and every time they will go against a western playoff contender they will be the weaker team at point guard (Patrick Beverly) small forward (Trevor Ariza) and power forward (Terrence Jones).
Beverly, Ariza and Jones are actually all pretty good players but they’re not as good as, say, who Portland or Dallas have at those positions, much less Oklahoma City or the Clippers or San Antonio.
They’re bench is also inferior to the other West playoff teams and so I just think too much will depend on Harden and Howard…
2. Harden and Howard have bad attitudes for superstars. Harden doesn’t try on defense. Howard’s immaturity is well-chronicled.
When you’re lead by the likes of Durant and Westbrook or Paul and Griffin, it inspires your team…if the most talented players are also the hardest-working and most responsible and take their job the most seriously, it seems natural that they would set a positive example “If these guys are working that hard, I better work hard”
I might be wrong but my sense is that Harden and Howard don’t possess those qualities, and that their superstardom is not greater than the sum of its parts.
3. Kevin McHale is the first coach fired. Why does he have a job? It’s like he’s still coasting off the good will of making cameo appearances on Cheers. He’s the worst coach of any contender and that includes Scott Brooks (though David Blatt is the great unknown).
Look, the Rockets will be good. They won 54 games last year with Chandler Parsons, so maybe I’m downgrading them to 47-48 wins. But somebody has to finish 8th in the West and this is my tentative selection.
11. Washington Wizards
I really like the Paul Pierce signing. Even though he’s clearly declining, he’s the one guy on the Wizards you can trust.
Hopefully, Bradley Beale quickly comes back, John Wall matures and the team rounds into a playoff threat.
Like every single non-Pole who follows the league, I did not like their overpaying for Marcin Gortat, and Coach Randy Wittman is in the Kevin McHale realm of Midwestern white guys from the 80s who keep getting breaks.
Those two factors plus their cursed history keep the Wiz from being in “Part 3” of my exciting rankings.