The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

It sure is early to start predicting next season, but from looking at offseason moves, I’m going to take a crack at the Central Division for next season.  This is by far the strongest division in the Conference, so I’d still say that Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit are locks for the playoffs with Milwaukee having an outside shot.

1: Chicago Bulls: I still believe that the Bulls were the best team in the East last year, and would have represented the East in the finals if they would have had the #2 seed instead of Cleveland.  Of course, that didn’t happen so my opinion and 50 cents is worth a cup of coffee.  Anyway, the Bulls are the only team in the Central to have improved themselves this offseason with new additions.  Their only loss is PJ Brown, and they replace him with Joe Smith and Joakim Noah.  At the very least this is a lateral move.

The Bulls already were probably the deepest team in the league last season, and with the added size of Noah they only get deeper.  They already have a very young core, as Hinrich, Gordon, Ty Thomas, and especially Luol Deng are young enough to continue getting better with age.  People will look at Ben Wallace as their weak link, but the presence of Noah will allow them to limit his minutes below the 35 he played last year.  The other complaint about the Bulls is the lack of a post presence, which I feel is an overblown concern.  Between Deng, Thomas (whose offensive game will make a leap, I believe), Noah and Smith there will be enough post touches to go around.

The Bulls are the best the Central has to offer and, should the KG-to-Boston rumors die down, probably the best in the East.  I honestly this this is a 55-60 win team, and their superior depth should keep them resistant to injuries.

2: Cleveland.  As the worst team to ever make the finals, the Cavs are in a rather disturbing spot.  They had no draft picks this year and are probably going to be stuck paying the luxury tax.  They have no fewer than 4 horrendous contracts on their books this year ($33 million this year to Ilgauskas, Hughes, Snow and Damon Jones).  This completely handcuffs their efforts to get any better.

It’s not so much that Ilgauskas is a bad player, but that because of age he cannot play enough minutes to justify his contract.  In fact, LeBron and Hughes were the only players on Cleveland to play over 30 mpg this season.  This kind of sums up the Cavs’ roster — after LeBron, it’s a bunch of players who are paid superstar money for pedestrian production.

The cap issues have led to another problem — both their starting 2-guard and second best player (Sasha Pavlovic and Anderson Varejao) are restricted free agents.  Should they retain them both then their payroll will be well over $70 million this season and they will have to wait until 2011/12 to have any major cap room — and by that time, LeBron will be a free agent again.

They are counting on big things from Daniel Gibson and Shannon Brown this year but the bottom line is this: There isn’t much difference between the rosters of the Lakers and the Cavs, which in the East was good enough to make the finals and in the West barely makes the playoffs.  They are depending on big contributions from big men who are on the downside of their careers in Ilgauskas and Donyell Marshall and have question marks at every non-LeBron manned position.  Lebron is good enough to get you into the playoffs.  He’s not good enough to get you past the Bulls.  50 wins.

3: Detroit. Well, Chauncey Billups finally got paid.  However, Detroit still has one of the oldest teams in the league, with 3 starters over the age of 30 (Billups, Wallace and either Webber or McDyess), one at 29 (Hamilton), and Tayshaun Prince at 27.  Outside of Jason Maxiell they don’t bring anyone young off the bench, either (while Aaron Affalo and Rodney Stuckey may contribute down the road, it’s hard to depend on anything from them this early).

The problem with old teams is twofold — players need to cut their minutes and they become more injury-prone.  Billups, Prince and Hamilton continued their ironman ways, playing 36+ mpg and 70+ games.  Wallace was durable as well, logging 32 mpg and Webber surprisingly so, at 30 mpg.  But I am hard pressed to believe that this can continue.  Where will the bench production come from?

Detroit seemed like a very tired team to me in the playoffs — world-beaters against Orlando and in games 1-3 against Chicago, but old and exhausted in games 4-6 against Chicago and against Cleveland. 

At some point the Darko-over-Anthony/Bosh/Wade pick will come back to bite them.  And that point is this season.  I see them cruising into the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference with 43-47 wins and stumbling once there.

4: Milwaukee. Last season’s injury-riddled debacle overshadows the fact that the Bucks are putting together a deep, young roster that has only scratched the surface of its potential (except for Michael Redd).  The starting 5 of Williams, Redd, Simmons, Villanueva and Bogut are all under 30 and should continue improving.

The combination of Simmons and Desmond Mason should offset the overachievments of Ruben Patterson last year, and I’d expect Mo Williams to continue his improvement.  Point guards often take several years to reach their potential.  Compare the statistics of Chauncey Billups’ first 4 seasons with Williams’ – they are remarkably similar.  While I’m not saying that Mo will become an all-star or lockdown defender, he can continue his slow, steady improvement for several years (it’s also worth noting that Billups’ defensive ratings were pretty poor until he arrived in Detroit and had Ben Wallace behind him).

The Bucks have one fatal flaw which will keep them behind the big boys of the conference: rebounding.  They are going to need Andrew Bogut to bust out into a rebounding machine this season to make a big leap.  Maybe that can happen — young big men often blossom in their 3rd season as their bodies mature — but I’m not counting on it.  From a rebounding perspective, power forward is also a question mark since Charlie Villanueva is coming off shoulder surgery and nothing about Yi says that he can rebound — or that he will even be on the team.

I forsee a frustrating 41-win season that sees many close losses in which the Bucks are outrebounded by double digits.  Should Charlie V be slow to recover from his shoulder problems then this could be another ugly year, but, honestly, if the rebounding question works itself out then this could blossom into an exciting, high-scoring team with close to 50-win potential.

5: Indiana. The Pacers are looking like a team that wants to rebuild but doesn’t have a decent plan about how to do it.  It began with last years’ bizarre Harrington/Jackson for Murphy/Dunleavy trade in which the Pacers came away with the less talented, more expensive players in the deal.  The trade also cost them this years’ first round pick which they had sent to Atlanta to acquire Harrington.  Now they are in luxury tax land  for a couple of years and basically have nobody good around Jermaine O’Neal; who has been the subject of opt-out and trade rumors for several months.  Oh, and they fired their overachieving coach, Rick Carlisle, who had only been good enough to get them into the playoffs in the season that Ron Artest, Jackson and O’Neal were all suspended for 20+ games.  Makes sense.

The Pacers hired Jim O’Brien as coach and their big offseason splash was to sign Travis Diener.  Nice.

Outside of O’Neal — who has already requested a trade — Indiana really doesn’t have much going for it.  Dumping Steven Jackson (who had a host of off-court problems but produced on the court for a fairly reasonable price) for players like Murphy and Dunleavy (average players who don’t particularly excel at anything but either have local ties or a big-college pedigree and are … well … white) smacks of a trade that is made as a PR effort rather than one that wins games.  O’Brien runs a “do whatever you want on offense as long as you buckle down on defense” system that doesn’t really fit this roster, which is filled with (after O’Neal) slower, not terribly creative offensive players.

I see the Pacers spending this season in a whole-hearted effort to blow up their roster, save money long-term, and chase a top-5 pick in the draft, with the prize being Indianapolis product and Indiana University Freshman Eric Gordon.