The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

After 2 years of questions such as, “if you win a division at under .500, are you still eligible for the lottery?”, the Atlantic got all shook up the day that KG arrived. It went from a division most notable for what a colossal screwup most of the teams were to the home of the most interesting story in the Eastern Conference: What will happen in Boston?

1: Boston: What can I really say about the Celtics that hasn’t been written already? They made the biggest, most visible moves in the offseason, transforming themselves into a powerhouse with a 3-4 year window to gun for a title. But the trade came at a cost , the team has almost no bench whatsoever and should injuries short-circuit them then all they will have to show for it will be no draft pick and a $76 million payroll.

Most of the “What if one of the big 3 gets hurt” questions center around Ray Allen, as he is the oldest member of the Garnett/Pierce/Alen triumvirate, and has already had injury problems (including offseason surgery on both of his ankles). Allen is also at an age where most big shooting guards just mystifyingly “lose it” (remember when Mitch Richmond went to Washington?), but he has always depended less on his athleticism and more on his sweet jumper, which won’t desert him. Obviously, if Garnett gets hurt then this team is sunk, but the same can be said for most title contenders about their best player.

After putting together the Big 3, Boston had solid pieces left to fill out their starting 5 (serviceable Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo, a first round revelation who provides excellent defense). However, the rest of their roster is a mess , partially because they didn’t have any money to spend to make it better, but part because they made some big mistakes. First of all, they used the midlevel exception on James Posey and Eddie House. House is a decent, if one-dimensional, player who has one of the highest shots-per-minute rates in NBA history. But why not go after Charlie Bell, instead? I know the Bucks would probably have matched an offer to Bell, but his ability to score would make him a perfect counterpart at point guard to Rondo, and his defense would fill in well behind Allen. Posey is terrible , he has gotten worse and worse in the last couple of years, and was even suspended by the Heat last year for not being in shape. So why not sign Ruben Patterson instead? Nobody wanted Patterson, and he wound up signing with the Clippers. Their other signings, Dahntay Jones and Scot Pollard were pretty awful as well, but the C’s only had the minimum available to get them.

I’m going to assume that the Big 3 stays relatively healthy, and that should propel this team pretty deep into the playoffs. They do have the schedule advantage of being in a weak division, so have a good shot at the #1 seed. I think that in the end the Bulls’ youth and depth will overwhelm the Boston star power, but it should be a very exciting fight. The Celtics win 57 and cruise to the Eastern Conference Finals.

2: Toronto: Funny roster. Besides Chris Bosh, the Raptors don’t have a single player who makes you say; “Oh yeah, he’s good.” But they have about 10 guys who make you say, “You know, he’s not bad.” While they won an extremely weak division last year, this team is good enough that it wasn’t a fluke.

Bryan Coangelo has completely remade the roster in the past season, and was most lauded for his acquisition of TJ Ford as the key to the Raptors’ rise. I’m not so sure that was truly his best move, though , as I wrote in this post, Ford wasn’t so much better last season as he had been with the Bucks except that his assist rate went way up , remarkably coinciding with him playing with better finishers than the Bucks had. No, it was the same TJ, just in a much better offensive system for his game.

The real genius of Coangelo is what he did with the roster beyond Bosh and Ford , every single player is a pretty nice pickup (except for Kris Humphries). Anthony Parker and Jorge Garbajosa were terrific European imports, and Jose Calderon has Toronto fans calling for TJ to be benched. I really liked the acquisitions of Juan Dixon and especially Carlos Delfino, and Radoslav Nesterovic even chipped in with a solid year. Jason Kapono got a ridiculous contract that they will regret in 4 years, but he should be pretty valuable next season.

One difficulty for this team will be trying to figure out what to do with Andrea Bargnani. While his sweet shot needs to be on the floor, trying to figure out where is a problem , it’s kind of like the same issue they had with Charlie Villanueva. Obviously he can’t play power forward with Bosh cemented there. His shooting is plenty good to play the 3, but his size/speed combination leads to a lot of defensive problems there. He is big enough to play center, and would create offensive mismatches there, but he cannot rebound at all. Seriously , he only got 6.3 rebounds per 40 minutes last season. I always complain about the Bucks’ lack of rebounding, but their entire frontcourt , Bogut, Villanueva, Gadzuric, and Voskhul , all averaged between 9.5 and 11 rebounds per 40 last year. Bargnani at center will make the coaching job much more difficult. One interesting thing to look at is Bargnani’s 82games.com page , when he played power forward his PER was equal to that of his counterpart but when he moved to small forward or center, this opponent went to town on him. This all probably means more minutes in the middle for Bosh than the team would really prefer.

But the Bargnani question is a minor one, and the Raptors will be just fine this season. They should be back in the playoffs, with a minor improvement on last years’ record. I’m looking for 47 wins.

3: New Jersey: When you have a hall-of-fame point guard, your team can only get so bad. Last season they suffered through the loss of Nenad Kristic, and survived using a patchwork frontcourt featuring guys like the immortal (sarcasm) Mikki Moore and the immortal (not sarcasm) Cliff Robinson. Richard Jefferson had an injury plagued year, and was awful when he wasn’t hurt. Lawrence Frank wouldn’t let things get too bad, though, and Vince Carter and Jason Kidd carried the load. Eventually this roster isn’t going to be able to get it done any more, and I think that decline starts now.

The aging of the roster can be seen in the decline of the team’s defense. People seem to think that with Kidd-Carter-Jefferson that the Nets are a run-and-gun bunch, but they actually have been one of the slowest paced, defensive-oriented teams around. That started to change last year as they were pretty much average in both offense and defense (I had them as the #14 offense and #18 defense). No doubt part of this was because of the frontcourt injuries, but some of it may be due to a general slowing down of the rest of the team’s talent base.
The Nets get Kristic back, which will help them on both ends of the floor, but nevertheless they spent the offseason trying to upgrade their big men. Futilely, I might add. After years of using no-offense, tough defense Jason Collins in the middle they decided to back him up with Jamaal Magloire, who is an upgrade in no way except rebounding. Then they drafted Boston College center Sean Williams, already a well-known head case who finished his college career by getting kicked off the team. Why take a risk on a guy like that?

The Nets find themselves at a kind of lousy crossroads. Not good enough to make much noise in the postseason, too much talent to get bad enough to go young and play for the draft. I think they slump to 38 wins and fall out of the playoffs, which would probably unfairly cost Lawrence Frank his job.

4: New York: I just love this team.

Once again, the highest payroll in the NBA couldn’t result in any more than another lottery pick for the Bulls. Isiah Thomas’ plan for rebuilding the Knicks with expensive superstars has only resulted in a roster filled with expensive players. He even wussed out on his theory about accumulating expiring contracts as trade bait, waiting until Jalen Rose and Anfernee Hardaway were in the final seasons of their contracts and buying them out instead of trying to trade them. Glass-half-full Knicks fans trumpeted Eddy Curry’s “break out” season as one bright spot, but actually Curry did nothing different than in previous years other than stay on the court longer , he scored at the same rate as before but played 7 more minutes per game than his career average. He shot a career high percentage from the field (but a career low from the line) and contributed his usual lousy rebounding, mind-bogglingly weak passing, and nonexistent defense. He played 35% more minutes per game than the season before and scored 43% more points per game. Not exactly an amazing jump in his production.

To Isiah’s credit, he has drafted a pretty good frontcourt to surround Curry , David Lee and Renaldo Balkman are high energy, dirty work players who are spectacular rebounders and, in the case of Balkman, a shockingly good defender. Lee and Balkman were a large factor in the Knicks leading the league in rebounding , strong praise, especially considering how weak a rebounder Curry is. The rest of the lineup has problems, particularly with the decline of Stephon Marbury. In addition to his game slipping, Marbury seems to be descending into some sort of delusional egomania (last year’s “The way how this world is right now, we need more people like me” quote, saying that he would like to finish his career in Italy, and his bizarre series of television interviews this offseason).
So of course the Knicks added Zach Randolph, an acquisition which I cast my doubts upon earlier this season. I think that Curry paired with Randolph will make for such a poor defensive unit that they will have a hard time staying on the court and that there wont be enough shots to go around to keep either of them happy.

The circus continues in Madison Square Garden, as the front office mayhem continues to make as many headlines as the players. I think that James Dolan has an ulterior motive at work in the way he has run this team, and I will write a longer post about it later this week (hint: on Thursday, Cablevision shareholders will vote on the Dolan family’s buyout bid to take the company private). But I think that the overall talent level of this team is debatable, and the distractions far too many to overcome. This team will not be any better than it was last year, even with Zach Randolph. They win 35.

5: Philadelphia: Normally when you trade away a superstar you get screwed in the deal. The Sixers, however, did pretty well on the Iverson trade. Not for the quality of players they got back, but for the roster flexibility they get next season. As for what that means for this year, though “¦ well, it will be a long season in Philly.

Billy King’s reign of error has one more season in luxury tax land, but after this season they will drop well below the salary cap as Chris Webber, Aaron McKie and Kevin Ollie’s contracts finally expire. What that does mean, however, is that Philadelphia will probably just cruise along without making much noise this season, just waiting until after the season to remake the roster.

After Iverson left, Andre Iguodala was a revelation in more ways than one , he showed off a much more varied offensive game than people knew he had, and it became clear that you can only go so far with Andre Iguodala leading the way. Samuel Dalembert has the center position locked up and Andre Miller provides a steady hand at point guard. The forward positions are in a state of flux. Thaddeus Young will probably get the nod at small forward (and has a chance to be a really good player in a couple of years) and power forward is pretty much an open competition between Shavlik Randolph, Reggie Evans and draftees Jason Smith and Herbert Hill.

Well, a $72 million roster doesn’t get you much these days, does it. The Sixers have a long road ahead of them. To their credit, they didn’t fold last season after the Iverson trade, and hopefully they will keep fighting this year, knowing that the roster should get a big influx of talent this offseason. However, the roster has way too many holes and this season they will struggle to win 30 games. If they are serious about rebuilding, though, hopefully it starts with getting a new GM.