The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Boy, has this division seen some changes this offseason. One team bolts town, another trades one of their best players for a second round pick, and another adds the #1 pick from last year. But one thing doesn’t change: Jerry Sloan is still on top.

1-Utah: After winning 54 games and seeing Deron Williams blossom into one of the top 4 point guards on the planet, there isn’t much reason for Utah to make changes. And change the didn’t. They seem to have given up on the idea of trading Andrei Kirilenko (probably a good idea) and are sticking with the plan that between CJ Miles, Ronnie Brewer and Morris Almond they must have one decent shooting guard in there (Miles might surprise some people this year). One thing about the Jazz’ record that makes last year seem as though it was no fluke was that they were a pretty mediocre 17-24 on the road — their dominance at home is pretty much a given and with a couple of lucky breaks there is room for improvement on the road as well.

Last year: won 54 games.

+2 wins because they will be better on the road this year.
+1 win from the “Carlos Boozer contract year” effect (he can opt-out after the season, but apparently the Jazz are trying to sign him to an extension).
+1 win from the continued dominance of Deron Williams.

This year: 58-24.

2-Portland: No offense to John Hammond, but I wish Kevin Pritchard was my GM. He has built one of the most talented teams in the league and is set to drop $35 million under the salary cap this offseason. Meanwhile, he adds last years’ #1 pick, Greg Oden, to the team this year and stole Jerryd Bayless from Larry Bird as well. I’m not much of a Bayless fan — I don’t see how his helter-skelter style fits in with the organized system Roy, Aldridge and Oden are suited for and it seems like dominating summer league like he did is usually correlates with not doing anything at the NBA level. That said, Jarret Jack is a nice player who doesn’t do a whole lot for me and I don’t think much of Brandon Rush at all. The Bayless trade was a good risk for the Blazers — they didn’t give much up and just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean anything. I’ve been wrong before. Meanwhile, I think Greg Oden will prove to be very similar to Dikembe Mutombo early in his career — capable of dominating games with his rebounding and shot blocking, despite being a little raw offensively. You add a defensive anchor to this team and a year of improvement and you get a big jump this year and most likely 60 wins and a title three years from now.

Last year: won 41 games.

+6 wins from the arrival of Greg Oden.
+2 wins from the improvement of the Roy/Outlaw/Aldridge nucleus.
-2 wins from weakness at point guard and difficulty integrating Bayless into the system.

This year: 47-35.

3- Denver: George Karl has never struck me as much of a coach. He pretty much rolls the balls out onto the floor and lets the guys do what they want. He needs a dominant personality on his team to be on the same page as him, and it’s no coincidence that he had success with Gary Payton in Seattle and then mortgaged the Bucks’ future by pushing to get him again. Meanwhile, financial concerns are all set to blow up this Denver team. Allen Iverson is starting to show his age, and it seems pretty much settled that Carmelo Anthony doesn’t have the game or attention span (He is well known as one of the biggest partiers in the league. OJ Mayo got in trouble with the NCAA for accepting tickets from Anthony, after Mayo joked around with him that he was staying out too late the night before a Lakers game) to get through a whole NBA season, and is better suited for short, Olympic-style tournaments. The Nuggets are hamstrung with horrible contracts to Kenyon Martin and Nene, and this offseason’s trade of Marcus Camby for nothing is a clear indication that the team is all set to give up, let Iverson’s contract expire after the season, and start over. George Karl has no chance to motivate this bunch.

Last year: won 50 games.

-5 games from the loss of their only defender, Marcus Camby.
-2 games from the decline of Allen Iverson.
+1 game from the theft of Renaldo Balkman from the Knicks.
-2 games from the inevitable breakdown from the $25.7 million combo of Nene and Kenyon Martin.
-6 games from the fact that George Karl is a horrible coach for motivating a bad team.

This year: 36-46.

4-Minnesota: Give Kevin McHale some credit — he found the only GM in the league who is worse than him in Chris Wallace and stole Kevin Love and Mike Miller in exchange for the next Larry Hughes in OJ Mayo. This all came after McHale spent the pre-draft period talking about how badly he wanted a center so that Al Jefferson could go back to power forward and Ryan Gomes to small forward because as a center and power forward the two of them were the worst defensive tandem in the league. Then McHale did the smart thing and got the best player available instead of messing around with drafting for need. And he stole Mike Miller. And got rid of Antoine Walker and Marko Jaric in the deal. Nice move. However, the whole plan almost fell apart two weeks ago when Blake Ahearn fell into Al Jefferson’s knee. They say he will be back in two weeks and I’m basing my projection on this being true. But I hate to make assumptions like that about knee injuries.

Last year: won 22 games.

+4 games from Al Jefferson’s improvement.
+3 games from Kevin Love’s presence, who should pay immediate dividends.
-3 games from Al Jefferson being forced to play center. He’s as bad as Eddy Curry defensively at that position, but at least it’s not from lack of effort.
+3 games from Mike Miller’s presence, which really says more about how he will keep other T-Wolves (particularly Rashad McCants) off of the court than what Miller will do on it.

This year: 29-53. Still not good, but an improvement.

5- Oklahoma City: There isn’t much to say about this team. They don’t care about their record, only about amassing draft picks and cap room. They should concentrate on the picks, since they can have all the cap room in the world but wont be able to sign anyone of note in the sprawling metropolis of Oklahoma City. The team has a budding star in Kevin Durant and a couple of interesting players in Russell Westbrook and Saer Sene (not too excited about Jeff Green, though) but not much interest in anyone else on their own roster. The fans are excited for NBA basketball and all, but they aren’t going to see much of it from their own team.

Last year: 20 wins.

+3 wins from the improvement of Kevin Durant.
+3 wins from moving from the angry fans of Seattle to the college atmosphere in OKC

This year: 26-56.