The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

This is the best division in basketball. Home of possibly three of the top five teams in the league, it really says something when a team like Dallas might be on the outside looking in come playoff time. Last year saw an explosion by Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets into one of the league’s best, and poor George Shinn will likely find that his team will be so good this year as to force him to keep his team in the Big Easy for the next 10 years (a failure to average 14,000 fans this year would allow Shinn to break his lease).

And so, this year the Best Division In The League will look like:

1- New Orleans: Has there ever been a more mismanaged, luckier team than the Hornets? They have consistently fallen to the depths of the NBA standings, only to have the lottery drop great players right in their lap. In 1992 they had the #2 pick in the year that just happened to have two franchise centers available (Shaq and Mourning). Then in 1999 Baron Davis fell into their laps when Vancouver took Steve Francis at #2, despite knowing that Francis had no interest in playing for them. Finally, after Davis lost interest in playing for the Hornets, they found themselves with the fourth pick in a draft that featured two franchise point guards, three teams in front of them who needed point guards (Atlanta, plus the fact that Utah traded up to Portland’s #3 pick), and one more team that needed a point guard but didn’t realize it (Milwaukee). Remarkably, Chris Paul fell into their lap.

Meanwhile, the rest of this team is for real. David West has blossomed into a star, Tyson Chandler is the perfect player for their system, and while the Hornets may still wind up regretting the contract to Peja Stojakovic, he has provided the deep shooting they need. And they addressed their one major weakness — their bench — by adding James Posey this offseason. They will definitely regret his contract in a couple of years (especially since Julian Wright is probably a better player right now) but give them credit for trying. The Hornets are primed for a shot at the finals this year.

Last year: won 56 games.

+2 wins from the continued improvement of Chris Paul (23 years old!).
-4 wins because Peja and David West both have injury histories that are likely to crop up again at some point.
+1 win because Tyson Chandler is for real.
+1 win because James Posey has made a career of helping out good teams (and promptly falling out of shape for bad ones).

This season: 56-26.

2- Houston: 82-82-79-43-48-61-26.

What’s that, and why should it make Rockets fans worried?

That is the number of games Ralph Sampson played in each of his first seven years. Why is that a problem?

82-80-80-57-48-55.

That’s the number of games Yao Ming has played in his first six seasons. Plus international ball every year. You have to wonder how much pounding the body of a 7’6″ player can handle. And now, I fear that the leg and foot injuries that Yao has sustained over the past few seasons are starting to become more of a trend. Yao clearly wasn’t 100% at the Olympics and should have been resting. When does the guy get a chance to sit back, relax, and let his body recover?

The other problem for Houston is that Tracy McGrady’s game has become a sort of balancing act between “coasting to try and reduce the stress on my back” and “turning it on and hoping it doesn’t hurt my back.” Both T-Mac and Yao have crossed over into the realm of being listed as perpetually “questionable”, and it’s hard to believe that you can win a title if you can’t count on your players remaining upright until the end of the season.

It’s too bad, too, because the Rockets have done almost everything else right in putting together a championship-level team. They have one of the best defenders in basketball in Shane Battier, stole Luis Scola from San Antonio, and have mined second-round gold repeatedly in Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry. I’m not sure how well Ron Artest will fit in, as it seems to me that he and Battier will have a hard time co-existing, as both are too small to be very effective at power forward. But it’s still a worthwhile gamble with Artest’s contract about to expire — he will be motivated to keep his mouth shut and do what the coaching staff wants.

But, unfortunately, given the brittleness of their two stars, I can’t imagine this team has the horses to go all the way.

Last year: 56 wins.

No change from the inevitable Yao/McGrady injuries costing them their stars for several games yet again.
-2 wins from an overextended Yao suffering a post-Olympics hangover.
-2 wins from the Battier/Artest combination suffering growing pains.
+3 wins from Artest’s offense making up for some of the loss suffered when Yao/McGrady can’t go.
-2 wins from Carl Landry coming back to earth.

This season: 53-29.

3- San Antonio: I just cannot believe how old this team is getting. Of their top seven players, only Tony Parker is under 31 years old. The core group of Duncan, Ginobili, Oberto, Bowen, Finley and Thomas stays together, but for how long can this bunch stay athletic enough to go deep into the playoffs every year? They have been trying to limit Manu Ginobili’s minutes for a long time, but now he’s hurt before the season has even started. Basically, this team doesn’t have anybody on it who is getting better — everyone is either getting incrementally worse with age or struggling to stay at the same level.

The core reason for the Spurs’ success over the past decade (aside from getting lucky and grabbing Tim Duncan) was their ability to mine talent from overseas. However, that advantage is long gone now that other teams have copied the San Antonio scouting method. The inability to continue stealing international talent is going to bring about the end of the Spurs dynasty, and that end begins this year.

Last season: won 56 games.

-5 wins from age.
-3 wins from the loss of Ginobli.

This season: 48-34.

4- Dallas: I’ve always felt that Mark Cuban was overrated as an owner. Last year he proved it.

He is always credited for rebuilding the Mavs after buying them, but he acquired a team that already had Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Michael Finley in place. He then embarked on a strategy of willingly accepting salary additions in trades, which only netted them players like Raef LaFrentz, Shawn Bradley, Christian Laettner and Juwan Howard. Their front office — primarily Don Nelson — extricated them from that mess by drafting Josh Howard, signing DeSagna Diop for almost nothing and making a savvy trade for Jason Terry and a draft-day deal for Devin Harris.

But then Cuban started meddling again. And the resulting Jason Kidd trade threatens to pull the whole thing down again.

The problem is that Dallas is the worst possible place for Kidd, especially since players like Tony Parker and Chris Paul run the show for the Mavs’ primary divisional competition. Kidd couldn’t stay in front of Parker in the finals 5 years ago. What is he supposed to do against them now? This problem was exposed in the first round of the playoffs last year, and was also illuminated in the Olympics when Kidd was anointed as the starting point guard for Team USA but Paul and Deron Williams were both clearly better than him. Cuban took a huge financial hit from the trade (exacerbated by re-signing Diop to a full-midlevel contract this off season) and traded away Devin Harris — who will be better than Kidd three years from now, can defend quick point guards better than Kidd, and just might be better than Kidd right now.

Kidd is also a known coach killer, which is a problem when you remember that Dallas just signed Rick Carlisle to be their head coach. It is also well known that Carlisle doesn’t get along very well with anyone, as shown by him getting fired by the Pistons while he was the reigning coach of the year and then fired by Indiana — and by Larry Bird, his best friend — for missing the playoffs once in six years.

This team still has quite a bit of talent, but between the competition in the division and growing pains within, it will be a tough season for the Mavs.

Last season; won 51 games.

-2 wins from the struggle to adjust to the coaching change and to find a style that maximizes their players’ strengths.
-2 wins because Jason Kidd is in decline and isn’t the right guy to defend the division’s best point guards.
0 change because Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard (no matter where his head is) are still in their primes.
-1 win because Jerry Stackhouse is in decline.

This season: 46-36.

5- Memphis: I love mediocre NBA basketball. Sometimes the more incompetent teams are more interesting than the well-run ones, to me. When I read John Hollinger’s player previews, I almost alway skip to losers like Eddy Curry and Tim Thomas first for the laughs. I write a blog about the Bucks for, goodness sakes.

But if I had to be a Grizzlies fan I would abandon the NBA.

General Manager Chris Wallace is redefining “not having a clue” on a daily basis. For arguments sake, lets just say that I’m wrong about OJ Mayo and he’s going to be much better than Kevin Love. Let’s just say that Mayo is worth trading away Mike Miller and Love and accepting the contracts of scrubs like Antoine Walker and Marko Jaric in return. Then why on Earth would Wallace ignore the logjam he has with Mike Conley, Kyle Lowry and Javaris Crittendon despite the need to make room for Mayo?

It’s like Wallace has gone out of his way to field an NBDL team. He is going to start a point guard with next-to-no experience (Conley or Lowry), a rookie (Mayo), a player who has been mentioned as “underrated” so much that he has become totally overrated (Rudy Gay), either a career loser (Darko Milicic) or a guy who might still be high from the NBA’s rookie orientation session (Darrell Arthur) and the younger brother of the franchise’s best player (Marc Gasol). And they expect people to pay money to see this happen?

It’s not so much that this team has gotten so bad, but the way that Wallace has done it. He managed to dump Pau Gasol for nothing, and in the Mayo trade manage to take on bad contracts rather than shed them. Then, despite adding Mayo he failed to sort out the rest of the back court as well. No wonder the Grizzlies are the laughingstock of the NBA right now.

Oh, and I don’t think OJ Mayo is all that good in the first place.

Last season: Won 22 games.

-3 wins from the loss of Mike Miller.
+1 win from the improvement of Rudy Gay.
-3 wins from the backcourt not being NBA ready.

This season: 17-65.