The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

A roundup of the Atlantic Division blogger previews from around the blogosphere.  Brett’s look at the entire division was posted earlier.

Boston Celtics
Jeff Clark: CelticsBlog.com
Jim Weeks: Green Bandwagon
FLCeltsFan: LOY’s Place
John Karalis: Red’s Army
Dustin Chapman: Celtics 24/7

New Jersey Nets
Dennis Velasco: About Basketball

New York Knicks
Joey: Straight Bangin’
Seth Rosenthal: Posting and Toasting

Philadelphia 76ers
Dannie & Pete: Recliner GM
Jon Burkett: Passion and Pride

Toronto Raptors
Franchise: RaptorsHQ.com
Ryan McNeill: Hoops Addict
Cuzzy: Cuzoogle

Sure, I know training camp hasn’t even started yet. But you know what? It’s still time to bring forth my thumbnail preview of the 08/09 season. I kind of liked how I projected the Bucks’ record a few posts ago, so I did it for the rest of the league. Today, I’m going to cover the Atlantic Division.

1 – Boston: After ending a career of frustration for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, one has to wonder just how aggressively they will go at it this season. It’s only natural – you bust your ass to reach the top of the mountain and realize that, hey, it’s the NBA, we could have won 20 fewer games and still made the playoffs. Shaquille O’Neal’s teams were well known for using the regular season as an extended playoff warm-up, and a little of that attitude will cause the same thing for the Celtics this year. However, barring injury, they will still be really, really good.

Last year: won 66 games.

This year:
-4 wins from a general “I got mine”-itis.
-2 wins from age-related declines for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce.
-3 wins from Ray Allen’s decline. Nobody seemed to notice last season that Allen had really dropped off last season, and at his age he is not going to get any better. Eddie House is Allen’s only backup.
+2 wins from continued improvement from Rajon Rondo.
-2 wins from the loss of James Posey. The Celtics bench still has Big Baby and Leon Powe, but after losing the valuable Posey (who played big minutes when Allen had to sit) they took flyers on Patrick O‘Bryant and Darius Miles. Yuck.

Celtics final record in 08/09: 57-25.

2 – Philadelphia: According to my numbers last year, the Sixers were for real last season, and actually underachieved a little. They didn’t lose anyone and added Elton Brand, a perfect complement for their roster. They need shooting, but have plenty of athleticism to make up for it.

Last year: won 40 games.

This year:
+6 wins from the addition of Elton Brand.
+2 wins from budding stud Thaddeus Young.
-1 win for signing Royal Ivey.
+1 win because they underachieved last year.

Sixers’ final record this year: 48-34.

3 – Toronto: While TJ Ford blossomed with the Raptors, Jose Calderon will make them forget about him in a hurry. Overall I like the Ford-O’Neal trade for the Raptors, with the assumption that O’Neal will be able to play at least 70 games and will be healthy for the playoffs. Other than that the Raptors pretty much stood pat this offseason.

Last year: won 41 games.

This year:
+5 wins from a full season of Jermaine O’Neal (and the corresponding banishment of Andrea Bargnani to the bench).
-3 wins since the odds that O’Neal wont get hurt and miss at least 20 games are about 50:1.
+1 win because the TJ Ford/Jose Calderon sideshow has finally been decided.
+3 wins because Chris Bosh is continuing to get better and better.

Raptors final record this year: 47-35.

4 – New York: Lost in all of the “Mike D’Antoni is a coaching genius” hype is this little fact: in the two seasons that D’Antoni has not had Steve Nash as his point guard, he has a 35-76 career record (0.315) which would rank as the 17th worst career record among coaches with over 100 games of experience (one spot ahead of Larry Krystkowiak, incidentally). I have my doubts about D’Antoni’s system without the unique collection of talent he had as his disposal. He simply ignores defense, so the only way the Suns were able to stop anyone was through the incredible athleticism of Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. The Knicks roster is pretty much the worst possible collection of “talent” that D’Antoni could find for his system – slow, lazy plodders like Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry and, even worse, shot-happy chuckers like Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson. I can just see Crawford telling D’Antoni: “You want a shot in seven seconds or less? I can get one up in three seconds, no problem!” I foresee Crawford firing up 500 pull-up three pointers with 20+ on the shot clock this season. It’s going to be ugly in NY. On the bright side, at least D’Antoni will actually try to coach the Knicks this season, unlike what Isiah Thomas did last year.

Last year: won 23 games.

+14 wins by having a coach that cares.
-8 wins from having the worst imaginable collection of talent for D’Antoni’s system.
+2 wins from the nights that Jamal Crawford is hot.
-6 wins from the nights that Jamal Crawford is ice cold – but that’s never stopped him from firing away before.

Knicks final record this year: 25-57.

5 – New Jersey: Don’t you just feel bad for everyone involved here? The organization is obviously trying to clear cap room for their 2010 run at LeBron, meaning that most of the players (everyone except for Devin Harris, Brook Lopez, Sean Williams and maybe Yi Jianlian) know that they are only there as salary cap-filling bookmarks. Vince Carter is sure to either be traded or pull his “Half Man/Half Invisible” act he perfected in Toronto. Devin Harris is blossoming into an excellent player, but the Nets are going to be completely irrelevant for a couple of more years.

Last year: won 34 games.

-6 wins by not having Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, or Vince Carter (whether he is on the court or not).
+2 wins from the growth of Devin Harris.
-4 wins from “trying to develop the youngsters and/or 25 year olds masquerading as youngsters” as Lopez and Yi get minutes they don’t deserve in the name of “player development”.
-4 wins from most of the team realizing that there is absolutely no “team concept” ‘at work here that includes them, so they may as well just gun for their own stats.

Nets final record this year: 22-60.

It’s an interesting division. Boston clearly remains one of the top four teams in the conference (assuming the big three, and particularly Garnett, stays healthy) while Philadelphia and Toronto should be interesting for all the right reasons. The Knicks should remain a sideshow (but not quite the comical one they have been).

Up next: the Southeast.

Enough about the Bucks. Time to look at what’s going on among the good teams, and preview the first round of the playoffs.

Instead of thinking about how teams have played throughout the whole season, I’m a little more interested in how they are playing now. So I calculated IPM power rankings for the last six weeks of the season, which gives a good picture of which series’ might be the most competetive, and where potential upsets may lie.

If you are not familiar with IPM (as I recently learned that my friend Mike Headd is not, despite his having read the blog for nearly a year), it is my proprietary player ranking calculation. IPM stands for Impacts Per Minute, and more about the methodology is available here. I update IPM rankings for all players weekly (here) as well as team power rankings (here). All of this information is also avaliable through the links on the right side of the page.

I’m writing the preview under the assumption that the playoff matchups will not change in the next couple of days. If they do then I will update them accordingly.

Listed next to the team names are each team’s power rank for their offense, defense and overall for the last six weeks. The information is also given here.

On to the preview:

Eastern Conference

1 vs 8. Boston (#4 Offense, #1 Defense, #2 Overall) vs. Atlanta (#9 Offense, #18 Defense, #16 Overall): Welcome back to the big time, Hawks. Blink and you will miss it. Obviously the Celtics completely outclass Atlanta in this series, and it looks to be a 4-0 sweep.

4 vs 5. Cleveland (#13 Offense, #9 Defense, #10 Overall) vs. Washington (#12 Offense, #15 Defense, #14 Overall): The Cavs haven’t really jelled as much as I thought they would since their deadline trades, only going 13-12. They have, however, played a little better than their record, as my numbers say they have underachieved by two games. Washington is struggling to reintegrate Gilbert Arenas into their rotation, and the combination of home court advantage and LeBron James should make this series a pretty easy Cleveland win. I say the Cavs in 5.

3 vs. 6. Orlando (#20 Offense, #6 Defense, #13 Overall) vs. Toronto (#10 Offense, #13 Defense, #12 Overall): This is an interesting matchup — I feel that Orlando has overachieved all season and Toronto has underachieved. They come into this series as an even matchup, but I feel that the point guards will decide this series — and I think that Toronto has a huge advantage there. I’m calling the upset here — Raptors in six.

2 vs. 7. Detroit (#8 Offense, #3 Defense, #3 Overall) vs. Philadelphia (#11 Offense, #11 Defense, #9 Overall): The only Eastern Conference matchup that features two top ten teams over the last six weeks, the Sixers could make some noise against Detroit. However, I think that the Pistons’ veteran savvy will carry this one pretty easily. Pistons in 5.

Western Conference

1 vs 8. LA Lakers (#2 Offense, #12 Defense, #4 Overall) vs. Denver (#3 Offense, #29 Defense, #19 Overall): Despite getting the edge over Golden State by beating them this week, the Nuggets are staggering to the finish line. Recent losses to Seattle and Sacramento highlight the absolute defensive collapse that they are suffering as they abandon that end of the floor to concentrate on scoring. Their home court advantage will win them a game or two, but they cannot seriously challenge Kobe and the Lakers. Lakers in six.

4 vs 5. Utah (#1 Offense, #4 Defense, #1 Overall) vs. Houston (#15 Offense, #5 Defense, #7 Overall): Utah has been the best team in the league for several months, but it hasn’t been borne out in their record, as they have underachieved by 5 games in the last six weeks. The problem is that they are simply dominant at home (36-4) but subpar on the road (17-23). That makes home court advantage the deciding factor in this series, which will be up in the air until the final day. Houston has one more game left than Utah, giving them an edge on getting home court. Even without Yao, the Rockets have been one of the best teams of the second half this season, and maybe this finally is the year that T-Mac finally gets out of the first round. My prediction? Lets see who gets home court advantage. Either way this will be the best first round series (which is saying somethng) and whoever is at home for game seven will prevail.

3 vs. 6. San Antonio (#23 Offense, #2 Defense, #6 Overall) vs. Phoenix (#7 Offense, #14 Defense, #11 Overall): Now the playoffs begin and the Spurs turn it on. One reason their numbers look so bad is that they limit Manu Ginobli’s minutes so much in the regular season. Once he starts playing a little more, look for them to get that much better. Meanwhile, I think that the Suns’ acquisition of Shaquille O’Neal will be exposed as a mistake in the playoffs — in the last six weeks their offensive and defensive rankings have all declined from their full season rankings. Spurs in seven.

2 vs. 7. New Orleans (#5 Offense, #7 Defense, #5 Overall) vs. Dallas (#6 Offense, #10 Defense, #8 Overall): After the acquisition of Jason Kidd, this is the worst possible matchup for Dallas. Kidd couldn’t stay in front of Tony Parker in the finals six years ago, what makes Dallas think he can check Chris Paul now? Meanwhile, the Mavs traded away their best matchup against Paul, Devin Harris, and in the process fell from the #3 seed to the #7. This is actually a pretty close matchup with two top-ten teams, but the Hornets are simply a little better at both ends of the court. Hornets in seven.

I’n not going to call the second round, but I guess I should give my finals prediction: Boston over San Antonio.

There are a couple of interesting tidbits floating around here, not the least is the story that the Bucks are seriously considering hiring Phoenix Suns’ Director of Player Personnel David Griffin to be the next GM.

It is a little tough to judge Griffin on what he has done since taking his current position since the Suns have one of the most impossible owners in the league to work with in Robert Sarver. Since buying the team, Sarver has mandated that the Suns compete for a championship while still keeping under the luxury tax with a roster that includes three max- or near-max contracts. As a result, Sarver has short-circuited the teams present and future by forcing them to sell picks for cap space. This has served the purpose of weakening their current team (you think having Rajon Rondo and Luol Deng would help them now?), destroying their salary structure (by their math, trading Marion and Marcus Banks for Shaq actually saves them money) and mortgaging their future (no Deng, Rondo, or their first rounders in 2008 or 2010).

But what Griffin did — or, at least was a part of — from 2001 to 2005 was a thing of beauty.

Griffin has been with the Suns for 11 years and was promoted to his current position in August of 2004 after three years as the assistant director of player personnel. His job description as the assistant “included player evaluation for the draft and free agency”, which is a positive thing because in that time the Suns made a series of truly ingenious moves — and one can only assume that came with his input:

2001: Traded for Joe Johnson.
2002: Drafted Amare Stoudemire, a very ballsy pick considering the character and maturity questions surrounding Stoudemire, and the availability of Caron Butler at the time.
2004: Traded Stephon Marbury to New York (which doesn’t really qualify as “ingenious”), collecting a ton of draft picks.
2004: Signed Steve Nash (“ingenious”).
2005: Worked out sign-and-trade for Joe Johnson, netting Boris Diaw and three first round picks.

The Suns have made a series of blunders, some of which may reflect poorly on Griffin (drafting Zarko Cabarkapa, signing Marcus Banks) and some which probably don’t (re-signing Boris Diaw, selling every draft pick they can).

It’s impossible to pass judgement on any GM candidate without actually knowing him, but based on the evidence, David Griffin looks like a solid candidate.

Another name that has been bouncing around a little is that of Raptors assistant GM Maurizio Gherardini. To tell you the truth, I don’t think this rumor has any legs. Apparently Gery Woefel mentioned his name on WSSP, and this got back to the Toronto Sun. The Sun then reported (in my favorite lazy-reporter trick) that “Well-respected Raptors assistant general manager Maurizio Gherardini has been linked to the vacant GM post in Milwaukee” in a story that includes nothing attributing it to any source. My guess is that the reporter read about Woefel’s comments on a message board and ran with it.

Gherardini has a reputation as one of the finest basketball minds in Europe, with a front office career that dates back to 1975. His sterling record as the GM of Benneton Treviso from 1992 to 2006 (seven Italian Cups and three Italian Supercups, which sounds really cool) is where his reputation was really made.

However, Gherardini has only worked for the Raptors for two seasons, and thus has spent relatively little time actually involved with American players (besides those who weren’t quite good enough for the NBA and were looking to play in Italy). Also, being successful as the GM of a team like Benneton isn’t all that impressive — most European leagues are set up so that the teams with the most free-spending owners are able to set up Yankees-style juggernaunts that result in championships usually being distributed among the same three or four teams every year.

Maybe my ugly-American bias is showing, but I can’t really see how Gherardini would have the familiarity with American players or the connections with other front-office members to be an effective GM. I’m sure he’s a great guy to have around for his insights on European players, though.

Four minutes and 55 seconds. That’s all it took for the Raptors to turn a 6 point game into a 25 point margin.

The Raptors even did it without a single three point shot or three point play.

Toronto shot 6-8 from the floor and 7-8 from the line.

The Bucks only were able to hoist two shots and get a third one blocked in that 5 minutes of action. They also drew one foul (missing both free throws). The Bucks did manage to commit six fouls and four turnovers, though.

Think about that — the Raptors only made two more baskets than you would expect them to make in eight shots and they didn’t make any big (3 point) plays. They went on a 19-0 run without doing anything particularly special!

I suppose I could ream Krystkowiak for some coaching errors, but what is he supposed to do? He calls timeout after three Toronto baskets (about the right amount of time to wait), inserts Ivey and Voskuhl (which I’m not going to complain about — it’s better than not doing anything) and those two immediately commit an offensive foul and a shooting foul. Allowing your opponents to go on a run like that is on the whole team, not just the coach.

It’s easy to start throwing around “heartless” and “gutless” adjectives after events like this, but it’s important to remember that the Bucks were playing their fourth game in five nights. A bad stretch of play isn’t worth insinuating that something is lacking in one’s personality.

But stretches like this — which are becoming increasingly common in the third quarters of games, like this one, and this one from the past week, are a symptom of a greater problem. Coaching is part of it, yes, but flagging effort from players who know that the season is lost is another. But why would that effort be flagging? Tuning out the coaches, maybe?

It doesn’t surprise me that this game wasn’t close. The Bucks have had problems competing on the road against good teams all year, so why would tonight be any different? I wrote in a preview of this game for a Raptors blog that I would have been surprised if the Raptors didn’t win by double digits.

But ask yourself: Is this team really so bad that they should routinely be 20-40 points worse than their opposition?

The answer is: No.

And that is an issue that starts with the coaching strategies. Not tonight, but all season. A series of games with competitive first halves and third quarter collapses? That looks to me like a team that is willing to play hard until they run into a little adversity. That’s a team that has quit on its coach.

And meanwhile, the Timberwolves (with a 7-35 record) lost by one at Boston tonight. Just saying.

I’ve posted the new IPM data through December 8. A few things that I’ve noticed:

1: I think it’s official — the winner in the TJ Ford/Charlie V trade is Toronto. TJ is playing his second straight spectatcular season with the Raptors, and now he’s shooting 48% from the field to boot. He’s finally curbed his most annoying trait, shooting too early in a posession, as he’s down to 38% of his shot attempts coming in the first 10 seconds of the 24 second clock. When he takes early shots they are good ones, too; hitting them with a 63% eFG% (which includes an adjustment for 3-point shots). On the other hand, Mo Williams has taken 41% of his shots early in the clock and shot 44.5% eFG. Meanwhile, Charlie V’s comeback season has been maddeningly inconsistent and there is always the problem with how he fits into a team concept — how do you use a player of his size who is too slow to guard small forwards and too thin to play power forward? The matchup problems he creates offensively are offset by the problems he has defensively.

2: Time to face facts: this whole “committment to defense” thing isn’t working for the Bucks. It’s a nice idea, but they aren’t defending that well. Their defensive IPM ranks them third to last, only a two spot improvement from last year (they were the #29 defense at the end of January 07, which is when they pretty much stopped trying last season). However, this team should be able to run pretty effectively as they have played at slightly faster than the league’s average pace for the past few years. However, this season they are playing at the 21st fastest pace in the league. A team with a pretty efficient offense but poor defense needs to get as many shot attempts as possible to make up for the weaker defense; they shouldn’t slow the game down. I am not saying that the Bucks should abandon defense altogether, but they have to run more and try to generate turnovers through pressure rather than slowing the game down with ineffective zones. One of the traits a good coach has is the ability to tailor schemes to your talent. Coach Krystkowiak has to know that the Bucks have plenty of offense-first players and needs to take advantage of it.

3: Boston’s team defense has been so good that their IPM differential is throwing off my formulas. For a while it said that the Celtics were good enough to win 83 games this year, now it believes that they look like a 76 win team. Well, I have my doubts about that. The Celtics haven’t really played anyone, and they needed last second shots to win two of their games. They also beat Miami by one at home. The Celtics are good, but they aren’t going to be threatening the Bulls’ 72 win season.

4: The Knicks are a lot worse than they look. They are so inefficient that they have the league’s worst offense and so lazy that they have the second worst defense. With only 6 wins so far, my formulas say they have overachieved by 3. It’s incredible how bad they are. What is amazing is that they don’t have a single player with a 0.8 IPM — the only team to do that. David Lee comes close — 0.7992 — but he only plays 25 minutes a game, so the Knicks aren’t even using their best player for much more than half a game! Coming as no surprise to me, Zach Randolph has seen his numbers drop significantly, and Eddy Curry’s “bust out” season a year ago was a mirage. What a joke.

5: My numbers say that Orlando is overachieving, my intuition says that Orlando is a overachieving … but the results look pretty serious to me. Their 5 losses came to Detroit, Phoenix (twice), San Antonio and Indiana; and they just finished a 5-1 west coast road trip. They are 11-2 on the road. Clearly Dwight Howard has become a complete beast, and still has upside. So why don’t I trust them? Because I don’t see how they can go very far with Howard as their only effective big man and without a decent shooting guard. Look at the positions that their top 8 players (by IPM) play: C, PG, SF, SF, PG, SF, PG, C. At some point they will get a matchup at power forward that Turkoglu and Lewis can’t handle and will need some well-rounded play from the “2″. They are off to a great start, but there’s a long way to go for that roster to keep this pace up.

Wow, what a demolition of a pretty good team on Tuesday night against Toronto. Any time a team wins by 27, shoots 60 percent and outrebounds their opponent by 13 there isn’t really anything to complain about.

And just look at Desmond Mason, working so hard to prove me wrong about how bad his game has gotten. 10-10 shooting, a couple of highlight dunks, and excellent defensive work to boot. Of course, I’m sure that’s the last 10-10 shooting night we’ll see of him — some of his shots were complete crap that fell in.

And note Yi completely outplaying Chris Bosh. Yi was on the floor for most of Bosh’s rather poor 16 minutes, and made several nice plays on him. One time Yi beat Bosh to a loose rebound and drove back in for a foul, and on another posession took Bosh off the dribble from 18 feet and beat him for a layup. Very, very nice.

But it is Toronto’s coaching that I wanted to talk about — Sam Vincent Mitchell pulled the coaching move that is my biggest pet peeve — pulling his best player early because he got two quick fouls, and then not bringing him back until the game was totally out of hand.

Bosh was removed after his second foul with the Raptors only down 3. They scratched along for a couple of minutes and the Bucks then went on a 14-0 run. Why wouldn’t Vincent Mitchell bring Bosh back after 8- or 10- straight Bucks points? Obviously if Bosh then comes back and gets more fouls then the Raptors are sunk, but what’s the point of leaving him on the bench while the Bucks run out to a 25 point lead? What good is Bosh going to do when you are already down 30?

But Vincent’s Mitchell’s efforts to keep Bosh out of foul trouble were a huge success — Bosh came back in the middle of the second quarter and the Raptors immediately went on a 5-0 run to cut it to 52-36, but the game was already won for Milwaukee by that point. Bosh then played 5 minutes of the second half before packing it in with 16 minutes played, one point scored, and a whole three fouls. So if he had come back in the first quarter he may have picked up a couple of more fouls, but the game might have been closer and the whole second half may have played out differently. But instead, Vincent Mitchell basically gave the Bucks the game only 5 minutes into the first quarter. Fortunately the Bucks were so hot that they grabbed that gift and ran away with it.

My favorite example of “why give them the game just because your star has two fouls” was game 2 of last years’ Finals. LeBron James picked up his second foul less than three minutes into the game. So, this being the Finals and all, not an important game or anything, Mike Brown sat down James for the rest of the quarter. Believe it or not, the Cavs had a hard time executing without James and they finished the first quarter down 11. Game over. And then LeBron came back to start the second quarter and finished with 38 minutes played and a grand total of 3 fouls. Just incredible.

My thanks to popcornmachine.net for the game flows, which are a really interesting tool to keep an eye on. I probably look at their data every single day.

Edit Not trying to make some comment about Sam Vincent; I accidentally got him confused with Sam Mitchell.

I wanted to open up The Bratwurst for in-game discussion of the Bucks. Feel free to leave all the comments you want as we discuss the game as the Bucks play host to the Toronto Raptors tonight.

Bucks.com Game Center

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.