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Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Milwaukee Bucks

22 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the combustible Milwaukee Bucks.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

At first or even fifth glance the Milwaukee Bucks seem an unremarkable cast of characters, destined for .500 at best and a crushing bit of anonymity along the way.

A re-tread coach. A small market setup. A series of middling low lottery picks. Samuel Dalembert, on his 49th team. An, um, "experienced" GM. The answer to several "Who He Play For?" questions, should Charles Barkley remember that there is still a team in Milwaukee. Just one nationally televised game all season that isn't on NBA TV or WGN.

Beyond all that lies a ticking time bomb, though. One that very well could prove a positively-toned breakthrough for several of the more prominent cast of characters, but one that could also make for a Hindenburg-sized disaster that only the League Pass know-alls would notice. Rub your hands together, NBA sickies, because you can't lose.

Leading the Bucks, ostensibly, is coach Scott Skiles; a truly intelligent basketball man who truly did try to get himself bought out last season so that he didn't have to return to this noise. Skiles had unpleasant endings in each of his last three head coaching spots — Greece, Phoenix, Chicago — and his expert (as in, "probably should have won the Coach of the Year award") turn riding the 2009-10 Bucks to an unending series of 89-81 wins seems like ages ago. In the last year of his deal and his fifth (!) season in Milwaukee, Skiles could lead the league in passive/aggressiveness in 2012-13.

The actual leader of the team is Brandon Jennings, because either Skiles cannot tame him or doesn't care to. Jennings does play hard and wants to win, but even after 7171 career NBA minutes it's not readily apparent if he knows the quickest way between an in and out dribble maneuver and an actual win. Jennings comes off as the sort of waterbug you can't stay in front of, but he averages fewer than four free throw attempts per 36 minutes of play, and seems quite content by wasting his youth on fading low-percentage jumpers.

Above him in pay but behind him in seniority is Monta Ellis, owner of an expiring contract and capable of the sort of 14-point quarters that keep you coming back time after time. The shakeup the brought Ellis to Milwaukee last March breathed new life into the franchise — the last thing Bucks fans could handle in the autumn of 2012 is the sort of day to day injury updates that Golden State Warrior fans are pouring over as they keep up with Andrew Bogut's "progress" — but Ellis and Jennings did not work especially well overall in a small'ish, training camp-less sample size last season.

Best, for the sickies anyway, is the fact that Ellis could potentially opt out of his contract this summer (something we're not sure Bucks brass wouldn't especially mind), and Jennings' restricted free agency. Also prepare for a series of "Is Brandon Jennings Worth It?"-columns from websites with an eye for advanced metrics.

All while the Bucks shoot for the lower rungs of the playoffs, again, hoping to take in some playoff revenue and a trip to Miami. Or, erm, Indianapolis.

Prospects could genuinely improve, if all are engaged. Dalembert is by no means a panacea, but his presence allows Drew Gooden (who, with dozens outside of Wisconsin watching last season, enjoyed a career year in 2011-12) to move down to the power forward slot. Mike Dunleavy Jr. also enjoyed a career renaissance of sorts, and if his painful knee condition allows for it he should be able to provide the sort of all-around offensive play that teams crave once a play breaks down. Larry Sanders is a sound helper, provided he reins in his pick and pop instincts, and I simply cannot dismiss the chance that Ellis and Jennings could create some sort of chemistry together under Skiles' tutelage.

Skiles is the guy that went from high school/college scorer to NBA assist record-breaker to defensive-minded head man. He's changed, before. It hasn't happened much since Bill Clinton took office, probably no co-incidence there, but he's been proven capable of learning on the fly before. If he comes up with something in some way that shows that he wants to make Milwaukee home for the next few years, the Bucks could be onto something.

Or, they could fall short while falling out. Ellis and Jennings might be encouraged to find safe haven elsewhere, Hammond and Skiles could be let go, and the team could head into 2013-14 with Ersan Ilyasova as its highest-paid player and yet another 11th overall pick to attempt to trump up. We genuinely would hate every bit of this, considering the potential on both the sideline and starting lineup.

Whatever the turnout, the sickies will be on board.

Projected record: 38-44

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: The chance that the production that followed the trade for Monta Ellis will hold up for a full season. The idea behind sending injured defensive centerpiece Andrew Bogut and never-made-for-Milwaukee shooter Stephen Jackson to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for shooting guard Monta Ellis and young big man Ekpe Udoh was, primarily, to try to inject some offensive life into a unit that seemed in need of a jolt to make a postseason push. The Bucks ranked 17th in the NBA in points scored per 100 possessions through last season's first 43 games -- an improvement over the dead-last finish they managed in 2010-11, sure, but still in the bottom half of the league and not looking in much danger of improving in time to catch the New York Knicks or Philadelphia 76ers for one of the East's final two playoff berths.

So general manager John Hammond swung for the fences with a deal that looked like a score at the time, and while the Bucks wound up finishing in the lottery, four games out of the No. 8 seed, the numbers show that the deal bore fruit -- Milwaukee did get better offensively over the final 23 games of the season, improving by more than three points-per-100 to an offensive rating of 104.5, making them the league's 11th-most efficiency offense during that stretch. And as Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings made a point of noting during the offseason, a big part of that was the supercharged offense the Bucks featured when he and Ellis shared the backcourt. As I wrote at the time:

[…] during the 601 minutes that he and Ellis played together, [the Bucks scored] 106.2 points per 48 minutes of playing time compared with 98.9-per-48 on the season as a whole, according to NBA.com's statistical analysis tool.

Part of that's due to Milwaukee playing at a significantly faster pace with the Jennings-Ellis unit sharing the floor — when the duo played at the same time, the Bucks averaged 100.6 possessions per 48 minutes, more than four-per-48 faster than their season average — but they also scored more effectively in that uptempo game, doing much more damage on fast breaks and in the paint and producing an average of 105.3 points per 100 possessions. That's a big improvement over the Bucks' 102.4-per-100 season mark — over the course of a full season, it's the difference between having a top-five offense on par with the Chris Paul-led Los Angeles Clippers and having a middle-of-the-league group like the Orlando Magic or Atlanta Hawks.

It's weird to think about a Scott Skiles-led Bucks team heading into a season trying to make its bones on offense. But with two guards who thrive in an uptempo, open-court, transition-keyed style, plus stretch bigs Ersan Ilyasova (whose season 3-point mark was inflated by an unsustainable 50.8 percent from deep after the All-Star Game, but the Bucks would probably be fine with the 38.8 percent he hit before the break, too) and Drew Gooden (44.5 percent from between 16 and 24 feet away last year) back to space the floor in the frontcourt and (Bucks fans hope) a potential breakout season from trimmed-down 2011 lottery pick Tobias Harris, who reportedly has the inside track on starting at small forward after a strong summer, just letting it rip might be the team's most effective, and efficient, shot at fielding the kind of top-flight offense that could propel the Bucks back into the playoffs for the first time in three years. If nothing else, it should make the Bucks a lot of fun to watch, which is something they haven't consistently been since ... oh, 2000-01.

What Should Make You Scared: The prospect of Jennings-Ellis lineups getting roasted on D. Ah, the yin and the yang. From the stat dive I did during the summer:

Opponents made more field goals per 48 minutes, posted a higher effective field-goal percentage, and grabbed a higher share of available offensive and defensive rebounds to key second-chance opportunities and transition offense.

In sum, teams playing the Bucks feasted when Jennings and Ellis shared the court, scoring an average of 107.7 points per 100 possessions of floor time, more than five points-per-100 below Milwaukee's season defensive mark, according to NBA.com's metrics. To put things in perspective, only one team put up defensive numbers that inept over the course of the full 2011-12 season — when Jennings and Ellis shared the backcourt, the Bucks ceased being a slightly-worse-than-average defensive team and became the Charlotte Bobcats (107.8-per-100 allowed).

Now, to be fair, as Milwaukee-focused blog Behind the Buck Pass noted after I wrote that, the presence of a legitimately capable defensive center/rim protector behind the guards -- most notably offseason trade acquisition Samuel Dalembert, but perhaps also Udoh, ace shot-blocker/iffy team defender Larry Sanders, free-agent signing Joel Przybilla (if he can stay healthy) or 2012 lottery pick John Henson -- could change matters drastically, as could the steadying presence of multipositional lockdown man Luc Richard Mbah a Moute once he returns from rehab following offseason surgery to repair the patella tendon in his right knee. After shipping out former defensive linchpin Bogut, Hammond may have provided Skiles with enough frontcourt and wing pieces to cover over his explosive guards' perimeter mistakes. If he hasn't, though, a third straight lottery trip could be in the cards.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

Any team coached by Scott Skiles will focus itself around the defensive end of the floor, and for years that approach made total sense for the Bucks. With Andrew Bogut serving as defensive linchpin, they could organize themselves accordingly. Several major Bogut injuries led to some disappointing seasons, but his abilities nevertheless gave the Bucks a coherent strategy. After trading him last season for Monta Ellis, everything changed.

Put simply, the Bucks now make very little sense. Both Skiles and general manager John Hammond are in the final years of their contracts, suggesting that massive change is imminent barring a surprising playoff run. On top of that, the team's two key players, Ellis and Brandon Jennings, are both small scoring-oriented guards who match each other's strengths and cannot possibly serve as a solid long-term combo at the defensive end. The frontcourt is more jumbled: rookie John Henson has promise and Ersan Ilyasova has improved much over his career, but Drew Gooden has aged considerably.

This is now a team without a clear identity, and it seems unlikely that they'll have one until Skiles and Hammond leave town. Unless that happens midway through the season — possible for Skiles, unlikely for Hammond — the Bucks may be looking at a lost season. Despite having some tradable assets and looming cap space, they arguably have few reasons to maneuver right this minute. Why plan for the future when some other brain trust will be controlling it?

It should be clear that this puts everyone involved in the franchise — the coaches, the players, the executives, etc. — in an odd situation. And that, my friends, is why most coaches on middling-to-bad teams rarely make it to the end of their contracts. Because, when an entire season is run-up to coming change, it's a little hard for any of it to matter.

Tags: career, Ilyasova, nba, percent, Play, sort, team

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Indiana Pacers

19 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the suddenly-relevant Indiana Pacers.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

The up and coming Indiana Pacers have taken in a real pat-on-the-head treatment of late, and this is something that the team is just going to have to endure. The idea of the Pacers as a second round staple was jarring enough to NBA fans last season, even after the team's strong showing in a first round loss the year before, and within days that same slack-jawed fandom we associate with suddenly had to get used to the idea of the Pacers possibly knocking off a Miami Heat team that eventually turned into a champion. The Heat put a dampened comforter on that brush fire, but not before Indiana got pretty rowdy for a while.

The noise was deserved, and the offseason was pretty damn goofy for a team that seemingly just needed to keep it together from May until November.

Casting out Larry Bird and David Morway can't accurately be described as a regime change, not when the replacements in Donnie Walsh and Kevin Pritchard worked with both and appear to think along the same lines as Bird and Morway, but it is a change above all caveats. Pritchard seems a passionate personnel man, but questionable practices and decisions in Portland plague him; and his salary cap work during the 2012 offseason was strange to say the least — as he weirdly let go of Darren Collison and Dahntay Jones in order to sign and trade for a player in Ian Mahinmi that he could have just signed outright.

Collison had disappointed as a Pacer, and Jones was going to be never the over-the-top addition Bird championed him as back in 2009, but they were respected NBA rotation parts that the team just needlessly gave away. It's possible that the two could have been spiking the Gatorade and throwing dry clothes in the showers behind the scenes, but why not wait for an honest-to-goodness transaction/trade involving the two, once you've picked Mahinmi up with the cap space you've cleared?

George Hill's contract extension sounded good until we heard about the $8 million yearly price tag, not the worst news for Pacer fans but a little unsettling. And D.J. Augustin's recent devotion to the art of finding others must sustain, if he's to ably fill in at times for Hill at the point guard slot.

Beyond this, however, cheer abounds.

Roy Hibbert won't be counted on to pump out 20 points a contest on the reg, and the big fella may never be able to average 35 minutes a night, but he is a center who is very good and YOU GIVE CENTERS THAT ARE VERY GOOD ALL OF THE MONEY ALWAYS. It was shocking to see Hibbert fall so far during the 2008 draft, odd to see coach Jim O'Brien treat him as an afterthought at times (though his fouling and stamina didn't help), and wonderful to see the center change Miami minds in the paint last May.

The team's offense isn't pretty, but it works at times with lots of isolation dribble penetration performed by superior athletes. Of course, this could all change for the better.

Because new coach Frank Vogel will get a full training camp this year, for the first in a career that is already in its 21st month. We don't expect a soothing solve to take place, and for Danny Granger and Paul George to effortlessly utilize their skills and athleticism in ways that will vault Indiana to the top of the heap in both aesthetics and offensive efficiency, but the orthodox preparation (and Vogel is way into preparation) can't hurt.

George, as most have noted, is the key; but he's also an on-court enigma of sorts in ways that daunt somewhat similar players like Nicolas Batum on one end and Scottie Pippen on another.

Can the third-year wing put together a package that can be counted on, near-nightly? We're not suggesting that Vogel rely on George in the same way that the Pistons seemed to put every possession plus whatever you're having in Grant Hill's hands 15 years ago, but the best way to tame a floater is to charge him with breaking everything down. Is George ready for that sort of role, while being asked to work on his sometimes-there defensive instincts?

It could be the difference between 45 and 57 wins. Or, perhaps, the second or third round of the playoffs. Big men, sadly, can be countered in the modern NBA. All-around cats? Swingers of the highest order that can drive and dish and still knock you backwards with a quick post and spin? Those people can rescue waffling point guards, aging power forwards, and too-tired centers.

Chicago's out, Boston's has a lot to figure out, Brooklyn hasn't memorized first names yet and the Heat are fat and sassy. This is Indiana's year to pounce on what will be a strange Eastern conference.

Projected record: 53-29

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: The fact that nobody really thinks you're scary. This is something I covered when we previewed as Indiana was wrapping up the NBA's fifth-best record last season and just before the Pacers' first-round playoff matchup with the Orlando Magic back in April -- there was something eerily quiet about the way Indy went from a sub-.500 lamb to the first-round slaughter in 2010-11 to a team that could give the Miami Heat in pretty serious trouble midway through the Eastern Conference semifinals last spring. They just sort of slowly and steadily bludgeoned their way to a No. 3 seed, and in an Eastern Conference where pretty much every team besides the Miami Heat has key pieces to replace and big questions to answer, they could make a similar, even deeper trudge this year.

Indiana's two big offseason moves before the lockout-shortened campaign -- signing power forward David West off a torn left anterior cruciate ligament prematurely ended his time with the New Orleans Hornets, and trading a first-round pick (later used on Kawhi Leonard) to the Spurs for combo guard George Hill after a relatively undistinguished performance in San Antonio's first-round upset at the hands of the Memphis Grizzlies -- didn't really seem like earthshaking additions. But as each had throughout their NBA careers, the two perfectly Paceresque dudes provided smart, tough, efficient, reliable offensive execution of coach Frank Vogel's sets that helped catapult the Indy offense from ninth-worst in the NBA in points scored per 100 possessions all the way up to a tie for eighth-best overall with the Steve Nash-led Phoenix Suns, according to NBA.com's stat tool.

Those quiet but effective signings were bolstered by a pair of critical internal developments -- rising star Paul George becoming a deep threat (improving from 29.7 percent on 3s as a rookie to 38.5 percent in Year 2) and an in-shape and active Roy Hibbert sharpening up on both ends of the floor en route to his first All-Star berth. With just-south-of-stardom swingman Danny Granger to lead but not dominate the offense, a steady improvement on the defensive end (giving up three fewer points per 100 possessions, by NBA.com's numbers) and a team-wide dedication to not beating themselves -- they tied for the NBA's seventh-lowest turnover percentage, allowed the league's third-fewest points off turnovers, took the league's third-most free throws and hit them at the third-best percentage -- they just sort of methodically kept being better than most of the teams they played.

They return virtually the same crew this year, with the exception of ex-Bobcat D.J. Augustin taking over at Darren Collison's role alongside Hill in the Pacers' point guard tandem and ex-Maverick Ian Mahinmi providing a true backup center in a spot filled mostly by overmatched power forwards last year -- neither's a home run of a move, but both should fit well, and Hill seemed to have taken the reins from Collison by late last season anyway. Reborn jumping jack Gerald Green has reportedly really impressed Vogel in training camp, and his teammates have sure seemed to like seeing him go up and get it this preseason; he could be a difference-maker backing up George and Granger off the Indy bench. First-rounder Miles Plumlee is gripping it kind of tight now, but all he needs to do is learn and provide spot minutes as a fifth big to count this rookie season as a success.

The Pacers have continuity, depth, a legitimate candidate for a breakout year (George, who could rank among the league's best two-way shooting guards by season's end) and, given the likelihood of Derrick Rose's injury knocking the Chicago Bulls down the mountain, what appears to be a clear shot at the Central Division title and possibly the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, as long as they stay steady and keep working Vogel's plan.

What Should Make You Scared: Less injury luck. The Pacers were very fortunate not to be bitten much by the injury bug last season, losing the league's fourth-fewest player games to injury, according to one analysis. Eight of their top nine players appeared in 60 or more of the team's 66 regular-season games, including their entire starting five, with George and, somewhat amazingly, the just-past-ACL-rehab West starting all 66. Not only did the Pacers' starting five play more minutes together than any other five-man unit in the NBA -- they played 241 more minutes, or five full games, together than any other five-man unit in the NBA, according to BasketballValue.com's lineup data.

All that shared floor time provides an opportunity to develop familiarity, rhythm and cohesion, and to be sure, the Pacers took advantage, building a balanced and efficient attack that send them soaring up the standings. They were good, not just lucky, to be sure. But injury luck like that tends to be inconstant, and while the Pacers are a young team with only two likely key contributors above the age of 26, those two -- West, 32, and Granger, who'll turn 30 at the start of the first round of the playoffs -- are pieces Indy's offense can ill afford to lose if a run to the No. 2 seed and a postseason rematch with the Heat are to be in the offing.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

The Pacers are a really, really good team, and with the presumed deficiencies of the Bulls they could even better their third-place finish in the East last season. After years of steady improvement, they're now a real playoff team with hopes of doing more.

The bad news, insofar as something like this can be bad, is that they're roughly the same team they were in 2011-12. Their biggest changes were relatively minor, and in truth might actually have made the team worse (which isn't to say they'll finish worse, of course). What the Pacers have now, apart from one of the best teams in the East, is a good team with a ceiling. Over time, that can be frustrating. Iti's nice to be good, but a few years near the top will make everyone wonder why they're incapable of taking the next step.

The issue for the Pacers, in short, is that they don't have a superstar. Players like Roy HIbbert and Danny Granger are All-Star-caliber performers, but they also don't bend games to their will with the regularity most top-tier stars do. That structure doesn't doom the Pacers to playoff irrelevance, and with a few breaks — like, say, Chris Bosh's injury in the last spring's Eastern Conference Semifinal vs. Miami — Indiana could very well make a breakthrough. But relying on luck to defeat more talented teams is a tough proposition. For the Pacers to move to the next step, they might have to break apart this carefully assembled roster and take a risk.

To be clear, that idea would have the potential to blow up in the Pacers' faces. The franchise is in a very good place right now, following up years of irrelevance with a status roughly similar to the one they held before the infamous Malice in the Palace brawl in 2004. Being a good playoff team, particularly after that long period of pain, is a sensible goal and the sort of achievement that can satiate fans for a very long time.

It's just that it's not contending for a championship. If that's a team's ultimate goal, then winning a playoff series or two every season might not be enough. The Pacers need to ask themselves what they ultimately want and go about attaining it as best they can. If they've already done just that, then they should be comfortable with their decisions and enjoy the moment. Because, no matter what they choose, this team is worth enjoying.

Tags: nba

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Detroit Pistons

19 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the slowly-moving Detroit Pistons.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

We're all well-aware of the fact that the 2011-12 Pistons finished their season on a strong note, working well down the stretch to right the wrongs and make their way toward a winning percentage that would have resulted in 31 wins were it spread out over an 82-game season. And we're also aware that the team is relying on the internal development of several young players in order to improve beyond that, and that even the most careless of young players can't help but improve and provide better production as they grow more experienced. And we've unending respect for Lawrence Frank's talents as a coach.

This is still a team moving into 2012-13 without having made a major upgrade, and while the Pistons games we deigned to watch as the lockout season rounded off last spring were few, we did notice that the boys were doing their work mostly against a cast of don't-cares. Not dismissing the midseason improvement, but reminding that the Pistons probably should have been playing 31-win basketball all along.

This is an odd rebuilding project, dating back years. The Pistons seemed to embark on the dang thing when Joe Dumars traded for Allen Iverson's expiring contract in 2008; but then we learned that Dumars actually traded for Allen Iverson, and not Allen Iverson's expiring contract when he extended Richard Hamilton soon after and signed Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva during the next offseason. Dumars was attempting to keep his team afloat in the wake of the passing of former owner Bill Davidson, and the too-long switch in ownership groups that followed. The problem was that Gordon and CV failed miserably, Hamilton declined, and the Pistons haven't really thrown their weight around much in the year and a half since new owner Tom Gores took over.

Gordon and Villanueva combined to play just 1578 minutes in 2011-12, miserable production for the $19.1 million the Pistons paid for their services last year. Dumars had to pay Charlotte in the form of a potential lottery pick to take the last two years and $25.2 million of his contract on, and Villanueva has looked terrible during the postseason despite an offseason committed to making well-meaning beat reporters look bad. The Pistons used the amnesty clause on neither, oddly, potentially balking at the idea that they'd have to pay another player to take over those 1578 minutes; even if the cuts would aid in creating cap space. This does not inspire me to cheer the first year of the Tom Gores Era.

Gordon was dealt for Corey Maggette, a player whose size and ability to get to the line would seem to be a perfect salve for a Pistons team featuring a litany of undersized shooting guards, if only this were 2008. The 2012 Maggette is coming off a year that saw him shoot just 37.3 percent from the field, which is still somehow better than the 32 percent forward Austin Daye managed last season. Brandon Knight is a comer, but he and Rodney Stuckey still run an uneasy show. Viacheslav Kravtsov may have ended Ben Wallace's playing career. Rookie center Andre Drummond is Neneh Cherry's first album. Even if, holy cow, he has a chance to be absolutely dominant.

There is Greg Monroe, though. Greg Monroe, potential All-Star. Greg Monroe, Scoring Big Man Who Doesn't Make You Cringe Every Time He Lands Hard On His Feet.

Monroe's defensive issues have been well-established by this point, and though we'd be foolish to completely write off his abilities on that end at such an early age, NBA big men don't tend to improve on that end in ways that resemble, say, Albert Pujols turning into a Gold Glove-level first basemen. Little of this currently matters, though, because of Monroe's ability to carry a team at times with his efficient scoring and impressive passing. On a team still stuck in a holding pattern, that work with the ball is desperately needed, and the eventual pairing with Drummond could be a franchise-changer.

Nothing's changed, though. All of this movement is still a while away, while Frank and Dumars figure out who sticks, and before all that 2013 cap space hits. Frank's abilities and Monroe's ascension could have our guess at the won/loss total looking foolish by February; but this still feels like a team that is going to lose far more than it wins in 2012-13.

The corner has been turned, though. Now it's up to Dumars to not replicate 2009 some four frustrating years later, next offseason.

Projected record: 31-51

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: Greg Monroe's development into a legitimate All-Star reaching " build around me" status. Heading into last season, I suggested that seeing how Monroe followed up a quietly excellent rookie season for an often-unwatchable Pistons team would be "one of the more exciting storylines in the league." Working again under the relative cover of darkness that comes with playing in the middle of the country on a lottery-bound non-highlight factory, Monroe developed from an interesting prospect into a burgeoning monster who might be the league's best young player that no non-diehard talks about.

The Georgetown product took on a much larger role in the Pistons' offense in his second year, using nearly 24 percent of Detroit's offensive possessions (up from just over 15 percent as a rookie) and showing that he could score, topping 20 points 18 times after managing just five 20-plus-point nights in Year 1. While his field-goal percentage fell from 55.1 percent to (a still very solid) 52.1 percent, he bumped his free-throw percentage up nearly 12 points, helping offset somewhat the dip in his efficiency. And after struggling to score away from the rim as a rookie, he stepped out on the floor more often and with much improved accuracy -- 37.2 percent in the paint outside the restricted area (up from 23.6 as a rook) and 41 percent on midrange attempts (up from 23.1), according to NBA.com's stat tool.

Monroe continued his stellar work on the glass, grabbing the league's sixth-highest share of available offensive rebounds while making a sizable jump on the defensive boards, too -- he turned in the league's eighth-best total rebound percentage, and his 30 double-doubles were ninth-most in the NBA. With 2011 lottery pick Brandon Knight making the difficult adjustment from college freshman to primary NBA facilitator, the deft-passing center also assumed more responsibility as a playmaker, assisting on nearly twice as great a share of teammates' buckets as he did in his first season (though his turnover rate rose, as well).

Drafting 2012 lottery pick Andre Drummond and signing Ukrainian free agent Viacheslav Kravtsov makes it seem like Joe Dumars and Lawrence Frank want to move Monroe to power forward full-time. It remains to be seen how the 6-foot-11, 250-pounder handles opposing fours' quickness, but while by no means an elite defender, Synergy Sports Technology's play-tracking data show Monroe improved virtually across the board on D last year -- he allowed fewer points per possession on isolation plays, post-ups, spot-ups and when defending players rolling to the basket in the pick-and-roll than he did as a rookie.

If Monroe can hold up in space and the rookie bigs can protect the rim, Detroit's defense could crawl out of the NBA's bottom five in defensive efficiency for the first time in four seasons. If Knight can take better care of the ball in his second year (one turnover for every 1.46 assists as a rook) while maintaining his stroke from long range (38 percent on 3-pointers, third-best among rookies behind only Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving), last season's 28th-ranked offense should tick up, too. Ultimately, though, the onus is on Monroe to establish himself as an All-Star-level centerpiece if Detroit to make a surge this season. If he continues apace, he's not far away.

Last season, at age 21, Monroe averaged 17.6 points, 11 rebounds and 2.3 assists per 36 minutes. According to Basketball-Reference.com's Player Season Finder, only 11 players in NBA history have managed that before their age-22 seasons -- four are in the Hall of Fame (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Charles Barkley, Bob Lanier and Bob Pettit), two will be (Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal), two rank among the 10 best players in today's game (Kevin Love, Blake Griffin) and two were All-Star-caliber talents whose careers were cut short by injury (Marques Johnson and Clark Kellogg). That company might surprise those who still haven't really watched Monroe; by season's end, though, the NBA's best-kept secret should break out.

What Should Make You Scared: Relying on the remnants of the past before the future starts. Detroit's 25-41 record -- its fourth straight sub-.500 mark -- was due in large part to a dismal roster that had a disastrous start to the season. The Pistons dropping 19 of their first 23 games, posting the league's second-worst units on both sides of the ball and getting outscored by an average of 14.6 points per 100 possessions, an efficiency differential even worse than the historically bad Charlotte Bobcats.

(This, of course, means that Frank's crew went 21-22 to finish the season, and while the offense never picked up much, the defense sure did -- Detroit allowed the league's 11th-fewest points per 100 possessions over its final 43 games, a promising finish indicating that defensive-minded coach Frank's teachings had begun to take root and leading some to think Detroit will take a leap this season. OK, back to being scared.)

Six of the 14 Pistons who suited up last year -- Damien Wilkins, Austin Daye, Tayshaun Prince, Jason Maxiell, Walker Russell Jr. and Will Bynum -- performed below replacement level, according to analysis included in the Pro Basketball Prospectus 2012-13. For five, you can make a case that it was the worst year of their careers -- the easiest being Russell, who was a rookie -- while Maxiell's only saving grace is that he struggled even more mightily in 2010-11. That doesn't even account for Ben Wallace's age-induced decline, Knight's rookie growing pains or the maddening performances of the team's leading millstones -- regrettable Dumars legacies Ben Gordon, who continued to underwhelm in his role as designated off-the-bench backcourt scorer, and Charlie Villanueva, whose continual disinterest in defense and 38.5 percent shooting clip left him stapled to Frank's bench despite reportedly getting himself into shape (although, apparently, not good enough shape to represent the Dominican Republic). Basically, when you got past Monroe, shooting guard Rodney Stuckey and forward Jonas Jerebko, Detroit's roster performance got dicey fast.

Some of that could be reversible. Russell, Wilkins and (we think) Wallace will all ply their trade elsewhere this season. Gordon's offseason exit in a trade for Corey Maggette could free Bynum, now reportedly healthy after a foot strain last season, to return to the energetic, pressing role in which he'd previously thrived, and the team seems quite high on second-round shooter Kim English's potential at off-guard. If Drummond and Kravtsov work out, and second-rounder Khris Middleton can chip in some, Frank can rely on Monroe and Jerebko to handle most of the minutes at the four, limiting the amount of damage from Maxiell's decline.

Unfortunately, though, Prince, Villanueva and Daye combine to make more than $17.8 million this year, and in all likelihood, two of these three are going to see chunks of minutes at the forward positions; if the last three years of performance are any indication, they're not going to be especially good minutes. If Maggette doesn't bounce back from a rough all-around 2011-12 season in Charlotte, the Pistons could have one of the league's worst small-forward rotations. (Unless Kyle Singler's actually good enough to make opponents' fans boo him, that is.)

The good news for Pistons fans is that, thanks to the Gordon/Maggette deal, Maxiell's contract coming off the books and the fact that Detroit can elect to let Daye walk after this season, some of the pay and performance issues should clear up nicely after this year -- especially if Dumars actually pulls the amnesty trigger on either Prince (three years and $21.8 million left) or Villanueva (two years, $16.6 million remaining). The bad news is that they'll likely have to watch another year of some strugglin' dudes before getting there.

The worse news, of course, is that the last time they got there, Dumars spent nearly $85 million on Gordon and Villanueva, the unshakeable memory of which must scare Pistons fans at least a little.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

With all due respect to the Pistons, they have been a rather dull team for quite some time. Though Greg Monroe has established himself as one of the best young big men in the NBA, Detroit hasn't exactly stood out as an up-and-coming club, or the kind of group bad enough to stand out as a likely lottery winner. Instead, the Pistons are situated firmly in the middle of the lottery, just good enough to be inoffensive and just bad enough not to add the kinds of complicated, uber-talented, work-in-progress players who demand to be seen at all times.

That situation is likely to change this season with the emergence of first-round pick Andre Drummond. A project big man at one point thought to be the second-best player in the draft behind Anthony Davis, Drummond dropped to the Pistons at No. 8 because of perceived immaturity issues, both on the court and off it.

Yet Drummond is incredibly talented, an athletic dynamo with impressive skills and the chance to be a true game-changing player at both ends. He's shown considerable flashes of that ability in the preseason, wowing fans and generally standing out as one of the rookies most worth watching. That's not to say that he's anything close to a finished product. But Drummond clearly has something, an ineffable star quality that helps him prove fascinating even when he's not playing his best. If you're not convinced, just check out some of the highlights from his third preseason game:

Curiously, the Pistons do not seem convinced that he should be allowed to play through all of his problems. Despite the impression that the Pistons are currently nothing like a playoff team, head coach Lawrence Frank has yet to commit to giving Drummond steady playing time. In fact, in Detroit's second exhibition game, he played only six minutes. And, although Drummond and Monroe are clearly the Pistons' best chance for a relevant future, Frank seems wary of playing both at the same time. For that matter, Frank wasn't even particularly willing to play Monroe when he was obviously the squad's best player — he averaged only 31.5 minutes last season.

We should not judge Frank's entire plan for the season by a few meaningless games, but it is still not yet clear exactly what the Pistons hope to accomplish by not playing Drummond. For the time being, they're a largely faceless organization with no apparent direction. While there's no use in exposing Drummond to prolonged failure, he has shown that he has enough talent to handle learning on the job. Give him a shot, or risk further irrelevance.

Tags: nba, percent, percentage, Pistons, player, score, team

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Cleveland Cavaliers

19 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the stylishly outfitted Cleveland Cavaliers.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

The Cleveland Cavaliers, once again, are a farm team. But unlike the one that put up with LeBron James' growing pains and hanger-on demands before he skirted off to Miami, this one is essentially acting as a growing field for whatever the team's front office decides will come next. The team's rotation is almost entirely filled with players on rookie scale contracts, and while a good chunk of those youngsters won't bowl you over, they have enough star guard Kyrie Irving to make up for any misgivings you might have about two-through-12.

Irving is an unabashed star. You could probably score on him in a pick and roll, and he doesn't have John Stockton's career assists record shaking in its mid-cut sneakers, but the kid is an All-Star level scorer and game-changer. Because he shot so well and scored in so many different types of ways during his rookie season, you don't fear the sort of stagnation that hampered John Wall's disappointing second season; or, to a far lesser extent, Derrick Rose's second season. To work that smoothly which such little help as a teenager while turning in the sort of rookie season he managed in 2011-12? You might want to make Cleveland one of your five League Pass selections this year.

The other youngsters have a lot of explainin' to do, though.

Tristian Thompson produced well on the glass in his rookie year last season, but he seemed awkward and ill at ease at times in ways that seemed to go beyond the usual rookie hesitancy. Perhaps switching out the horrid defense of Antawn Jamison with the well-intentioned floposity of Anderson Varejao will aid in his development, but for now it looks like the Cavs used a high lottery pick on someone who could end up as a rebounding enthusiast to bring off the bench.

Dion Waiters? We've waited all summer on making too-early declarations about the guy based solely on his summer camp play or offseason training habits, so it wouldn't be wise to leave that policy behind when he's a few weeks away from making his own declarative statements on the court. His hole is already pretty deep, though — Cavs fans are anxious for this rebuilding to bear some fruit, and drafting a sixth man from a team that isn't the Kentucky Wildcats is a tough sell.

The easy sell? Look at the guy. This dude could turn out to be one of the toughest guards dem guards are charged with guarding.

From there? The double-A team, which even includes rookie big man Tyler Zeller. All manner of youngsters — from vets like Omri Casspi and C.J. Miles to fringier League Pass sensations like Jon Leuer and Alonzo Gee — that the team will have 82 games and loads of practice anecdotes to work with while they decide to decline or pick up options in the coming years.

Leading them all, and carping about those practice habits, will be Byron Scott. Scott has a very poor reputation as a leader of youth; it's true that self-starters like David West and Richard Jefferson have improved under his watch, but the difference between a good coach and great leader is the ability to pull great things out of someone like, say, Dion Waiters. Should we be predicting the next two years of Cleveland's fortunes based on the fact that J.R. Smith's father is a real piece of work? Probably not, but Scott has some proving to do that goes well beyond his ability to improve a young team's defense and make sure its homework is turned in on time.

This is a two-year plan, by the way. Next summer the Cavs will have six (six!) qualifying offers to decide upon, as well as a spate of expiring contracts and loads of cap space. They're going to have to pounce and pounce hard in order to give something to Kyrie Irving to want to come to work with, and pull it off way better than Danny Ferry did after LeBron James' second season in 2005. Even with that hometown discount in hand, you'll recall, LeBron only signed a limited extension.

Until then, mild growth. Nothing to sell to season ticket-holders, but you tend not to care about such things when Kyrie Irving gets to suit up for 82 games between October and late April.

Projected record: 34-48

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: Kyrie Irving. The 19-year-old No. 1 overall draft pick and new Cleveland cornerstone responded to post-draft concern (including some from me, in our '11-'12 Cavs preview) that his 11-game college cameo at Duke had not adequately prepared him for the rigors of running point at the NBA level by promptly beginning to kick the league's ass, scoring 20 or more in seven of his first 12 games to lead Cleveland to a surprising 6-6 mark out of the gate. But while the young, relatively talent-poor and overwhelmed Cavs soon cooled and stumbled to the league's third-worst record, Irving kept up his stellar play. He finished the season averaging 18.5 points, 5.4 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game in 51 appearances -- Rookie of the Year-winning numbers that sound good on their own, but look even better in context.

According to Basketball-Reference.com, only seven other players in NBA history have put up equal or better averages in their rookie seasons: Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Allen Iverson, Damon Stoudemire, Tyreke Evans and former Phoenix Suns big man Alvan Adams. All seven played more than 33 minutes per game as rooks, though; Irving averaged just 30.5. Pop his pace-adjusted numbers -- 21.8 points, 6.4 assists, 4.4 rebounds per 36 minutes of floor time -- into the Player Finder, and it's just the kid and the Big O, which isn't bad company to be in.

Irving was accurate, too, shooting 46.9 percent from the field, 39.9 percent from 3-point land and 87.2 percent from the line on the season. Only 36 players in NBA history (who have attempted at least 50 3-pointers, which helps control somewhat for guys that went 1-for-2 from deep or played short minutes) have matched those splits over a full year; among them, Irving was the only rookie. If he repeats that performance just once more during his career, he'll become one of 15 players to post multiple such seasons, joining elite shooters like Ray Allen, Larry Bird, Jeff Hornacek, Reggie Miller, Chris Mullin, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Mark Price and Peja Stojakovic. Which, again, isn't bad company to be in.

And while the Cavs weren't very good in close games -- they went 10-20 in contests in which they were tied or within five points of the lead with five minutes left, according to NBA.com's stat tool -- Irving was sensational when it counted. According to 82games.com's tracking, the rookie led the NBA in scoring during "clutch" time (defined by the site as "4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points") with a staggering average of 56.4 points per 48 minutes of "clutch" play on 54.4/66.7/89 shooting splits. You name your favorite late-game killer and Kyrie outpaced him. The rest of the top five: Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul. Again: Not bad company to be in.

So yes, Irving is good; more to the point, after leading the Select Team charge to beat the eventual gold medalists from Team USA during a pre-Summer Olympics scrimmage, he knows it. (Why else do you think he's so eager to take Kobe 1-on-1?) He's not all the way there -- we'd like to see that 1.74-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio get up above 2-to-1, and to crib a thought our Fearless Leader used in discussing Rajon Rondo during our Boston Celtics preview, it's hard to be considered the best point guard in the biz when you run the fourth least-efficient offense in the league -- but he's really close for a point guard after just one season.

There are only a handful of players whose mere presence on a roster makes a team a near-lock for a playoff berth virtually irrespective of the talent that surrounds them -- James, Paul, Dwight Howard, maybe Durant, maybe Wade, maybe Kobe. (Not that any of them have to go it alone anymore, natch.) I don't expect the Cavs to achieve their goal of making the playoffs this year -- there's just not enough talent or depth on the roster to make big enough leaps on either side of the ball to bridge the gap between a 26-win pace and the eighth seed. If they prove me wrong, though, I am convinced it will be because Irving has entered that group. Not bad company to be in, and pretty damn impressive to get there during a season that begins before he can legally drink.

What Should Make You Scared: That defense, again. NBA.com's stat tool, Hoopdata and Basketball-Reference all had Cleveland ranked 26th among 30 NBA teams in defensive efficiency last season; Synergy Sports Technology's play-tracking data actually thinks that's a bit high, pegging the Cavs as last year's third-worst defense in terms of points allowed per possession. In fact, Synergy's got Cleveland as the league's worst team at defending spot-up shots, third-worst at guarding the ball-handler in pick-and-roll situations and second-worst at guarding the roll man, third-worst at checking dudes off cuts, and among the league's 10 worst on isolations, post-ups and preventing scoring off screens and offensive rebounds. (Weirdly, they ranked second-best in transition defense. Maybe the answer for Cleveland is to crank up that middle-of-the-league pace and turn every game into a track meet.)

A full (well, maybe full) season of Anderson Varejao, back from the broken right wrist he suffered in March, should help organize and solidify Cleveland's opposition. But it's not like 30-year-old post-injury Andy can be expected to impact the defense like Dwight Howard, Kevin Garnett or Tyson Chandler would; more pieces are needed. No. 4 overall pick Dion Waiters excelled as a disruptive defender in Syracuse's 2-3 zone and could help on the perimeter, but what Cleveland could really use is a major defensive step from second-year forward Tristan Thompson.

The Texas product has length and athleticism for days, but posted relatively low block and steal rates, and failed to translate his gifts on the offensive glass (where he grabbed a higher share of available rebounds than noted board-crashers DeMarcus Cousins, Joakim Noah and Marcus Camby) to the defensive end (where his 16.8 percent defensive rebound rate ranked as well below average among NBA power forwards and centers). If he can't pair with Varejao to form a stronger defensive front line, Cleveland will again have a really hard time slowing opposing offenses ... and if Jonas Valanciunas, who was still on the board when the Cavs chose Thompson at No. 4 in the 2011 NBA draft, winds up being a defensive force for the Toronto Raptors in his first NBA season, it might get a little hot under the collars of Thompson, coach Byron Scott and general manager Chris Grant.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

For their first post-LeBron season, the Cavs — via the astonishing actions of owner Dan Gilbert — became the NBA's loudest spurned lovers. It was not terribly attractive, an unhealthy combination of desperation and self-righteousness. Luckily for us, it was short-lived, in large part because of Kyrie Irving. The Cavs point guard is a genuinely electrifying talent: able to get into lane as adeptly as anyone in the NBA, agile in the open floor, explosive in tight spaces, etc. Assuming he improves at the expected rate, he'll lead Cleveland back to the postseason and farther away from their unfortunate past.

In other words, they will continue to define themselves positively rather than as an organization in opposition to, essentially, a void at the center of the franchise. The Cavs, to their credit, seem to have realized that complaining about one man is no way to creep back towards respectability, especially now that LeBron has become more popular than he was when the wounds of The Decision hadn't yet been cauterized.

It's necessary, too, because this Cavs team should be a lot of fun. Irving is the main draw, clearly, but watching Tristan Thompson and Dion Waiters come into their own could be thrilling, too. Our job, insofar as we have one at all, is not to saddle this group with the weight of proving past Cavs wrong. They are not in moral opposition to the past — they're simply another kind of fun basketball team. Let them breathe.

Tags: defense, LeBron, nba, percent, Rookie, team, way

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Chicago Bulls

18 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the very emo Chicago Bulls.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

So … that was shot to hell pretty quickly.

At their core, the Chicago Bulls are a team full of All-Star level 20-somethings who play hard every night and seem to have the wherewithal on both ends of the ball needed to string one or more championships together. Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng and Taj Gibson are years away from hitting their primes, and the team is led by a coach in Tom Thibodeau that some consider to be the best in the game even with just 148 regular season games under his belt. The Bulls earned the best record in 2011, tied for the best in 2011, and would seem to have the world on a string.

If only the team's best player wasn't on crutches, and likely a year away from consistently showing the sort of all-out, MVP-styled play we became used to from Derrick Rose before he tore his ACL last April. And though the thought of all those returning 20-somethings is warming, those budding vets have been told via action and inaction that 2012-13 (and, in a way, 2013-14) absolutely will not count. That this is a champion in waiting; waiting a really, really long time.

And that even when the waiting seems about over, that the team's ownership will not make the financial commitments necessary to grow and sustain a winner on the same level that the Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, and (potentially, should they extend James Harden's contract) Oklahoma City Thunder do. Despite a rabid fanbase that has poured endless amounts of cash into Jerry Reinsdorf's pockets over the last quarter century.

All while, as we've belabored intensely at Ball Don't Lie for years, the Bulls leave themselves enough outs to make all the cost cutting reasonable:

"Ben Gordon wasn't worth the money. We once threw the max at Ben Wallace, so we're not afraid to spend. Cutting Carlos Boozer with Taj Gibson's extension kicking in is reasonable on several levels. The team wasn't going to win anything in 2012-13 anyway with Derrick Rose only playing 15 to 20 games of B-level Derrick Rose basketball. And we're set to pay the luxury tax this year."

(In a season without majorly punitive tax penalties, and with four months left still to trade Rip Hamilton and dive below the tax ceiling).

All this takes place because the Bulls are smart. With other teams, the moves come so obviously: Miami clears all its cap room to get a star or three, New York chooses personal politics over a point guard with potential, the Lakers go cheap for one year so they can spend huge gobs of money for three more. Chicago's moves don't come in black and white, or even easily-defined tones of red and black (however you want to take that).

What's left is a team that has downgraded in several categories, and looking to dive in the standings even with a clean bill of health following a year that saw one of the most injury-plagued teams in the NBA actually improve upon its league-leading winning percentage from 2010-11. Do you know how proud you should have been about your 2011-12 Bulls, Chicago?

Worse, the team will have to work through the haze of exhibition, knowing that none of this counts. Admire the hearts on this squad to no end, we certainly do, but these men aren't superhuman. Possibly worst amongst all this is the fact that they will be pushed by a coach in Thibodeau that demands the superhuman. That just played Jimmy Butler 48 minutes in an exhibition "contest."

This is why all the advanced statistical metrics go out the window with these Bulls. By all typical standards of measuring production, stepping backwards from Rose to Kirk Hinrich, or C.J. Watson to Nate Robinson (even if I think this is an upgrade in some ways), or Ronnie Brewer to Marco Bellineli would set the stage for doom and gloom. But with Thibodeau around, there is always the chance (if not the expectation, because he's so damn good) that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.

And because the note that began can also destroy, there is the chance that the overuse and the insistence on attaining perfection could force an already-stressed team into imploding, before Derrick Rose is even cleared to return from practice.

We're not predicting either, because an experiment like Chicago's is unable to be predicted by all the standard measures. Which is probably how the team's ownership likes it, as they dangle that carrot.

Projected record: 44-38

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: A persistent will to destroy. It is probably not a very controversial opinion that I don't think the Chicago Bulls will win their third straight Central Division title this year. I think that because I watched one season's title hopes die, then saw the Bulls' front office was convinced a second season's were dead, too, and then found myself agreeing with Jeff Van Gundy's assessment that a .500 finish would constitute "a heck of a year."

But I still think they're going to be a very difficult team to beat on most nights, because I just can't envision a team coached by Tom Thibodeau and led by Joakim Noah and Luol Deng doing anything other than continuing to charge opponents until one side or the other has no life left. The relentlessness and lack of defensive mercy cultivated throughout Thibodeau's first two years at the United Center is not absent merely because Derrick Rose is, and I think that's still going to be enough to win enough games to stay in the running for a bottom-of-the-bracket playoff berth.

After Rose went down in the closing seconds of the first game of Chicago's playoff series with the Philadelphia 76ers, many writers pointed out that the top-seeded Bulls weren't exactly slouches without Rose on the court during the 2011-12 regular season: Chicago went 18-9 in the 27 games the 2010-11 NBA MVP missed due to injury. Even when he was healthy, the rest of the Bulls performed pretty damn well when he sat, scoring an average of 102.1 points per 100 possessions while allowing just 93.9-per-100, according to NBA.com's stat tool -- an even better defensive efficiency mark than the league-leading 95.3-per-100 the team averaged on the season. For last year's Bulls, there was life without Rose ... there just wasn't much two days after losing him for the season in a series against the No. 3 defense in the league, after the emotional sucker punch of watching him carried off after he'd finally gotten healthy and looked great in Game 1, and definitely not after losing Noah to an ankle injury, too.

In a new year with a healthy Noah and Thibodeau in prime position to hammer home the "nobody believes in us" point, there will be life without Rose again. How much life hinges largely on how well Thibodeau can handle his remade roster after losing so many other pieces during the offseason.

Starting shooting guard Ronnie Brewer, a rangy and reliable wing who tied for sixth among guards in Defensive Win Shares last year, is a Knick, reserve center Omer Asik's gone to Houston and sharpshooter Kyle Korver will spot up in Atlanta. The two players who backed Rose up last season, C.J. Watson and John Lucas III, will now caddy in Brooklyn and Toronto. In their place are names like Kirk Hinrich, Nazr Mohammed, Marco Belinelli, Vladimir Radmanovic, Marko Jaric, Nate Robinson and Kyrylo Fesenko, each of whom have their merits as players, but none of whom seem like very reliable commodities.

Noah and Deng, fresh off doing everything for his country this summer, have to assume bigger offensive roles. Carlos Boozer has to follow up a quietly-better-than-most-think season (18.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.2 steals per 36 minutes, 53.2 percent from the floor, 19.7 Player Efficiency Rating) with a louder, stronger all-around performance if he wants to answer the critics calling for him to be amnestied. (Nosing up his declining rebounding rates, especially on the offensive end, would be a good start to making up for Asik's absence.) Richard Hamilton will have to make people remember he's on the Bulls.

As NBA.com's Steve Aschburner noted, this basically has to be a breakout year for Taj Gibson, who'll get a ton of minutes backing up both Noah and Carlos Boozer with Asik gone. Promising sophomore swingman Jimmy Butler will have to assume some of Brewer's defensive responsibilities on the wing, and considering the relative shakiness of both Hinrich, whose decline was evident in Atlanta last season, and Robinson, who went from being a key part of Boston's late 2009-10 title run to an afterthought for the past two seasons, rookie Marquis Teague figures to get a long look at the point. As long as he busts his hump on defense, at least.

It won't be pretty -- while their defensive efficiency remained stellar without Rose last year, the offense dropped off precipitously, from 107.6-per-100 when he was on the court (which would've finished second in the league, between the Spurs and Thunder, over the course of a full season) to 102.1-per-100 when he was off it (which would have been 17th, between the Bucks and 76ers). Without the threat of Rose slashing, defenses could load up on Chicago's forwards; Deng should see a lot of doubles; if Belinelli or Radmanovic struggle from deep, spacing could be an issue. But good defense, good coaching and good leadership matter ... don't be surprised if, come April, the Bulls wind up mattering, too.

What Should Make You Scared: Rose coming back too soon. Yes, the commercials are cool, and yes, of course we want to be able to watch one of the league's most breathtaking young players again as soon as possible. But as reports that the point guard is ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation have turned into questions about whether he might miss the whole season, I've found myself growing increasingly worried about the prospect of Rose -- his team in contention for a lower-tier playoff berth as I outlined above -- pushing just a bit too hard and coming back just a bit too soon in an effort to help push the Bulls over the top. It would be in keeping with his competitive nature and it's the kind of thing leaders do … and it scares the crap out of me. And if it scares the crap out of me, I'm sure it scares Bulls fans far, far worse.

I'm a Knicks fan who spent several years watching Nate Robinson jack shots, throw ill-advised passes, show off and do all sorts of little things that made me want to tear my hair out. He's driven better men than me to curse, and Bulls fans, you'll soon get to know the challenge of rooting for him. But if running him out there every night, even through the end of the season, even if the season ends earlier than you'd like, means ensuring that the next five years of Rose's career get a fair shot at unfolding, then all those pull-up 3-pointers in transition will have been well worth it.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

Tom Thibodeau has created the Bulls in his image: a hardnosed, defense-oriented outfit with the belief that their own toughness can overcome a team that might seem superior on paper. That identity has served them well over the past two seasons, and there's no indication that they're ready to change things up.

Naturally, that identity is not the full story of the team's success, which is where this season becomes a little less certain. For all the Bulls' defensive strengths, they're also readily dependent on Derrick Rose to make the offense work. Playing without him in 2012-13, as he recovers from his ACL tear, will be a struggle.

For large portions of 2011-12's bizarro regular season, the Bulls did perfectly fine without him, so it's not necessarily the best idea to bet against Chicago to make the postseason comfortably this year. On the other hand, the condensed schedule aided team's that out-efforted the opposition, both because of shorter breaks between games and the related dip in scouting time. The ability to disrupt — the hallmark of any great defense unit — became even more of an advantage.

Once Rose fell out of the picture, the Bulls' precarious position became all too apparent. Without him, they struggled to produce consistent offense against a solid defense. And while their own defense was still stellar, that wasn't necessarily enough.

The challenge, then, is twofold this year: find enough offense to survive without Rose and make sure the defense doesn't dip. The former is an open question; the latter should be doable. But even that task could be more trying than it seems. The loss of Omer Asik to the Houston Rockets will sting, and there's as yet no guarantee that Thibodeau will be able to train a suitable replacement. The Bulls know what they are and what they want their players to be, but that certainty doesn't necessarily mean that they'll have an endless supply of players to fill those needs.

This season could serve to be the most difficult test yet of the squad that Thibodeau has built. They are a defensive team, and they help turn solid defenders into great ones and the bad into the passable. But that process takes time, even under ideal circumstances. Identity is merely the context for improvement and success — it can't be the answer itself.

Tags: chance, defense, game, League, nba, Series, team

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Toronto Raptors

18 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the not-interested-in-the-American-election Toronto Raptors.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

Because the squad seems to be eternally rebuilding, expecting what amounts to a (pro-rated, considering the shortened 2011-12 season) six win jump for the Raptors feels like a bit much. The Raptors are the league's supposed afterthought, at least according to the small cabal of martyrish fans that still treat NBA media as if it's stuck in the year 2001, and forever adding pieces instead of wins. Six wins seems like a lot, especially when we don't know how Kyle Lowry will react to being The Guy, if Andrea Bargnani can stay healthy, and what to make of Jonas Valanciunas.

One element will remain rock steady, though, and that's coach Dwane Casey's ability to think on his feet and adapt. Toronto willingly went into 2011-12 thinking of the campaign as a throwaway season, something to abide while waiting for Jonas and packing a few pounds of real coach muscle on Andrea, and yet the team still upped its winning percentage considerably (even threatening the near-.500 mark enjoyed during Chris Bosh's final year in Toronto) with Bargs missing more than half the season. Whatever typical storm and stress hits in 2012-13, Casey will be able to dodge gale winds on the fly.

On top of that, we've no reason to believe that Bargnani won't play most of the season again. Lowry stepped back somewhat as a defender in Houston last year, but that was at the overall cost of him playing near All-Star ball offensively (and, in great news to Bargnani, on the glass) before an illness set in. Adding Landry Fields won't serve as a massive upgrade at the wing, but it will act as a stabling sensation as he provides competent play amongst other features (rebounding, again, and solid entry and skip passing) along the way. And Valanciunas, despite earning the requisite amount of rookie whistles, will likely add around 1400 minutes of athletic play at a position that only a few teams can ably fill from year to year.

The depth is not to be admired. The team goes 10-deep only if you appreciate the chuck-first instincts of John Lucas III and Linas Kleiza, although both rank as solid-enough replacement-level players despite their rim-gazing. At this point, Bargnani's rebounding will likely never improve (decades of data tells us that steep rebounding misgivings never really round up as careers move along), but the team has acquired enough helpers to make Andrea's scoring work passable. And Calderon as a trade chip could be a fantastic thing — the Raptors are set to acquire cap space should they hold onto or deal Jose, so they'll receive both high-end work in the passing department for more than half a season before taking either a solid draft pick, fine player making big money, or 25 more games following the trade deadline and eventual cap relief should they decide to keep him.

Of course, it will be another year of Raptor fans standing to the side and waiting for the months to count down until summer, frustrating in the sense that a postseason appearance is far from assured, and that both Bargnani and Lowry are just about nearing their primes.

Things will turn, though. The Raptor front office didn't exactly go great guns when the current regime took over in 2006, but in staying patient with two major assets in Casey and Valanciunas the Raps will eventually roll into the swing of playoff things.

Eventually.

Until then, enjoy a team well worth your time. And patience.

Projected record: 35-47

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: Defense, toughness and proper bookends. Dwane Casey joined Rick Carlisle's staff to handle the Dallas Mavericks' defense before the 2008-09 season. Over the next three years, according to NBA.com's stat tool, they improved from 17th in defensive efficiency (average points allowed per 100 possessions) to 12th to seventh during 2010-11, the Mavs' championship season. That rapid move up the rankings led the Raptors to hire Casey before last season to overhaul a Toronto defense that finished dead last in the league in '10-'11; after just one season, he had them at 12th in the NBA, a meteoric rise that makes me think Casey is perhaps some sort of wizard.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does this year, when he upgrades to a bulldog at the one and gets an actual wizard at the five. A full season of summer acquisition Kyle Lowry to harass opposing point guards and swell-sounding young Lithuanian center Jonas Valanciunas to change shots down low and attack pick-and-rolls up top should be a revelation for Raps fans accustomed to watching noted sieve Jose Calderon and a rotating package of alternately out-of-position and slow-footed bigs play heavy minutes. If the on-ball toughness Lowry showed in Memphis and Houston carries over, Valanciunas can stay on the floor (he fouls a lot) and the nine returning Raps keep pounding the rock (metaphorically, despite Casey's love for the literal), Toronto's move up the defensive ranks should continue. If they can approach the jump that Dallas took from Year 1 to Year 2 under Casey -- an improvement of 2.1 points per 100 possessions -- the Raps have an excellent chance at being a top-10 defensive unit, borderline unthinkable two years ago.

(Seriously: Four of the 10 best defenses in the league could come out of the Atlantic this season. I'm not sure if that's going to make all those divisional games brutal watches or brilliant ones, but if nothing else, it's going to be awful fun seeing how they all match up with a Brooklyn Nets offense that we expect to be high-powered.)

One critical evaluation facing the Raptors this season comes at power forward, where Casey and company will have to determine which of their three fours works best next to Valanciunas. The most likely choice seems to be Andrea Bargnani, back after missing 35 games with a calf injury last season. Six years of on-court evidence suggests the former No. 1 overall pick would fit well as a stretch four, using his long-range touch to give Valanciunas room to operate down low and spacing the floor for penetration by Lowry, Calderon and Toronto's slashing wings. Defensively, though, the evidence shows Bargnani's best role is cheerleader -- both 82games.com and NBA.com's stat tool confirm what any eyeball test suggests, showing that Toronto has allowed fewer points-per-100 with him off the court than on it in every season since 2007-08. (Neither site has on/off data for his '06-'07 rookie season.)

In fairness, Bargnani has never played next to a legitimate defensive center (seriously: Rasho Nesterovic, Primoz Brezec, Jake Voskuhl, Patrick O'Bryant, Alexis Ajinca, David Andersen, Solomon Alabi, Jamaal Magloire, Aaron Gray) and often shifted around when combo bigs Chris Bosh and Jermaine O'Neal were in town. If pairing with Valanciunas can hide some of his defensive deficiencies, and he's hitting from deep at the 37.1 percent career clip he managed before his injury-shortened '11-'12 season, Bargnani could be a valuable asset in helping Toronto improve its 25th-ranked offense. (As would DeMar DeRozan and restricted free agent signing Landry Fields fixing their respective busted strokes, but I'll believe those when I see 'em.)

The jury's still out on whether Bargnani can work as a full-time four, and similar evaluations will have to be made on reserves Amir Johnson and Ed Davis, both of whom took a step backward in mix-and-match roles during Casey's first year. But with three years and $32.3 million left on the 26-year-old Italian's deal, it's worth the Raps' while to see if the coach can begin to turn Bargnani and Valanciunas into a down-market version of Dirk Nowitzki and Tyson Chandler. If they click and Lowry turns in the same near-All-Star play he managed in Houston, Toronto could both play meaningful games in the late spring and continue building for the future.

What Should Make You Scared: DeRozan continuing to try to be The Man and failing, or succeeding enough to get Toronto to double-down on its bet on the wing. Come the end of this season, the Raptors will have to decide whether they want to lock up 2009 first-rounder DeRozan -- the starter at shooting guard the past two seasons, now moving to small forward due to a glaring need there and the presence of offseason imports Fields and 2012 lottery pick Terrence Ross -- with a long-term contract, or to extend him a one-year, $4.5 million qualifying offer that would make him a restricted free agent following the '13-'14 season. As such, a lot of eyeballs are going to be trained on DeMar's play this year, with the Raps reportedly wanting "to be wowed" by him before they'll put ink to paper. This could mean DeRozan looking to do (read: score) more, which could be a problem.

While DeRozan has been one of Toronto's two leading scorers in each of the past two seasons, as the share of team possessions he's used on offense has increased throughout his career, his field goal, True Shooting and Effective Field Goal percentages have all declined. So has his individual Offensive Rating -- after producing an average of 106.5 points per 100 possessions as a rookie, he dipped to 103.2-per-100 in Year 2 and 100.8-per-100 in Year 3, according to NBA.com's stat tool.

As defenders play off DeRozan to account for his athleticism and explosiveness off the dribble, he's tried to make them pay with the jumper, but he's just not good enough with it to use it as often as he does. Midrange Js and threes accounted for 59.4 percent of his field-goal attempts last year, but he shot just 36.3 percent on the former and 26.1 percent on the latter. (That deep mark, at least, was a significant bump from the 9.6 percent he managed in '10-'11.) The focus of his game has to be attacking the rim; considering his weak rebounding numbers, the fact that his assist and turnover rates are basically a wash, and that he doesn't create many turnovers in the way of blocks and steals, if DeRozan continues to just float outside without fixing his janky jumper, he might do more harm than good on the floor.

Strangely enough, Toronto's situation might be even worse if DeRozan does post a small improvement. After the Raptors drafted Ross eighth overall and gambled on a three-year offer sheet for Fields to checkmate the Knicks out of a potential sign-and-trade for top free agent target Steve Nash (which, as you know, backfired), they now finds themselves in a position of having already made two big investments in wings as another, more established player's contract comes up.

Say DeRozan does trend up this year, averaging something like 18 points per 36 minutes, nudging his shooting percentages up a bit (say, 45 percent from the field and near 30 percent from deep, while continuing to hit better than 80 percent at the line) and showing a bit more commitment on defense. Do Bryan Colangelo and Ed Stefanski then decide they have to keep him around, even if it costs them eight figures a year? Go for it and you could hamstring the franchise for years to come; turn away and you could miss the prime seasons of an electric athlete coming into his own. That's enough to give any exec trouble sleeping.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

The Raptors are an admirable squad, making relatively small moves (via the draft, trade, and free agency) that turn them into a more legitimate contender for a low-level playoff spot. Despite missing out on Steve Nash — their brightest hope for a single game-changer — and overpaying for Landry Fields, the Raptors figure to improve. Dwane Casey will continue to establish an identity as a defensive squad, and the additions of Kyle Lowry and Jonas Valanciunas should get them closer.

That said, they only figure to accomplish so much. Casey can point to Tom Thibodeau's Bulls as a defense-oriented club that achieved contender status with limited offensive talent, but that team also has Derrick Rose, a legitimate superstar capable of carrying the scoring load for an entire season. The Raptors don't have that player, and don't figure to for some time unless they happen to find such a player via the draft. That outcome is unlikely, though, if they continue this incremental improvement.

This is largely the fate of today's small-market teams, but the issue is greater for Toronto, a great city that, whether because of taxes or cultural issues, has yet to appeal to a considerable number of NBA athletes. The Raptors have had superstars in their past, but all have left via free agency or trade, suggesting that even the draft might not be the key to turning Toronto into a contender. It's perhaps too pessimistic to say they're doomed to irrelevance, but there is a sense that the Raptors are not playing by the same rules as everyone else.

If that's the case, then slow progress isn't such a bad way to go. The task at hand isn't only to make the Raptors better, but to turn them into a relevant team that doesn't seem like a second-tier outfit even among small-market teams. That status is unfair, but it still needs to be corrected via results. Making the postseason, even if their ceiling is ultimately low, would help accomplish just that.

Tags: DeRozan, League, nba, stat, team, tool, Wizard

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Philadelphia 76ers

17 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the ultra-patriotic Philadelphia 76ers.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

You don't have to love the Philadelphia 76ers. You just have to marvel at the way they constructed a team that was an anathema to all modern pro basketball thought, committed to a franchise savior in Doug Collins in spite of years of evidence that suggested they should at least try to counter Collins' whims, dumped big for small, mindful for thoughtless … and still ended up its summer with the best center in their conference.

Sweet moves, dingleberries.

By any rational line of thinking, the Sixers turned in a miserable offseason — mostly working without a proper GM on their way to more or less handing the reins over to Doug Collins in the form of in-house GM hire Tony DiLeo. Along the way, the team managed to somehow spend more money while essentially trading Elton Brand and Lou Williams for two vastly inferior players in Kwame Brown and Nick Young. The Brand release was such a stupefying move that tends to burn even with Andrew Bynum's presence on this roster — the team took in no real cap savings for his release, the team's ownership group still has to pay his salary from here on out, and the Sixers bid against absolutely nobody on their way toward landing Brown for two years at an above-average salary for a below-everyone player.

Lou Williams goes to Atlanta, and the team pays more to pull in Nick Young. I'm not convinced Doug Collins has seen Nick Young play basketball, because Nick Young and Doug Collins will go together like Nick Young and Doug Collins. Also, Nick Young will make more money than Lou Williams this season.

(Of course, they'll have cap space next summer. Then again, Andrew Bynum's hoped-for extension will eat up just about all of that cap space, and they'll still have to replace the brilliance that Nick Young no doubt lent to Philadelphia throughout 2012-13.)

It was a shakeup that the 76ers needed, but one that was executed miserably until the team was able to upgrade from Andre Iguodala to Andrew Bynum. As a result, provided Bynum hits his stride and stays healthy sometime this winter, the 76ers will be a better team than the one we saw for most of last season, one that saw the team follow up a white-hot start with a miserable finish. The addition of a series of new faces should help the buffer between Collins and his roster as they both near the inevitable burnout, and in the meantime the group could contend for 50 wins.

Because Collins can coach. He can coach his tail off and will have his team prepared for their opponent, even if Collins' offensive schemes can be their own worst enemy. The team spent most of 2011-12 acting as a college team of sorts, moving the ball and focusing on the sort of interchangeable parts that both win NBA games and turn NBA teams into shooting, jumping question marks. Even as it challenged for the Eastern Conference finals last May, you never got a sense of who the Sixers were. Now, with Bynum anchored down low, you get it.

[Fantasy Basketball '12: Play the official game of NBA.com]

It's in, and then out. Out to Jason Richardson, the underrated Dorrell Wright, and aforementioned Young. Jrue Holliday will still be around to look people off, while Thaddeus Young and Lavoy Allen stay behind to work that weird in-between game that we loved from the pre-Bynum 76ers.

Collins will lord over everything else. Few know X's and O's better than this guy and he will be just as adept working with his new roster as he was working with his motley collection of tweeners (at every single position, somehow). It's during the summer, and trade deadline, that we worry about with this man.

The meantime, provided Bynum can play 2300 minutes in a season for the first time in his career, could be worth all the offseason missteps.

(I don't think he'll play 2,300 minutes. Hence the record listed below.)

Projected record: 44-38

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: The prospect that change is good. After their most successful season in nine years and "fielding arguably [their] strongest team in over a decade," as Bradford Doolittle writes in the highly recommended Pro Basketball Prospectus 2012-13, the 76ers responded by shipping out five of their top nine players from a season ago (including three of the five players who saw the most floor time for Philly in the postseason) and deciding that they were going to be a very different type of team. Peace out, Integral Parts of a Team That Came Within One Win of the Eastern Conference finals!

Though he's known as an emotional sort, Philly coach Doug Collins clearly wasn't too sentimental about the Sixers' roster following their seven-game second-round loss to the Boston Celtics, telling Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News that the front office quickly decided "that team had reached its peak [and] knew we were going to have to make changes." Here's why:

Last year's Sixers ranked 17th in the league in offensive efficiency, featured eight players who averaged at least eight points per game but nobody who averaged more than 15 points per game, produced the league's second-most midrange jumpers (only the Charlotte Bobcats took more) and second-fewest field-goal attempts taken within the restricted area (only the Dallas Mavericks managed fewer), and generated the worst free-throw rate in the league. That came on the heels of the 2010-11 Sixers, who ranked 17th in the league in offensive efficiency, featured eight players who averaged at least 7.2 points per game but nobody who averaged more than 15 points per game, produced the league's second-most midrange jumpers (only the Washington Wizards took more) and ninth-fewest field-goal attempts taken within the restricted area, and generated the third-worst free-throw rate in the league.

The spread-it-out, pull-up-rather-than-attack, everybody-take-turns approach that Collins took in his first two years in Philly limited mistakes (the Sixers have had the lowest turnover rate in the league both years) and, in tandem with excellent team defense (No. 8 in defensive efficiency two years ago, No. 3 last year) produced consecutive playoff appearances; there are, to be sure, virtues to the tactic. But it also produced two heavy first-round underdogs to established powers (the Miami Heat in '11, the Chicago Bulls in '12) who, if not for serious injuries to Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah this spring, would both have been out-in-five also-rans.

So rather than be seduced by the second-round run, Collins and company allowed sixth man Lou Williams and 3-point specialist Jodie Meeks to leave in free agency, used the collective bargaining agreement's amnesty provision to shed the remaining $18.2 million on Elton Brand's contract, and signed noted bust Kwame Brown to play center alongside the re-signed and position-shifted Spencer Hawes. Most notably, of course, they shipped out star swingman Andre Iguodala, second-year center Nikola Vucevic and rookie Moe Harkless as part of a four-team blockbuster that brought back center Andrew Bynum -- a player who has ranked in the league's top 25 (including 11th last year) in at-the-rim field-goal attempts in four of the past five seasons, and finished 27th and 14th in free-throw rate among players who've made at least 20 appearances and averaged 20 minutes per game, and who shoots just under 69 percent from the foul line for his career.

The 76ers have organized, streamlined and defined their offense -- they're going to work inside out, feeding Bynum on the block early and often, and see if they can't use Hawes to get some Pau-to-Andrew, high-low volleyball action going. They're going to take advantage of the fact that most teams will have to double Bynum, which should create openings for penetration by point guard Jrue Holiday or clean looks for shooters like Holiday (38 percent from deep last year) and fellow new imports Jason Richardson (36.8 percent), Nick Young (36.5 percent) and Dorell Wright (36 percent). They're also hoping the extra post attention will clear space for newly minted starting small forward Evan Turner to operate in the hope that, after two largely underwhelming years in the pros, he can reclaim the playmaking form that made him the National Player of the Year at Ohio State.

They'll miss Williams' Microwave act off the bench, but they should get most of his scoring production back from the combination of Wright and Young. They'll miss Iguodala's all-around game, but they should still be good defensively with Turner and Holiday manning the perimeter and Bynum -- a legitimate post defender and force on the glass (finishing fifth in defensive rebound rate last year) who changes and blocks shots (he would've tied for fifth in block percentage two years back had he played enough minutes to qualify), but whose reputation as a defender has suffered by dint of being compared to Dwight Howard -- gumming up the paint. And the offensive gains they're likely to make thanks to having a low-post threat for the first time in more than two decades ought to more than make up for any defensive drop-off. The redefinition should be enough to give Collins not only his third straight playoff appearance, but also a legitimate shot at taking out a higher seed with or without injuries.

What Should Make You Scared: The prospect that change is bad. The thing is, it's really easy to see this thing blowing up in Philly's faces.

For one, the idea of Bynum as double-team-commanding low-post linchpin could be shaken pretty damn quick by the reality that, as TrueHoop's Beckley Mason noted, he doesn't handle doubles well; as Zach Harper wrote at Bleacher Report, 56 percent of Bynum's turnovers last year came in the post, most as a result of a double team. It stands to reason that Bynum had outgrown the third-wheel role in which he found himself in L.A., but if all the low-post attention that comes with being Philly's lead "dog," especially late in games, amplifies his ball-security issues and he turns out to be a less efficient scorer, the Sixers will need a Plan B in the worst way. Sure, Turner could figure it out and Holiday could start looking for his shot more, but would you bet your life on either of those things?

Plus, if he's turning the ball over, he's going to drive Collins crazy, which could make Collins something of an unpleasant guy to deal with for Philly players. Oh, that reminds us: This is Year 3 of the Doug Collins Era, which has throughout Collins' coaching career been the upper limit of how long a group of young charges can stand to deal with his exacting nature. The combination of that track record, this past spring's ominous rumblings about unrest in Philly and the addition of the very smart and occasionally petulant Bynum -- who, lest we forget, is in a contract year, knows he will absolutely receive a max offer this summer, and is seeing how he likes Philly even more than Philly is seeing how it likes him -- to the mix could produce some unwanted fireworks in the Sixers' locker room. (Also, watching Collins coach Nick Young could be very, very funny.)

In the best-case scenario, Bynum rises to the challenge, the team falls into place with a logical pecking order at long last established, and all the offseason change produces a team that competes for a top-four seed in the East. But within that order, there sure seems to be a lot of opportunities for chaos.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

The Sixers have done many a middle-tier team's dream, parlaying several valuable pieces (including their best player) into a legitimate All-Star. While Andrew Bynum's credentials as a superstar are still in question, his talent is not, and he figures to be the East's starting center in the All-Star game for quite some time. However, he's still a risk, and the Sixers can't act as if their offseason coup means the difficult work is done.

Bynum is clearly the new face of the franchise, but he also hasn't proven himself either as being capable of carrying the offensive load or the sort of player with the maturity to transition to a leadership role. That's not to say that Bynum is incapable of taking on those responsibilities, and it'd be unfair to assume he can't just because he played with Kobe Bryant for every season of his career up until this one.

There is nevertheless danger in committing to Bynum fully, and not just because of his perceived maturity issues. For one thing, Doug Collins has perhaps invested in an inside-out style of play too much, basing the offense around Bynum but also planning to pay another true big man (seemingly either Spencer Hawes or Kwame Brown, though most likely the former). What that does, effectively, is to put pressure on Bynum by giving him the ball while simultaneously giving him less room to work, partially recreating his situation with the Lakers without giving Bynum the cover of playing as a third option. Bynum is good enough to transcend any spatial issues in the paint, but if he doesn't then he'll surely be blamed for failing to produce in line with the expectations of an All-Star center. He would deserve much of that criticism, but he would also have been put in a less than ideal situation by a coach with an increasingly outdated sense of NBA positions.

The low-post offensive threat is as established a basketball archetype as any, which provides hope that Bynum can be inserted into the lineup without issue. But this is far from a surefire issue, both because of the Sixers' past as a wing-oriented team and the basic difficulty of integrating any new player into a system. This problem only gets bigger the more time Bynum misses with his knee injury.

The bright side for the Sixers is that they have Andrew Bynum, a player all but a few teams in the league would go out of their way to obtain. But team identities can't change over just a summer. If this relationship is going to work, everyone must be aware of that difficult process.

Tags: CHANGE, nba, nobody, percent, Philly, prospect, Sixers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The New York Knicks

17 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the always reliable New York Knicks.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

The New York Knicks, for the 37th offseason in a row, have set themselves up for all manner of ridicule with both their moves and non-moves. Jettisoning Jeremy Lin for the seeming failure of character of setting his own price in the open market (after the Knicks had encouraged him to do so) was a needless move, as was adding a third (or second; or, depending how he looks by Christmas, first) guaranteed year on Jason Kidd's contract. J.R. Smith was retained, his brother Chris was brought to camp briefly "just 'cuz," and the team appeared to go out of its way to sign on the most hilarious trending topics (fattest, oldest) of the League Pass set to round it its roster.

Also, Rasheed Wallace.

[Fantasy Basketball '12: Play the official game of NBA.com]

Also, parts. Lots and lots of parts to take advantage of that 82-game schedule that will see team after team alternating bouts of indifference and injury alongside the approximation of "go get 'em!" as 30 teams try to make it to spring. This is why the wins could, if not necessarily "should," stack up.

Famously, the stack will have to work from a foundation that would place Carmelo Anthony almost exclusively at the power forward position he worked so expertly from late last season. With Amar'e Stoudemire hurt towards the end of the 2011-12 turn, the Knicks turned into a dynamite defensive club with Anthony's quick-hit scoring bursts (because the position placed him and his spins and finishes closer to the basket) helping give the team's often-iffy offense just enough to survive. Of course, Stoudemire returned for most of the playoffs, and the team faltered in the first round. Again it was Anthony, 25 feet from the hoop, trying to make it happen.

Of course Stoudemire — truly one of our favorite players at his best, and someone who has grown into a gem of a guy — worked all summer to try and better his low post game. Of course, he's already hurt. Of course, Anthony (who will do whatever it takes) won't do that — he doesn't want to play power forward. Of course, coach Mike Woodson (who has already sold out in one significant way) is going to attempt to kowtow to his star (a star that isn't even his team's best player; that would be Tyson Chandler) in order to stay on at MSG.

And, of course, I don't think it matters.

If Woodson is slow and subversive with the switch, he can make a power forward out of Anthony yet. Those 82games.com numbers could have Carmelo playing way more minutes at the big forward spot if Woodson eases him into things. And for as much as we rip on Anthony for his skittish play at times, the guy is a competitor. He's not going to walk to the bench in protest the first time Woodson sits either Stoudemire (or Chandler, with foul trouble) a few minutes into a half to go small. He's not going to walk to the bench in protest the 30th time, either. Especially when he eases, again, into a power forward role that doesn't have to include much banging. Especially when Jason Kidd, trending as "old," fires him that two-handed lob.

The problem is that New York doesn't do "slow and subversive." New York is full of showy sittings — Sanchez for Tebow, we hear, and A-Rod for Ibanez — and back page blowouts. Mike Woodson knew all of this when he came on last year as Mike D'Antoni's obvious eventual replacement, and he knew all this when he pined for the full time gig after D'Antoni and the Knicks parted ways. He can't complain that things aren't what they were in front of 15,000 fans in Atlanta. He asked for the challenge of taming the Apple, and now he has to follow through on it.

In the meantime, the Knicks will throw out parts. Famous parts, well-compensated parts, productive parts, and day-to-day parts. Packaged properly, this season could turn out to be interesting in ways that have nothing to do with soap opera nonsense. It could just be cold, hard, winning basketball with a lot of nice numbers where big headlines used to be.

You asked for it, men. Time to execute as your city expects.

Projected record: 45-37

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: An elite defense that might be even better this year. In our '11-12 Knicks preview, I wrote that if Tyson Chandler could lift New York out of the bottom-third of the league in defensive efficiency for the first time since 2003-04 -- Mike D'Antoni's team ranked 22nd in the NBA in points allowed per 100 possessions in '10-11 -- "they ought to throw Tyson a parade." Last year, the Knicks skyrocketed out of that lower tier, improving their defense by a whopping 8.5 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA.com's stat tool, and finishing the year as the league's fifth-ranked unit. Instead of a parade, Chandler had to settle for the NBA's 2011-12 Defensive Player of the Year Award; reasonable folks can argue that he wasn't the trophy's most deserving recipient, but there's no denying his impact.

Some credit, too, belongs to coach Mike Woodson, imported before the season to serve as D'Antoni's "defensive coordinator" and later elevated to interim coach after D'Antoni's resignation. Woodson didn't really earn the defensive reputation he held following his tenure with the Atlanta Hawks, but after he took over, the team got even better on D, allowing just 97.4 points-per-100 over their final 24 games and going 18-6 to finish the regular season. Woodson's primary achievement seemed to be convincing Carmelo Anthony to compete on defense, which, as D'Antoni and George Karl will tell you, is no simple task. But even if the Knicks' defensive improvement was attributable primarily to Chandler being brilliant, Iman Shumpert emerging as a strong wing defender and, later, Anthony flipping the effort switch, the guy overseeing all of it should still get some praise.

The Knicks will miss Shumpert's defense to start the season, as rehab on his surgically repaired torn left anterior cruciate ligament will keep him out until at least December. But offseason signee Ronnie Brewer returned to practice Wednesday morning after missing more than a month with a tear to the medial meniscus in his right knee, opening up the possibility that the former Chicago Bulls defensive ace could be ready to step in for Shumpert come the start of the regular season. When Shumpert returns, the tandem will allow Woodson to keep a long, quick, tough, versatile perimeter defender on the floor at virtually all times; in a league with a lot of wing firepower, athletic import James White and noted bargain J.R. Smith (who will never stop wandering and freelancing, but was often engaged and attentive last season) could help, too.

The same presence-at-all-times idea informed the offseason re-acquisition of Marcus Camby, who, even at 38, represents an improvement on the glass and on D over any reserve big New York employed last season, theoretically enabling Woodson to give Chandler more frequent breathers without worrying that the Knicks' defense will collapse in his absence. (Interestingly enough, the numbers suggest that it didn't necessarily go to hell in a hand basket when Chandler sat last season -- NBA.com's stat tool and 82games.com both have the Knicks' D at around one point-per-100 worse with Tyson sitting, and BasketballValue.com's lineup data suggest they were actually 1.5-per-100 better when he rested.) Many Knicks fans would probably rather have seen Jared Jeffries' frontcourt versatility return to the roster than ancient Kurt Thomas brought back into the fold, but Thomas was still a tough, strong defender in Portland last season; similarly, fellow elder Jason Kidd posted a better defensive rating than both Mike Bibby and Baron Davis, who saw more than 1,100 combined minutes at the point for New York last year.

Increased wing depth and even slight improvements in the weaker reserve spots, combined with Chandler's continued ability to erase teammates' mistakes and single up any big in the league, give New York's defense a chance to nudge even higher than last year's elite finish ... especially if Anthony's final-month buy-in wasn't just a limited time offer.

What Should Make You Scared: Duh. As we laud Woodson's impact on the Knicks' defense, it's worth noting that their sputtering offense -- 19th in the league in offensive efficiency at season's end, according to NBA.com's stat tool, a dramatic drop from their No. 5 finish in '10-11 -- also improved dramatically under him. In his 24-game stint, the Knicks averaged 106.1 points-per-100; over the course of the regular season, that would have made them the fourth most potent offense in the league, and the best in the East.

There's a caveat, though: During that stretch, both Amar'e Stoudemire and Jeremy Lin were out of the lineup, which both removed any doubt that Anthony would be the team's top option (which had existed since Lin's emergence) and pushed him to the power forward slot, where he was far more effective (as he was the season before). The Carmelo/Amar'e problem didn't get solved; it just got tabled. Now, it's back.

After Anthony came over to the Knicks at the '10-11 trade deadline, he and Stoudemire often seemed awkward sharing the floor in the 24 games they played together, looking uncomfortable as they tried to make their volume-scoring, ball-dominating, space-occupying games mesh. Still, though, the Knicks continued to score, with lineups featuring the two stars producing an average of 110.7 points per 100 possessions in 672 shared minutes, per NBA.com's lineup data. Unfortunately for Knicks fans, they couldn't stop anybody, giving up 110.9-per-100. Chandler was brought in last year to fix the defense, and he did ... but the offense went in the tank. Lineups featuring the Anthony-Stoudemire duo (99.1-per-100 in 976 regular-season minutes, which would've been the league's eighth worst efficiency over a full season) and the Anthony-Stoudemire-Chandler trio (98.5-per-100 in 794 minutes, which would've tied for sixth-worst) struggled mightily.

It's pretty simple: If Woodson can't figure a means of improving the Knicks' offensive production when his three highly paid frontcourt All-Stars share the floor, and especially when his top two guns play together, New York will again fail to make any real postseason noise.

Stoudemire's summer Dream discipleship could help, provided STAT finds early success in the low post; Anthony meaning it when he says he'd "rather play off [his point guards] and do what I do best," which (as we saw in London) is catch, shoot and score quickly, would help, too. While I believe the Knicks' front office was wrong to evaluate Jeremy Lin as a less attractive option at the point than Kidd, the re-acquired Raymond Felton or Argentine import Pablo Prigioni, I tend to agree with Howard Megdal's assessment that the team, on the whole, enters this season better at the one.

Better, more stable point play, the addition of Camby to help create extra possessions on the offensive glass, a full season of Steve Novak doing what he does best, and Amar'e and 'Melo doing what they say they're going to do could push New York's offense into the top half of the league. If that happens and the defense holds, the Knicks could wind up with home-court advantage in the first round for the first time since 2000-01.

"Could."

The fear -- and, frankly, more likely outcome -- is that Stoudemire's post experiment is jettisoned at the first sign of failure in favor of a reversion to his familiar elbow face-up game, which looked creaky and fail-filled last season. That even if using 'Melo at the four alongside space-creator Novak at the three is the team's best bet for generating quality looks, 'Melo will refuse it. That even if Amar'e is ineffective, Woodson won't send him to the bench because it would mean ruffling both STAT and 'Melo. That, in a shocking revelation, Felton/Kidd/Prigioni ain't exactly the Holy Trinity. And that come the All-Star break, we'll still be wondering how the Knicks can mesh.

Sweet dreams, Knickerbocker fans.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

After several bumps in the road — a long and winding trade saga, a coaching change, a media sensation, and a refusal to commit to said sensation as a real player — the Knicks most assuredly belong to Carmelo Anthony. In most opinions, that's not a good thing. At best, the Knicks have sacrificed their long-term flexibility for a middling East playoff team — at worst, they've hitched their wagon to an overrated star with few elite skills. With so much money tied up in Anthony and his frontcourt partners Amar'e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler, the Knicks are who they are. Enjoy it if you can, I guess.

For the most part, their image is not a positive one. The Knicks are by turns old, offensively stagnant, and not always committed to the cause, prone to lapses in judgment and ability alike. This is a good team, but not a particularly imposing one. When Linsanity hit last winter, the joy was in large part the idea that the Knicks could surprise, that they could deploy an X-factor and receive unexpected rewards. The current team is relatively ossified, no matter how many aging role players they added over the summer.

If this situation sounds a little depressing and a lot disappointing, that's because it is. When Donnie Walsh remade the Knicks following the Isiah Thomas-orchestrated dark ages, there was hope that the franchise could return to relatively sane relevance for a prolonged period. That era lasted all of a few months, giving way to the same impatience and lack of vision that typified the previous term. That the Knicks look like a playoff team is immaterial. The problem, and the quality that defines them, is a general dysfunction that casts any single positive move as an aberration in the context of institutional rot.

And yet, given that mess, they do remain the Knicks, a team that will always look moderately attractive simply because of the tradition and aura associated with playing in a basketball-mad city that doubles as the cultural capital of the biggest city in North America. Even when the team looks screwed up beyond repair, there's still hope that they can become a major NBA franchise once again. Unfortunately, the same belief (of fans, analysts, observers, laymen, etc.) that sustains them also makes them increasingly prone to mismanagement.

Tags: defense, elite, League, nba, team, tool, Wing

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Brooklyn Nets

17 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the really, really cool Brooklyn Nets.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

The addition of a pro basketball team to the borough of Brooklyn interests me. The addition of a second pro basketball team into the city of New York — even the ABA's old New York Nets played all the way out in Long Island — is a groovy thing, even if the team's former owners and local politicians did terrible and duplicitous things on their way toward razing a community's worth of homes to put a big brown stadium on the corner. The color scheme and Jay-Z's presence and Deron Williams' weird ascension as some sort of talk-the-talk superstar? Less interested, but thanks for the summertime fodder.

Now, the basketball. Now, a Nets team that is full of big-ish names with giant contracts and, presumably, happy and healthy feet. Ready to give coach Avery Johnson a cast worth his time, a team he can mold in his plucky image, and a chance to make it back to the Finals he visited as a player in 1999 and coach in 2006.

The actual business of stopping the other team might get in the way of all that. In the way of 50 wins, even. There is potential, sure, and Avery's scheming to perhaps rely on at some point, but these Nets are going to look like a Secaucus-styled horror show at times on that end, and it could hamstring whatever hopes that $81 million payroll might have.

Williams could help, here, turning things around for the first time in his career on that defensive end and working as the sort of two-way player that typically earns $100 million contracts. Williams has never tried to be an all-out stopper defensively, and considering his shape and length I'm not entirely convinced he'd have as much success were he to follow-through. Brook Lopez is absolutely helpless as a weak side helper, rebounder, and (most importantly) screen and roll defender; and while Kris Humphries can help clean up Lopez's issues on the glass, he shares his step-slow attitude defensively.

Ardent Nets fans will no doubt bring up Gerald Wallace (traded for because GM Billy King forever wants to look a pretty Gretel to Larry Brown's Hansel) and Joe Johnson as the saviors, here, and it's true that they defend (and defend well) the two positions where the champion Miami Heat make their hay. Wallace looked a little older than his age last year, though, and the sheer minutes Johnson has piled up thus far in his career (nearly 35,000, already) has lessened his overall impact.

The team will score, we should remind, featuring a lineup full of contributors that on paper would seem to fit in perfectly with each other.

This will be a fantastic screening team, full of good footwork and planted posteriors. Wallace, Williams, Johnson, Humphries and Lopez's face up games may all come and go; but they won't all go at once. And with Deron filling in angles and hitting the obvious targets the Nets will routinely play as the team you can't close out on — even if they miss two-thirds of their three-pointers on the night.

Helming it all won't be Williams, the talkative star, but Avery Johnson. Johnson's uneasy departure in Dallas a few years back created a strange ending to what appeared to be an obvious pairing that would last for years. And though the Nets' swoon was by design, Dallas' run to the 2011 championship in a season that saw the Nets top out at just 24 wins couldn't have been any fun to work through. Johnson and Williams had to endure yet another season of waiting in 2011-12, biding their time until the team's cap space could bring help seemingly ages after the franchise seemed relevant.

Johnson, presumably, was on board with all the new moves; and he's had months to configure the various parts into something special. And because of the ages, skill sets, and payroll whomp that this team packs, this is more or less Avery's crew for a while now.

He's been in the background, as the Nets trot out new unis and Jay-Z and D-Will and J-John and B-Lopz, but his sideline work and schemes could be the difference this season. At nearly five years removed from having a team worth shouting about in Dallas, we're going to get a chance to see just how significant a sideline presence Avery Johnson can be.

Projected record: 46-36

[Fantasy Basketball '12: Play the official game of NBA.com]

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: Enough balance to turn a bottom-10 offense into a top-10 unit. The Nets averaged the eighth-fewest points per 100 possessions in the NBA during the 2011-12 season, and when you take a look at the roster that took the floor in the team's last go-round in New Jersey, it's not hard to understand why. More than 4,100 total minutes went to Shelden Williams (now out of the league, but still a No. 1 husband), Johan Petro (still in the league simply because it's good to be tall), Shawne Williams (who followed a comeback 2010-11 season as a 3-point bomber with the New York Knicks by missing more than three-quarters of his triples in Newark), DeShawn Stevenson (who celebrated his 2010-11 title win by posting the second-worst Player Efficiency Rating in the league) and the ghost of Mehmet Okur (reduced to a spectre by Achilles and back injuries). Add to that multiple hole-plugging cameos by replacement-level types (Dennis Horner, Andre Emmett, Jerry Smith, Larry Owens, Armon Johnson) employed solely to keep game clocks moving until the Center stage could shift from Prudential to Barclays, and basically the gifts of all-world point guard Deron Williams and another strong season from power forward Kris Humphries were the only things keeping the Nets from being what my old boss Trey Kerby might call an all-time yikes festival.

This year's Nets team, as you might have heard, is built a little bit differently, the result of a massive roster overhaul during the offseason. Sixteen of the 22 players who wore Nets uniforms last year are gone, with a dozen new names (at least nine of which are likely to stick) dotting the current Brooklyn roster, headlined by six-time All-Star shooting guard Joe Johnson. On paper, the overall upgrade looks monstrous -- as Kevin Pelton writes in the just-released Pro Basketball Prospectus 2012-13 (an absolute must-read for hardcore hoops fans and just about the best way you can spend $10.02), the Wins Above Replacement Player metric estimates all that locker-room change to be worth about 14 wins, a massive shift that would have bumped the Nets from the fourth-worst record in the East last season all the way up into a tie with the Knicks for the seventh seed in the conference playoff bracket. The Nets have their sights set a bit higher this year, of course, due in large part to a gigantic expected improvement on the offensive end.

The duo of Johnson and Williams -- two big-for-their-position guards skilled at both posting smaller defenders and facilitating in the pick-and-roll, at both stroking the jumper (while Deron's overall field-goal percentage was down last year, his mid-range splits were excellent) and beating close-contesting defenders off the dribble -- will give Avery a boatload of options in the half-court (especially if Joe's truly cool with moving away from all those isolations he used in Atlanta). When healthy, Brook Lopez (18.4 points per 36 minutes on 50.4 percent shooting and 79.6 percent from the foul line for his career) ranks among the game's most talented offensive centers, and after missing all but five games due to foot injuries last year, he's reportedly 100 percent and ready to resume his role as the Nets' primary post threat.

With those three taking the lion's share of the shots, it's difficult to imagine two better role players to fill out the starting lineup than Humphries and Gerald Wallace, both of whom are eminently capable of contributing double-figure scoring based solely off offensive rebounds, transition opportunities and timely cuts made while defenses key on their higher-billed teammates. Plus, Johnson's insertion into the starting lineup should strengthen the bench, as sophomore spark plug MarShon Brooks will now bring his gunner's instincts to the second unit. He'll team with Bosnian stretch four Mirza Teletovic (one of the Euroleague's top scorers and 3-point shooters a season ago, who hit four bombs during Tuesday's preseason matchup with the Boston Celtics) and possibly reclamation project Andray Blatche, who, for all his defensive/conditioning/decision-making/leadership issues, still has plenty of offensive talent. They'll be counted upon to provide scoring punch off the bench alongside guards C.J. Watson, Keith Bogans and rookie Tyshawn Taylor, all of whom can shoot the long ball.

Add it all up, and the result should be a season-long offensive surge in Brooklyn that comes at opponents in waves and has them wishing for the days of Johan Petro. (They will be the only ones.)

What Should Make You Scared: A defense still porous enough to give back many of those offensive gains. While coach Johnson left Dallas with a reputation as a defense-first coach, his New Jersey teams (due, at least in part, to an overall dearth of talent) have struggled mightily in that end, ranking 21st among 30 NBA teams in points allowed per 100 possessions in his first season at the helm and dropping all the way down to 29th last year. They allowed the third-highest opponent field-goal percentage and gave up the league's second-highest 3-point mark, allowing offenses to shoot 61.8 percent within five feet of the basket and a league-worst 43.6 percent from between five and nine feet away. They posted bottom-five finishes in points allowed off turnovers, on the fast break and in the paint, and finished in the bottom third of the league in second-chance points conceded. It was pretty rough, and while the offseason influx of talent should help some, I'm not sure it's going to get much better.

Joe Johnson should represent an improvement over Brooks in the starting lineup, but while he and Williams have both shown the ability to D up in the past and their big backcourt combo should allow them to effectively switch assignments on the fly without conceding too many mismatches, neither one is a true lockdown perimeter defender. A full season of Wallace at small forward should help, too, but fans expecting the lights-out defensive maniac who terrorized opposing wings in Charlotte will be disappointed by the step(s)-slower version of "Crash" they find three years later on the wrong side of 30 -- he's not quite the same guy, and faster swingmen can beat him off the bounce.

Once opponents get past the perimeter and into the paint, they're unlikely to find much opposition from Lopez or Humphries, neither of whom are strong shot-blockers or especially stout post defenders. I'm a bit less worried than some about Lopez's much-discussed struggles as a defensive rebounder, given that both of his frontcourt mates are plus defensive rebounders and both Williams and Johnson have been league-average or slightly above in defensive rebound rate at their positions over the last three years, but he's still not going to change many shots or strike fear into the heart of opposing drivers. The second unit will be bolstered somewhat by Watson's quickness at the point and Reggie Evans' gifts on the defensive glass, but as anchored by all-O/no-D contributors Brooks, Blatche and Teletovic, it will still likely surrender nearly as many points as it gives up.

Given health and the Little General's motivational talents finally being brought to bear on a more athletically gifted roster, a defensive improvement is likely. But moving out of the bottom third of the league seems like it'll be an awful tall task for this particular collection of defenders, which will make it awful difficult for these Nets to stick around very long come playoff time.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

The Nets are now in Brooklyn, city of the hip and rich, and therefore they're a much different entity than the group that left New Jersey just a few months ago. With help from Jay-Z, the franchise now boasts mainstream appeal. With the addition of Joe Johnson and the return of Brook Lopez from injury to join Deron Williams, they also figure to be pretty good. Unfortunately, because they have so much salary committed to three players (plus Gerald Wallace, not exactly making a pittance), they figure not to improve much over the next few seasons. What you see now is what you'll get for a while.

That puts them in roughly the same boat as their friends across the bridge, the Knicks. What makes the Nets different, though, is that they're looking to establish themselves in a new location rather than focusing on recapturing past relevance. For the Nets, it's enough to compete for a mid-level playoff spot, possibly win a series, and head into the next season with a postseason berth nearly assured. By accomplishing those goals, they'll set up about proving they're for real, win some fans for life, and help turn Brooklyn into the major-market destination that it can very well become.

That might not be exactly what Nets fans want in the short term, and it certainly doesn't jibe with Mikhail Prokhorov's promises that the franchise will bring home a title within the first five years of his ownership. Long-term, though these are important gains for the Nets. Their move to Brooklyn is not just a cosmetic change — it has the potential to reform the organization and turn it into one of the few teams that superstars actively want to play for. And while the Nets struck out in their first attempt to get one of those players, the interest that Dwight Howard showed suggests he won't be the only player with Brooklyn on his mind.

The Nets are likely a long way off from regular title contention, but it's rare for any team to dream of that outcome without relying on the luck of the draft. Making the playoffs this season is the first step for them. Even if they don't match the Knicks record or finish, they might end up with a much more successful season.

Tags: game, nba, percent, player, roster, team, way

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Boston Celtics

17 Oct
2012

Posted by Ball Don't Lie Staff in Fantasy Basketball, General

For the first time in two years we'll have an orthodox, full-length NBA season to look forward to. No lockout nonsense, and precious little obsession as to whether or not LeBron James will ever win the big one. He's won it, already, and our sanity as NBA followers is probably better off as a result. However big that shred of sanity is remains to be seen, following yet another offseason that once again proved that the NBA is full of Crazy McCrazytons that appear to take great delight in messing with us continually.

As a result of that offseason, and the impending regular season, why not mess with Ball Don't Lie's triptych of Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they preview the 2012-13 season with alacrity, good cheer, and bad jokes.

We continue with the pipe-smoking (probably) Boston Celtics.

Kelly Dwyer's Kilt-Straightener

The image has been blurred, somewhat. The Boston Celtics needed seven games to down a rather ordinary Philadelphia 76ers squad in the second round last season, and were only challenging the eventual champion Miami Heat when Chris Bosh was on the sideline and LeBron James was clueless about interior play. The Heat downed the Celtics by an average of 16 points a contest in Games 6 and 7 during last spring's conference finals, numbers that were probably more representative of Boston and Miami's respective stations last season than the five games that preceded those striking Heat wins.

Possibly.

The whole point of the 2012-13 Boston Celtics is that they want another chance. They want to get to a point, sometime next spring, where they can accurately determine what the fluke was between those Game 6 and 7 Miami wins, and the 2-1 record Boston enjoyed against Miami during the regular season in games that LeBron actually played in (3-1, overall). Even if you toss out the late-season game that James missed against Boston, that's a 5-5 season split between Boston and Miami, and the Celtics seem expressly designed to put the Heat in the same sort of dodgy position that flummoxed them at times during the team's uneasy run from The Decision to last June's triumph.

They want to see if James will want to dig in and traipse all over them again. We're so assured of James' dominance towards the end of the Eastern Conference finals and NBA Finals that we more or less take his new low post know-how as a given. The Celtics want to see if he's willing to give it to them, again, next spring. And I kind of want to watch, because I'm a sickie.

The space between a drizzly autumn and a brightened spring is an eternity for those old legs. And the Celtics took a roundabout way of buttressing their roster against the hoped-for reunion with the Heat on a playoff stage — watching as Ray Allen joined the Heat as a free agent as a way to spite Boston's newfound love of all things Rajon-y and Rondo-y. Allen has his ring, won in 2008 with the C's, so to Boston fans his chase for a second ring was kind of a jerk move on the surface, though the same fans should be assured the Celtics wasted no time in expertly rebuilding.

[Fantasy Basketball '12: Play the official game of NBA.com]

Because the contract extension handed to Kevin Garnett still allowed Boston to toss all manner of exceptions all over the free-agent field, Jason Terry and Courtney Lee will step in to provide the sort of pell-mell offense and sound enough defense that Allen's play at off guard lacked last season. The spacing won't be nearly the same — even if Lee's marks from long range are to be feared by opponents, defenses won't be giving Lee an all-out blitz on the perimeter as they did with Allen, blitzed that opened up lanes for an offense that struggled terribly last season.

The defense, even with yet another year added to Garnett's legendary legs, should remain stout. Hell, it might even improve. Losing Greg Steimsma's shot-blocking hurts, but losing his legendary fouling technique will not. Darko Milicic is a deserved joke at this point, but he'll either block shots and respond to the first enviable group of teammates since his stint in Detroit, or coach Doc Rivers just won't play the guy. Avery Bradley, upon his return, could be something special. Jeff Green is famously overpaid at this point, but if he turns into the next Derrick McKey few will complain.

The pressure is on Rondo, though. He's fearless, and a joy to watch; but too often last year he resorted to the sort of offensive play that reminded you more of a Mark Jackson or even an All-Star-leveled Brevin Knight, as opposed to the all-world point man he likes to fancy himself as. The league-leading assists are fantastic, but how can the NBA's best point guard man the helm of a team that finished 27th out of 30 teams in points per possession? Does he have the sort of offensive-minded teammates that a Chris Paul or Steve Nash get to boast? No, but 12 points per game and sub-60 percent shooting from the line just isn't going to cut it for a team that badly, badly needs buckets.

Part of point guard stardom is the leadership qualities inherent in structuring a winner from huddle to goal. And part of being a leader means an able understanding of exactly what your team needs. And 3.4 free-throw attempts per game and endless amounts of passed-up shots is not leadership — it's stat hounding.

This is Rondo's year to prove me wrong. And Boston's chance to get there, all over again. Throughout the summer, we trumped their chances to ride matchups and veteran play back to the Finals for the third time in six years this June. Pity they have to play from October until April until it's time to start.

Projected record: 47-35

Fear Itself with Dan Devine

It is tonally appropriate that the NBA season tips off just before Halloween -- because on any given night, each and every one of the league's 30 teams can look downright frightening. Sometimes, that means your favorite team will act as their opposition's personal Freddy Krueger; sometimes, you will be the one suffering through the living nightmare. In preparation for Opening Night, BDL's Dan Devine considers what makes your team scary and what should make you scared.

What Makes You Scary: Kevin Garnett (duh), Rajon Rondo (duh) and depth behind the remixed Big Three. It wasn't always pretty -- in fact, we'd kind of like to forget that whole seven-game second-round rockfight with the Philadelphia 76ers, if it's all the same to you. But after being under .500 at the All-Star break, losing their Hall of Fame sharpshooter for nearly a third of the season with ankle injuries, sputtering their way to a bottom-third-of-the-league offense and then losing their best perimeter defender to a shoulder injury, there the Celtics were, one win away from their third NBA Finals trip in five years.

They were there because even after 17 years, 50,600 combined regular- and postseason minutes and a nearly incalculable number of basket-stanchion headbutts, KG just keeps cranking along, turning our pathetic articles and lousy analysis into a potent bathtub rageahol that enables him to continue at his historic, soaked-an-hour-before-tipoff pace. He's still blowing up high screen-and-rolls, still calling opponents' offenses better than their own point guards and, as he reminded us by topping 20 points 10 times last postseason, still plenty capable of filling it up, too. (Remember, KG had been the best player in the Eastern Conference finals before LeBron's Game 6 changed ... well, everything.) He's back, for three more years, and at this point, to doubt his ability to continue being KG is to defy evidence.

They were there because Rondo took over the team, showed that he could dominate games by scoring as well as by passing and rebounding, and proved that whether or not he's the quote-unquote "best point guard in the game," he is inarguably one of its greatest and most difficult-to-solve riddles. He's back, now the clear and defined leader of the team, looking for all the world like an MVP candidate ready to emerge as a nightly marvel in all facets of the game.

This time around, though, the Celtics look deeper and more versatile. Ray Allen's flown south, replaced by former Sixth Man of the Year Jason Terry and apparent offseason steal Courtney Lee, and with all due respect to the surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer, you can forgive Celtics fans for feeling like trading one nearly 38-year-old for two younger guys whose career 3-point shooting marks are two percentage points lower than his and who can do a bit more on the court (especially Lee, on the defensive end) represents a pretty good deal. If third-year defensive ace Avery Bradley, one of the league's more improved players last season, returns in December (if not earlier) and in full health from his offseason shoulder surgeries -- yes, plural, which is the worry -- coach Doc Rivers might just be right in suggesting that his team's got the best four-guard rotation in the league. (They're still short a backup point, though.)

Add a thankfully heart-healthy Jeff Green to back up captain Paul Pierce and key cog Brandon Bass, a potential late-first-round theft in rookie Jared Sullinger to provide low-post scoring punch, and the hilarious combination of Jason Collins and a possibly murderous Darko Milicic to provide 12 hard fouls a night (18, if also thankfully heart-healthy Chris Wilcox comes back whole from his bout with back spasms) and this Celtics team looks like it's grown new rows of teeth behind that razor-sharp first tier to which we've grown accustomed. A sixth straight Atlantic Division title seems likely; another run to within one win of the Finals seems very realistic; a different outcome seems possible. I bet Erik Spoelstra finds that at least a little scary.

What Should Make You Scared: Injuries and the Miami Heat. For a Celtics team that's gone to two Finals, winning one and coming within a quarter of winning a second, all that really matters is competing for championships. To do so, they will have to get past the Heat, an incredibly daunting task as we detailed on Monday, and to do that, they'll need to be at or pretty darn close to full strength come early summer.

Can Bradley come back from dual shoulder surgeries to give Boston a legitimate defensive weapon against Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen in the playoffs this time around? Can Garnett organize the newly imported pieces into a coherent defensive unit capable of stretching to rotate, contest and cover Miami's quick/small/spread looks? Can Pierce, who shot just 34.4 percent from the field in the Eastern Conference finals, do enough against LeBron James and the Heat defense to give the C's a puncher's chance offensively? If he can't, is Rondo ready to take over the mantle of primary scoring option? If so, can he do it often enough to win four times in seven games? Answers to these questions won't come any time soon, but we're betting Celtics fans are going to think about them plenty between now and summertime.

Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis

There is no more important asset for a basketball team than talent, and yet the more loaded squad does not always win. What we've seen in recent seasons isn't only that the best team wins, but that the group with the clearest sense of self, from management down through the players, prevails. A team must not only be talented, but sure of its goals, present and future, and the best methods of obtaining them. Most NBA teams have trouble with their identity. Eric Freeman's Identity Crisis is a window into those struggles, the accomplishment of realizing a coherent identity, and the pitfalls of believing these issues to be solved.

The Big Three is dead, but that conception of the Celtics had been irrelevant for as little as one season, possibly nearly three, depending on whom you ask. Since their title in 2008, the Celtics have become more and more dependent on Rajon Rondo to control the office, relying on his creativity for shots and letting Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen function more as shooters than ball-controlling scorers. Though KG still controls the defense (and remains excellent in that role), this is Rondo's team.

The Big Three stood as a monument to veteran know-how and hard-won wisdom. Rondo, by contrast, presents a much less conservative sort of stardom: he occasionally seems fearful of shooting, his passes defy logic, he doesn't always get along with teammates, etc. Historically, that makes him a tough player to build around, and it's still an open question as to whether that approach will work when Garnett and Pierce are no longer on the roster. There's an essential uncertainty to what Rondo does, both in the apparent reasoning behind his more curious decisions and the idea that he might only be able to succeed in a very specific kind of team.

But turning Rondo into a central figure also changes the Celtics for the better, and not just because he's coming into his own as a star. With the Big Three, the Celtics were the sort of team that others fought to supplant, even when their record indicated they were not the best team in the East. Their value was part and parcel of the NBA establishment, an example for upstarts to measure themselves against. And while this incarnation of the team is still relatively old, all things considered, Rondo's ascendancy changes their identity into that of the dangerous challenger. They are still identifiably good, but they're less a milestone on the path to a conference title than a predator that might attack with little warning.

That's not to say that the Celtics are an unknown — no one will overlook them or forget they're a postseason contender. But an identity focused around Rondo is necessarily protean and difficult to pin down, which in turn makes the entire team a trickier challenge. A lack of predictability can be asset, especially for a team that's necessarily had to overhaul much of their rotation. Suddenly, the familiar has become strange. Keep pace if you can.

Tags: coach, Doc, game, League, nba, Rivers, team

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Blog // Archive // Ball Don’t Lie Staff

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Milwaukee Bucks

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Indiana Pacers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Detroit Pistons

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Cleveland Cavaliers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Chicago Bulls

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Toronto Raptors

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Philadelphia 76ers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The New York Knicks

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Brooklyn Nets

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Boston Celtics

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Blog // Archive // Ball Don’t Lie Staff

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Milwaukee Bucks

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Indiana Pacers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Detroit Pistons

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Cleveland Cavaliers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Chicago Bulls

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Toronto Raptors

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Philadelphia 76ers

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The New York Knicks

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Brooklyn Nets

Ball Don’t Lie’s 2012-13 NBA Season Previews: The Boston Celtics

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