Playoffs?

 Playoffs?  We talkin about playoffs?  Yeah, why not, as fans of  a rebuilding team we often only get to talk about playoffs between the end of the finals and around week 8 of the regular season, so let's talk playoff potential.

Three factors in where you end up in the standings relative the year prior, how much better your team got, how much better teams behind you got and how much worse teams ahead of you got or will get.  The Cavs already have two of the three going for them, between a pair of decent acquisitions, young players improving and likely fewer injuries they should be substantially better than last season, while the two teams that finished worse than they did last year are both avoiding adding to many wins for another shot at a top pick in a stacked draft.  I’ll continue working toward the upside potential that the Cavs have leading into the season, but this is about the downside of the rest of the East.  Some factors

1.  Injuries.  The 19-20 Pacers outperformed their pythag projection by 4 wins, but even dropping those 4 wins they still were on a 47 win pace for an 82 game season, last year they ended up on a 39 win pace in terms of total wins and a 42 win pace by pythag without any major offseason losses just a bunch of injuries and an attempt to swap out Oladipo for Levert who then missed a ton of time.  Long story short they dropped the equivalent of 12 wins from one season to the next because of a moderate amount of injuries and underperforming vs outperforming their pythag.  

2. Timing of losses.  The Cavs last three seasons each has held different goals going in, in the first Post Lebron Reduxe (PLR1) season they hoped to be a solid veteran team in the mix for a low playoff seed while they brought along a top 10 pick developmentally.  This didn’t work, and they quickly flipped to dumping vets and acquiring picks with bad contracts attached.  Had the Cavs achieved a small or modest cluster of wins early they would have held on longer and ended up with more total wins (not a ton more with how their injuries went).  Every year there is a wistful team that holds onto minor assets and then punts a few months or even a few weeks in.  

Overall teams can be looked at as fragile or robust to these circumstances.  Milwaukee would require devastating losses to move to the back of the pack, while Washington might panic early and go into a rebuild if Bradley Beal starts whispering the wrong things in their ear so this is a rundown of the fragility of the East.  This is not a rundown of what will happen, but a look at how many teams are exposed to negative variance going into the season.  Starting from teams one step above the Cavs in the standings last year.

Toronto:  Not particularly fragile except that Lowry left in the offseason and they landed the #4 overall selection.  Their stars are neither good enough to build a contender specifically around nor bad or expensive which could lead them to try to complement those two or sell them off for real assets.  They are obviously trying to toe the same line the Cavs tried 3 seasons ago, adding some young talent and hoping their core can be productive while they grow.  They missed their pythag by a huge amount last year and they get to play home games this season so I see it as unlikely they decide to rebuild outside of a FVV injury which would leave them pretty much rudderless (Dragic is 35 and his productivity has collapsed, he's a backup now not a starter).

Chicago:  They went all in on the playoffs this year… well not really because they passed on a solid rotation piece for a low value first round pick so they pushed 90% of the way in with a weak hand.  Clearly they feel forced into keeping Lavine and they have exposed themselves to early season struggles as that would increase his desire to be elsewhere while they have no real assets to swing a move to improve in mid season.  They will hold out as long as possible meaning the trade deadline is when you would see a panic trade of Lavine, but they are not a lock to be good.  In their limited mins together Lavine and Vuce were -3.7 and they are not at all a natural fit.  Beyond that their best players by LEBRON last year (500+ mins) were Gafford and Theis (both gone) and then after Laving and Vuce it goes Thad, Carter Jr, Valentine, Porter, Satoransky, Markkanen and Temple.  All gone.  Their additions are decent but their roster is thin and they kept the least effective players and lost the most of their supporting cast.  A lot more top heavy and top heavy teams are often vulnerable to a modest amount of injuries.  

Charlotte:  Charlotte’s best two advanced metric guys walked in Zeller and Graham, and they were -10.1 in 2,400 possessions without either on the court last year.  That dramatically overstates the importance of those two, but it does highlight how weak teams can be with shallow rotations.  Because they are fairly young they could improve along that route, but they also got younger in adding two first round picks.  Kai Jones will be really fun to watch as a screen and roll guy next to LeMelo but he is also likely to be giving way more back on the defensive end of things.  If Plumlee is injured their options at center are rookies and a 2nd year 2nd round pick, or PJ Washington?, and that can definitely cause issues that cascade through their defense.  It wouldn’t at all be surprising to see them tread water for a year either with the moves they have made.  

Indiana:  They had a bad year health-wise and underperformed, and made the play-in, its hard to project worse outcome for the whole season for them.  

Washington:  They swapped Westbrook for a bunch of depth which on net should add a few wins, but also exposes them to a Beal injury, and they were 2-10 without Beal last season.  It would take an extremely poor start to force them into shipping BB out but its not unfathomable and a notable injury, 20+ games missed, would really crimp their final win total.  

Boston:  They are a functional team around Tatum but they aren’t a strong team.  Walker was productive for them last year and his worst LEBRON season over the last six years is a full point better than Schroder’s best.  Horford back and TT out helps, but only if he staves of decline at 35.  He’s well rested at this point which should be a plus (then again Iggy was well rested when Miami traded for him).  Even with Brown’s hot shooting last year he was still only a small plus overall, so if Tatum is limping around its really very thin for the Celtics. 

Miami and ATL:  Neither appears very fragile, Miami you basically have to have a serious injury to Butler or Bam and also have Lowry decline, and ATL managed to keep it above 0.500 in games Trae missed last year, they need a whole slew of issues before they are in danger.

New York Knicks:  This is the last team I’d consider fragile enough to mention.  Their surprising run last season was heavily based on their defense which was heavily based on their 3pt% against.  If that regressed to league average their win expectation would drop to ~40.  Their additions should be net positive, though a 31 year old PG with bad knees can easily hurt your defense as much as he helps your offense and they don’t have a good option if Randle goes down.  They also heavily relied on cheap vets with injury histories to get to where they were last year and kept them around on substantial contracts.  They definitely have the potential to have 3-4 guys on the bench at the same time for stretches of the season which risks wearing down the remaining cast so even if/when they return they might not get the boost the team needs.  I expect them to do a bit worse than expected with some potential for a messy season of two way players and rookies getting time while some combination of Kemba, Rose, Taj, Nerlens, Burks and Mitchell are on the bench.

Over the haul of a full season some of these teams are going to run into significant issues, and the Cavs need to leap three teams to get into the play-in, so it is definitely feasible for a lot of improvement plus some luck to have them in the chase past the trade deadline.