The East vs the Cavs

 How well you finish obviously depends on how good your team is relative to the competition, so let’s do a quick rundown of the East:

1.  Milwaukee:  Defending Champs returning almost everyone and added some minor pieces.  Their only real risks are Giannis’ knee soreness after a long playoff run and Jrue+Middleton playing in the olympics after a long playoff run.  Penciled in for a top 2 finish.

2. Brooklyn:  Even with Kyrie’s current unavailability they are in good shape.  Durant and Harden both missed time last year but they really only need 1 fully healthy guy with solid rotation pieces to make the playoffs.  Another top two spot, but the eraser is ready if one guys comes up lame off a drive to the hoop.

3. Philadelphia:  Where the East starts getting shaky, the first step in the Simmons resolution has occurred with him reporting to camp and talking with upper management.  Still unhappy players don’t translate to wins (see Harden’s final games in Houston), and Embiid is always a risk to miss extended time.  This could get ugly quickly if Embiid misses time early and Simmons oversees a few losses in a row.  In general I expect their talent level to carry them on through the rough patches, but they could easily demonstrate fragility this season.

4. Miami:  The surprise finals run from 2 seasons ago has carried their reputation further than it should.  6th in the East last year but outperforming their Pythag by 6 wins.  33-19 in games Butler played, 7-13 without him and they traded a lot of depth to land Lowry.  Trading depth for a single higher end player can definitely work out, but it has its risks especially when that player is 35.  Between Nunn, Igoudala, Ariza, Olynyck, Dragic and Achiuwa they have 6,000 mins missing from last year’s team, and their primary replacements are 36, 35 and 32.  This team could find itself gutted by injuries fairly easily.

5. Boston:  This team is really cobbled together around Smart/Tatum/Brown.  Losing Hayward and Walker for a negative return (see Sengun) over the past two years has really made team building difficult.  Josh Richardson could have a bounce back season… and he could not.  Time Lord could be healthy and the best value contract in the league, or he could be injured and Al Horford has to be more of a lynch-pin than a savvy vet and locker room guy.  Schroder at $6 million for a year is a bargain… except that means he is your primary PG and it's worth $15 million not to have that be the case.  Pritchard could be good or he could need another year to be a net positive in the league.  

6. Knicks:  Just fragile in every sense of the word.  Who has worse knees, Derrick Rose, Kemba Walker or Nerlens Noel?  How much are they relying on Taj to give them over a full season what he managed to do for a few dozen games after a long layoff last year?  This team is a prime candidate to have cascading injuries ruin their season.

7. Atlanta:  This team was struggling along at 14-20 last year at one point, health was a big issue, but that could still be true this season.  Gallo’s knees are so bad the Knicks are trying to trade for him, and they have no iron men in their rotation.  Expect a season of two teams, the healthy and running guys of the court, fun, highly popular version, and the long slog of trying to fill mins when 3-4 guys are watching from the sidelines.  

8. Indiana:  Injuries struck last year, and as I write this Levert and Warren are expected to miss the start of the season.  Brogdan, Turner and Sabonis each have missed 10+ games each of the past three seasons, and eyeballing the average it looks like ~42 combined missed games should be expected from them over an 82 game slate.  Duarte should have a better career than McBuckets, but he is still a rookie taking over a role held down by a 10 year vet.  A fully healthy squad would be in contention for the 3 seed, one without a SF going into the season and guys who miss time at the top end is a play-in fighter instead.

9. Washington:  The past two seasons the Wizards are 7-20 when Beal misses time.  They pulled a bit of a coup getting off Westbrook’s contract for rotation depth and a draft pick, and even landing Dinwiddie in the process.  The Wizards hope to be playing a pair of guys (Dinwiddie, Bryant) coming off significant knee injuries as well as a rookie or two.  They have rotation pieces at every position plus a 3rd tier star which often means 40 odd wins but also is entirely dependent on that star’s health.

10. Charlotte:  After winning 32 games last season they went out and got younger.  I like this move from an organizational standpoint, but a pair of rookie picks in the teens are likely to counteract the growth from their recent selections.  Things could look very good in 2-3 years but also could be very choppy this year.  They lost two of their top 3 rotation pieces in terms of +/- in Graham and Zeller, and brought in Plumlee and a couple of rookies.  There is space for a healthy surprise season, but also a low end team whose young bench gets outscored on a nightly basis.  

11. Toronto:  A solid top 6 team if healthy they are entering the season with an injured Siakam and Boucher, while integrating a rookie in Barnes and a 2nd year C in Precious.  Unless Dragic pulls a major bounce back year defensively the first stretch of the year without their projected starting front court is going to be rough as a small team with a couple of exploitable guard/wing players and inexperienced help bigs.  

12. Chicago:  I hate this team construction, especially at the price, and might well be biased.  The stories of a strong offense ring hollow to me as Vuce has never been on even the 20th ranked offense in his career, with 21st being his peak.  He has not been a guy who makes it easy on his teammates to get easy looks (though he has been a guy who can produce decent offense with one way defensive players around him to create wins).  Lonzo’s health history should be a larger concern (missed an average of 20.5 games a year, his healthiest season he missed 9) with his role as their best defender who will have to switch onto a whole range of players throughout the season.  Without him, or without a Lavine 2-way ascension, this team is weak defensively with multiple exploitable holes with basically every lineup.  Pat Williams is a potential answer but entering the season injured.  Solid chance of implosion.

13. Detroit+Orlando are in the hunt for lottery balls.

I’m starting to lean pretty heavily towards the Cavs making the play-in games and possibly the 7th/8th seed.  The East is stronger in the sense that there are more teams that could do well than in some past years but a lot of these teams are fragile and several of them are going into the season banged up (much like the Cavs did last season).  The Cavs don’t need all of those teams to suffer from injuries, chemistry or age they just need 2 or 3 and they are in the playoff mix with the new system in place.  

On the other hand the Cavs actually have depth and the question marks for them start around the 9th/10th man where they have options, and not the 7th-8th where a lot of the better teams are trying out journeymen who deserve that role.  Teams like this do make the playoffs on the strength of veteran benches and depth giving them a few extra wins over the long haul, and teams with 3-4 young guys can go on long winning stretches as they figure out their games and things suddenly click.  If you run down the teams that have made the 7-10 spots over the past decade in the East there are a lot of really limited teams, the Kemba Hornets, the Drummond Pistons, the Vucevic Magic, the Whiteside Heat.  It is not unreasonable to think a team with actual NBA players through spot 9 or 10 going into the season (fingers crossed) healthy can get to the point where they are winning 35 games.