Tag Archives: Deron Williams

We’re about ten games into the NBA season so far.  It’s late enough to start perceiving some trends, and still early enough to make predictions.

If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s what’s been hoopening:  Miami, after all the hype, is 6-4.  The Hornets, who had no hype, are 8-1.  The Lakers, who still aren’t fully healthy, are 8-2.  The Clippers, who are mostly healthy, are, well, the Clippers.  The Knicks have shown signs of life, but then allowed Kevin Love to put up a 30-30 game.  No joke.  At least 30 points and at least 30 boards.  (A question for the NBA’s official statistician: does it only count as a 20-20 game, because it happened against the Knicks?)  And, after improving to 2-0 against the Heat this year, Paul Pierce tweeted an absolutely classic tweet.

We’re now deep enough into the season that it’s an appropriate time to start talking about predictions.  I begin my analysis by looking at individual players; specifically, stars.  For a team to make the playoffs, it obviously must have balance, depth, and role players.  No question.  But, in general, it also must have at least 1 star.

I don’t see more than 1 or 2 NBA teams making the playoffs that do not have an All-Star on their roster.  The only team to do it last year was Milwaukee, and they had a few guys who were borderline All-Stars.  This is no coincidence; when attempting to pick the playoff teams, I start by trying to pick the All-Stars.  Then I add 4 borderline All-Stars per conference, and that tells me which of the teams are worthy of going through the hoopservations state-of-the-art (ahem) data analyzer to predict playoff teams.

As a starting point, here were last year’s All-Star rosters:

EAST:

LeBron James

Kevin Garnett

Dwyane Wade

Allen Iverson (injured)

David Lee

Dwight Howard

Al Horford

Chris Bosh

Paul Pierce

Gerald Wallace

Joe Johnson

Rajon Rondo

Derrick Rose

WEST

Carmelo Anthony

Tim Duncan

Kobe Bryant (injured)

Jason Kidd

Steve Nash

Amar’e Stoudemire

Pau Gasol

Kevin Durant

Dirk Nowitzki

Zach Randolph

Chris Paul (injured)

Chauncey Billups

Brandon Roy (injured)

Chris Kaman

Deron Williams

Right off the bat, we know there will be a few changes, because Iverson isn’t in the league anymore (he was barely in the league when he made the team last year, but his name won’t be on the ballot this year so the chances of a repeat are low), David Lee went to the Western Conference, and Amar’e went to the East.

Here’s what I see for the East:

1. LeBron James

2. Dwyane Wade

3. Amar’e Stoudemire

4. Dwight Howard

5. Danny Granger

6. Paul Pierce

7. Gerald Wallace

8. Joe Johnson

9. Rajon Rondo

10. Derrick Rose

11. Joakim Noah

12. Andrew Bogut

Borderline:

Brook Lopez

Al Horford

Andre Iguodala

Anderson Varejao

And here’s what I see for the West:

1.  Carmelo Anthony

2.  Kobe Bryant

3. Steve Nash

4.  Blake Griffin

5.  Pau Gasol

6.  Kevin Durant

7.  Dirk Nowitzki

8.  Manu Ginobili

9.  Chris Paul

10.  Brandon Roy

11.  Deron Williams

12.  Russell Westbrook

Borderline

Stephen Curry

Zach Randolph

Tony Parker

David West

So, the teams we can eliminate from playoff consideration because they simply don’t have enough talent are: Detroit, Toronto, Washington, Sacramento, Minnesota, and Houston.  That probably doesn’t count as going out on a limb, so let me push the envelope a bit… at least 4 of those teams will win fewer than 30 games.

Soon, I’ll analyze each of the other teams and generate playoff predictions.

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It’s still early in the season, and I’m not going to be ready with season predictions until I do a bit more analysis.  For those who aren’t paying attention to hoops yet, here are a few storylines to keep your eyes on, that you won’t necessarily read much about on other hoops sites — not yet, at least.

1.     Terrible teams.  Some of the teams at the bottom of the league are just awful.  The Raptors didn’t make the playoffs last year, and they lost Chris Bosh.  They will be horrible.  The Pistons are bad.  The Timberwolves might be worse.  Casual fans have no reason to turn on a game that those teams are playing in.  To put in perspective how bad they are, I’m a few sentences into a discussion of the terrible teams in the league, and I haven’t even mentioned the New Jersey Nets, who were 12-70 last year.  Simply because they have Brook Lopez, the Nets are better than a few of the other teams near the bottom of the league.  Seriously.  Brook Lopez.

With a labor negotiation looming, and a commissioner who has already mentioned the possibility of contraction, I predict that the ineptitude at the bottom of the league will get lots of attention pretty quickly.

2.     The evolution of the PG and C positions. Both of these positions are in a state of flux, basically pulled between the past and, um, an alternative model.  (Sorry, but I just can’t refer to Channing Frye playing center as “the future.”)  There are a bunch of PG’s in the league who play it the way I like to see it played: controlling tempo, creating shots for their teammates, and pressuring the ball on D.  I’m talking about, among others, Chris Paul, Steve Nash (without the “pressuring the ball on D” part), Tony Parker, Derron Williams, Rajon Rondo, and Jason Kidd.  Then there are a few young guys who shoot more than I like to see PG’s shoot, but are quite effective at it, and might just change the game in the process.  I’m talking about Tyreke Evans and Brandon Jennings.  Somewhere in the middle of the two groups are Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook.  The way these PG battles play out will have a big impact on the future of the game.  (My money is on CP3, Rajon Rondo, and their crew.)

A similar thing is happening at C.  As I blogged last year, the guys playing center seem to be getting smaller, and generally less center-esque than they used to be.  But, a funny thing happened during the evolution of the center position into a bunch of tall guys who shoot 3’s…. Some guys started playing C the old-fashioned way, and giving their team a big boost in the process.  There are now a bunch of C’s who stand 6’10” or taller, block shots, grab rebounds, and leave the 3-point shooting to the little guys.  I’m talking about Dwight Howard, Joakim Noah, Chris Kaman, Emeka Okafor, the Lopez brothers (as touched on above, the Nets are better than 4 or 5 teams at the bottom simply because they have a real C).  And, Shaq and Tim Duncan are still roaming the paint.  If Greg Oden and Yao get healthy enough to play serious minutes, then the C position might be returned to what it used to be.

3.     The Miami Heat.  Obviously, they’re a big story for a whole bunch of reasons.  I’ll be addressing them plenty over the next few weeks, and don’t want to get too deep into them right now.  I bring them up simply to point out that, while the PG and C positions are in a state of flux, the Heat have essentially decided that the two positions hardly matter at all; they loaded up all the talent they could at SG, SF, and PF, and basically decided that they could win without a capable PG or C.  My money is against it.  (Basically, I agree with what Jason Whitlock wrote here.)

All of that, and I haven’t even mentioned Kobe and Phil going for another three-peat, the Knicks acquiring their best player since Ewing, or Blake Griffin looking like an instant star.  I LOVE THIS GAME!!

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