With the All Star Weekend shortening last week’s slate of games, I’ve decided to break down what I’m looking for as we approach the postseason in lieu of my weekly Power Poll.
The All Star Game is over, and with less than 30 regular season games remaining for most teams, the NBA’s intensity is about to ratchet up a notch. For those of you worried that your favorite team’s All Star will be tired from playing in Sunday’s game, don’t be. The guys playing Sunday were the only NBA players who weren’t getting black out drunk for the entire weekend. With that settled let’s discuss:
1. The Bulls Joining the League’s Elite
Joakim Noah will be back soon, I swear. And when he’s back, the Bulls will be a truly scary team. They have a certifiable superstar in Derrick Rose. Not just a stat sheet stuffer, though he is that too, Rose presents an impossible matchup. Nobody can stay in front of him, and you can’t sag off him like you would Rajon Rondo because Rose’s jumper has become a true weapon. He makes the right play almost every time he has the ball. Carlso Boozer is one of the top-10 power forwards in the game, a damn good player. He’s great from mid-range and has a good back-to-the-basket arsenal. He provides the Bulls with a reliable half court scoring option that they didn’t have last year. One of the best three or four rebounders in the league, Noah is a tremendous athlete, defends the rim as well as anyone, and has an improving offensive game. He also is the rare, talented player that also provides an energy boost whenever he’s on the floor. Plus, he’s a nasty competitor and a winner—two National Championship titles at Florida. Amidst Rose, Boozer, and Noah, you almost forget about Luol Deng, who quietly averages 18 points and 6 rebounds a game with excellent efficiency. A smart player who stays within himself, Deng also leads the team in minutes per game. The Bulls have one superstar in Rose and three star players, or very near it, in Boozer, Noah, and Deng. Rose will get 25 points, Boozer 15-25, Deng will chip in 15-20, and Noah will snatch boards, block shots, and run the floor with abandon. Each of the four players in that group provides a different element that you can count on every night. Then consider a bench that features Taj Gibson, a second year-forward that’s very skilled offensively; Kyle Korver, sometimes a liability defensively but is one of the very best long distance shooters in the game; Ronnie Brewer, a tremendous athlete with a limited offensive game but an excellent defender with playoff experience; and Kurt Thomas, a rolling ball of rock hard muscle. He’s not going to get off the ground, but you will not back him down in the post. The Bulls bring every element you could want—experience, speed, length, offensive firepower, shooting, dribble penetration, athleticism—it’s all there. And for me, the icing on the cake is that their head coach is Tom Thibodeau, the original architect of the great Celtics defense. He has made the Bulls similarly tough to score against. If Chicago runs up against Boston in the playoffs—a good possibility—Thibodeau will know everything Boston is going to do and will have the personnel to exploit it. And since they run Boston’s defense, the Bulls will also frustrate the Heat as well, which has given Miami fits this year.
2. A Contender Making a Trade
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| Opposing All Stars, Now Teammates |
Somebody will pull the trigger on a move. It may not be a huge move, but it will be something significant to impact a rotation, change game plans, and affect chemistry. Maybe the Lakers pursue a point guard, the Bulls or Celtics acquire Anthony Parker, or the Mavericks find some bench athleticism in exchange for Caron Butler’s expiring contract. And maybe, just maybe, the Knicks can land Carmelo Anthony, though the more these teams negotiate without a deal, the more I think he might be stuck in Denver for the year. He could go to New Jersey right now, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to be a Knick, but New York doesn’t want to give away their whole roster for him. I support the Knicks in that decision. Anthony is very good, but between him and Amare Stoudemire you have two prolific scorers who don’t play much defense. Anthony is a great singular talent, but is not worth the entire Knicks roster, especially when they might still be able to get him after the year in free agency.
Well, it looks like that Knick deal went through. Denver ships Anthony to New York along with Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter, and Renaldo Balkman. In return, the Nuggets get Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey Mozgov, a 2014 first-round draft pick from New York, and additional second round picks from Golden State.
3. The Heat Gelling
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| Get It Together |
This is more of a hope than a prediction; I think it’s possible though. They’ve been together for almost 60 games now, have been through the media circus, and have won a lot of games. They’ve got to figure out a plan for half-court offense though. The pick-and-roll game is their best answer with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James getting screens from Chris Bosh. Since the big three bring a lot of the same elements to the table, you can’t just have them spread out and run a free flowing offense. James and Wade just are not great spot-up shooters, and Bosh doesn’t thrive with his back to the hoop. This means that all three guys need space to operate and be effective. With the pick-and-roll, James/Wade will either get a driving lane to the hoop where they can finish or kick it out, or Bosh curling to the hoop for the finish or popping out to mid-range territory where he can shoot or drive past a slower defender. The pick-and-roll also causes teams to help, switch, and make quick decisions on defense, so this could also lead to open looks for marksmen James Jones and Mike Miller. Those two will have to make shots consistently for this team to succeed in playoffs. Even if the Heat do all this effectively, they still sorely lack a true back-to-the-basket post player that can suck defenses in and create foul trouble for opponents.
4. The Lakers Recovering
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| The Black Mamba: Coiled and Ready to Strike |
They’re 38-18, but if you’ve been reading headlines and watching TV, you’d think they were in danger of missing the playoffs. I don’t want to discount all of their struggles lately—to be sure, they’ve looked lethargic, disinterested, slow, and lazy. Only the slow part really worries me though because the other three are byproducts of mid-February NBA basketball for a team that’s been to the Finals three straight years. They’ve played an astronomical number of games these past four years, and they just don’t have the mental energy to care about a mid-season game in Charlotte. But they are slow, and that could hurt, especially on defense. Ron Artest looks like his feet are stuck in the mud at times, and Derek Fisher can’t stay in front of anyone. That’s worrisome with the likes of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Tony Parker, Deron Williams, Rondo and others lurking in the playoffs. Still, as their only glaring weakness, it’s no different than last year. In fact, with the addition of Steve Blake, the point guard position has actually gotten slightly better than last year’s team. Matt Barnes is also an excellent defender who has been out injured, but he should be back in the next couple of weeks. The All Star break came at the perfect time for the Lakers, allowing them to charge their batteries, take a break from the grind, and come back refocused on refining their playoff gameplan over these last 30 games. Andrew Bynum is healthy (please knock on nearest piece of wood), Pau Gasol can be great when fed the ball, and Kobe Bryant looked like he was 25 again in the All Star game. Lamar Odom has played at an elite level all year, and I look for Shannon Brown to get his game back in the closing segment of the season. Los Angeles is still the most dangerous half-court offense in the league with the best size in the league, the best coach, and the best playoff performer. Sure, Los Angeles has a few issues, but I think most any team in the league would trade their set of problems for the Lakers’.
5. The Spurs Coasting
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| A Familiar Sight for the Rest of the Season |
This is not coasting in the sense of mailing it in—I assure Gregg Popovich will never let that happen—what I mean is that with a six-game lead over their nearest competitor, San Antonio will be able to rest some key guys down the stretch. The Spurs have only 26 games left, and at 46-10, would only have to go 14-12 to finish with 60 wins, a simple task for this highly efficient, well-oiled machine of a club. If they can win say ten of their first fourteen games coming off the break, they should glide to the West’s #1 seed. That’s great news for Spurs fans that have worried all year about a crash from their aging roster. Popovich has done a miraculous job managing his veteran’s minutes all season. By playing eleven guys consistently, nobody on the team exceeds 33 minutes a game. Tim Duncan is putting in a career low 29 minutes per contest. Thus, an already well rested Spurs team should be able to take entire games off down the stretch, and could easily have nothing to play for the 7 -10 games. Rest always trumps rust for a veteran unit like the Spurs who can play their way into form against whoever they face as the #8 seed.
6. Playoffs Baby
We’ve talked a bit about the playoffs already, but now let’s dig deep. I really believe these upcoming playoffs could be the best we’ve seen in years. Yes, the East will have a few stinkers in the first round with the 76ers and Pacers currently filling the seventh and eighth spots respectively. No way can either of those teams run with Boston, Miami, or Chicago in a seven game series. But after that it gets really good out. The Knicks are currently slotted in the sixth spot, and while they won’t beat any of the East’s top teams, they play exciting basketball and Madison Square Garden belongs in the postseason. It’s just a great venue, and having the Knicks back in the party will be a fun element we’ve been missing in recent years. The 4 vs. 5 matchup will almost certainly be the Magic and the Hawks squaring off, a more competitive series than people might think. The Magic will be favored because they’ve made deep playoff runs the past two years and have the most dominant player in the series, Dwight Howard. Yet, Orlando has serious deficiencies. Chief among them are that they really have no second star to take the burden off Howard and they rely way too much on the three ball. Atlanta may not be good enough to exploit these weaknesses, but they could push the series to six or seven games. Then, I think we get Boston vs. Orlando and Chicago vs. Miami in the East Semis. In the first matchup you get two teams that know and hate each other, and have faced off the past two years in the playoffs. The latter matchup pits the young gun teams that don’t have a rivalry yet but could develop one right now. With Rose and Noah at point guard and center, the Bulls are poised to exploit the Heat’s two biggest positions of weakness, and as mentioned, Thibodeau has been a huge headache for James throughout his career. I think Boston might make quick work of Orlando again, but the Bulls and Heat could go to seven. Then we would get either Heat vs. Boston, which everyone wants, or Bulls vs. Boston, which would also be great. (See the 2009 Celtics-Bulls playoff series that went to seven games where only three of those games weren’t decided in overtime.)
Next let’s stroll over to the Western Conference. Perhaps there aren’t as many elite teams in the West as in the East—I think Boston, Chicago, and Miami are all serious championship contenders—but its a much deeper conference. The team currently seeded one spot out of the West playoffs, the Grizzlies, are four games over .500; the East’s current eighth seed, the Pacers, is six games under. As it stands right now, the West matchups would be Spurs vs. Jazz as the 1 vs. 8 that pits Deron Williams, Paul Milsap, and Al Jefferson against Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, and Duncan…not bad; Mavericks vs. Nuggets, the 2 vs. 7, though this will be subject to change for Anthony-less Denver; Lakers vs. Hornets, 3 vs. 6, despite the disparity in talent and experience, Chris Paul represents a huge matchup issue for LA that probably negates a possible sweep; and Thunder vs. Blazers, 4 vs. 5 matchup, no way the banged up Blazers can steal a series from the likes of Durant and Westbrook. Then in the West Semis I would predict Spurs vs. Thunder and Lakers vs. Mavericks. The Thunder-Spurs matchup would be great much like last year’s Thunder-Lakers series was: A young, up-and-coming team with two super stars would take on the epitome of a veteran squad with a deep and balanced attack. I think the Spurs are too good inside, too deep, and matchup too respectably at point guard—Parker can stay with Westbrook at least a little—for the Thunder to take the series. The Mavericks are playing well, and will likely have the home court advantage over LA, but they have nobody to guard Kobe or Gasol and I don’t think they could match the Lakers’ size advantage, even with Tyson Chandler. That would set up an epic Lakers-Spurs West Final.
Let’s hope we can get a Boston, Miami, LA, and San Antonio Final Four. That would guarantee as good as any Finals pairings in recent memory, great ratings for the NBA, and great games for you and me.
--from Adam
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