Continuing on with my preseason look at the Eastern Conference, here are teams 6 through 10.  Last season, three teams at .500 or worse made the playoffs.  That is not going to happen again.  I believe it’s going to take 42-45 wins to get into the post season this year.  All five of these teams have the capability of getting that done.

10.  Toronto Raptors

Toronto is a trendy pick to move up in the East after trading for Jermaine O’Neal, but I just can’t bring myself to believe that he’ll stay on the floor all season, or be the kind of player he was five or six years ago.  That being said, the Raptors were just 41-41 last season.  They might actually have a better record this year and still miss the playoffs.  I like the move to clear out T.J. Ford and hand the full time point guard reins to Jose Calderon.  I expect him to end up in the top five in the league in assists, averaging double figures.  This team’s main drawback is a total lack of interior strength.  Their best big guys, Chris Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and O’Neal, all play small, and that will kill them in the end.  Still, they should be in playoff contention, coming up just short.

9.  Milwaukee Bucks    

I liked the Bucks chances better before they traded Mo Williams.  They did land Luke Ridnour in the deal, but he has been nothing short of miserable the past couple of years playing on really bad Seattle teams.  If he can regain some of the form he showed a few years ago when Seattle reached the second round of the playoffs, the Bucks will have an excellent shot of landing a playoff spot, and possibly making some noise when they get there.  With Richard Jefferson, Michael Redd, Charlie Villanueva, Andrew Bogut and explosive rookie Joe Alexander, he’ll have plenty of chances for assists, but a rejuvenation is far from secure.  If he can’t get it back together, Milwaukee will be in major trouble at the point, and that will cost them a chance at postseason play.  I’m guessing Ridnour will be solid yet unspectacular and the Bucks will miss the postseason by a hair, possibly going down to the final day of the season.

8.  Atlanta Hawks      

After years of futility, the Hawks finally broke through and nearly pulled the greatest upset in NBA playoff history, taking a Celtics team that was almost 30 games ahead of them in to standings to a game seven.  Just having Mike Bibby on the floor for a full season should be enough to get them over .500.  And it’s a distinct possibility that Marvin Williams will blossom now that Josh Childress is playing in Greece, Al Horford will take a step up into All Star territory and Josh Smith will move into superstar range.  And that’s not even mentioning Joe Johnson, who is still Atlanta’s best player.  Depth is the main concern, I think.  An injury or two that causes key players to miss significant time will derail the entire season.  My guess is they will be better right out of the gate this year, and two of the three key young guys will step up their games, crashing the post season for the second year in a row.  The short bench will be their downfall, however.  The Hawks are a year and a few shrewd personnel moves away from legitimate contention.

7.  Washington Wizards      

This is kind of a difficult team to figure.  They may have been better off letting Gilbert Arenas walk and spending that money elsewhere, but they gave him an enormous contract despite missing nearly the entire season with an injury, and the team performing very well without him.  Caron Butler, if he can stay away from the injuries that have hurt him throughout his career, looks to be a guy blossoming into a genuine star, and with Brendan Haywood looking like an actual player for the first time in his career and young big guy Andray Blatche looking as though he has a nice upside, the Wizards won’t be just the same old run and gun team.  Look for some of the toughness they displayed in the Cleveland series to carry over into this year, and winning home court advantage in the first round is a possibility.  But I expect they will again have some injury issues that will cost them a few games, and Agent Zero’s new contract will look even worse by the end of the season.  They’ll probably just be happy if they don’t have to face LeBron James and the Cavs in the first round again.

6.  Chicago Bulls       

This is the team I think will move up the most in the East.  Remember, just two seasons ago, Chicago swept the defending champions in the first round, before last season’s catastrophe, led by a disgruntled and massively overrated Ben Gordon.  From all reports, Gordon is done as a Bull, and to me, that is definite addition by subtraction.  It would have been an enormous mistake to pay him $10 million per year.  Chicago is much better off giving the bigger and more defense-minded Thabo Sefolosha more minutes than dealing with the streaky, much-too-small, defenseless Gordon any longer.  The main reason I think the Bulls will move into the playoffs is that I don’t think their roster is done.  I suspect there may be a major move coming up sometime this season.  The Bulls still have an abundance of pieces to package together, and their inability to put together deals for Pau Gasol, Kevin Garnett or any other quality player over the past few seasons has held this team back.  This year, I believe they get it done.  With the right deal, they could move up even higher.  I expect a slow start as Derrick Rose learns the pro game, but a strong finish, and a reconstituted team that could possibly pull a major upset come playoff time.

Next Up:  Top Of The Heap

 

Now that I've watched the first round of the NBA Draft, and read a bunch of the draft winners and losers columns,  I think I've concluded on an easy way to wrap up this draft:  They're all losers.  I'm not really excited about anybody in this draft class.  I have a feeling that in a few years, we'll be talking about this draft class in the same breath with the 2000 draft as the worst since the lottery. 

If you listen to the analysts, every player in this draft was a monster, everyone has a wingspan 8 inches longer than their height, everyone is either a freakish athlete or a smart player with a high basketball I.Q.   Just once, especially late in the second round, I'd like to see Jay Bilas or somebody say, "You know, this guy just sucks.  He's slow, plays no defense, has horrible shot selection.  Sure, he scored 20 points per game on the last place team in the SEC, but he had to fire up 30 shots a game to do it."  How can everybody in the draft be a superstar in the making?  Obviously, they all have some skills or they wouldn't even be considered, but come on, most of these guys out of the top 15 or 20 have just average skills.  Stop talking them up like they can all be Hall of Famers.

In five years, if there's more than a half dozen guys out of this draft making a major impact on an actual contending team, I'll be surprised.  There are a few guys who'll probably put up big numbers on perpetual lottery teams (I'm looking at you, OJ Mayo) but those guys are basically useless if you want to win.

How good will Derrick Rose be?  Who knows, but does it matter?  A team led by an elite point guard hasn't won a title since Isiah Thomas in 1990, 18 years ago!  All this talk of needing an elite point guard is so much BS.    And don't try to tell me that Tony Parker is a point guard.  LeBron James is more of a point guard than Tony Parker is.  Don't get me wrong, Parker's great and his game is perfectly suited for championship contention, but he's not a pure point guard.

How good will Michael Beasley be?  An undersized power forward.  For some reason, the name Kenyon Martin comes to mind.  It's also a bad thing, in my mind, if you're a guy coming into the draft and there's more than one person out there comparing you to Derrick Coleman.  Sure, Coleman had skills, but is there a better example of a waste of superstar talent than Coleman?  Probably, but he'd be in the argument any way around it.   Plus, Pat Riley doesn't like him.  You could tell by the look on his face as he was doing an interview after the pick.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a trade at some point soon if anyone comes calling.

Both these guys have an abundance of talent, and in the right situation with the right guidance and the right attitude, they could be stars.  I think Beasley has a better chance if he stays with the Heat because of Riley and Dwayne Wade.  But Rose coming into a dysfunctional situation with a first-time-at-any-level head coach?  Has anyone ever wasted their potential as much as the Bulls have over the past three years.  They were overloaded with sought-after talent and high draft picks thanks to the Knicks.  It looked like all the pieces were in place for a trade or two for an established veteran to pair with some youth and be a contender.  But they did nothing useful, except dumping Tyson Chandler (who just helped the Hornets to the second best record in the West) for P.J. Brown (who just helped the Celtics win a title) and J.R. Smith (who now scores points in bunches off the Nugget bench), and that trade was useful to everyone involved but the Bulls.  What a waste.  A 19-year old point guard's gonna clean this mess up?  Unless he's got a post up game I haven't seen, good luck to him.

I guess the draft is all about possibility and potential.  But I'm just not feeling this one at all.  Usually, there are a handful of guys that I feel like have a chance to be solid pros and possibly stars, but I don't see it with any of these guys.  I'm sure somebody will pop up and become a good player, but I'm guessing its not going to be the Kevin Love's, Russell Westbrook's or the token-Italian-guy-drafted-by-Mike-D'antoni.  (It is reassuring to see that, no matter who's running the Knicks, they still know how to screw up a draft.)  After all, the best player out of the 2000 draft by far was second round pick Michael Redd.

My guess is that a small school, relatively unknown player's going to have a bigger impact that the big name, primetime school guys.  (Say, Courtney Lee for instance).  Anyway, I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.