NBA 2014-15 thread

The Game Room
1

Usual caveat: I know this isn’t a real basketball heavy board (especially with Marley stepping back), but I thought we should have one anyhow.

Early results, with a few exceptions, notably the Northwest, look about as expected. Toronto is playing lights out but I don’t think that’s a huge surprise. Washington is actually playing up to the expectations, which is… new. Cleveland is having some growing pains, but that wasn’t unexpected.

As for the NW, that’s a strange looking division standings right now. I know we’re not even 10 games in yet, but only Portland is over .500 and Minnesota is in 2nd place at 2-4 (I know, divisions don’t really mean anything in the NBA, but still…)!

Speaking of the Timberwolves, watching them right now for the first time in several years at least, and so far I am liking what I’m seeing from Wiggins. OTOH I don’t understand what’s up with their uniforms. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was bothering me about them, but it turns out it was they’re wearing t-shirts jerseys. I’ve seen this before on a few other teams and personally I don’t like it. It looks like they all forgot to take off their warm-up gear, but maybe it only bothers me, I don’t know.

Anyways, for the few of us who are into the NBA, here’s somewhere to unload your thoughts, rants, and other chatter.

2

The Derek Rose story about sitting out games had my coworkers furious yesterday. I’ve got mixed opinions on it, I know I hate working with people that take a sick day every week. But, I also know the NBA is a long season, and you don’t win the title in November games. The Bulls are a lock for the playoffs , even with mussed games by Rose.

3

I don’t understand that at all. The guy just went through consecutive season ending and career threatening injuries and people are pissed he might want to go easy for a while? that is utterly ridiculous. It’s Derrick btw.

4

Yeah, if they were losing, I could see people having a problem with him opting out of a few games, but they’re fine without him. I say let him sit out as long as he wants and then bring him off the bench when he’s ready. They don’t need him right now, but they will in a few months.

5

…aaand Rose goes out in the 4th quarter with a hammy after a pretty sub-standard performance. And they still won. Let him sit!

6

I would hate to see him go the way of Brandon Roy. This rookie class was supposed to be a once in a generation kinda thing and so far they are all pretty mediocre.

7

I hope Miami beats Cleveland in the playoffs, just because it would set the internet on fire. The Brow is a beast, too bad he’ll be on a crap team for the foreseeable future.

It’s because this board trends older and white, a weak demographic for basketball fans, right? Then again, and this just might be me, but it seems like a lot of white basketball fans trend stereotypically nerdy. Not sure why that would be. Anecdotally in my circle of gamer friends a lot of us only follow basketball as our main sport. Then again, we’re mostly 20-somethings, couple in the early 30s. Maybe the quick action of bball appeals to our ADD-addled brains.

8

A few thoughts on the early season:

Golden State looks like the real deal. They’re bound to cool down somewhat though, right?

I can’t tell yet if Sacramento has turned the corner and become a legit playoff team yet. Cousins’ issues doesn’t seem to have hurt them and they’re at the point where a young team usually turns the corner if they do at all

OKC is going to have to make up a lot of ground when they get their stars back. Right now, barring injuries to other teams, they have 11 teams ahead of them. I don’t think they’re going to get homecourt in the first round this year, given the projected 2 month delayed start to their season. And they’re not even just slightly bad, they are really really bad.

Speaking of bad, my Lakers suck :frowning:

Teams in the East seems to be where they should be, though I didn’t expect Indiana to lose even more guys to injuries. Luckily they can go under 0.500 and still make the playoffs. But is Paul George expected to be back this year? If not, they might as well try to out-tank Philly and just get a draft pick because the season’s wasted. If I were them, I’d let Hibbert lead the team, get some of that lost confidence back by being the best player on a bad team, and rest West like Pop rests Duncan. I don’t know their cap situation but I’d sit on it and try to sign somebody impactful for next year

I see Atlanta’s doing their typical we’ll-be-a-4-or-5-seed-and-get-bounced-in-the-first-round trick again

As usual, the top of the East is pretty easy to guess. Based on records and past performance, you know it’ll be Chicago and probably Cleveland at the top, followed by Toronto and Washington. The real fun is to get to see who fights for that 6-8th spot. There’s like 5 or 6 teams bad enough to hover around 0.500 for most of the season and make a push for the playoffs somewhere in March. Its fun for me to try and guess how bad that last 8th seed can be and still make the playoffs. Though this year we have a decent team in Miami taking up one of the spots, maybe they’ll be in the 5-6 spot with Atlanta and we’ll have the likes of Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Indiana, Boston, and Charlotte trying to decide if its worth it to get another player in the draft or flame out in the first round

9

Serious question, will OKC make the playoffs this year? Its not completely crazy that they’re in too big of a hole right now, this early in the season, to make the 8th seed. Here’s the current standings as of tonight:

2014-2015

  1. Memphis…15 - 2
  2. Golden State…14 - 2
  3. Portland…13 - 4
  4. Houston…13 - 4
  5. San Antonio…13 - 4
  6. Dallas…13 - 5
  7. LA Clippers…12 - 5
  8. Phoenix…10 - 8
  9. Sacramento…9 - 8
  10. Denver…9 - 8
  11. New Orleans…8 - 8
  12. Oklahoma City…5 - 13
  13. Utah…5 - 13
  14. LA Lakers…5 - 13
  15. Minnesota…4 - 12

For comparison, these are last year’s standings:

2013-2014

  1. San Antonio…62 - 20
  2. Oklahoma City…59 - 23
  3. L.A. Clippers… 57 - 25
  4. Houston…54 - 28
  5. Portland…54 - 28
  6. Golden State…51 - 31
  7. Memphis…50 - 32
  8. Dallas…49 - 33
  9. Phoenix…48 - 34
  10. Minnesota…40 - 42
  11. Denver…36 - 46
  12. New Orleans…34 - 48
  13. Sacramento…28 - 54
  14. L.A. Lakers…27 - 55
  15. Utah…25 - 57

Of course OKC is only in this hole because of injuries. But it was to both their big stars. Other teams might, and probably will lose one guy for a while, or two guys at different times, but its hard to imagine 2 people as important to a team as Durant and Westbrook both going down at the same time. I think looking at history and the standings right, barring injuries, you can pencil in Memphis, Golden State, Portland, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and the Clippers into the top 8. That’s 7 spots already.

I don’t think there’s any question that Memphis, Golden State, and Dallas are better than they are last year. They won 50, 51, and 49 games in 2013-14. Clippers might be a little worse, but they won 57 games and I don’t see them going under 50 games this year. San Antonio will make it, Pop knows how to use his guys better than any coach I’ve ever seen. Leonard is a star now and he’s adding better scoring to his repertoire. They won’t win 62 games I think, but they’ll be a high seed. That leaves Houston and Portland. Both teams have started better this year, but I can see them falling into a bit of a funk and out of the top 4-5 seed like they were last year. 54 wins (for both) might be down to around 48-50, but in exact opposite to OKC’s fortunes, they might have built up enough of a cushion early to fall a little and still make a mid or high seed.

That means the 8th seed will be super competitive, and some perennial doormats are competing for that spot right now. Let’s look at the history first. The 8th, 9th, and 10th seeds in the West in the last few years have records as follows:

2013-14: 49-33, 48-34, 40-42
2012-13: 45-37, 43-39, 41-41
2011-12 (shortened season, projected 82 standings): 36-30 (44-38), 34-32 (42-40), 33-33 (41-41)
2010-11: 46-36, 43-39, 40-42
2009-10: 50-32, 42-40, 40-42

So on average, you’ll need about 46-47 games to make it and at least over 0.500 to be in the hunt. Now let’s look at this year’s competition:

  1. Phoenix…10 - 8 (48-36)
  2. Sacramento…9 - 8 (28-54)
  3. Denver…9 - 8 (36-46)
  4. New Orleans…8 - 8 (34-48)
  5. Oklahoma City…5 - 13 (59-23*)
  6. Utah…5 - 13 (25-57)

Phoenix, as far as I can see, is about even with last year. Sacramento is a lot better. Denver had a 6 game losing streak, but they’ve bounced back. New Orleans is better, but that’s only because Anthony Davis is beasting it up. Might be a little early for him to carry that team into the playoffs, but its not entirely out of the question. And Utah is only there because they have the same record as OKC, nobody expects them to do anything still

Let’s say the 8th seed needs 47 games this year to make it, that’s a pretty reasonable number. The West is still feasting on the East and don’t expect to stop in the near future. The best 2 teams in the East last year, Miami and Indiana, are both completely different teams due to free agency or injuries, and Lebron’s Cavs are starting slow so far. I don’t think the 1 seed in the East will win 58 games, or if they do, #2 is going to cap at like 55 games.

OKC with Durant and Westbrook is certainly good enough to go 42-22 the rest of the season, but that’s not good enough. Phoenix is 5 games better than OKC. OKC will have to go close to 47-17 if it hopes to over take all 4 teams above it. Phoenix right now is good enough to knock OKC out of the playoffs if they simply play as well as they did last year, I think, and Sacramento and New Orleans will probably have the biggest win/loss jump from last year out of any team in the West, OKC can’t just count on beating the teams above them to make it, they have to hope for some injuries, some luck, and Durant and Westbrook to play out of their minds coming back from injuries. They can do it, but it won’t be easy.

10

The Sixers win one! All it took was a trip to Minnesota, the team with the 2nd worst record in the league.

And fittingly, the game had to be restarted after 16 seconds of play because the officials determined they were shooting at the wrong ends of the floor. Why that matters I’m not really sure.

11

Derrick Rose chose to try to make a political statement before last night’s game wearing a T shirt saying, “I Can’t Breathe.” He’s being rightly mocked online and on sports talk radio. He’s the last person who needs to be making stupid political statements, he really should keep a low profile and try to show up for at least every other game.

Unfortunately, I think we will see more athletes making these sort of statements. Hopefully, they’ll understand that we watch sports to get away from 24/7 news coverage and someone like Rose is likely to get injured taking his shirt off!

12

The Sixers won another! And maybe more importantly, they’ve looked like an actual NBA team for the past couple of weeks! (Two wins, and losses averaging in the single digits instead of 20+.)

The Celtics have been kind of miserable, but they beat the Lakers pretty handily at home on Friday, and in the abysmal East they’re all of a game and a half out of the playoffs. Which they still probably don’t want.

Finally, good for Derrick Rose.

13

Rose played a pathetic game last night with a pathetic 9 points, Gausol had yet another double/double, but Rose was useless.

14

Is this the worst imbalance between the conferences in the last 20 years? The top 9 teams in the West are 50-6 vs. the East, the #7 team in the West has a 70%+ win percentage, and going into tonight, and the top 7 teams in the West currently have a 31 game win streak. Golden State just won, so that’s 32, and the Clippers play tonight against the #8 team, so that streak could come to an end. Also, the top 6 teams, based on their records, are on pace to win 60 games. I’m glad that I’m in the West to be able to watch great matchups every night, but I’d hate to be a bubble team with 50 wins that just barely squeaks into the playoffs, or a 45-48 win team that misses it. I hope Adam Silver takes a good look at the playoff system and does something about the imbalance

15

The problem is with the draft lottery. However the imbalance began, the continuance of The Lottery as it is currently structured continues to strengthen The West while maintaining the weakness of The East.

Essentially the argument is this: as currently structured, The Lottery “rewards” all non-playoff teams with top-half draft picks. The problem lies in the fact that a good portion of non-playoff teams in The West are already good teams, but the competition at the top is so stiff that these good teams fail to qualify for the playoffs but are still top-half teams whole-league-wise, thus taking away high draft picks from weaker East teams (who qualified for the playoffs with inferior records). Thus The Lottery system perpetuates a situation where good Western Conference teams get to improve already competent teams while inferior East teams are left with the dregs of the draft pool to try and improve themselves.

Now obviously, that trend could be corrected if all Lottery teams in The East drafted better and the Lottery teams in The West drafted poorly, but that would take a monumental amount of both uncanny luck and near complete incompetence on the parts of the respective GMs in both conferences.

The solution, as far as The Draft is concerned at least, would be to take conferences out of the equation as far as The Lottery is concerned. Give Lottery slots to the 15 worst teams in the league, regardless of conference.

How much of a difference that would make and how quickly is debatable, but it’s a start.

Relevant article with the particulars can be read here:

16

That’s a good point and a good article, I never thought about correcting the draft overall (and not just the #1 pick) instead of just fixing the playoffs. It totally makes sense, and this draft thing is just going to give better picks to the good West teams that stumble. Based on their records right now, Sacramento and New Orleans will be winning about 41-43 games and get a draft pick while under 0.500 Miami and Brooklyn will not get anybody. Picks really needs to go to the bottom teams in the whole league

17

And of course that’s not the whole story; The West got good because of a series of smart, shrewd moves by the respective teams, and The East deteriorated because of a series of terrible moves, bad luck, and risky gambles that didn’t pay off (I’m looking at you, Detroit!), but the Draft Lottery thing is definitely a factor.

Then there’s the case of the 76ers…

18

Well, the 76ers actually have a plan, so even if it doesn’t work out, its a high risk/high reward one.

What I’ve noticed more than simply drafting well, is that West teams tend to get good and stay good for a while.

In the last 10 or so years, we’ve seen in the West some perennial contenders. San Antonio, Dallas, Houston have all stayed relatively good. Some years they’re great, and some years they’re merely good. Then we have a teams that are good for a while, fall, then are good again. I would put Portland, LA Lakers, Phoenix, and Denver into that category. These teams are generally good until they lose players due to age or injury, or a major trade. But they are run well and can sustain themselves if they get lucky in the draft or get a few good free agents. Then you have teams that have been bad, but finally get some good players, and they stay good. Memphis is one, OKC and Golden State are the others. I don’t think anyone expect them in 2 or 3 years to just drop completely off the map, they are well run organizations.

Meanwhile, the thing I’ve noticed most about the East is how little time they get to rebuild, then they tear it down and start all over again. New York tried with Amare and was mostly terrible through the Isaiah Thomas era, and in the Carmelo era, they did make some noise in the playoffs, but year to year under mostly the same core, they can be wildly different: be the 2nd seed in the East one year, then flame out in the first round as a low seed, to having an 8 game losing streak and out of playoff contention early in the season. Charlotte made their first playoff run a few years ago, and it seems like they would at least sustain it if not get better, but inexplicably they bottomed out again. I’m not going to talk about Miami and Cleveland because those teams fortunes obviously tie in with one player. But what about Milwaukee, or Orlando? Some years they make the playoffs barely, and other years they’re unwatchable. Its almost random year to year what these East teams are doing.

That’s why I’m actually excited Philly has an actual plan. If it works, they’ll be good for a while. If it doesn’t, at least they wouldn’t sneak into the playoffs, get pasted by the #1 or #2 seed, then miss the lottery. Right now, what I want is some consistency in the East. In the West, I have a good idea of the type of basketball and “mood” of the team. They fit into niches I can cheer for or against. In the East, its utterly random, and it makes it so that during the playoffs, I care nothing about those teams because, why watch a team whose appearance in the playoffs will never amount to anything? If Toronto or DC makes the playoffs this year, they could fall into some East curse and disappear. I want them to sustain an East-leading run, I want to see them build a rivalry so Toronto vs. DC games mean something. Right now, teams rarely meet consistently in the playoffs so its hard to care about them

19

They Knicks have become even worse than the Yankees at collecting past-their-prime veterans and failing to build a young, talented base. Hardaway Jr and Larkin are nothing spectacular. But go look at their draft picks the last ten years. They actually made some decent picks but traded them away for vets.

20

With Phil Jackson there, I hope that process will stop. Isaiah Thomas was perennially trying to justify his job, that’s why I believe he tried to trade away assets for a quick score. Phil’s got 5 years, plus I don’t think he really wanted the job, so I don’t think he’ll make rash decisions. I expect him to stick with Fisher for most, if not all, of his 5 year tenure, even if he’s bad. Everybody knows the Knicks have no cap flexibility until next year so crying about how bad they are this year is pointless. They should want to lose and get a good draft pick