Previews

NBA Preview 2009-10: Southeast Division

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SEDivision

The Southeast is an interesting new fangled division.  Since the NBA switched to a three-division format, the Southeast has been the shallowest in terms of talent.  While they have had some nice teams (2004-06 Heat and the 2008-09 Magic), the rest of the teams in the division have varied from middling to bad.  2008-09, however, was the first year that the division managed to have three teams over .500.  The division should be even a little better this year as Washington will be improved and Charlotte actually has an outside shot at the playoffs.  Let’s take a look:

1.    Orlando Magic: The absolute cream of the division and co-favorite for the Eastern Conference title.  The Magic melded a unique style of taking a ton of threes (almost double their opponents) and a bunch of free throws on offense with a stifling defense (best in the NBA by efficiency numbers).  Obviously, Dwight Howard is the best player on the team and the focal point for everything they do and is only 24 years old to boot.  Throw in a core of pretty young players (Jameer Nelson is 27 and Rashard Lewis is 30) and Vince Carter (an upgrade over Hedo Turkoglu) and there is little reason why the Magic can’t at least stay at last year’s level as a team.  In fact, the 2008-09 run was no fluke.  Really, the Magic have been pretty formidable team for two years running.  The 2007-08 version won 52 games but had the expected won-loss record of a 56-win team and was actually better offensively than last year’s model. 

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Previews

NBA Preview 2009-10: Central Division

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Turning to the Central, we see the same pattern we saw in the Atlantic.  One title contender (Cleveland) and a whole bunch of maybes.  While the Central doesn’t look like it will have any truly horrible teams it also has plenty of also-rans.  The also-rans are varying degrees of interesting from very (Chicago) to not so much (Milwaukee).  Let’s see how it all shakes out: 

1.    Cleveland Cavaliers:    By most accounts, the Cavs seemed to be the best team in 2008-09.  They had the most wins, the best expected won-loss record, and the best player in the NBA.  Alas, things fell apart against Orlando when Dwight Howard dominated them enough to knock off a 66-win team.  The Cavs are back with substantially the same team, with the exception Shaquille O’Neal, who they hope can annoy Howard enough to slightly negate this edge.  Going forward, the Cavs look to be in great shape.  LeBron James is still the best player in the NBA and the only older players on the roster are Shaq and Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who will be splitting time at center. 

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Previews

NBA Preview 2009-10: Atlantic Division

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We’re only weeks away from another exciting NBA season.  We thought this would be a good time to get going with a division-by-division preview and see what we have to expect.  Sure, predictions are fraught with issues.  Facts (and rosters) will change between now and April 2010, which will render some of what we see moot (think Billups, Chauncey and Detroit Pistons last year) but doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to chew up what we have so far.  As a fun bonus, we’ll give you our All-Decade starting line up for each franchise.  Today, we’ll start out with the Atlantic Division:

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Quick Thoughts, Uncategorized

Quick Thoughts

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I know it’s exciting that training camps are open and players are playing actual basketball but actual news is quite hard to come by.  We’ll have full NBA previews coming in the next few weeks but we thought we’d tide you over with a little bit of basketball talk.  We often associate a particular position with a particular player (i.e. Magic Johnson at the point in the 1980s or Michael Jordan at shooting guard forever).  We were wondering whether our mental associations comport with the stats.  Obviously, the stats don’t reflect all the value of a player (particularly not the defensive side of the equation) but PER is a very nice barometer of offensive accomplishment.  I thought we could look at the PER leaders year-by-year since 1979-80 (the first year of the Magic/Bird Era) and see if the yearly PER leaders by position really comport with our conceptions:

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Transactions

Transactions 7/10-9/22 Part III

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Phoenix Suns 

7/13    Signed Channing Frye

7/20    Signed Steve Nash to a two-year contract extension

9/15    Waived Sasha Pavlovic 

As we mentioned in the Dallas comments last week, point guards tend not to age well.  On the bright side, most of the ones who have aged well have done so in recent years, a good indicator for Nash.  Indeed, despite all the talk of Nash’s durability years ago, he hasn’t missed more than 12 games in a season since 1999-00.  The stat line has gone down a little from the peak years in the mid-2000s but Nash is reasonably good bet to be useful through age-37.  The contract is little rich but we can understand the excess cost in salary is worth it because a struggling Suns team should get back a fair amount of goodwill with fans.  

Frye’s signing is not terrible either.  He’s clearly not a starter on a good team but the front court needs some scoring outside of Amare and the price is pretty cheap. 

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Transactions

Transactions 7/10-9/22 Part II

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Golden State Warriors 

7/27    Waived Jermareo Davidson

7/30    Traded Marco Belinelli to Toronto for Devean George and cash

9/2      Signed Mikki Moore

9/15    NBA fines Stephen Jackson $25,000 for making public statements detrimental to the NBA 

On the surface, Belinelli for George is a “who cares” type of trade.  Their salaries are pretty close but Belinelli is young and potentially useful as a designated shooter, while George is the definition of filler.  It’s not clear why the Warriors would want to trade even modest potential for George but we can only assume Don Nelson decided that Belinelli didn’t interest him as a player.  Similarly, Moore has not been a useful bench player for a few years now.   These moves are not the makings of great depth in Golden State for 2009-10. 

The other issue here is the fine of Stephen Jackson.  This fine surprised us a bit because Jackson’s statement did not seem like an NBA issue.  Jackson’s exact words?  According to Dime Magazine, Jax was a speaker at a party in New York and was asked about Golden State’s chances of making the playoffs.  Jackson responded : “Um…I don’t think I’ll be a Warrior next year. I’m looking to leave.” 

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