NBA Eastern Conference Predictions

The rich get richer and the poor lose their draft picks

Today is the third day of the NBA season, so I want to thank the Boston Celtics for bringing me back to reality. There’s a little mystery in the East, so this preview will start in reverse order.

Better Luck Next Decade

Atlanta Hawks — Trading the rights to Luka Doncic to Dallas for a first round protected draft pick is kind of like playing Let’s Make a Deal with Doc Brown instead of Monty Hall.

Atlanta: “I’ll take the consolation prize and what’s behind door number one.”

Doc Brown: “Ah… but… um… nothing will pass through that door until 2021*!”

Atlanta: “Don’t matter. We just love small point guards who love to jack up 30-footers at a 28% success rate and can’t play defense.”

Doc Brown: “Great Scott!”

*Dallas gave up a top-5 protected 1st round pick and are sure to be a bottom 5 team this year and probably next, given how tough the Western Conference is. I don’t think the Hawks are getting this pick until 2020. Other struggling teams that don’t own their 2019 first round draft pick: Cleveland; Memphis; Clippers; and, Sacramento.

Hope for the Future

Chicago and Orlando have some nice young prospects, but will continue to dream of ping pong balls this year. According to my NBA draft night projections, Wendell Carter Jr., and “I gotta have Mo!” Bamba (13 pts, 7 reb, 2 blocks on .750 FG% and one made 3-pointers in a win over Miami) will become very good players.

Brooklyn and New York will have their first round picks as consolation for another bad season. In addition, some Knick fans are holding out hope that Kevin Durant gives up everything that basketball, the Bay Area and Silicon Valley can offer for the chance to play for James Dolan.

Near Misses

Charlotte — The good news is, they got rid of Dwight Howard. The bad news is they had to eat the contract of Timofey Mozgov. At least ex-Lakers and now Charlotte GM Mitch Kupchak was unable to sign Luol Deng. The problem with Charlotte, besides having so few good players, is Kemba Walker. He’s good enough to help them win enough games to miss out on getting a top 5 lottery pick, but not good enough to help them get into the playoffs.

Detroit — Seeing Blake Griffin move further and further away from the basket as his physical skills decline is really sad. He was so much fun as part of Lob City and silly Kia commercials, but now he’s just a below league average 3-point shooter who isn’t going to reverse Detroit’s decade long run of mediocrity.

#8: Cleveland

As Tristan Thompson tweeted, the Cavs are still the team to beat in the Easter Conference. He will no longer be able to say it after getting swept in the first round of the playoffs. Most people think the Cavs will be terrible, but I say don’t overestimate the East. They’ve still got enough to sneak into the eighth spot.

#7: Washington

Dwight Howard. Austin Rivers. Jeff Green. Fat John Wall. Scotty Brooks. Is there anything left to say? They are too good in the East to not make the playoffs, but that’s not saying very much.

#6: Miami

The Heat were unable to get rid of a bad locker room influence and NBA dinosaur in Whiteside, who has too much money invested in him to dump for the more mobile and modern style center in Emeril Lagasse’s all-time favorite player, “BAM!” Adebayo. They are in NBA purgatory, like Charlotte, as they have too good a coach and organization to become a bottom 5 team, but don’t have the cap space to get a true All-Star and challenge the still relatively weak East for a top 4 seed.

#5: Milwaukee

I’ve never been a fan of anyone on their roster outside of Giannis. Middleton is a wonderful offensive player and Bledsoe is a huge disappointment compared to how he played when he was with the Clippers. The addition of Brook Lopez will hurt them defensively, even though his 3-point shooting will help spread the floor for Giannis. It remains to be seen whether their new coach, Mike Budenholzer can turn these ill-fitting pieces into something precious.

#4: Indiana

The addition of Tyreke Evans could be huge. Last year, Indiana’s starters had a point differential of 4.6, which projects to be a 53-win team. Somehow, they ended up +1.4 in point differential, projecting to a 45-win team that overachieved. In other words, their bench and hybrid units were in the bottom 10. If Evans can shore up the bench, maybe the Pacers could move up as high as the #3 seed, if Philadelphia falls apart.

#3: Philadelphia

Last year, I fell victim to the next great thing bias. I was absolutely amazed at the beginning of the season when I saw Joel Embiid make history with a 46–15–7–7 game and Ben Simmons put up 18–9–10 as if he were sleep walking. I dreamed about a time in the future when Philadelphia and the Lakers would once against meet in the NBA Finals.

But here’s the problem with daydreams — you don’t focus much on the here and now. The Lakers were young and destined to become a 35-win team. And yet, in spite of Embiid looking like the greatest center in history, the Lakers came back to take a 1-point lead with 4 minutes left in the 4th quarter.

At the end of the season, I thought that Embiid and Simmons were superstars and would dominate the Celtics in their second round playoff series. We all know what happened — the Celtics were the better team, with a deeper bench, a solid game plan to stop the 76ers main weapons (Embiid in the post and Redick on 3-pointers) and force Simmons to score and shoot free throws. And, most importantly, the gap between their coaches is enormous. Brad Stevens, unfortunately for Celtics haters, is the best coach in the NBA outside of Popovich.

This off season, I thought that Embiid and Simmons would make significant improvements in their games and make the leap to have a shot at winning the East. Watching them stumble and bumble against the Celtics proved that my one time observation was nothing more than a day dream.

For the same reason people were killing Lonzo Ball last season (“He can’t shoot, teams will collapse their defense into the paint. He can’t make free throws, so teams can play hack-a-shaq and get him off the floor.”), probably every other coach in the NBA is thinking the same thing about Ben Simmons. Or they should be. Brad Stevens obviously did, and once again punked the 76ers badly.

So, thanks, Boston. You woke me up to the reality that the 76ers are much further from winning the East than I thought.

Obviously, Philadelphia simply has too much talent for the rest of the East, and while Brett Brown looked like an idiot coaching against Brad Stevens, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

#2: Boston

Have I mentioned lately that Brad Stevens is an unbelievable coach? Well, I haven’t mentioned that he is also unbelievable in player development. He has turned Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown into snarling beasts that not only want to beat down Philadelphia but want to pyschologically destroy Joel Embiid. Tatum hit a ridiculously lucky bank shot while being heavily contested by Embiid and give him a look that should have been reserved for doing something like this:

I’m in the small minority that doesn’t think Gordon Hayward is a better two way player than Tatum or Brown. Brad Stevens is unfortunately smart enough to see the same thing, and won’t make the mistake of cutting down their minutes or forcing them to the bench. If he does, it will be the first big mistake he’s ever made. Brown and Tatum scored almost every point in the first seven minutes of the season opener against Philadelphia. Hayward came out after six minutes and then played with the bench guys to begin the second quarter, scoring the first four points. Brown replaced him with 6:37 to go in the half to play with the starters, adding Marcus Morris to supply more muscle on the floor in guarding Embiid and Simmons.

The elephant in the room is that the contracts of Hayward, Irving and Horford are not compatible with the long term future of this team. In a couple of years, Brown and Tatum will be max players, and Horford will be too old to play at his current level. If they can’t move Hayward and Irving’s contracts, their window becomes much smaller.

That’s why this might be the best possible year for Boston to make the NBA Finals. But here’s why I don’t think Boston can win the title this year.

The article also explains why I don’t think Boston will win the East.

#1: Toronto

Toronto had the best regular season record last year and upgraded from a mid-range jump shooting All-Star to an NBA Finals MVP. If Danny Green plays decently, they traded one starter for two, making their bench even better.

For those of you who don’t want to read that swell article above, I’ll give you the super condensed version of the 6 boxes to check if a team wants to win a title during the Warriors era of basketball.

Toronto checks all the boxes, but Boston does not, which is why I think Toronto will win the East:

1. League average or above 3-point shooting without depending on it for all your offense. (Toronto, .361 3P%, and #6 in PITP; Boston, .370 3P%, but #24 in PITP, almost 9 points less than Toronto). Edge: Toronto
2. Play elite defense when it counts. Boston and Toronto suffered big drops in defensive efficiency in the playoffs because they couldn’t pad their stats against bad teams like they did in the regular season. While Boston will remain very strong as a team defense, the addition of Kawhi Leonard completely changes the balance in being able to shut down opposing All-Stars in the playoffs. Edge: Toronto
3. Turn good defense into easy transition baskets. Toronto was #8 in transition ppp, #11 in transition frequency, and #11 in transition points. Boston was #24 in transition ppp, #21 in transition frequency, and #24 in transition points. Edge: Toronto
4. Maximize each possession by minimizing turnovers: Toronto #4; Boston #13. Edge: Toronto
5. Have one unstoppable, high efficiency superstar. Kyrie Irving will try to take over games, but he will fall into patches where he depends too much on the 3-pointer. Kawhi Leonard can get to any spot on the floor, and score points off turnovers and offensive rebounds. Edge: Toronto
6. Have one or more players who can slow down the other team’s superstar. For the last eight years, this key is reduced to one simple question: “can you slow down Durant and LeBron?” Guess who is the only guy who has beaten Durant and LeBron in consecutive playoff series? Edge: Toronto

I hope you enjoyed this Eastern Conference preview. Please check out my Western Conference preview.

Here’s a bunch of fun stuff for Lakers fans:

And here’s a bunch of fun stuff so you can laugh at the Lakers:

Have a great season!