NBA Eastern Conference Preview
The NBA season will get underway on Tuesday, December 22. I could not be more excited about the season getting started. The NBA is a wonderful league that has wonderful story lines, intrigue, and drama all throughout. Unfortunately for fans of every team, the NBA is thirty teams strong and not just fifteen. Today we’re gonna be previewing the red-headed step-child of the NBA, the Eastern conference.
The East is the less talented, easier to win conference in the NBA. We saw LeBron James just absolutely smack the conference around for eight years in a row and never seem like he was at any risk of not making it to the NBA Finals. Luckily, the East has gotten stronger bit by bit. The bottom of the conference is still absolutely atrocious, but the middle of the conference is slowly getting better and better and becoming more up to snuff with the West.
The way today and tomorrow’s articles are going to work is I am going to be listing where I think each team will finish. It will be a quick standings prediction. This will then be followed by a breakdown of the groups each team will fall under. The groups are as follows: title contenders, playoff upset potential, the play in tournament candidates, abandon hope all ye who root for these. That last group will be considerably bigger in the East then it is in the West.
The Predicted Standings
Milwaukee Bucks
Brooklyn Nets
Philadelphia 76ers*
Miami Heat
Boston Celtics
Toronto Raptors
Washington Wizards
Indiana Pacers
Atlanta Hawks
Chicago Bulls
Orlando Magic
Charlotte Hornets
Cleveland Cavaliers
New York Knicks
Detroit Pistons
Title Contenders
It is genuinely hard to see another team in the East taking the top spot in the conference. The biggest competitor would have to be the Nets and that purely boils down to the Kevin Durant factor. The Bucks just locked Giannis Antetokounmpo down for the next five years with the richest deal in NBA history. The back-to-back MVP probably deserves that deal as well. Without that looming over their heads, the Bucks are primed to make a run at the title again. The issue with their run being the top of the East looking very strong this year. The Nets still have two superstars and a dearth of young talent. They re-signed Joe Harris and have Caris LaVert and Spencer Dinwiddie to add to that. The Nets have a lot of talent and a surprising amount of playoff and championship experience to add as they gear up for the season.
The 76ers have an asterisk next to their name purely because of the James Harden factor. If they get James Harden I would move them up to two in a heartbeat. As it stands I believe they have three seed potential but it hinges on what Doc Rivers can pull off with the scheme and in the locker room. If Doc can galvanize the troops, turn Embiid into a workhorse, and build an entire offensive system around the strengths of his two star players then the sky's the limit for the 76ers. I have little faith in that happening but I do believe they will be a fantastic regular season team that gets knocked out of the playoffs in the second round because ever since 2010, that's just what Doc Rivers does.
The next team in this group are the Miami Heat. I liked what they did in the offseason, which wasn’t much. The team needed to get healthy and to add one more solid scorer that could create his own shot and that's exactly what they got in Avery Bradley. Jimmy Butler will lead this team to another very promising season and if they continue to grow and Tyler Herro can take the next step forward in his development, there is little reason they won't be right back in the conference championship giving the Bucks absolute fits. Although Kendrick Nunn needs to figure his crap out and get more consistent later in the season. That one is pretty key too.
The last team in this group are the Boston Celtics. The pairing of Jayson Tatum and Jaylon Brown is everything with this team. Brown simply needs to continue to do what he did last year and refine his skills. The ceiling of the Celtics goes with Tatum. Will Tatum be the unimpressive third year player we saw during the first half of last season, or will he continue to take the leap and be the burgeoning superstar we saw during the second half of the season? The Celtics have a lot of starting line-up talent with Kemba Walker still being a great scorer and the addition of Tristan Thompson to anchor the front court. The issue for them is their bench. It lacks the talent of some of the teams ahead of them. I don’t see a title run for this team, but they have to at least be called contenders.
The Playoff Upset Potential Teams
This is a much shorter group. In this conference it is literally one team. The only team I have in this category is the Toronto Raptors. This is the group that will be much bigger in the West and the real reason why that conference is the stronger of the two. The Toronto Raptors have a very solid team with good depth and one of the three best coaches in the NBA. Nick Nurse can get so much from this roster that they will be a threat to knock off at least one contender at some point in the playoffs. The reason I don't have this team listed as a contender is the lack of star power. Pascal Siakim is not a number one on a title contending team, and neither is Fred VanVleet. The Raptors look like the kind of team that can win up to forty-eight games and have one hell of a regular season, but come playoff time they don’t have that guy to take over a must win game five when you are tied at two games a piece. The Raptors will be good, but they won’t be great.
The Play-in Tournament Candidates
This is a very thick and juicy group in the East. One of the teams I mention here will wind up in the seven seed, but the reason I have them here is because I think the seven and the eleven seed in the East will be separated by about three games. The team I have not participating in the play in and getting the seven seed are the Washington Wizards. I simply think the pairing of Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook is too good to miss out on the playoffs. Davis Bertans and Rui Hachimura are also solid pieces to have on your team. The Wizards wont get to the second round. They lack the talent and Russ just simply doesn't make the players around him better and that's what you need from your point guard if you want to go places in the playoffs.
The next group is the three teams I believe will be in the actual play in tournament: the Indiana Pacers, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Chicago Bulls. The Pacers should end up getting into the playoffs here. I think they have the most well rounded team and their starting five is better than either of the other two teams here. They have a bit of playoff experience that should help. What this really hinges on is Victor Oladipo’s health. If Oladipo can come back at at least 85% of what he was then the Pacers will be an above .500 team that can win a game or two to get them in the playoffs. The Hawks have a lot of talent on paper but I just don't think they are there yet. Trae Young has to learn how to defer and needs to really learn how to be a team player. He hasn’t had to do so yet but the additions of Bogdan Bogdanovich and Danillo Gallinari will force him to do so. As for the Bulls, they are just stacked with young developing talent. I think Billy Donovan is a good enough coach to keep them on pace for a .500 record. The real crux of this argument hinges on Lauri Markanen becoming the offensive juggernaut he is supposed to be. He was never allowed to do what he is best at previously, hopefully Donovan can get the most out of him.
The Orlando Magic I have missing out on the fun, but they have a solid team and should be in the mix at the end of the season. I like the Magic to also be hovering around the 36-36 mark at the end of the season, I just don’t think they have the offensive firepower to hang with the three teams above them.
The “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Root for These” Teams
Boy what a hard group to write about. Charlotte added Lamelo Ball and Gordon Hayward this offseason. Other than those two players they are mostly just a roster of overpaid role players. They have some talent and will definitely improve on last season, however I don’t see much in the way of excitement for the fans of that team, wherever they may be. The Cleveland Cavaliers on the other hand, simply lack any sort of identity. They have a back-court that doesn’t fit together properly, a front court that lacks talent outside of Kevin Love, and a bench that has a lot of people you have never heard of on it. It's grim for the Cavs, but at least they aren’t the next two teams I have to try and scrape a paragraph out of.
The New York Knicks have RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox and a few other Duke players that no one cared about. The Knicks have some other good talent too. Allonzo Trier showed some flashes last year. Oh, wait, they waived him. Hmm. Well then let's hope James Dolan embraces the Sheikh lifestyle, sells the team and moves to India because as long as that man runs that team, the Knicks will never be anything more than a bottom feeder. The Detroit Pistons on the other hand are just a roster devoid of talent. They couldn't keep their best asset, Christian Wood. Their two best players are an old washed up Blake Griffin and a slightly older Derrick Rose. This team is headed nowhere fast and I see exactly zero ways out.
Those are my thoughts on where the East will be headed this year. I think this will be the most competitive season we have seen from this conference since LeBron was still in Cleveland and I like what a lot of the teams have been doing over the past season plus. Hopefully I am not completely off because at the end of the season this article will still be able to be looked at.