As promised here is our (delayed) All-star break feature on the NBA. What we decided to do was rank the teams (sort of like a mid-way point power rankings) in order of how they have played so far, as well as their chances for winning the title. Four of us ranked the teams from one to 30 with the last place being one point, second to last being two points and so on. here is the first part of our list, these will come in chunks then we will do a big article for the elite eight. We also divided the teams by doing a draft for the rights to write about them, because anytime you can do a fantasy draft for anything you have to do it (it makes things about 100 times more fun). Anyways, here is our first installment of teams, starting with number 30.
30. Charlotte Bobcats (4 points)
Four voters, one point per last place, you can probably guess which team we had unanimously in last, ladies and gentleman your Bobcats! (Cut to MJ whiffing on an easy putt). To be fair, they chose a hell of a year to suck, Anthony Davis is a beast and could form a solid foundation for any franchise. I am giving as much effort to this paragraph as the Bobcats have given to their season, so there.
-Daki
29.The Washington Wizards (9 points)
Quick. Name the Wizards head coach... If you guessed Randy Wittman you’re either a cheater (very possible), a die-hard Wizards fan (impossible), or Randy Wittman (possible). The Wiz head coach has been as irrelevant as his team excluding John Wall this year. Washington came out of the gate to a very slow start (2-15) and got Flip Saunders fired as head coach. This surprised no one because how much do you think guys like Andray Blatche and Nick Young worked out over the lockout? Not a lot. Since that time the Randy Wittman led-Wizards and John Wall have stormed all the way back and are now in the East’s playoff race!! Ok not really, but they have been slightly better going 5-13 since Wittman took over. The Wizards do have some form of weird entertainment value as they’ve somehow managed to create a team mostly made up of ‘the guy you don’t want on your basketball pick-up team’ guys. You know the guy I’m talking about. The one who is insanely lazy on defense, turns the ball over with no care and thinks he’s one hundred times better than he is. That’s basically the entire Washington roster other than Jan Vesely (plays the game the right way but is just very raw) and Wall who is the one redeeming quality of the Wizards. Last year’s rookie of the year has seemingly gotten better in every aspect of his game and seems like a Derrick Rose Lite at this point in his career. Wall seems to have the demeanor in some games of a prisoner counting the days until his sentence expires. Funnily enough this is basically what Washington has become. Quick random theory on this; what if Wall did something to Stern pre-draft that David is making him pay for in his first few years in the league. After ‘The Veto’ we all know the commissioner has great control over things so why put it past him? Insane? What’s more likely? That David Stern is punishing John Wall for something he did or that someone thought the supporting cast of Andray Blatche, Nick Young, JaVale McGee, and Rashard Lewis’ corpse was a good idea...?
-Luka
28. The New Orleans Hornets (11 points)
Who would have thought that David Stern would make Eric Gordon sit out a large amount of games (probably the season) so the Hornets would get a top pick to add to the young core of players they have? The foundation they got from the Clippers in the now famous 'veto' suddenly does not seem so bad when you add a top pick. It is also incredible that Stern convinced the Hornets to play Kaman again so that they could raise his trade value exponentially (My theory: he tells the refs to treat him like LeBron) and maybe add another valuable building piece. Of course I am only speculating, there is only a 50% chance that what I wrote about Stern is actually true. Anyways, the Hornets are in full out 'tank the season' mode which will eventually spark the debate talking heads have every year: how do we prevent this from happening? There really is no way to prevent it, but what I would do is have the bottom eight teams play a tournament with the winner getting the number one pick. I will expand this idea in a future post, this is not the time or the place.
-Daki
27. New Jersey Nets (17 points)
The main news that has been surrounding the Nets this year has been the
potential acquisition of Dwight Howard that will be concluded in the
next few weeks. I won’t talk about this trade anymore, but rather focus
on the Nets’ season up to the half way point. Deron Williams has been
their star player and seems to have overcome his wrist injury issues by
putting up a career high in points per game (21.7, including a career
high of 57 tonight!). However, his assist numbers are the second lowest
of his career and this is probably because of the inability of his
teammates to score. Luckily for the Nets and Williams’ assists, Brooks
Lopez returned about a week ago and has made an immediate impact on the
offensive end. Outside of these two, MarShon Brooks and Kris Karda..I
mean Humphries are the only other players worth mentioning. Hump is his
usual self grabbing ever offensive rebound off his missed layups and
Brooks is a young player with lots of potential (as I mentioned in mine
and Luka’s Rising Stars mock draft). The Nets are struggling this year
and I don’t expect anything to change unless they do acquire Dwight or
another big name player to keep Deron and make an impact in the NBA when
they move to Brooklyn next year.
-Igor
26. The Detroit Pistons (21 points)
Remember when the Detroit Pistons were one of the best teams
in basketball? It wasn’t too long ago and yet it seems like an eternity. Back
in those days the 5 Piston starters were all all-star caliber players, Joe
Dumars was considered one of the best GM’s in the NBA and the palace was
rocking each and every night. How the times have changed. These days only 3
pieces remain of the mid-00’s Piston glory days. Tayshaun Prince, Ben Wallace,
and Joe Dumars. Each a shadow of their former selves (I still think Prince
could be a serviceable player for a title contender. He is wasting away on this
team though). Wallace’s game was never going to get better with age (his post
game makes Dwight Howard’s look like a mix of Olajuwon’s and McHale’s) but it
is the decline of Dumars that has ultimately doomed the Pistons. Weird free
agent signings for even worse contracts combined with one of the most
confusingly crafted rosters in the league have set up Detroit for the type of
success they’ve had over the last few years. Very little. This year the Pistons
are simply one of the league’s bad teams with a few bright spots on the floor
and on the sideline. The hiring of Lawrence Frank was an inspired one since
everywhere he’s gone, he’s proven he knows what he’s doing. Of course anyone is
a massive upgrade from John Kuester who was the first coach to my knowledge to
have a legitimate mutiny performed on him (seriously, the players refused to
practice and everything). On the floor the Pistons have one of the most
under-appreciated, least-talked about young stars in the game in Greg Monroe.
Monroe has been a force this year averaging 16 and 10 with 2 assists and a
steal per game. If he can continue to develop in sync with some of the young
guys he has around him (Jerebko, Knight, Stuckey) the future of the Pistons
could be much more promising than their present. As for the time being though
they’ll just have to settle for being known as the team that gave Charlie
Villaneuva and Ben Gordon a combined 90 million dollars.
-Luka
25. The Toronto Raptors (23 points)
It’s been a tough year for the Toronto Raptors. Bryan
Colangelo didn’t make any significant off-season moves, the players he did
bring over have underperformed, and to top it off, Andrea Bargnani has been out
for most of the season with a calf injury. It’s unfortunate because with the
defensive leadership of Dwayne Casey (the only good move Colangelo made),
Bargnani was finally showing up on both ends of the court. Nevertheless, the
Raptors still have a better record than three of the Eastern conference teams,
and they’ve had numerous close games against better teams that were lost due to
poor execution in the final minutes of the games. The Raptors have been
battling inconsistency all season (ie. Demar DeRozan and Jerryd Bayless) and
they don’t have a true leader, but they have still managed to function as a
team and challenge stronger opponents. With the players the Raptors have,
that’s still somewhat of an accomplishment. The season won’t end any different
for the Raptors. They’re probably going to stay a bottom 8 team in the NBA, and
hopefully Colangelo will draft a player who will make a significant difference
for this long-struggling Raptors team.
-Jovan
That will do it for part one, look for part two sometime this week.
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