Your Short-Attention Span NBA Preview

Where have you been all summer, Giannis?

WHATEVER interest in the baseball playoffs I may have had left was pummeled to death the other night during that 5-minute, 6-pitch at-bat by Mariner-reject-turned-Dodgers-starting-outfielder Chris Taylor against John Lackey, who at one point took two minutes between pitches before issuing the inevitable walk which set up the inevitable 3-run walkoff homer by Justin Turner, which was inevitable because Justin Turner is really good at baseball and John Lackey is really good at giving up home runs. I was already bored sick watching the baseball playoffs, being someone who finds 32 strikeouts in a game to be not particularly dramatic, but that collective malaise and cluelessness exuded by the Cubs in the 9th inning of that game pushed me over the brink. I no longer care. Go Astros. There. Enough. Whatever was interesting even in the abstract about the NFL has gone bye-bye as well. Frankly, the most interesting things in the entire league were watching Aaron Rodgers and J.J. Watt play and now both are out for the season. I hate the politics and the paid patriotism and the cloak of intellectual dishonesty hanging over the entire operation – don’t even tell me Kaep shouldn’t be in the league when Smokin’ Jay Cutler has a job – and I just don’t care any more. And I don’t care about hockey right now, either, because the Canucks are horrible.

But BASKETBALL BASKETBALL BASKETBALL IS HERE and be still my foolish heart and thank god for something worth watching and paying attention to. But I’ve torn at the moment, because I want to write all about what I want to see in the NBA this season, but I also have deadlines and commitments regarding stuff that pays me more than zero dollars which is going to keep me from writing a proper NBA preview edition. (Shameless plug: if you want me to make more than zero dollars on this site, and maybe want to read a good book or two or three, click on those gadgets at the right.) But I don’t have time right now, so I’m going to make this quick and get this out there in the cyberworld. And I’ll probably start going in strange directions while I do this, because I have a short attention span and am easily distracted.

So I’ve got this league figured out. We’ll break it down into five categories, all of which conveniently rhyme and I may have almost certainly have done this before on this blog, but fuck it I don’t have time for creative ideas. Take all of these predictions to the bank, but don’t cash the cheque, because gambling is a sin, kiddos:

The Least
All of these teams are bad, and now that the NBA is modifying the lottery, this season just might feature the last epic tankapalooza. I say ‘might’ because I’m not convinced they’ve done quite enough to disincentivize losing, and there is not much institutionally you can do about a team that is completely incompetent – a team like, say, the Orlando Magic, who’ve been in the lottery now for approximately 27 years and have managed to assemble a roster on which there are zero players I would want on my team. That’s a bad team right there. Having wasted so much ink over the years on a team that accomplished so little, hipster bloggers and reporters in the NBA can now turn their attention away from the Atlanta Hawks, who’ve blown the whole thing up save for Dennis Schröder, who seems bound and determined to blow up his career all by himself. The Hawks are in full-on tank mode and actually have some trade pieces with which to make themselves even worse as the season progresses, but they may not want to make the effort because it would take a Herculean effort to catch the Chicago Bulls, of whom you can give me any number between 5 and 20 as a win projection for this team and I’d say it was reasonable. [Update: Guys! This isn't helping! Guys!] The Phoenix Suns are still garbage but are at least watchable garbage from a Lose perspective, given that Devin Booker is terrific, given that they play no defense at all, and given that they continue to have at least one guy on the court at all times who has no idea where he is supposed to be. In the “fun bad” category, we’ve at least got the Sacramento Kings to kick around, are there is no way a team with 10 guys on the rookie scale mixed in with 58-year-old Vince Carter and 53-year-old Zac Randolph can be any good, but the kids will play their asses off and probably lose a lot of games simply due to inexperience. People in the NBA desperately want the Los Angeles Lakers to be relevant again, and hype up Lonzo Ball and, hey, have you heard that Kyle Kuzma is jesus? But that’s silly and it’s all geared to next season if/when they sign LeBron and PG13 and Russell Westbrook (nope can’t do that anymore) … never mind that they don’t have the cap space for any of that stuff … but in the meantime, anyone who says this is a good team is engaging in wishful thinking. Oh yes, and then there are the New York Knicks, with the worst point guard situation in the league and with little flexibility – since they grossly overpaid Tim Hardaway Jr., willingly took on Enes Kanter’s contract from the Zombies, and are still paying Noah – no coherent offensive plan, a big whiff in the draft by not drafting Dennis Smith, and a defensive scheme something along these lines:

This illustration by Sam Woolley/GMG might be the greatest .gif in NBA history

The Feast
All of these teams are gonna get chewed up in the West. Two of them will actually make the playoffs. You can make the argument that none of them deserve it. I think the Los Angeles Clippers will be entertaining right up until the point that Blake Griffin gets hurt, because Teodosic is a human highlight reel and I like the idea of running the offense through Blake and also like Gallinari, who may be able to stay healthy since he no longer has any Dutch eurobasketers on which to break his hand in a fight, and the Clippers don’t seem to openly hate each other quite so much now, and they have an actual GM, but all of this is dependent upon getting a full season out of a guy who signed his new $175m contract while wearing a walking boot, and I have zero faith in this happening … Memphis hasn’t drafted a player who they signed to a second contract since Mike Conley, who is now in his 30s. Just think about that for a minute. That’s beyond front office incompetence and verges on negligence. The land of reclamation projects and Grit & Grind is being ground into dust and if this starts off bad this season, I can see them trying to move Marc Gasol. With Gasol and Conley they’ll win some games. Without them, the only rosters worse in the NBA are probably Orlando and Chicago … I just don’t see how the Utah Jazz score. If you’re going to try to win games 90-85, well, good luck with that, but the problem is that they pose so little of an offensive threat that teams really don’t have to worry about guarding them, and can focus all of their energy on breaking down that defense. It sucks that Exum got hurt, since I thought an interesting idea would be to pair him with Rubio and try to run a little bit more, since Rubio can be dynamic on the break … Portland were so desperate to free up money that they traded Crabbe to the Swamp Dragons, who was a guy they actually needed, and they are stuck with Evan Turner, whom they never needed and never should have signed, and while I love the addition of a passing center like Nurkic to the Dame and CJ show, and think they played great together last season, the front court is still awful, and minus Crabbe, a team that desperately needs great shooting to win, because the defense sucks, is now also lacking shooting … literally nothing about the New Orleans Pelicans makes sense. First they were going with two point guards, then Rondo got hurt, and now they’re talking about how they have no real point guard and that AD is going to bring the ball up and Boogie’s going to shoot all the threes, and they no wings at all and the bench is still barren. This just can’t end well. And neither will this blog end well if I don’t start writing faster, but fortunately I can breeze through this next batch.

The East
I care about none of these teams. All of them happen to be in the East. I begrudgingly picked the Toronto Raptors fourth in the East, because I find them dull and didn’t for the life of me understand why they felt to need to resign Serge Ibaka, whose age I won’t question but who plays like he’s 46, and the Raptors will continue on with their low-to-the-ground, pass-averse offense and bore their opponents into submission on their way to winning 48 games and being brushed aside in the playoff, since they’re incredibly guardable if you actual spend more than 3 hours looking at their offense, which no team has any time to do in the regular season. Charlotte is the most boring team in the NBA and that’s all I need to say there. I will admire Indiana for not tanking, because they never tank, even though they should tank, because they aren’t any good … the Dion Waiters Experience will bring some fun and enjoyment to the Miami Heat, although counting on him to be as good as he was a year ago, and also counting on the assortment of spare parts and misfit toys who nearly made the playoffs (along with paying them like something other than spare parts and misfit toys) might not be the smartest idea … oh, god, do I hate everything about the Detroit Pistons. I hate the players, the offensive set-up, the way they’re coached (at least for now, as my guess is you’ll find the first guy fired in Detroit), and for godsake Andre Drummond will you make a damn free throw? It’s really hard to build a team around a guy you can’t have on the floor in crunch time. I would just put him out there and live with it, but there is only so much 35% free throw shooting most coaches can stand. That this team might make the playoffs speaks to just how bad the East really is, since there are probably 12 teams in the West better than this one.

The Yeast
Teams on the rise. These take many forms. Some are bad teams getting better, some are good teams verging on being great. These are the fun teams to watch because you know there is some progress being made. I really like what Brooklyn is doing and while the Swamp Dragons are not good, they’re going to be fun, and there was absolutely no downside to taking a flyer on DeAngelo Russell reviving his career, and Crabbe will shoot a tonne of 3s, and if they’re healthy, they’re probably better than five teams in the East. Dallas is also not good, mostly because the bench is horrible, but Dennis Smith will be the Rookie of the Year, their first five can play a little bit, and they’ll be a pain in the ass to play against … after years of loving and hating The Process, I still don’t have that much trust in the Philadelphia 76ers, since having so much faith in young players usually proves foolish, especially since Fultz seems to have a self-created broken shot and we don’t know what Simmons is going to do, but if they get 60 games of good health out of Joel Embiid this season (bless his heart, he is wonderful), this is probably a playoff team in the East. But the original O/U of a .500 season for this team made me want to drive up to Tahoe and plunk down a boatload of money on the under – which is also what I would do with the Minnesota Timberwolves, while acknowledging that Towns is maybe the best center in the NBA and Jimmy Butler is a boss, because I have no idea how Butler and Andrew Wiggins fit together on the court and have zero faith in Thibs to coach this team to its utmost. And I like Thibs, he was a great mind in Boston and Chicago but now’s he got supreme offensive talents in Wiggins and Towns who don’t seem to be able to guard the floor they’re standing on, and also a team desperate for some spacing has little-to-none. So I’m not as high on the Wolves as I could be, and also I HATE THESE NEW JERSEYS. The offense is terrifying a mile up in the sky, the passing from the post out of Jokic and Millsap will be dazzling, and I’m not as concerned about the point guard spot as others are because all you have to do is dribble it up and then throw it to Jokic as quickly as possible, but they’re still the Enver Nuggets until they find the D. But damn, the offense is going to be sweet. Milwaukee is going as far as Giannis takes them, and if he’s doing stuff like this, and doing it in rhythm with confidence, he may take them a very long way. I’m going to also put Washington here among the Yeast, even though I think the Buzzards are one good trade away from being élite, since the starting lineup is dynamite together. If they stay healthy and shore up that bench, this team could be really dangerous at playoff time, as there is literally no one on any roster in the Eastern Conference who can stop John Wall.

The Beast
Royalty. My thinking going into this season was that the San Antonio Spurs were going to solve their point guard issue by simply counting on Kawhi to tighten his handle and focus in the offseason on his playmaking, because what’s been lost on people is that this guy literally develops and masters a new skill every year, which is how the Spurs keep being so successful, so we’d all better hope that he gets healthy soon and in the meantime, signing Rudy Gay and Gasol and giving LMA an extension makes no sense to me, it’s as if in their quest to zig when the others zag the Spurs are doubling down on the whole “get old and slow” theory of the game which has gone out of fashion, but system ball wins a lot of games in the regular season, which the Spurs will do plenty of, and also Vote Pop in 2020. I’m not convinced that OKC is anywhere as good as people hope they will be, because there are still too many one-note players and the bench is horrible, and I’m not convinced Russ will alter his game after being spoon-fed and pandered to by the organization last season, nor am I convinced Carmelo Anthony will alter his game either, which means Paul George will have to, and he’s the one guy that shouldn’t. But it should be fun to see them try. If Kyrie Irving brings the same vision and creativity to passing as he does shotmaking, then the Boston Celtics are going to be really good by season’s end, but in the mean time, they’re going to be trying to introduce all of these new players, and given that the roster presently consists of Kyrie, two bigs, and 68 wings, I’m not sure how they ever get a rebound. Cleveland now has the same problem Boston did a year ago – they have no one to stop Kyrie Irving – and who knows when IT will be healthy again. In the meantime, a Rose/DWade starting backcourt is a defensive nightmare and a spacing clogger on what was a devastating offense last season. This team managed to somehow get older and slower in the offseason, which wasn’t what needed to happen. I think they’re smart to start Kevin Love at center, and Crowder simply has to play to add at least one plus-defender, although I don’t see what value Thompson has coming off the bench. (Then again, I’ve never thought he had that much value as a starter, either.) But none of that matters for now, because LeBron will be in a bad mood here and want to clobber people, at least until they start getting lax midway through the season and all of the rumors about his future start becoming a constant distraction. I love pairing James Harden and Chris Paul in Houston, simply because you have a Hall of Fame point guard on the floor for 48 minutes, and it’ll be fun to see if the Rockets figure out how to use Paul’s terrific midrange game to compliment the snipers from deep. This is gonna be fun. But none of this matters, really, because the Golden State Warriors actually went out in the offseason and improved what was already one of the best teams in history. Yes, they got better, and also this season, they don’t need to spend three months integrating Durant into the system while Steph Curry fully comes back from a knee injury far worse than people made it out to be. Due to that uncertainty, the Warriors big four all actually shot worse than their usual from 3-point range last season, and Golden State still had the best offense in the NBA. Oh yeah, and they have the second best defense. The Warriors may win 70 without actually trying. That’s how great the margin of error is. They’ve loaded up the bench and I suspect they’re going to rest everyone regularly throughout the season, because their only real opponent is injuries.

ESPN staff picks for 2017-2018 season

Now, some people may not like the fact that it seems almost like a foregone conclusion to start the season who is going to win the title, but I wound remind everyone that it seemed that way two years ago as well, which did not happen, and I’d also point out that what you’re seeing from the Warriors is like nothing you’ve ever seen in the sport, and I’d recommend you enjoy it while it lasts, because it won’t last forever.

And neither will this blog. I have other stuff to do. Whew! Wait ... what was I doing again?

Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? Would you like to commiserate because your team sucks? Drop me a line! You can email me at inplaylose@gmail.com, and when we get enough questions and comments gathered up, I’ll do another Hate Mail edition of In Play Lose.