Dunk Base

I am by nature a skeptic.  If most “experts” suggest that something is going to happen, my inclination is to find an alternative route, especially in a medium like sports, where there are multiple outcomes to the end the product after several months of build up.  This seems to be the path I’m taking at the start of this NBA season.

If one reads through the NBA previews that have been released thus far (which I seem to be addicted to), the one thing that is glaringly obvious is that the Lakers are unanimous favorites to repeat as champions.  When I say “unanimous, I mean, there has yet to be a credible publication published that has picked a team other than the Lakers to win the NBA title this season.  The only real disagreement is which Eastern Conference team among the Cavaliers, Celtics, and Magic will be the victims.  Now Sports Illustrated, Slam, and Hoop haven’t released their preseason predictions yet (or at least that I’ve seen), but I can be reasonably sure that their assessment isn’t going to be much different than ESPN, Sporting News (who apparently bought Street and Smith, I was appalled by this), Athlon, Yahoo, and Lindys.

This irks me a great deal for a number of reasons.  Most of all, I hate preseason predictions.  They’re usually based on no tangible substance except what happened in the previous season and as we’re all reminded every season, a lot can change over the summer (this has a lot more importance in College sports, but it still applies to Pro Sports, just in a smaller capacity).  Second is, I hate the Lakers with a passion, they rank up there with the Cowboys and Yankees as sports teams that I would be happy to be expunged from existence.  Third, it always leaves a bad feeling in the pit in my stomach when so many “experts” pick one team to be the favorite, because it’s just begging to be wrong in the end (call it whatever you will).

Although the biggest problem I have with it is this: they’re not wrong.  At this point, there is no logical reason to think anyone but the Lakers (but there are plenty irrational reasons not to pick them).  Of all the obvious contenders, the Lakers are the team with either the fewest holes or the least amount of question marks.  They return two All NBAers from last season in Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, a still up and coming Andrew Bynum at center, and Lamar Odom as an earlier front runner for sixth man of the year.  All of this and they added Ron Artest and while there is some debate over how much of a detriment his crazy is going to be on the team as a whole, in theory he’s an upgrade over Trevor Ariza.  On top of this, they still have Phil Jackson as head coach, who only wins titles in threes (for all those fans of trends).  There only glaring weakness seems to be at the other guard spot, but because of the triangle, the failings of a player like Derek Fisher are minimized.  They’re far from a flawless team but based on the fact that they won last season and made no major changes to their line up (Ariza for Artest is merely a change on the line-up card, Artest offers many of the same things that Ariza did, in theory).

The Lakers are the most comfortable pick right now.  But that’s not to say that there aren’t teams that can challenge them.  Like I said, the Lakers are a far from flawless team, it’s just that they have the least amount of questions surrounding them and “Ron Artest will eventually sink the ship” seems to be prevailing opinion of why they won’t the title again this season.  The other teams that make up the upper echelon of the NBA have a feeling about them that someone has to sort talk themselves into those teams winning it.

Starting with the team the Lakers beat for the Title last summer, none of the top teams overhauled their roster the way the Magic did.  They’re probably going to continue to launch more threes than anyone again this season and they’ll most likely still be a tough defensive team (in fact they might be more formidable in that department), but the uniqueness of their attack is somewhat gone.  Losing their sometimes ball handling small forward Hedo Turkoglu, they become a much more traditional team by inserting Brandon Bass, Ryan Anderson, and Matt Barnes into the position he played last season.  None of them are close to being as versatile as Turkoglu (or even as good really), but assuming that the Magic go to a more traditional, all of these players do things differently than Turkoglu.  Of course, if that was the only change, the Magic would be in relative trouble, but they’re big pick up who should make up for Turkoglu’s scoring is Vince Carter and also gives the Magic swing player to draw in the defense (something they desperately lacked in the Finals).  On paper they look like a stronger team that last season but it’s kind of hard to predict how a team is going to mesh exactly until they’re out on the floor.

The Lakers opponent from two seasons, the Celtics, probably has the biggest question marks.  By acquiring Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels, they shored up the two biggest holes they developed last season, a competent back up big and a competent swing player (Mikki Moore and Tony Allen just did not cut it).  Those are both excellent pick-ups but it’ll all be for naught if Kevin Garnett isn’t healthy next season.  It would be easy to see the group as it presently exists making a somewhat deep playoff run without Garnett, but they are very much not a championship contender if he’s not on the floor.  All of their title hopes essentially hinge on Garnett’s knee.

The Cavaliers had the best record last season and looked poised to make their second trip to the Finals until they matched up with the one team that they couldn’t cope with in the Magic.  They seemingly solved the few problems they had last season.  They traded for a strong inside presence in Shaquille O’Neal and brought in two swing players with size, Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker.  All three of those players should allow for the Cavaliers to play any style to match their opponents on the floor (although knowing Mike Brown, he’s going to be baffled when teams start killing Shaq on the pick and roll and won’t put Lebron at power forward when teams go small against them).  Like Magic, the Cavs look strong on paper but there are enough moving parts that’s it’s difficult to judge how they’re all going to blend together.  Add in a key player like Delonte West having offseason trouble and who knows what kind of emotional state the Cavs are going to start the season.

Finally there are the Spurs, who lost in an odd year for the first time since 2001.  Most of their problems are exactly the same as the Celtics.  While none of their stars quite have the injury problem that Garnett seems to have, adding up Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili’s ailments (and now even Richard Jefferson is having issues), it just about equals to Garnett’s problems.  Still the Spurs should be right in the thick of things with the acquisition of Richard Jefferson giving them some much needed athleticism on the wing and shoring up their front line by signing Antonio McDyess and drafting Dajuan Blair.  But until the entire group is healthy, it’s hard to tell just how good they’re going to be.

In the end, that’s the major issue with making preseason predictions, it’s all a bunch of half hearted speculation.  These are how things stand right now but by the end of the first of the season all of this could change.  There could be a major injury, one of these five teams could stumble out of the gate, and the Portland Trail Blazers (the young team most seemingly poised to take the next step to contender status) could come out like gang busters and turn the entire league on its ear.  But as of now, we’ll just have to sit here in wait and then ignore the predictions we made in summer when everything inevitably turns out different than what everyone planned on.