1. Golden State Warriors – I’m not worried about the loss of J-Rich. Don Nelson is alpha and omega of this team as he plugs in no name players on a regular basis and they seem to perform well. Just look at the roster and tell me there’s another coach on earth who can win with them:
1 – Baron Davis, Troy Hudson
2 – Monta Ellis, Marco Belinelli, Kelenna Azubuike
3 – Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, Mickael Pietrus
4 – Al Harrington, Austin Croshere, Brandan Wright,
5 – Andris Biedrins
They were such fun to watch last year. I think they can keep it up.
2. Sacramento Kings - what a pathetic team. They have exactly one bright spot and for all of you who don't know, his name is Kevin Martin. Bibby hates it here, Artest is a looney, Miller played like a corpse last season and Abdur-Rahim is perpetually injured. On top of that the Kings have a bunch of overpaid and overrated roleplayers (Kenny Thomas, Mikki Moore, John Salmons).
When the season rolls along and they trott out these five:
PG - Bibby
SG - Kev-Mart,
SF - Artest
PF - Rahim
C - Miller
... will you be watching then?
3. LA Lakers - Forget about the drama from La-La land. There are more important issues here such as how effective will Odom be with his surgically repaired shoulder and what do they do with the 3-headed center (Kwame, Bynum, Mihm)? This is gonna end badly.
PG - Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar, Sasha Vujacic, Javaris Crittenton
SG - Kobe Bryant, Maurice Evans,
SF - Luke Walton, Vladimir Radmanovic
PF - Lamar Odom, Ronny Turiaf, Brian Cook
C - Andrew Bynum, Chris Mihm, Kwame Brown
Kobe is surrounded by a bunch of role players and he knows it. This is the season when he takes the matters into his own hands. I predict a ridiculous scoring spree ... that's the only thing that can make the Lakers relevant again.
4. LA Clippers - With Elton Brand hurt the Clips frontcourt looks very thin. Good thing they have 5 small forwards – Patterson, Ross, Thomas, Maggette, Al Thornton - some of which will be sliding to shooting guard and power forward to fill in for injured players.
This is what they look like:
1 – Sam Cassell, Brevin Knight, Shaun Livingston
2 – Cuttino Mobley, Quinton Ross
3 - Corey Maggette, Ruben Patterson, Al Thornton
4 – Tim Thomas, Josh Powell, EB
5 - Chris Kaman, Aaron Williams
Let's dissect them even further.
Cassell is old, injury prone and will be pushing for a buyout in no time (Cleveland sounds about right), Livingston is a bust in addition to being injured all the time, Knight is a decent pass-first PG and will be starting for them in no time (regardless of Dunleavy's conditioning comments), Mobley is ineffective (I can't remember his last good game ... must've been for the Houston Rockets), Ross is a good defensive player but not much more than that, Mags is probably the only bright spot (other than Brand when healthy) and yet they tride to trade him 7 times over the past two years (let's see how that affects his attitude and confidence), Patterson had a great season with the Bucks although he could get distracted (LA is perfect for a registered sex offender), Thornton is a rook I doubt he will have much of an impact this year, Tim Thomas is a fraud (as evidenced by Mike D'Antoni telling him 2 years ago - you play hard for us this year and you'll be able to trick a team into giving you a phat contract. Then you can keep coasting) and any team relying on him is going down and Leatherface errr Chris Kaman at center who plays like a stiff.
On top of everything they traded Jared Jordan, the assists leader for two straight years in the NCAA, to the Knicks. Hey, it's not like they needed a point guard, right? What a stupid move.
This is a wasted season for them anyway – why wouldn’t they use it to develop a pass first point guard? It’s not like there are many of them out there anyway. But whaddaIknow. Maybe today’s NBA teams prefer the Stephon Marburys of the world.
5. Phoenix Suns - Amare Stoudemire is going to sink the Suns and they will regret passing on KG. The reasoning behind the Suns refusal to trade Amare for KG was that Amare is a younger player on the rise while KG was on the decline and didn't have many years left. Also Amare will still be the conerstone of the franchise when Nash retires. Well after 3 knee surgeries in 2 years I'd say that the GM screwed up. KG is an unselfish player, a better defender than Amare and way less injury prone. He could've given them 2 trophies in the next 3 years. He was the missing ingredient, the one player they needed to get them over the hump (or the Spurs if you like).
But the GM outsmarted himself as they often seem to do. The Suns will not win the ring with knee-repair Stoudemire as their franchise guy. They still have a shot with Nash in the fold but I doubt it.
Anyways, the Suns are very thin. One key inury and they're done. They essentially have 8 players in the rotation:
PG – Steve Nash, Barbosa
SG – Raja Bell
SF – Shawn Marion, Grant Hill
PF – Boris Diaw,
C – Amare Stoudemire, Brian Skinner
They also have a situation with Marion who feels unappreciated and wants a contract extension.
GM Steve Kerr downplayed the situation. Kerr recalled a similar time when he was a teammate of Scottie Pippen in Chicago.
"The last year we won a championship, at the beginning of training camp, we had a similar issue, a contract dispute," Kerr said. "It didn't affect the players because we enjoyed playing together. It's business. Players put that aside. That's what we did in Chicago and if I remember correctly we won a championship that year."
This is the thing Steve - Marion doesn't like playing here. He wants to go to a bad team and post 35 points and 10 rebounds a night and be their franchise guy (kinda like Joe Johnson in Atlanta). This time around it's not about business.
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