by Gil Roth
(Last day of NBA Week here on VM! Soon, it’ll be back to confessional rambling and snarky comments about the news!)
Atlanta Hawks
This team, hands down, gave us the most entertaining story of the offseason. They offered Phoenix way too many assets for a free agent sign-and-trade of Joe Johnson, then saw their “team governor” minority owner submarine the deal, because he felt it was too expensive.
The other two ownership groups had to sue to get the guy “de-recognized” by the league, and then had to buy him out, which made the Johnson deal even more expensive. Is JJ worth it? Of course not! He put up nice numbers as a complementary player with Phoenix, but he’ll be exposed when he’s controlling the ball this season.
His main reason for leaving the Suns, of course, was that he was tired of being the fourth option.
The rest of this team looks pretty awful. Al Harrington got exposed last year when he wanted to go be the main man in Atlanta. Unfortunately, there’s not even a Gold Club for him and JJ to head to for solace. At least they can go The Cheetah, Atlanta’s only choice in fine dining gentlemen’s clubs.
Projected record: 18-64
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Charlotte Bobcats
I thought they’d be adequately bad last year, and I was right. Bad, but not record-setting bad. This year, though, it looks like their draft was coordinated by the marketing department. They took a pair of guys from UNC with high picks, one of whom clearly came out of college too early, since he made the prediction that the Bobcats will make the playoffs this season.
The team had some success developing its young players, like Gerald Wallace, and watched Brevin Knight somehow post 9 assists per game. That career resurrection was enough to get him consigned to the bench this year, where he’ll tutor Ray Felton in how to be undersized and play on 7 teams in 8 years.
Projected record: 21-61
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Miami Heat
This team is completely befuddling. They were within 5 minutes of getting to the finals before they melted down against Detroit. So, rather than tweak with the lineup, they blew up half of it, bringing in a couple of no-defense gunners in Antoine Walker and Jason Williams, an over-the-hill ass in Gary Payton, and one of my favorite players from two seasons ago, James Posey. How will they fit together? Will all those new guys need too many shots to be effective? Will Antoine Walker get into a fight with Shaq over the post-game buffet spread?
I have no idea. The mere presence of Shaq will keep guys in line, and Dwyane Wade made The Leap last year into superstar status, as he single-handedly carried the team in the second round of the playoffs, but a lot of these new players seem like raging idiots, to be honest.
That said, I’ll pay to watch Jason Williams any ol’ day. I know that, every game, he will try to make at least one pass that no one else in the league would think of throwing.
Funnily enough, Shaq complained that he was too skinny last year, and that’s why he got injured. So he decided to bulk up for this year. Now, I’m firmly convinced that, by the end of his run in LA, he was topping 400 lbs. The fact that he retained such amazing footwork is like watching that scene in The Freshman where Brando ice-skates pretty gracefully around a rink.
I imagine that a bunch of these pickups were made with an eye toward beating Indiana, not Detroit, and that the smartitude of the plan will make itself clear in late May, leaving me feeling like an imbecile.
Projected record: 60-22
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Orlando Magic
Steve Francis, who seemed to have a sorta gay relationship with Cuttino Mobley, went in the tank after the Big Cat got traded to Sacramento. At some point, they’ll have to shift him to SG for good, but it won’t matter. Like Stephon Marbury, he has no clue about how to make other players better.
I saw him play last year, and pile up a ton of assists while his team was down by 16. There are some nice players on this team, but they’re not exactly going to ride their big high school oaf back to the playoffs. He’s a good rebounder, but he has no instincts for offense, except for dunking putbacks.
Grant Hill made a nice comeback last year, but I can’t imagine that he can sustain it for another season. I hope they figure out some way to run him at the point, and get the scorers to concede that Hill’s the best ball-handler on the squad. Won’t happen, because of Francis, but it’s nice to hope.
Projected record: 28-64
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Washington Wizards
Okay, I was completely wrong about this team last year. I joked that they were trying to recreate the “magic” of the 2001-02 Golden State Warriors by reuniting Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison, and Larry Hughes. Turned out they’d learned to play in those intervening years, and put up a pretty good season. Unfortunately, they got swept in the playoffs by a Miami Heat team that was missing Shaq for the whole series. So, they were good, but not that good.
They lost Hughes in the offseason, but it would’ve been insane to re-sign him at the money Cleveland offered, so they added Antonio Daniels instead. Then they traded Kwame “I’ve still got upside” Brown to LA for Caron Butler, which really helped them restock. I think this team is in better position than last year’s was, but I’m a retard. So I’m going to predict that they make a little jump next year into the second-tier of playoff squads.
Projected record: 50-32