Basketball This Week (Done) Quickly

The fade for Cade is ON.  Shai may have a monster year.

RPM loves this team.  Whether that will end up being an indictment of that bad stat or not, time will tell.  I think Bledsoe will certainly help their defense, and he’s a nice complimentary player who can I could see fitting nicely in the back court.  There are still a lot of questions how all these dudes fit together, but in the end the fate of this team will all be based on Zion’s progress.  I think at the very least they have the parts to help him out. 

I don’t necessarily love this roster, but it at least makes more sense than it has in recent years.  There is definitely a call by ownership to make the playoffs, and I’m not sure they are there yet, but if enough teams fall before them they can at least get into play-in range.  If the wheels fall off early though I think they should go ahead and just work on developing Edwards.

It’s funny because the media really clutched pearls about their offseason, but it was pretty decent overall.   The Jrue Holiday trade was expensive but will help them a lot.  Bogdan would’ve been nice, but it didn’t happen. This is still a team that was in the midst of a historic run before the season went wonky and they improved from that team, so I expect big things from this team.  If they will be able to overcome their playoff woes, well, that still remains to be seen.

Your NBA runner ups.  Crowder was a surprisingly large percentage of their offense, but not necessarily a good part outside of a hot playoff run.  Avery Bradly can definitely replace a lot of his defense if he can stay healthy.    Other than that they mostly ran it back.  A lot of people were skeptical of their final appearance, bu t if you listened you know I’m not.  I don’t know if they will be able to overcome the Celtics and Bucks again, but I’m not going to count them out and say they don’t have a chance.

So much to love about this team.  They draft well, they have some fun players that are on the come up.  They might have a hard time sustaining winning over 72 games due to their youth, but I expect them to bring it every night, and to be a lot of fun.  I expect them to at least be in the play-in range, maybe better if teams expected to take a step back take a step back.

The Lakers definitely made themselves over from the team that won the title last year.  They went from being a team primarily focused on defense, to at least having a bench that is a little more defensively oriented.  The theory is that Vogel will be able to make good defenders out of those offensive players.    Time will tell if that was a good decision.  At the very least they should be able to weather the storm when LeBron sits.more this season.  I don’t expect LeBron to do a ton of load management this year, for better or worse, by the way.  And of course, the team will still ultimately need AD to bring it often to have a great season. 

The team is pretty similar to last year’s team.  Replacing Montrez with Serge is a great idea if you really believe Serge is still a great defensive presence.  I’m a bit skeptical.  Batum also looks super cooked. But it doesn’t really matter at all if Kawhi and Paul George are healthy and around and everyone is on the same page.  They still hplayers who are theoretically among the best two-way players in the league.  Throw in a solid bench, and it should be easy to win basketball games, the rest of the pieces aside.  In practice it hasn’t worked out like that.  But maybe this year is different. 

It’s hard to really understand what Indiana is doing.  Why’d id they fire their coach if they weren’t going to make any moves?  The team did fine.  The talent is what it is.  Do they think the coach has a special fix for it?  I again expect Indiana to be in the middle of the pack of the East with a chance of a first round series win.