07/08 Season Preview Part 3 - East
@BenitoSTARR,
@Dan &
@sebsheep on the
New York Knicks (54-28, Conference Final)
How will the new Cafite trio manage? Expectations are high, but they may have to be tempered with the knowledge that the Knicks leadership apparently considers their team to be "rebuilding" this season. On the face of it there don't seem to be too many reasons why they would do any worse than last season, so what gives? We'll have to wait and see if the strategy has any tangible consequences.
@hobbers and the (good???)
Charlotte Bobcats (42-40, 1st Round)
hobbers has been very, very slowly declining the last couple of years, but 1) that only took him to "still best player in the world", and 2) he seems to be trying to reverse it. Surprisingly the rest of the Charlotte Bobcats seem to have gone along for the ride. There are no huge changes (except maybe the signing of the pretty good Sebastian Telfair), but somehow the team just seems... better. It's possible for an 89 rating player to take a decent team to the finals, where anything can happen. He'll just have to take on a historically strong Eastern Conference to do it, and then
probably deal with a very strong Lakers. Is it possible? Maybe.
@V.O. is on the
New Jersey Nets (42-40)
V.O. cursed himself for ending up on the New Jersey Nets, but they aren't
terrible this season, are they? V.O. is their superstar, and they've got a very solid group after him. Mind you, the members of that group are nearly universally on the last year of their contract, so it might be now or never. The Nets are also "rebuilding", mind.
@Samid is on the
Cleveland Cavaliers (25-57)
A very minor decline for
Samid this off-season, but it's unlikely to matter at all. His Cavaliers aren't half bad. They aren't half good either. They're just... half? It's like a very solid core to build around a superstar, except they forgot to get the superstar. Samid has two years left on his contract, but then that's never stopped him from moving teams before.
@weetee on the
Atlanta Hawks (37-45)
Just looking at their squad, the Atlanta Hakws
should be good.
weetee forms part of a starting five that seems to have two great players, one very good player and two good-enough (?) players. He's also locked into several years left together with Tim Thomas and LeBron James, though the potential worry could be that those three combined take up a very (un)healthy part of the Atlanta salary cap.
@Dr. Dwayne on the
Indiana Pacers (37-45)
Dr. Dwayne is on another one of those "superstar support staff sans superstar" squads. 67 isn't too far off, but the worry is that he'll have to do
a lot of the heavy lifting on his own. He's getting too old for this shit.
@Solius &
@reelworld on the
Orlando Magic (44-38, 2nd Round)
"nimic", I hear you asking, "why did you decide to arbitrarily include so many bad players in the screenshot for the Magic? The answer is that there's nothing arbitrary about it; it's just the squad. The whole squad. All of it. You don't need to scroll up to the Finances screenshot to identify that the Orlando Magic are in "rebuilding" mode, they just forgot the building part of it. As a consequence,
Solius and
reelworld have to share the court with some very bad players. It probably doesn't help that the 4 best players on the team - the only 4 players above 42 in rating - are Guards.
Good luck.
@oneniltothearsenal and the
Miami Heat (31-51)
oneniltothearsenal wished to be delivered from the dire Seattle Supersonics, and his wish was granted. He's now back on the dire Miami Heat. I think it's worth remembering that he's still among the better players in the league, and has quietly been collecting stats and awards all these years, including a lot of Double Doubles and Quadruple Doubles. Just not a lot of wins. Will that change this year, maybe?
No, it will not.
