You have kind of proved my point with how you did this calculation. You have given the absolute best possible scenario and rotations to these guys to eek the way to 32 wins.
I think I made that pretty clear.
No team ends up spending the entire 82 games with their projected 10 man rotation at the start of the year, though.
So yeah, you can come up with all kinds of reasons why things will go wrong for them, or why their best players won't play that many minutes or games.
Yes, the Nets are lacking in depth, which makes them more susceptible to things going wrong.
Still, 30 wins or so sounds right to me, barring a catastrophic injury or Joe Johnson falling off a cliff. I don't know about the former, but I doubt that the latter is going to happen.
The Nets may not get much higher than 30 wins due to their lack of depth, but this is the Eastern Conference, and a well coached team that gets some unexpected contributions from some scrappy bench guys and rides their core guys hard (as the Nets did at the end of this past season) can win 5-8 more games than expected. The Celts did it, after all.
The Nets might bottom out and finish with a terrible record. I'm not placing any bets on it. There will be teams that are doing poorly sometime in February and decide to pack it in. The Nets have no reason to do that. They will keep fighting to get the most out of their roster for the entire season. In the East, that should be enough to remain in the playoff hunt until April.
We like to talk about all the reasons why the Celts will continually exceed expectations. Why no willingness to do that for the Nets? They've got a nice coach, too. Lionel Hollins isn't perfect, but I don't think he's likely to let that team fall into the gutter. He's done a good job with that team so far.
With respect to this, for me personally, I think the Celtics could improve based on things that historically and normally happen in the NBA. We do have a few players that should be improving like Smart, KO, Crowder and Sullinger in a contract year. These guys are all between 21-25 and have a few seasons of experience under the belt. Historically, this is a time when players at their age/experience level increase.
By contrast our other rotation players are actually pretty young and should not be getting worse. Bradley will be 25, Turner is 26, IT is 26. We only have 1 player over 30 in David Lee (32). This means we have a lot of room for improvement in a traditional way of players improving in their early and mid 20's.
By contrast, you are expecting big healthy seasons from guys in their 30's like Jack and an ancient Joe Johnson.
The Celtics also have a much larger room for error because of their depth so when IT, or Sullinger inevitably miss a handful of games we are still able to play NBA level players like Amir, Lee, Smart, Bradley, Jerekbo at the same positions that won't absolutely destroy us. When any of these Nets guys miss a handful of games, you are talking about sub-replacement levels players entering the court. That is a fact that is unavoidable and is worth at least some wins.
I guess at larger picture the Celtics finished with a better record than the Nets last year. We only lost one player that played significant minutes (Bass) and have added at least two (Johnson and Lee) that more than offset that. Meanwhile, the Nets lost a bunch of their rotation including their 3rd best player and best backup big and only got one healthy replacement in Bargs that is expected to play. You add all this stuff up and they are a really bad team, one that is worse than the 38 win outfit from last year with very few avenues for internal improvement. Repeating the East is weak over and over again as your main argument isn't really countering any of that.
well put. these are the same points I go to in discussions regarding why I think the Nets will be a lousy team this year.
Also, even though the C's improved their roster going into next year from the end of last season, it may not be enough to make the playoffs.
- the 6 teams that finished better than them in the East still figure to be better.
- Miami is significantly better with players returning healthy and adding Winslow. Easily a better team than the C's.
That's 7 teams that are not a stretch to finish better than the Cs. So I really think the C's are fighting for that 8th seed at best.
- Indy, while losing West and Hibbert, added Ellis and Myles Turner and getting Paul George back. I think the positives outweigh the negatives here. They have 2 guys that can score at the end of games which is something we still lack (IT is NOT the solution as we saw in the playoffs). They should finish better than the Nets easily and quite possibly better than the C's.
- Detroit made some moves that seems to provide a better balance to their roster. I think they'll be better than last year. how much better is the question. Better than the Nets IMHO.
- Charlotte made some headscratching moves (and drafted Kaminsky to boot) so a team I thought was on the upswing could be trending upwards, treading water or sinking. too early to tell right now but they seemed to have addressed their chemistry issues. May not challenge the C's but should have enough talent to pass the Nets.
- Orlando -- a very young team but with a good balance. players showing improvement. Gordon, Payton and Oladipo are a pretty nice core with Hezonja added to give them a potential killer scorer down the stretch of games. Probably won't catch the C's but not a complete stretch to catch the Nets.
- NY -- signed Afflalo and Lopez and gets Melo back. that's a real improvement right there. can't see them in the playoff hunt or finishing better than the C's just based on team depth but I would not be surprised to see them pass the Nets if Melo is like his old self and Afflalo helps take some of the scoring burden off of Melo.
- Philly --> still a dumpster fire. The only team in the East I would guarantee will finish worse than the Nets. Keeping my fingers crossed that the Nets pick ends up leapfrogging them in the lottery drawing to the top 3 and Hinkie can suck eggs for another year.
Topic: #NBAFrontOffice on the Celtics Rebuild (Read 19435 times)