NBA Season Preview Part III: A Few Good Players
Welcome to part three of our NBA Season Preview series. If you missed part one and/or two, you can find them via the links embedded in this sentence. The brief synopsis is thus: We’re taking a quick look at every team in the league, organized in tiers. Each tier will get its own post, starting with the worst and building up to the best.
This isn’t meant to be a definitive ranking (though we should drop some power rankings shortly), so teams within tiers are ordered alphabetically.
Today we present you with a grouping we’re referring to as the “A Few Good Players.” Each team included here is too flawed to be reasonably considered anything beyond a fringe playoff contender. They all have enough talent to find their way into the postseason, and lose in the first round. It’s not the most enviable situation to be in as an organization, but there are worse things to be than an eight seed.
Charlotte Hornets
Last Year’s Record: 36–46
Projected Starters
C- Dwight Howard
PF- Marvin Williams
SF- Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
SG- Nicolas Batum
PG- Kemba Walker
Relevant Bench Players: Cody Zeller, Malik Monk, Frank Kaminsky, Michael Carter-Williams, Jeremy Lamb, Dwayne Bacon
I think the Hornets are a playoff team this year. They “won” the Dwight Howard trade, at least from a talent perspective, and in doing so shored up their biggest weakness, not having a credible center on the roster beyond Cody Zeller. They’ll have some work to do to figure out who plays when, but in adding Howard, Charlotte can ensure that they have a solid defensive five on the floor at all times. They were 6.4 points worse per 100 possessions on that end when Zeller sat.
Kemba Walker will need to have another good year for things to work on offense, but assuming he continues to play well, Charlotte likely has enough shooting and secondary ball handling surrounding him to do quite well. They have some holes that will get picked at in a seven game series, but as a regular season team, the Hornets will give opponents plenty of headaches.
Dallas Mavericks
Last Year’s Record: 33–49
Projected Starters
C- Dirk Nowitzki
PF- Harrison Barnes
SF- Wesley Matthews
SG- Seth Curry
PG- Dennis Smith Jr.
Relevant Bench Players: Nerlens Noel, Dwight Powell, J.J. Barea, Devin Harris, Yogi Ferrell, Dorian Finney-Smith
Dirk is really getting old, but it’s hard to bet against him and Rick Carlisle. Dallas has assembled an interesting young core around their aging cornerstone too. Harrison Barnes, while no superstar, proved to be a better lead dog than many thought he would be last year.
Add in a pesky, twitchy, defense-first big in Nerlens Noel, and a rocket-powered, bowling ball point guard in Dennis Smith Jr., and the Mavs have begun collecting pieces that make more sense with his (Barnes’) developmental timeline. That could make next year a little awkward. Nowitzki is likely a little too aged to compete meaningfully, and most of everyone else is a touch to young.
There’s a world where Dallas makes it work. If Smith can contribute immediately, Noel takes a jump, and Nowitzki keeps healthy enough to stay on the floor as an effective floor-spacer, then the Mavericks could might be able to fight for the last playoff spot in the West. It’s probably not wise to bet on all that happening though.
Detroit Pistons
Last Year’s Record: 37–45
Projected Starters
C- Andre Drummond
PF- John Leuer
SF- Tobias Harris
SG- Avery Bradley
PG- Reggie Jackson
Relevant Bench Players: Ish Smith, Stanley Johnson, Luke Kennard, Langston Galloway, Henry Ellenson,Reggie Bullock
I want to believe in Andre Drummond. I really do. Just watch him run some time. The way he moves at his size is incredible. And yet, it’s never translated into a particularly valuable brand of basketball. That’s a result of a lack of skill. Drummond is terrible in the post, middling as a roll man, and a complete nonthreat as a shooter.
He’s mobile enough to suggest he might be a good defender, but has never rated out as a particular impactful player on that end of the floor. The Pistons actually allowed 10.3 more points per 100 possessions when Drummond was on the court last year (per Basketball Reference).
There are other variables to consider when evaluating that number, but in ESPN’s defensive real plus minus, which attempts to be context-independent, Drummond ranked as the 27th best center in the league. A mark likely boosted up by his defensive rebound rate (the exact calculation of RPM is proprietary information, but Kevin Pelton has mentioned the rebound rate as a relatively significant variable).
If Detroit wants Drummond to be their best player, they need to get a lot more out of him. He has all the physical tools to be, if not old-school Dwight Howard, at least present day DeAndre Jordan. Those guys figured out how to play defense in a way that Drummond is yet to sniff though, and expecting him to suddenly turn into an All-NBA caliber defensive force next year is closer to insane than it is realistic.
With all that being said, the Pistons weren’t far out of the final playoff spot last year, and they should be a better team in the upcoming season. New shooting guard, Avery Bradley, is an upgrade over Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (maybe not long-term, but certainly immediately), and Reggie Jackson should have a bounce back year. It’s hard to imagine him playing any worse.
Toss in the fact that several of the contenders for the East’s final playoff spot took major steps back, and suddenly there is a real reason to think that Detroit could be in the postseason mix. Just how high their ceiling is is another, more depressing question entirely.
Indiana Pacers
Last Year’s Record: 42–40
Projected Starters
C- Myles Turner
PF- Thad Young
SF- Bojan Bogdanovic
SG- Victor Oladipo
PG- Darren Collison
Relevant Bench Players: Cory Joseph, Lance Stephenson, Domantas Sabonis, Glen Robinson III, T.J. Leaf, Al Jefferson
The Pacers will start the season without superstar wing Paul George on their roster for the first time in seven years. They added just enough talent this summer to make it seem like they have a chance at one of the bottom playoff spots in the East, but the team’s ceiling has collapsed in the George vacuum. All of Indiana’s projected starters outside of Myles Turner are decent players, but none rate as above-average for their positions.
That’s not an ideal position to be in, but it could be worse. In Turner they have a stretchy, athletic five, theoretically capable of defending the rim and spacing the floor out to the three-point line.
If the Pacers sub out Collison for Corey Joseph, and can find a way to get decent defensive contributions from either Lance Stephenson or Glen Robinson III, they could have a very talented, switchable, and potentially stingy unit on their hands. It’s unclear if they could score enough points for it to matter.
New Orleans Pelicans
Last Year’s Record: 34–48
Projected Starters
C- DeMarcus Cousins
PF- Anthony Davis
SF- E’Twaun Moore
SG- Jrue Holiday
PG- Rajon Rondo
Relevant Bench Players: Jordan Crawford, Frank Jackson, Cheick Diallo, Alexis Ajinca
I’m going to try not to dive into this too much, since I wrote about it already here, but I’ll give you the cliff notes. This version of the Pelicans, with two supersized superstars, is the most fascinating team in the league for me. I’m a huge believer in talent trumping everything in the NBA, and have always thought that DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis rate at the top end of that spectrum individually.
I want to live in a world where a team with enough star-level big men can challenge the small ball philosophy that so dominates today’s game. Theoretically New Orleans has the top-level personnel to give it a shot. But the more I watched this team, the less convinced I became that they could create an effective counter-cultural big ball revolution, or maybe devolution.
Part of that has to do with the style of play. It may simply be the case that no amount of talented bigs can compete with a cleanly spaced floor and the barrages of three-pointers that tend to come with it. And even if that weren’t the case, Cousins and Davis just don’t have enough talent around them to really find out. Don’t be surprised if this team leaves us wondering about what could have been.
