Here’s a fun fact: Since its creation at the start of the 2004-05 season, only two teams have won this division, and both reside in the state of Florida. The Heat have seven division titles, the Magic own three— none of the other teams have even won this division! In the last decade, this division has produced the Eastern conference champion six times. Quiet as kept, this division produced four playoff teams just last year. They can’t seriously pull that off again, can they?
Orlando Magic
This summer the Magic let go the last piece of their 2009 NBA Finals team. Jameer Nelson left Orlando for Dallas, thus officially closing the book (they got rid of the old arena and everything) on a brief, but memorable moment in Magic history. Now the Magic are knee deep in an arduous rebuilding process, one that has seen them also utilize the now ubiquitous method of rebuilding: doubling up on lottery picks in one draft in an attempt to expedite the procedure. The Cavs did it, the Jazz did it, the Hornets did it, the 76ers did it and the Magic have also done it, all within the last four drafts.
Sidebar: The catch with this is hitting on draft picks is hard— hitting on two is twice as hard. And if the talent pool isn’t deep that year, you’re pretty much screwed.
General Manager Rob Hennigan, the youngest GM in the league, has put his franchise in the hands of Victor Oladipo, the athletic Aaron Gordon and the rangy Elfrid Payton. Oladipo started fast, but his production slowed late in his rookie season (hit the rookie wall maybe?). And news just came down today Oladipo is out indefinitely with a broken face suffered in practice. Gordon and Payton have plenty of upside, but both are far from slam dunk stars of the future. Bottom line though, there’s simply not nearly enough talent in this locker room to compete on a nightly basis. Put it this way: when your highest paid player is Channing Frye, your team is garbage.
Even though Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic are pretty good players, this team’s core would be questionable in 2018; it’s definitely not winning in 2014.
Atlanta Hawks
The Hawks have been through a lot the last few months, but have handled it well. Even though his transgressions were NOWHERE NEARLY as egregious as Donald Sterling’s, in the post-Sterling NBA, principal owner Bruce Levenson was forced to put the Hawks up for sale after news of a racially charged email surfaced this summer. That led to the news of GM Danny Ferry’s conference call recording, on which he said some disparaging things about African-born player Luol Deng.
The good news in all this for Atlanta is the initial news regarding Levenson broke on the first day of the NFL season, so it flew under the radar, relatively speaking. But Ferry, who had quietly done a masterful job putting together a competitive team while getting the Hawks out of luxury tax hell and Eastern Conference purgatory, has since been suspended indefinitely. If Ferry is asked to walk away permanently, the Hawks may struggle replacing him.
In the interim, ATL brings back a team that won just 38 games last year, but managed to sneak in the playoffs and nearly knock of the top seeded Pacers. A team high on assists, low on rebounding, the Hawks should benefited greatly from the improvements of Paul Milsap (excuse me, three-point specialist Paul Milsap) and Jeff Teague. They also used a draft pick wisely on Michigan State senior big man Adreian Payne. But most importantly, Al Horford is back, which should have significant impact on this team.
How much upside does this group have though? With a short bench and a lack of star power, the Hawks will be right in the thick of that middle-of-the-pack dog fight in the East.
Charlotte Hornets
The Bobcats…oh, my bad. The Hornets! The Hornets are back in Charlotte, and they got a bad ass court & new uniforms too! They have a new old name, (or is it an old new name?) and a new attitude because they gave Lance Stephenson a three-year $27M contract (that’s a bargain!). Coming from the Indiana Pacers, the do-it-all swingman should help solidify one of the better defensive teams in the NBA.
Sidebar: The kid was spittin over that “Hot Nigga” record too, by basketball player standards anyway. This was a big summer for Lance.
The Hornets were short-changed last season when Al Jefferson hurt his foot in last year’s playoffs. But Big Al was quietly fantastic in 2013-14. The growth of Michael Jordan’s young players, plus Jefferson’s presence, should have the Hornets thinking playoffs again. The questions lie on the offensive end. Kemba Walker has improved, but in a league swarming with incredible point guard play, how high is his ceiling? They drafted an energetic rebounder in Noah Vonlah from Indiana with the ninth overall pick, but it’s unclear just how good he is.
And with all the potential to be the best defensive team in the league, this team still can’t shoot. Aside from Gary Neal, the Hornets have nobody that would make a defender close out on a three with anything quicker than a slight jog.
Sidebar: Oh, and as long as Lance and PJ Hariston are both on this squad, they’ll be going nowhere quick. It’s in clear violation of the NBA’s unwritten “one knucklehead per legit contender” rule.
In today’s NBA, you had better be able to space the floor and hit the three— this could be Charlotte’s Achilles heel all year.
But you gotta love those jerseys though.
Washington Wizards
The Bullets (hell, Charlotte got their old name back, why can’t we call these guys the Bullets?) enter 2014-15 with higher than usual expectations. Having brought in Paul Pierce to replace Trevor Ariza, the Bullets are clearly in win-now mode.
At this point, you might be wondering “well, what did Pierce do last year in Brooklyn anyway?” Glad you asked! Pierce averaged 13.5 points, 4.6 boards and 2.4 assists in 28 minutes a night. All of these numbers were career lows (assists per game were tied for the lowest), and guess what? At age 36, those numbers aren’t going back up. Sorry dawg, that’s “the truth”.
Time to back up all that tough talk.
What’s cool though is the future Hall of Famer wasn’t brought to Chocolate City to do the heavy lifting. He was brought in to be the veteran voice in the locker room to help this young Wiz Bullets team get through the tough times, such as last year’s second round series versus Indiana when John Wall shot .368 and averaged four turnovers per game, and Bradley Beal shot .412 and averaged 19 points on 17 shots a game. Beal & Wall were as big a reason this team lost four of five against an emotional car-crash of a Pacers team.
Sidebar: But this is “the best backcourt in the NBA” though, and don’t you forget it.
Washington’s size will help them in the playoffs— Nenê and Marcin Gortat are talented big men that must be accounted for and could give a team like the Cavaliers all sorts of problems. Even though Beal will miss significant time out the gate with a broken wrist, he could make the All-Star team in the East and should, along with Wall, lead the Bullets to a division crown.
Miami Heat
When LeBron James left Cleveland in July 2010, everybody in Ohio was sick. Some even went through the five stages of grief right before out eyes— I ain’t talking about fans either! So now Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh (and Erik Spoelstra and Pat Riley) have acted like they’re all cool with LeBron James bouncing on them. But he hurt em. He did. Nobody likes rejection.
Miami pulled one off one of the greatest coups in NBA history, but Riley’s vision was short sighted as the Heat locked themselves into a cap situation that made it virtually impossible to improve the team around The Big Three. Whether out of foolishness or arrogance, the Heat could only muster Josh McRoberts, Danny Granger and Shabazz Napier in an effort to woo James prior to his departure. After he made his intentions known, Riley opted not to rebuild, and instead signed Luol Deng, and re-uped Wade and Bosh.
Bosh amazingly got a max-deal of five years and $118 million to stay on South Beach. Granted, he was asked to do less offensively in recent years, but this dude averaged less than 17.0 points and 7.0 rebounds a night last season. Those are Nikola Pekovic numbers (I know, it’s apples and oranges, but still)! If Bosh doesn’t go back to putting up Toronto numbers immediately, and if Wade can’t play at least 70 games at a relatively high level, Miami is going nowhere fast.
The Heat probably have the greatest ceiling/floor differential of any team in the East. If all goes well, this could be a top four team in the conference. If injuries and complacency set in, they could easily miss the playoffs altogether after going to the Finals four consecutive years.
The power of LeBron.
Eastern Conference Playoff Teams: Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Washington Wizards (I give up), Toronto Raptors, Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Miami Heat
I really want to put the Knicks in the playoffs— they could definitely make it. And it’s kind of hard to imagine four teams making the playoffs from the Southeast Division again. But the loss of Tyson Chandler and Derek Fisher being a rookie coach may be too much transition for them to overcome. Plus if they dump Amar’e or Bargnani to clear cap space, they’ll miss the little bit of production they brought to the frontcourt. A trade for Rajon Rondo would have them back in the mix however.
Eastern Conference Champion: Cleveland Cavaliers
With a decent amount of luck and an underrated amount of cunning, the Cavs front office put together the greatest offseason in NBA history, on paper anyway. As stated in HHSR’s Central Division Preview, Cleveland will win 60 games and make it look relatively easy most nights, but Chicago’s size, defense and (hopefully) Derrick Rose will make them earn it.
Come to think of it, all of my fundamental basketball beliefs are telling me to pick the Chicago Bulls to represent the Eastern Conference in the Finals. The Bulls are bigger, tougher, arguably deeper, better defensively, chock-full of playoff experience and continuity, and they know how to make LeBron James work.
Many prognosticators are scared off by the fact that Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters have never played in the playoffs and David Blatt has never coached in it either. Guess what though? These guys ain’t Mo Williams (aka a second round pick on his third team when he landed in The Land). Love is a two time All-NBA Second Team performer. The likelihood that you see some type of epic postseason fall-off from a player this elite is slim to none. And a funny thing happened on the way to Anthony Davis’ coronation as the next great young player set to take over the NBA after a dominating MVP performance for a gold medal-winning Team USA at the FIBA Wold Cup this summer…it didn’t happen.
Irving won MVP of that tournament. He was the best player there. All the stuff you probably read or heard about Davis growing into a leader and transposing that experience back on his NBA team a la Kevin Durant in 2010 now must be fixated onto Irving.
The Cavs are insanely talented — to the point that it’s exceedingly difficult to not believe in this group — and none of their “Big Three” have even hit 30 years of age. Cleveland has also maintained the cap and roster flexibility to bring in a rim protector or Ray Allen if they choose. David Blatt is no stranger to offensive minded basketball, so dropping close to 110 on a nightly basis shouldn’t be an issue for a team that naturally fits so well together. But how the Cavs respond to their current state on the defensive end, where during the preseason they were constantly seen escorting ball-handlers to the basket, is where they really must develop on the fly. It’s also the best place for James to impart his leadership.
The pervasive anti first-year “super team” narrative to which most Cavs detractors will point tend to overlook one thing: the 1981 Celtics, the 1983 Lakers, the 2004 Lakers and the 2011 Heat all made the NBA Finals in the first year of their “super teams”. So while only one (the Celtics) won the title and while some consider the ’04 Lakers and ’11 Heat to be massive disappointments…THEY STILL MADE THE NBA FINALS!
The heart says Cleveland, but the head says Chicago. But then I think a little more, and the heart overrides it. Who knows if Derrick Rose even lasts 30 games? And the comeback story of the decade won’t be complete without at least a Finals appearance, right?
