29 And A Half NBA Predictions

I used to really like basketball. At some point between when I stopped playing basketball and Jordan's awful Wizards comeback, which I still think we can erase from history if we all just pretend it never happened, I completely stopped caring. Over the last few years, I've been dipping a toe back into the NBA waters. This year, I'm going to try to pay attention. So here's my NBA preview with a prediction for each team, in order of how good I think they'll be.

30. The Sacramento Kings will be the worst team in the NBA. Name a player on the Sacramento roster, go ahead, I dare you.

29. Sometime in January, the Milwaukee Bucks will play a home game on the same day as a Packers playoff game and become the first team in history to record a zero for attendance.

28. The Timberwolves will sign Brett Favre to play point guard, that guy can do anything, he's just having so much fun out there. I don't think the T'Wolves get enough uncredit (what's the opposite of getting credit, probably not that) for the Ricky Rubio debacle. What was the thinking there? "Hey, this guy isn't sure he'll sign with the team that drafts him." "Oh yeah, well wait until he finds out he's moving from Spain to Minnesota, who could say no to that?"

27. The Memphis Grizzlies will start playing hockey. This team left a nice Canadian city for a second rate U.S. city that barely notices them. Sounds like a hockey team to me, it's only a matter of time, I say the time is now. (I really wish Allen Iverson had gone to a decent team. I was all set to say he was ready for a big comeback year. I still think he starts strong, but it's hard to see him keeping it up all year on a bad team that has him coming off the bench behind guys who aren't nearly as talented as he is. I hope he gets another shot after this year, I'd hate to see Iverson go out this way)

26. The Clippers will find a way to be terrible. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had the Clippers 10-15 spots higher, going to the playoffs, and being surprisingly feisty when they got there. Then Blake Griffin broke his kneecap before the season even started. I actually don't think they'll miss him that much on the court, I was never sold on Griffin, but this incident reminded me that the Clippers are still the Clippers. So, while I still like the Clippers' talent, I'm picking them for 25-30 wins until they prove they can do something different.

25. The Knicks craptastrophy will continue unabated. I only need to know two things about the Knicks. First, their big off-season addition seems to be Darko Milicic. Joe Dumars was once a savvy and respected GM, then he drafted Darko, I can't think of a good move he's made since. So Knicks fans, congratulations, your big off-season acquisition is the guy who, through his sheer lack of basketball ability, broke Joe Dumars. Second, I've seen a lot of Knicks commercials this month. The player that's highlighted most often is Danilo Gallinari. This can't end well. I'm starting to wonder if Mike D'Antoni took this job for the degree of difficulty.

24. Stephen Curry will spend most of the year looking like the next J.J. Redick. I hope this one turns out to be completely wrong, but the Warriors look like a mess and every Curry highlight I saw this pre-season involved him missing a shot and looking confused.

23. The New Jersey Nets will...(editing note: I couldn't get through typing a whole sentence about the Nets without falling asleep, so we'll just have to move on). Except to say this, if you merged the Knicks and Nets, I'm pretty sure you still wouldn't have a playoff team.

22. The Indiana Pacers will throw out a legitimate whitewash (trademark Bill Simmons) on more than one occasion this year. Diener, Dunleavy and any combination of Foster, McRoberts, Hansbrough and Murphy get it done.

21. Michael Jordan will see a Charlotte Bobcats game this year. I'm almost positive this one will happen. I actually think there's a chance this team overachieves a little this year and finds the playoffs, thanks to Larry Brown. But when your team president seems to care about your team roughly as much as I do, that's not a good starting point.

20. The Houston Rockets will not miss Yao Ming. He's a giant stiff. They will, however, miss Tracy McGrady and Ron Artest (who was a much better fit in Houston than he will be in L.A.).

19. This will definitely be Chris Bosh's last year in Toronto. Look, I've been to Toronto, it's an awesome city if you're a hockey star, or a hockey fan, or just an ordinary citizen looking to live in a nice clean city, or a Bison meat enthusiast (I had my first Bison burger in Toronto, it was fantastic, I've never had another one that good, like when I had my first Heineken in Ireland). But it isn't where I'd want to be if I were a big time basketball player, and this team isn't good enough to make him stay.

18. The 76ers aren't a playoff team. I just looked at their roster, I feel like the random Cleveland citizens at the beginning of Major League ("who are these guys?") and Elton Brand is Jake Taylor:
Sixers coach Eddie Jordan: "I wish we'd had him two years ago"
Sixers GM Ed Stefanski: "We did"
Eddie Jordan: "Four years ago then"
(OK, they didn't exactly have him two years ago, but it still almost works, you get my point)

17. The Detroit Pistons will make a bad trade, barely make the playoffs and then get destroyed by the Lebrons. Sound familiar? I think this happens every year until Joe Dumars has an exorcism to get rid of whatever it is Darko did to him.

16. Anyone who doesn't already know about Kevin Durant will find out about him this year. This guy is a superduperstar. If I was on a basketball team, and I saw Durant warming up on the other end of the court, I'd pretend to be injured. Unfortunately, he plays in Oklahoma for some reason, no playoff heroics in his immediate future, but I think he single-handedly gets his team very close to the post-season, and I'm not that sold on the next couple of western conference teams. It could happen, and if I'm the Spurs or the Lakers, I want no part of this in a first round series.

15. The mystery of Andrei Kirilenko will continue to go unsolved. I know this is lower than most people have the Jazz, but I can't put them any higher until someone explains to me what happened to AK-47 and why we're sure it won't happen to other Jazz players. I bet the mormons had something to do with it.

14. Phoenix Suns ownership will sell Amare Stoudemire for a couple of draft picks (which they'll later sell for cash) and some magic beans (NBA magic beans being whatever group of awful players they get back from Desperate Team X at the trading deadline). It's a shame this Suns team never even made the finals. Where I work, we had to recently screw some windows shut to keep them from falling out. That's how I feel about the Suns, their championship window isn't just closed, it's screwed shut.

13. The Miami Heat will continue to be unwatchable, at least for me. I think they have to change their uniforms. Every time I see them, I just think of awful Heat-Knicks games. Also, Dwayne Wade could be the MVP this year. I think Kobe should be the MVP every year, but the people who vote on these things seem to disagree.

12. Chris Paul will completely lose his mind, soon. It's like the Hornets are trying to surround him with as little talent as possible. I think the Sixers did the same thing with Iverson. If the Hornets don't get their act together soon, this story ends with a 34 year old CP3 limping around Madison Square Garden with a tattoo on his neck. Don't say I didn't warn you.

11. The Atlanta Hawks will continue to work with the other Atlanta teams to give Atlanta fans what they deserve, painfully mediocre sports. I recently read something on ESPN.com that said the Hawks are now clearly the fourth best team in the east thanks to adding Jamal Crawford and Joe Smith. Seriously?

10. Even after losing Iverson, the Denver Nuggets will continue to lead the league in tattoos. I like the Nuggets (I liked them more when they had Camby), but this season could go horribly wrong for them. Something just doesn't feel right here.

9. Derrick Rose will prove last year wasn't a fluke. Is it possible for a talented and smart point guard to completely cover for an almost comically overmatched head coach? We're about to find out.

8. Mark Cuban will say something stupid (I wanted to make sure I got at least one right). I'll be honest, I've never liked the Mavs and I've really never liked Dirk. If I could trade one U.S. pro sports franchise to another country for one of their franchises, I'd trade the Mavs to England for one of their soccer teams. Then, the English soccer team could dominate MLS until the league had to fold. This is currently my best plan for ridding our lives of soccer in the U.S., if you have a better one, let me know.

7. Everyone will finally figure out that Greg Oden just isn't that good. Portland, on the other hand, could be pretty good and a little dangerous to the top western teams. I've always liked Portland as a basketball city. Also, Oden fouled me twice while I was typing this paragraph.

6. Gilbert Arenas will be an all-star and lead the Wizards pretty deep into the playoffs, I'm thinking a surprisingly tough 7 game loss in the second round against Cleveland. I have Washington way higher than I've seen them anywhere else, but Arenas seems to have committed himself to giving a crap and not acting crazy this year. This could go either way, but he's a top talent and I'm on board for now.

5. Lebron will not be the MVP this year. I don't know why people like the Cavs so much this year, but at the moment, the Hype King has as many championship rings as I do and the rest of that team doesn't look all that exciting.

4. The Boston Celtics will scare small children. The constant chest bumping, the screaming at the ceiling, the crazy eyes, if you're four years old, this team is legitimately frightening. I'm a Celtics fan, I'd like to pick them to win it all, but I don't see it happening. This team is old, Paul Pierce put a lot of mileage on his body carrying bad teams early in his career. The rest of the guys are even older. I see a conference semis lost to the Magic happening again. Also, if things really go south for this team, we could get Rasheed vs. KG on pay per view, I'd watch that.

3. Ron Artest will do something inexplicable (this isn't entirely true, you can explain pretty much anything Ron does by saying "hey, he's Ron Artest") and people will find a way to blame it on Kobe Bryant. Part of me wants to pick the Lakers to repeat. But repeating is hard, Bynum can't finish a season healthy and I don't like the off-court combo of Artest and L.O. I'm a huge Odom fan, I believe in Lamar Odom, but he seems like the kind of easy-going guy who would follow Artest to Tijuana one weekend just for laughs. I don't see the Lakers repeating after two key guys spend a few weeks in a Mexican prison.

2. The last great year of the Spurs dynasty will come up just a little short. A typically savvy Spurs off-season made them a favorite to win the title, I don't think it happens, but I think they get to the finals after a well-coached 7 game conference finals with the Lakers. I just don't think they match up well with my number one team.

1. The Orlando Magic will win the NBA title. I don't think they can beat the Lakers, but I don't think they'll have to, and the Magic match up really well with the Spurs. Dwight Howard can dominate, and I mean dominate the Spurs front line (that includes Duncan, he doesn't have anything for Howard, maybe five years ago, not now). And then there's Vince Carter. Listen, I don't think you can get as good at something as Vince is at basketball without some part of you caring, and I think that part comes out this year. He's got a legit big man to protect him on defense and shooters all around him on offense. This is Vince's year, and I think he has a big one. Also, Dwight Howard is just a man. Honestly, if he ever learns some offensive moves, they may have to kick him out of the league after he averages 60 points a game one year.

Magic over the Spurs in six. I should send this blog to David Stern and give him eight months to find a way to make this not happen.