With the NBA season a mere two weeks away, the time has arrived to yet again break out a fresh batch of predictions, forecasts, and best-guesses. Having already covered the Absurd side of the preview, today The On Deck Circle will dive into the second half of our forecast, as known as the Astute. Everyone is talking about it! (No one is talking about it.) Read on for the (supposedly) insightful portion, where we offer up a dozen legitimate predictions on how the season will shake out.
1) Carmelo Anthony will make 1st-Team All-NBA – Bold? Maybe, but as the season inches closer and closer, there are ever fewer reasons to doubt that Anthony has finally broken into the inner-circle of the game’s true elite. His playoff performance last spring, where he dominated every facet of the game for the better part of three rounds, speaks to this louder than any Hollinger statistic ever could. Anthony has the talent, the motivation, and the confidence to be among the league’s very best, and if he continues to display the growth in in-game decision making and offensive efficiency he showed last season there is no reason he can’t elevate above Nowitzki and Bosh as the game’s best forward not named LeBron.
2) Kevin Durant will lead the league in scoring: With LeBron having to defer at least a portion of his shots to the Big Hypocrite down low and Phil Jackson likely reducing Kobe’s minutes to rest his legs, Durant’s biggest competition will come out of Miami. The Heat are a mediocre-to-lousy basketball team and require Dwyane Wade to do a ton of heavy lifting. Then again, the Thunder call on Durant for the same thing in terms of offensive dependency. Durant has better range than Wade and a far more pure jump shot, meaning that Flash’s superiority when it comes to getting to the rim and finishing would have to make up a lot of points to account for the difference between him and KD outside of the paint. While Durant is still finding himself on defense and therefore has yet to form into the complete player we all hope he can become (and hopefully prove to be the true foil to LeBron that we all want to see over the next 10 years), the leader of the Thunder might just already be the game’s best pure scorer and is in exactly the right situation to fill up box scores nightly.
3) The Spurs will break off a “Fear of God”-type streak around mid-season: At some point during a stretch from January through March, San Antonio will enter into a groove last seen from Jimmy in The Wizard. The Spurs may not come out of the gates in fifth gear in November, but don’t be shocked when they win something in the realm of 30 of 33 games including 16 straight. If they stay healthy and get on a roll, Duncan’s crew will be scary good.
4) The Iverson in Memphis experiment will end poorly: The Answer’s place in the game historically is beyond question. The case can easily be made that he had the biggest impact culturally on the sport and pop-culture consciousness at large of any player post-Jordan, pre-LeBron, as he brought the hip hop culture to the NBA’s forefront and inspired a generation of players that we see today (including player’s like Carmelo, Rajon Rondo, and Nate Robinson) (Editor’s note: He is also the reason David Stern instituted a dress code). That makes the ending to his career, this up-coming season-long Coda in Memphis, all the more depressing. Like Orr on the Blackhawks, Jordan on the Wizards, or Namath on the Rams, we will want to forget seeing a legend go out this way.
5) Amare isn’t done, but 6) KG is: This prediction hasalmost exclusively as much to do with age as it does to do with the relative
durability of the players in question. STAT has proven throughout his career that he cannot be written off on account of an injury, so by now fans should be conditioned to expect nothing less than a complete recovery from dual eye surgeries. Further, he has the rest of his career riding on how well he does this season: if he cannot perform up to his former glory he will not be offered anything approaching a max deal this summer and will have his days as a top earner effectively end. If nothing else, that reality will motivate him to another All-Star quality campaign. Meanwhile, Garnett has over a thousands games on his odometer and the broken-down body to prove it. The wear-and-tear he endured having to carry the T-Wolves for over a decade is now showing its lasting impact. Of all these predictions, I certainly hope I am wrong about this – yes, I am an unapologetic Lakers fan as well as a Raptors Truther, yet seeing Garnett hobbled and broken is not inspiring to me in the least, as it almost immediately puts an asterisk on any victory over Boston all season if KG can’t be KG anymore. I would much rather see him at full strength so I could marvel at his amazing versatile and endless passion for the game, but I just don’t think it’s in the cards.
7) Portland steps up: I admit this is nothing but a flat-out hunch, so let’s call a spade a spade here. I have no real basis for thinking it, yet I believe that the Blazers will peak at exactly the right time next spring and in doing so make it all the way to the Western Finals against the Lakers after taking down San Antonio in seven games. My list of reasons for this hunch begins with Brandon “All-NBA” Roy and ends with LaMarcus “Future All-Star” Aldridge. Note that the list does not contain Greg “Benjamin Buttons” Oden.
Kevin Love will be lead the league in Rebounding Rate: The Wonder from Lake Oswego won’t lead the Association in Rebounds per Game (as that honor will fall to Dwight Howard through perpetuity), but he will be the league leader in terms of effectiveness by collecting the highest percentage of missed shots while on the floor. Not since Rodman has a player had better natural rebounding instincts and it is precisely that which makes up for Love’s lack of athleticism overall. He won’t out jump anyone, but he won’t have to, since he has already beaten them to his spot.
The Lightning Round – Rapid Fire Predictions
9) The sixth-seeded Wizards will give the Atlantic-champ Celtics trouble in a seven game Round 1 battle.
10) Derrick Rose will easily make the All-Star game, and continue to do so for most of the next decade.
11) The Jazz will fall out of the Playoffs in the West, as the Thunder overtake them in the week’s final week for the right to get swept by the Lakers.
12) Detroit’s strategy to reinvigorate its roster does not pay off, as the Pistons do not manage to finish any higher than seventh in the East and are ushered out in five games by the Magic.