NBA Notebook: Eastern Conference

Over the next few days, I will offer my personal list of the teams in each conference of the NBA and rank those teams in order of their likelihood of reaching the NBA finals out of that conference. Starting out today will be the Eastern Conference, with only five legitimate title contenders, and in the next couple days will be the Western Conference, with seven teams I will profile.

#1 Detroit Pistons
Not only do the Pistons have the best record in the Eastern Conference right now by 4.5 games, but they have also spent the year pretty much injury-free and are currently playing their best basketball of the year, having won 12 of their last 13 games. This season is extremely different than last season was for the Pistons. Last season, Detroit was considered easily the top team in the East, if not the whole NBA, all year long, with people even saying that they had a chance at winning 70 games. Anything less than a championship last season would have been considered incredibly disappointing. Unfortunately for Detroit, they let problems with chemistry and Flip Saunders deteriorate their season, along with a little help from Dwyane Wade. This year, it seems as if Detroit has almost flown under the radar with the East being down, and Lebron, D-Wade, and Gilbert Arenas getting most of the attention in that conference. With the exception of Ben Wallace, the Pistons return the same core of players from a team that was a few breaks away from winning three NBA championships in a row. They were also able to add Chris Webber mid-season, and even though Webber has been slowing down lately, he still adds another interior prescence. Detroit also has much more depth than they have had any of the last three years, with 12 players averaging more than 10 minutes a game. They have 3 solid big men on the bench in Antonio McDyess, Nazr Mohammed, and Jason Maxiell, and also 3 solid back-up guards in Flip Murray, Carlos Delfino, and Lindsey Hunter. The Pistons have to be the odds-on favorite in an extremely weak Eastern Conference, even if Wade and the Heat were fully healthy.

#2 Miami Heat*
This entry is made with an asterisk because the Heat will only stay in this spot if Dwyane Wade can come back fully healthy from his shoulder injury. Even without Wade, I think that the Heat would make the playoffs in such a weak conference, but they would be absolutely no threat to win the conference without their superstar. It might be a surprise to see a team with a sub .500 record and with their best player out indefinitely ranked this high, but if Wade is healthy for the postseason then they have as good a chance as any team of making it to the finals. Even though it seems as if the Heat are taking this season easy and thinking that they can just turn it on later, maybe they will be able to do just that. They did basically the same thing last year, and it worked out fine for them then. The biggest difference between this year and last year besides the Wade injury is the fact that last year the Heat was filled with a bunch of veteran players that had never won a title like Gary Payton, Jason Williams, and Antoine Walker, and these players were more than willing to give up inidividual stats for the sake of the team. This year, those players already have their title, and they may not be quite as willing to sit on the bench or be told not to shoot as much. This team is the biggest wild card in the whole league, but with a healthy Dwyane Wade, they can beat anybody.

#3 Washington Wizards
The Wizards have cooled off a bit in last few weeks, going just 4-6 in their last ten, but I still see them as having a decent chance at winning the Eastern title. The Wizards are obviously led by Agent Zero, Gilbert Arenas, who, in addition to being the NBA's best player-blogger, is scoring 29.2 points this season and seems to always save his best for late in the game. Agent Zero is helped by having two other teammates who are scoring around 20 points a game in addition to his 29. Caron Butler is averaging 20.3 PPG and Antawn Jamison is scoring 19.3 a game. Besides just scoring, Arenas is averaging 6 assists a game, Butler is averaging 4 assists and 7.6 rebounds a games, and Jamison is averaging around 8 boards a game. Almost the entire Wizards offense is revolved around these weapons, but they are also helped out in the starting line-up by sharpshooter DeShawn Stevenson, who is shooting 47% from 3-point range this season, and starting center Brendan Haywood. Deciding between the Wizards and the Cavs for the #3 spot on this list was very tough but when I thought about which team I would pick if they played each other in a 7 game series, I had to go with the Wizards. I just think that Washington is playing better and with more chemistry than Cleveland this season, and I don't think Agent Zero will let the Wizards fall to the Cavs for the second year in a row.

#4 Cleveland Cavaliers
Although right now Cleveland is tied with Washington for 2nd place in the Eastern conference, the team just doesn't seem to be playing very well lately, and LeBron has seemingly been off all year. I know that he has been putting up 26.5, 7 and 6 this year, but he just doesn't seem comfortable playing in the offense or with his team. I think that this is equal parts frustration with the coach, frustration with his teammates, and frustration with how the season is playing out. If you watch a Cavs game, it seems like his teammates drop a number of easy baskets every game, but that still doesn't mean that LeBron should go to his "dribble around for 10 seconds and force up a jump shot" offensive strategy. Now, I would not be surprised at all if LeBron were to completely turn it on at the end of the year and the playoffs, but right now I just cannot see that happening. In all of this talk about LeBron, I cannot understate how poorly his teammates have been playing this year. Besides Larry Hughes, not a single other teammate averages more than 28 minutes per game. That means that besides LeBron and Hughes, no one else on the team can even manage to get on the court for more than 58% of the game. There is only one outside gunner on the team, and it seems as if half the time Damon Jones cares about how good he looks than the basketball game at hand. Even Eric Snow averages 25 minutes a game on this team! The Cavs are an incredibly perplexing team, and it will be interesting to see how they do in the postseason.

#5 Chicago Bulls
The Bulls started out the season as one of the favorites from the Eastern conference to make it to the NBA finals, and after their opening night thrashing of the Heat, those predicitions seemed prophetic. However, now that more than half of the season has been played out, Chicago has shown to be a team with a number of weaknesses, and now that the trading deadline has passed without a big deal, those weaknesses look like they will be enough to doom the Bulls in the playoffs. Chicago has absolutely no low post scoring, and they will not be able to win in the playoffs with that fact being true. Ben Wallace is still one of the better defensive players in the league, but he doesn't do very much on offense at all (6.2 PPG) and he has even slowed down a bit on the defensive end. Chicago has balanced scoring on the offensive end, with four players averaging between 15 and 21 points per game. Unfortunately those four players are either guards (Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich) or small forwards (Luol Deng and Andres Nocioni). The Bulls have a good, young core to their team, but they won't go very far in the postseason without that low post offensive option. People have been saying that the Bulls are a good, young team for three years now, and it's time for that "good, young team" to take the next step and become an elite level team. Unfortunately for the Bulls, that most likely won't happen this year.