Points in the Paint 11.04.08: Election Day Edition!

Posted by Rob Bonnette on 11.04.2008

I go West!

Hello everyone, and welcome to a special Election Day edition of Points in the Paint. This week I talk about the Western conference, who's gonna win it, etc. No time to waste here, so let's dive right and see what I think.

THE WEST

I got the Lakers winning it. They have enough talented players to lose any one player (even Kobe) make it through the regular season with 50 wins, and if they stay healthy they'll top 60 wins easy. There will be plenty of nights like the first two games of the season where they just run away with the game and are able to sit their starters in the second half. No one else has the depth to keep up over 82 games, and if they make it the playoffs fully intact no one will have the sheer number of All-Star quality players to contribute. Kobe, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum are all guys who could play on All-Star weekend or win year end awards. (Kobe for MVP, Odom for Sixth Man, and Bynum for most improved are all possibilities. As with the Celtics in the East all of their competition is fatally flawed in one way or another.

Houston: A lot of people are saying that the Rockets fortunes hinge on whether or not Ron Artest spontaneously combusts at some point in the season; I think that's the least of their worries. The bane of the Rockets existence over the past several seasons has been the injury bug. It seems that every year both Yao and T-Mac miss a lot of games, and that these absences ultimately cost the Rockets their season. Three years ago they both missed over 20 games and the Rockets missed the playoffs. Two years ago they were both healthy but the rest of the team stunk. And last year they were ready to do some postseason damage before Yao was lost for the season. I don't expect anything to change this time around; the only questions are: (1) how many games will each one miss, and (2) will they come at the worst possible time, like the playoffs. I predict that Artest makes it through the season with nothing more than a few technical fouls called by trigger happy refs, but that the usual cause of death will rear its ugly head once again.

New Orleans: The Hornets have an excellent chance of getting to the conference finals this season, and on paper they should be able to. If you look their roster you see a lot of talent, led by the guy who is the best at his position in point guard Chris Paul. The only problem is that rest of their guys aren't better than their Laker counterparts. Compare these matchups: Kobe vs. Morris Peterson, Peja Stojakovic vs. Vladimir Radmanovic (or Lamar Odom in crunch time), David West vs. Pau Gasol, and Tyson Chandler vs. Andrew Bynum. Anyone picking the Hornet in any of those? And while they added James Posey, who will help in a major way come playoff time, they still lack any real frontcourt depth. If Chandler or West has to miss a lot of games, it will hurt their chances severely. And if Paul get hurt, they're done. They'll be really good, but just aren't good enough to beat the Lakers.

Utah: The Jazz look good enough on paper to give the Lakers a real run. They stack up well in all the non-Kobe matchups (Deron Williams vs. Derek Fisher, Andrei Kirilenko vs. Odom/Radmanovic, Carlos Boozer vs. Gasol, and Mehmet Okur vs. Bynum), and on given night will look like the best team in the league thanks to how well they execute on offense. But here's the thing: they put the same team on the floor against the Lakers without Bynum in the playoffs and got cooked. So how on Earth would they beat the Lakers with Bynum?

San Antonio: This is more of courtesy mention more than anything else. The Spurs are getting older and thinner, and will be without Manu Ginobli for some time. Right now, they are Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and a bunch of role players, which isn't enough to win their division, let alone the entire West. The other night Michael Finley was forced to play 34 minutes at the shooting guard spot, which he has no business doing at this point in his career. Needless to say, the Spurs lost the game. Of their supporting players, only Roger Mason, Jr. and Kurt Thomas look to be any good. So why mention them at all? Because if Ginobli comes back strong later, and the Lakers falter for one reason or another, then the Spurs can get it together to squeeze out one more title run. They're not better on paper than any of the other teams I mentioned, but they have enough championship character to psych out anyone except the Lakers if they're at full strength. That matters.

That's your race for the West crown right there. But what about the rest of the conference? That's basically split into three groups: the playoff also-rans (Phoenix, Dallas, Portland), the almost playoff teams (Golden State, Denver, the Clippers), and the doormats (Sacramento, Minnesota, Memphis). The first group represents both the past and the future; Dallas and Phoenix are former Western powerhouses now in decline while Portland is the young team on the way up. The sixth through eighth playoff seeds should fall to them, although I wouldn't pick any of them to get past the first round. The Suns got a lot older in 2007-08, importing older players like Shaq and Grant Hill to play major minutes. When you combine that with the selling off of draft picks that turned into Rajon Rondo and Luol Deng, it's obvious that they made the wrong decisions here. Dallas blew their shot at glory and, like the Suns, swapped out youth for experience when they deal Devin Harris for Jason Kidd. Now they're relying on a old point guard, a wuss of star player in Dirk Nowitzki, and a third wheel with a penchant for off the court tomfoolery in Josh Howard. Not a recipe for success there. And Portland is the latest assembly of great young talent that is poised to take over. We shouldn't get too carried away with the predictions just yet, though. Remember that we've seen this before in other cities, and the final results are almost always underwhelming. But they're definitely good enough to crack the top eight in the West.

The second group has lots of talent but lots of holes as well. The Clippers got Baron Davis and Marcus Camby over the summer; both are very good but injury prone guys. Davis is as good as any point guard in the league, but Camby isn't on the same level as Pau Gasol, Carlos Boozer, or David West, all of whom he'll have to face now. Chris Kaman matches up OK with the other centers, but the rest of their guys look a lot better in a vacuum than they do when you actually compare them to their counterparts in other cities. I think they can beat anyone on any given night, but they're just not going to do well enough against the better teams to make the playoffs. Golden State is a mess, a collection of good talent without any real direction. They have some good players like Stephen Jackson, Andris Biendris, and Al Harrington but are without Monta Ellis until midseason and are still as defensively challenged as you would expect a Don Nelson-run team to be. Denver traded Camby away for a couple of gym bags, making a bad defensive team worse. They can still beat up on the mad teams enough to get to .500, but that won't be good enough to escape the lottery. And if they trade Allen Iverson, they're likely to be a full blown lottery team, even with Carmelo Anthony.

And the final group….oy. The Sacramento Kings have downgraded at almost every position in the past few, save for Kevin Martin at shooting guard. I've always like Brad Miller as a center but now he's potentially the second best player on the team, which is not a good sign. The T-Wolves have Al Jefferson, Mike Miller and a bunch of mediocre players who wouldn't start on winning teams. And the Oklahoma City Thunder aren't much different. A collection of players, including Kevin Durant, who look better on paper than they do on the court.

That's my look at the West. Next time we can start digging into the season and breaking down some things. Until then….

And remember, VOTE!