With the NBA's 2012/13 regular season just underway, Hoops Rumors' writing team has weighed in with predictions for the coming year. We've made our picks for the top eight seeds in each conference, the Conference and NBA Finals teams, and the winners of the league's major awards.
Click on the link below to see predictions from Luke Adams, Chuck Myron, Zach Links, Alex Lee, Ryan Raroque, Sean Highkin, Michael Pina, and Daniel Seco. And be sure to chime in below in the comments section with your own selections!
Nice to know that exactly zero writers went out on a limb. It’s like a group of five year olds coming to the museum. The doorman high-fives the first kid in line who goes inside, and everybody else blindly follows suit. High-five. High-five. High-five. High-five. I guess there’s no reason to watch the NBA season and we should just tune in during the playoffs.
Hey, I hope we get an entirely unpredictable season and many of my selections are proven wrong, but I wasn’t about to choose teams or players I didn’t believe in simply for the sake of “going out on a limb.”
Feel free to share your picks.
— Luke
Yeah right, it’s easier just to call people out. This is the NBA and like baseball, 8x out of 10 you get what you pay for pertaining to Ws in the regular season. The NBA also has less sleepers in the NBa bc of small benches and payroll differential (only so many players can impact the game).
East
Mia, Boston, Bkn, Chi, AtL, Was (if Nene & Wall back in no more than 1mo), Ind, NYK, Phi
West
Den, SA, LAL, Ok-City (really dont get me started on Harden), Utah, LAC, Mem, Minn
Luke: in all seriousness, you do great work. I’m punking you guys a bit and having some fun. Yet, it does get old when ESPN or HoopsWorld or whomever all seem to make the same projections. Teams don’t thrive just based on newspaper stats, star power, or last year’s standings. If things were par for the course, Las Vegas would go broke, and the Detroit Pistons would be looking to 25-peat since the Isaiah Thomas and Joe Dumars days never collapsed. For example: did you watch the Lakers tonight? Granted … it’s just game one. But the Lakers have serious flaws with age, free throw shooting, a methodical offense, and a defense that will take a step back (Nash is the worst PG defender in the NBA, at the most critical defensive position). Yet Howard and Nash are All-Star names, it’s LA where everything’s bigger, and so they become the sleek and sexy pick to make. So the analysts say they make a big step up, instead of a big step back. Whomever was the first to forecast the 2012-13 NBA projections was probably the same person who thought the Red Sox and Phillies would be in the World Series.
I disagree with Irrevalent (I think he means Irrelevant, which makes that ironic) that you get what you pay for in the NBA. Plenty of middle of the road salary teams (San Antonio, OKC, Denver, Indiana, etc.) who are just as much contenders as larger salary teams, like Boston or the Lakers. Depth is huge. Staying relatively injury free is huge.
In any sport, you’ve got surprises EVERY season, so why not pick a few? That’s not being reckless in going out on a limb. That’s being grounded in reality. The reason hardly any writers do that — it makes them look dumb and less credible if they miss horribly on the sleeper picks, because there’s less margin of error then for the perennial favorites. Picking the Yankees or Lakers or Patriots or Red Wings to win it all each year is much easier than picking against them … yet the odds greatly favor the latter, if we look at history.
I’ll tack a hack at a few surprises, at the risk of looking a fool: Portland and San Antonio are two of the top 4 out in the West. Golden State cracks the playoffs. Atlanta will be the big surprise of the East, and will be the biggest threat to Miami. Most improved: Byron Mullens. Defensive POY: Chris Paul/Anthony Davis. 6th Man: Manu Ginobili. MVP: Lebron … but LaMarcus Aldridge is in the discussion if he stays healthy all year.