New Jersey Nets:

The funny thing about the Atlantic division is that the two teams that are in the best shape are the Celtics, the favorites for the championship and the Nets, who have yet to win a game this season.  [Note: I say that the Celtics are the favorites only because I find myself incapable of averring that status to the Lakers.]  As everyone knows by this point, Brook Lopez is legit—and not just because he looks like Sam the Eagle.  Lopez’s success is a good reminder about (part of) what’s wrong with NBA scouting.  All I read was: Lopez is skilled and has good size, but isn’t very athletic.  So he might be a good pro, but his upside was limited.  What that really means is that Lopez doesn’t jump high or run fast.  And it’s true.  The same is true of Carlos Boozer, but like Boozer, Lopez is exceptionally coordinated for a player his size, handles the ball smoothly with either hand, and can also finish at the rim with either hand.  Coordination, body control, and “touch” are significant aspects of athleticism.

It’s funny to think how amid all the measurements that they take in draft camp, you don’t hear much about a player’s ability to use his off hand.  Just consider Brandon Jennings’ game right now.  It’s extraordinary how effective he has been, at his size, considering he never goes right.  If you look at clips of his games this year, you’ll see him taking some incredibly awkward body-twisting shots (and making a number of them,) because he can’t use his right hand.  It makes a ton of shots he takes that much harder to make.  Brook Lopez may not have a huge burst of speed going to the rim, but because of his coordination and handle, he moves more efficiently, more under control, and takes easier shots.

As for the rest of the team, if Devin Harris has peaked, that’s fine.  He’s not amazing, but he’s quite good and plays to his contract.  Courtney Lee is cheap and can contribute.  Terrence Williams is pretty unknown to me at this point, but I read good things about his talents and I’ll root for any player that wears a Sponge Bob Square Pants backpack and has pink Barbie socks, (or is the other way around?)  I don’t know how good Chris Douglas-Roberts can become, but he’s probably a rotation guy; and he’s cheap, as well.  And Yi…

I figure the only reason the NBA still lists Yi Jianlian as being 22 year-old (he’s 25) is to maintain their always tricky relations with China.  His age isn’t as problematic as the fact that he’s a very, very poor man’s Brook Lopez.  He’s pretty coordinated for a player of his size, and he can handle the ball fairly well for a player his size, and he’s a halfway decent shooter.  But when a player is that tall, he has to be a very good ball handler and very coordinated to opperate from the perimeter or from the high post.  And if he can get into the lane, he has to have the strength to finish.  And it helps a ton if he can finish with either hand.  Yi isn’t that guy.  Rather, he’s pretty much the same as most of these very tall European players who come over and don’t succeed.  The only benefit of being as tall as they are is that they have an easy time getting their shot off.  But compare those guys to Danilo Gallinari.  Maybe he doesn’t run and jump like crazy, but he shoots the lights out, and can handle the ball well enough to penetrate and either look to finish or (even rarer for a guy his height) pass accurately off the dribble.  I’ll take that over Tyrus Thomas’ 40″ vertical any day.

“T.J. Ford is a lock to lead the league in assists once he gets his minutes in Indiana!”

“Mike Dunleavy’s first good season totally wasn’t a fluke!”

Hell, the Pacers don’t even have enough talent to take that joke into the fourth round of a made up draft of a made up fantasy league.  Brandon Rush is going to be a good rotation player.  Some people think Roy Hibbert is hot stuff, but I haven’t seen enough him (didn’t get much run in the games I saw,) to have an opinion.  Almost everyone else on the team hurts them either by sucking or by being overpaid.

Chicago: NBA stars consistently take the ball into the paint and finish or they shoot the lights out.  There are the rare exceptions, but for the most part, if a guy can’t do one of those two things, he’s not going to be a star.  Can you see Tyrus Thomas developing a highly effective post game?  Or a good-enough handle to penetrate from the perimeter?  Can you see him becoming a great shooter?  Neither can I.  He’s not going to be a star, no matter how young he is or how high he jumps.  His upside is as a third option on a good team.  Fortunately for the Bulls, Derrick Rose is a star, and Luol Deng is a fairly good second option, and John Salmons is a high-quality third option.

I didn’t like the Bulls last year; I like them this year.  Last year they had only three players who could regularly create their own scoring opportunities: Rose, Ben Gordon, and Salmons.  And of those three, only Rose even tried to pass the ball.  Ben Gordon is a good player, sort of, kind of, but he was a bad fit.  Spreading his 16 shots around the roster will help Deng get his mojo back and might help Thomas find his bearings.

Milwaukee: Signing Michael Redd in 2005 was sentimental.  They should have let Cleveland sign him to play with LeBron.  Instead, they took a course that made it virtually impossible to build a contender during the length of his contract.  I wrote “virtually impossible” because a miracle (hitting the lotto jackpot) gave them a shot to making it work and they screwed that up, too.  Almost every move they’ve made since signing Redd has been awful.  Not bad, awful.

Oh yes, but they did draft that Brandon Jennings character.  I saw him tonight for the first time, facing Dallas.  My take?  He was totally out of control half the time and clearly barely knows what he’s doing out there; and he was still one of the best players on the floor.  I wouldn’t bet against him.

Unfortunately, Jennings was an obvious choice in the 10^th spot for a team with garbage pointguards.  So it’s not like choosing Jennings was a coup, or an indication that the Bucks are going to do smart things, going forward.  However, I did like Ilyasova, tonight.  And I love signing young players to small multi-year contracts ($7M over 3 years.)  Who knows?  History says it’s a fluke smart move.  We’ll see.

Cleveland: They will win the Central Division and in the playoffs they will beat anyone but Boston or Orlando in 5 games or less.  Is this news to anyone?  Maybe it is.  It was pretty absurd hearing all of the commentary on problems in Cleveland in the first week of the season.  I liked and still like the Shaq move.  He makes around 60% of his shots.  Isn’t that a nice addition to a team that has the best scorer in the game and no one else who can be counted on, game in and game out, to put points on the board?  What Shaq can’t do is practically irrelevant; nearing his 38^th birthday, he’s still one of the most dominant post scorer’s in the game.  Fouls are the one concern with Shaq, but mostly it’s just a question of whether he’ll be a force for 30 minutes a game, or only 20 minutes a game.

Detroit: I don’t think Joe Dumars is somehow less smart than he used to be; I think he’s having a midlife crisis.  I didn’t immediately hate the Billups/Iverson trade like so many others did; I thought it was weird and risky, but not insane.  It didn’t pan out, but he got a ton of salary cap space to reinvent the Pistons.  And he did, spending almost 30% of Detroit’s cap space on two players (Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva) who don’t rebound, defend much, or pass.  That they can’t/won’t pass the ball is particularly problematic, since Rodney Stuckey doesn’t do it either, and Richard Hamilton’s effectiveness is almost entirely dependent on ball movement.  I see this team looking a lot like Denver did with  Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, J.R. Smith, and Linas Kleiza—but less talented.  And when it didn’t pan out for Denver, they still had Anthony to build around.  When this Detroit squad doesn’t work, what are they going to do?