NBA 2012/2013 Thread

2013 Playoffs begin Saturday!

Also kudos to Raptors for good pre-season. I'm optimistic this season

I think boston is completely under looked this year with the premise of an expected lakers-heat finals and the tough competition of OKC, SAS and CHI. If anyone here takes a quick glance they will see that since last year of being banged up but being one game away (and leading at halftime on the road in game 7) they almost took out miami to make the finals. They are healthy now and have added the following players to the roster:

Jason Collins, Darko Milicic, and Jared Sullinger

others on the team who I am not sure if added last year or brand new/significant additions:

Courtney Lee
Leandro Barbosa
Jason Terry
Chris Wilcox

Also, Jeff Green should be ready to play full time now that he had 1 full year off after open heart surgery. The guy was a beast who was basically kind of like James Harden for OKC until he got traded to boston. He's definitely guaranteed points per game as he's versatile from 3-point land or driving to the rim as well as a solid defender with good post-season experience. It looks like the Celtics are making a real run with all these additions on defense size and bench and Rondo might have his biggest year ever too. Celtics have the depth, coaching and vets to take the title and they are Lebron killers by nature. You can grab boston at +2439 at Pinnacle right now for the 2012-2013 NBA champion future bets. I definitely think it is better than Chicago +2032 as well simply because Rondo can carry his team just as well as Rose and there is always a big question mark over the Rose ACL injury last post-season.

i expect boston to finish 2nd in the east (apparently peirce and garnet don't age), and make the eastern finals again (unless Rose somehow comes back 100%, which I have many doubts about)

other then that east is full of chumps, NYC is very over-rated, they still show close to 0 team chemistry and clearly no one enjoys playing with carmelo.

Celtics are old. Rondo can't shoot. They did well with some of their cheap additions and their defense will still be beastly (Avery Bradley is a monster on D). However they can't rebound or shoot or score. They will get torched by Miami if they even make it that far.

Bulls are basically punting this season. They let a ton of their players go for nothing. Rose won't be back till the end of the season and obviously won't be full strength by then.

Heat will make the finals.

Oh and Jeff Green has never been good and he just took a year off from basketball...........

You must really hate boston with that write-up lol. Are you forgetting how close Miami came to losing to both Indiana and boston? This team is suspect for only +232 IMO

^ boston = bellator

lakers not looking good preseason

I actually don't even hate Boston all that much. It's just they were very fortunate to even make it that far last year.

Also Miami did almost lose to both Indiana and Boston but once they stopped playing Joel Anthony like 40 minutes a game and started going small with Lebron at the 4 and Bosh at the 5 they started dominating.

This year they have had 2 years to figure everything out (i.e. no more hero ball isos back and forth between Wade and James) and they also realized that they can just go small surround Lebron and Wade with shooters and watch as Ray Allen gets to shoot 10 wide open 3s a game haha.

Obviously repeating in general is really hard (the last team was Lakers unless I'm forgetting ~10 years ago) but given the fact that the East is super weak and that we'll see how the Lakers do after adding all the people (plus Kobe is gonna just Kobe it up when he's the 3rd best player on his own team) I expect the Heat to comfortable get to the Finals and also be favored against either OKC or LA.

I mean for betting purposes I can understand possibly gambling on Boston or some other team (Denver would be my pick to surprise people in the West) but I mean I find it unlikely that Boston can get through all those series + full regular season with enough offense and health to win the Championship.

On October 23 2012 03:02 flounder44 wrote: lakers not looking good preseason

and raptors / golden state warriors are... I think that speaks for itself

We need to cut half of these teams. Fast forward to the finals plz. Everyone knows its the Lakers and the Thunder on the west and the Heat vs the Celtics or the Bulls.

Too many teams, not enough freaks of nature.

On October 24 2012 22:09 mnj wrote: We need to cut half of these teams. Fast forward to the finals plz. Everyone knows its the Lakers and the Thunder on the west and the Heat vs the Celtics or the Bulls. Too many teams, not enough freaks of nature.

You're discounting both Indiana and Philly to face miami in the east?

Bulls will barely scrape through to the Playoffs without Rose and their bench depth.

^^ I don't thin philly will be a serious force, Bynum is not Shaq. He has the potential to be huge but hes not there yet. He still screws around too much, dosn't bring his A game as often as real NBA supstars do

On October 24 2012 23:41 RaiNKhAN wrote: Show nested quote + On October 24 2012 22:09 mnj wrote: We need to cut half of these teams. Fast forward to the finals plz. Everyone knows its the Lakers and the Thunder on the west and the Heat vs the Celtics or the Bulls. Too many teams, not enough freaks of nature. You're discounting both Indiana and Philly to face miami in the east?

....i literally laughed at this question. insert not sure if srs...

anyway at least in football like 90% of the teams are still in the running (this year specifically). basketball just has a higher returns to talent. in football you have 11 individuals per team and therefore every position has to do its job for the success over its team. you can't just have one individual running the show and this reaches the scope to offensive/defensive coordinators and assistant coaches.

i mean lebron james was a 1 man show in cleveland and reached not only conference finals but also nba finals as well. like even one of your favorite teams memphis. they are a great example of a team that truly got better (think jazz, atlanta, la clips, pacers). but unless you reach a certain threshold of competitveness it's for nothing as they are just increasing their wins against shitty teams.

look at okc you have 6 fucking allstars on taht team. look at the la lakers you have at least 3 future HALL OF FAMERS on that team. there is no regular season race or play off race. wake me up at the 2nd round of the play offs.

all i'm trying to say is that there is not enough talent to go around in the nba which provides snoozefest regular season + half the play offs but should provide an exciting conference and nba finals. conversely if you simply just eliminated half the available teams, the now existing teams would have a better chance of providing regular season competition as well as a more exciting playoffs all the way to the finals.

i don't see how anyone can disagree with this.

^^ detroit pistons beat the superlakers couple years ago in the NBA finals, when lakers had Kobe, shaq, malone, payton (4 hall of famers). Using Billups, prince, wallance (ben and rasheed), hamillton - all good players but no real superstars - In fact, no one from detroit that year made the all star team. Their team similar talent wise is similar to todays to Denver or indiana. I think a well coached motivated team can beat any team. That being said it's definatley unlikley anyone will beat the heat in the east, or lakers/SA/OKC in the west



In other news, thunder trade Harden to Rockets for Martin, Lamb and picks (picks are coming from toronto next year, so they prob gonna be good). I really hate martin, hes a low % high volume shooter (aka ballhog) I think this is a significant decrease in talent, but apparently harden rejected a 4 year 53m offer, he wanted 8 mill more, so they traded him the following week. I think we are gonna see a slightly worse OKC team this year then last year.

Ummmm discounting Indiana and Denver in the West and assuming the Celtics and Bulls (LOL) are going to make the conference finals means you must not watch basketball? Celtics might yes make it to the conference finals but I highly doubt the Bulls will. They will be like a 5 seed (could be worse) since Rose won't be back for most of the year and when he does come back he's not obviously going to be 100%.

Indiana is like the Denver of the East. No star but good depth and while in the playoffs this matters A LOT less (48 minutes for all the star players instead of having to sit and rest as often) they still gave Miami a good series and could do some damage in general.

Obviously in the NBA there are higher talent disparities but that's also because there's way less players so each individual one matters more to said team.

Either way it will most likely be Miami and LA, maybe the Thunder though they might take a SLIGHT step backwards now that they traded Harden but the season is still interesting and injuries or other randomness always happens every year so you never know.

On October 28 2012 15:04 mnj wrote: Show nested quote + On October 24 2012 23:41 RaiNKhAN wrote:   On October 24 2012 22:09 mnj wrote: We need to cut half of these teams. Fast forward to the finals plz. Everyone knows its the Lakers and the Thunder on the west and the Heat vs the Celtics or the Bulls. Too many teams, not enough freaks of nature. You're discounting both Indiana and Philly to face miami in the east? ....i literally laughed at this question. insert not sure if srs...

lol u do know this is the opinion of every joe who watches basketball? I'm speaking about pure gambling here. If you offered me miami and boston both at 1:1 to win it all then this holds true

fast forward to 4:00, I loved this intro for Houston's 2012-2013 team =D

song is The Game - Higher, was so sick when jin/harden came out