2012-13 Season Preview, Pt. 3

   16.     Utah Jazz

There’s not much to say about the Jazz.  They were a middle-of-the-road, borderline playoff team last year, and I expect the same this year.  Al Jefferson was pretty exciting to watch at the end of the season though.  He worked hard enough to slip the team into the playoffs, and he deserved that postseason appearance.  I hope to see more of that hunger out of him this year.

   17.     Detroit Pistons

The post-Chauncey rebuilding is finally going to start looking up a bit more this year.  Greg Monroe put up numbers that were comparable to, if not better than, Roy Hibbert, who earned an all star spot over Monroe last year.  Andre Drummond won’t be great this year, but he’ll be enough to take some pressure off Monroe so he can get those numbers up even more.  Watch out for a more experienced Brandon Knight this year as well.

   18.     Philadelphia 76ers

The spotlight in Philly is on Andrew Bynum, who will be taking on the role of team-star for the first time in his career.  Based on the maturity he’s shown in the past, I don’t expect that to go to well.  He’ll have plenty of strong games, and Jrue Holiday will be a good help to him.  But with the next best player being a slowly aging Jason Richardson, this team won’t be anything special in their first year together.

   19.     Portland Trail Blazers

This team is just struggling to get healthy talent.  Their future was bright a few years ago when the team carried plenty of youth like Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez, LaMarcus Aldridge and Travis Outlaw.  Things just didn’t work out though, for various reasons, and now only Aldridge is left.  Potential Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard should give him them a bit of a boost though.

   20.     Golden State Warriors

The Warriors seem like a team that’s in constant rebuilding mode.  They always manage to find good rookies and then get rid of them before they can be of help to the team.  Look at Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison, Monta Ellis, Jason Richardson, and even back in the ‘90s with Chris Webber and Latrell Spreewell.   We may see the same happening for Harrison Barnes and (to a lesser extent of greatness) Draymond Green.

To give them some hope though, Stephen Curry shows spurts of being a great floor general.  He also seems to like his role in Golden State.

   21.     New Orleans Hornets

Anthony Davis will be likely to get all the attention here, but I don’t think that will be saying much.  Davis will be okay, as will guys like Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon.  Overall though, I see this team struggling most of the season.  That's not necessarily bad though, the team is young and has some learning to do before they can excel.

   22.     Milwaukee Bucks

Nobody will be fearing the dear this season.  Monta Eliis is a tremendous shooter, but lacks game outside of that.  Brandon Jennings seems to have gone nowhere since his bright rookie season.  We saw some good play from Ersan Ilyasova at the end of last season, but that won’t be nearly enough for a playoff push.  Maybe Ersan should try a career as a body-double for James Franco instead.

   23.     Sacramento Kings

Lack of maturity will surely do this team in.  DeMarcus Cousins needs to learn to control himself on the court, as does Tyreke Evans off the court.  I think this team is full of players who will be great when they’re dispersed elsewhere, but not all on the same team.

   24.     Washington Wizards

This team has some decent talent in guys like John Wall, Nene and Jordan Crawford.  They really can’t get it together though, and that always leaves them in the bottom 10 in the league.  Their GMs may want to use that talent to make some moves quick this season.

  

   25.   Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavs are historically awful.  It just so happens that sometimes they’re so awful that a superstar falls into their lap.  With numerous lottery picks in the past 2 years, they have a few of those stars-in-training like Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson and Dion Waiters.  For now, we’ll just have to sit back and watch more of that training from them.

   26.   Phoenix Suns

There’s not much to expect from a team that’s going to be lead by Marcin Gortat.  He is one of the better centers in the NBA, but I can't see anything exciting happening in Phoenix this year.

   27.   Houston Rockets

The Rockets are usually creeping up close to a playoff spot.  With Luis Scola and Kyle Lowry gone, I don’t think we’ll see that this year.  We may get another flash of Linsanity this year though.

   28.   Toronto Raptors

The team added the previously mentioned Kyle Lowry, along with Landry Fields, which should give them a boost.  Then again, Lowry didn’t give the Rockets enough of a boost to reach the playoffs, and the Raptors are embarrassingly weak outside of those two.

   29.   Charlotte Bobcats

It will be interesting to see how Michael Kidd-Gilchrist does this year.  I expect him and Lillard to be the top candidates for Rookie of the Year.  They’re still bad though, and things will remain that way until Michael Jordan is out of the GM position.

   30.   Orlando Magic

The one bright spot for Orlando is that guys like Glen Davis and Aaron Afflalo still look like they want to work their tails off for the team.  They won’t necessarily have the worst record in the league, but this season will be pre-rebuilding for them.  Remember the Cavs the year after LeBron left?  It was just kind of play some games, wait for that disastrous season to be over, get a good lottery pick and then start the post-Dwight rebuilding next year.  This will be a pretty meaningless season for this team.

And there you have it folks, my previews and predictions for the upcoming NBA season.  Keep reading, and watch out for the start of the NBA season on October 30th.