Playoffs probably not.... In the East? Hmmm....

[BlackieMamba]

How would we stack up against teams in the East? Are we a playoff team in the East?

LOCKS
Cavs
Celtics
Wizards
Bucks
Raptors

HAS THE PIECES
Hornets
Heat
76ers

BORDERLINE
Pistons
Pacers
Knicks

LOTTERY
Magic
Hawks
Bulls
Nets

Doesn't matter at the end of the day because we won't ever switch to playoff seeds not being based on conference. But I thought it would be interesting to see where Laker Nation thinks we rank among the lesser half of the NBA.


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[Michael Lucky]

We're a 23-25 win team. No shooting and poor defense at the majority of our positions. Our best player led his team to 20 wins last year and we lost our three best offensive players. Not sure how we'd make the playoffs in the East even with weaker competition.

[VIPER8382]

We're a 23-25 win team. No shooting and poor defense at the majority of our positions. Our best player led his team to 20 wins last year and we lost our three best offensive players. Not sure how we'd make the playoffs in the East even with weaker competition.

That is quite pessimistic. We added a proven center who is better offensively than everybody we lost, we also added Ball and KCP. Next up Walton should be much improved in year 2. Finally add on our young guys getting better, and even against a tougher West it is hard to imagine not getting at least 10 more wins.

Last year we had a total of 0 players that were top 25% at their position, this year we have 2 (Lopez & KCP).

If he is as good as advertised then Ball should make everyone else much better on offense. Especially watch for KCP, as not only was he shackled with RJ, but also Drummond. Ball and Lopez will be an absolute breath of fresh air.

Ingram is also a wild card as he has the potential to become a star as soon as this year, though I would bet on late this season to early next.

[Michael Lucky]

We're a 23-25 win team. No shooting and poor defense at the majority of our positions. Our best player led his team to 20 wins last year and we lost our three best offensive players. Not sure how we'd make the playoffs in the East even with weaker competition.

That is quite pessimistic. We added a proven center who is better offensively than everybody we lost, we also added Ball and KCP. Next up Walton should be much improved in year 2. Finally add on our young guys getting better, and even against a tougher West it is hard to imagine not getting at least 10 more wins.

Last year we had a total of 0 players that were top 25% at their position, this year we have 2 (Lopez & KCP).

If he is as good as advertised then Ball should make everyone else much better on offense. Especially watch for KCP, as not only was he shackled with RJ, but also Drummond. Ball and Lopez will be an absolute breath of fresh air.

Ingram is also a wild card as he has the potential to become a star as soon as this year, though I would bet on late this season to early next.

Ball isn't going to add wins as a 19 year old rookie. Even Lebron didn't get his team to the playoffs his first year. It took Durant three years to get his there. KAT had a great rookie year and his team was terrible.

And again your proven Center led his team to the worst record in the league. KCP isn't a good player. He plays both ends of the floor but he is very inefficient offensively. He's brought in here mostly for defensive purposes. The vast majority of our wins last year came from the three players we've lost.

[Laker_Kid]

We're a 23-25 win team. No shooting and poor defense at the majority of our positions. Our best player led his team to 20 wins last year and we lost our three best offensive players. Not sure how we'd make the playoffs in the East even with weaker competition.

dlo, young, black, ennis, and mozgov were replaced by lonzo, kcp, lopez, kuzma, bryant, and hart.

are you saying we're a worst team than last year?

[BlackieMamba]

The point is I think our roster matches up well against the likes of the Hornets, the Heat and the 76ers. We stack up well against the borderline teams as well. We're going to be better than most of the league thinks. I think we would be on the borderline in the eastern conference. If Ingram or Randle breaks out this year we will hear talk of playoffs just as we did early on last year.


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[Michael Lucky]

We're a 23-25 win team. No shooting and poor defense at the majority of our positions. Our best player led his team to 20 wins last year and we lost our three best offensive players. Not sure how we'd make the playoffs in the East even with weaker competition.

dlo, young, black, ennis, and mozgov were replaced by lonzo, kcp, lopez, kuzma, bryant, and hart.

are you saying we're a worst team than last year?

Yes there's a very good chance that we are. Especially since Lou and Russell are currently better players than everyone on that list except for maybe Lopez. Heck you can make an argument for Young as well. Also can't be overstated that we'll be much easier to defend considering our serious lack of spacing.

[VIPER8382]

There is a huge difference between adding wins and getting a team to the playoffs. Many rookies add wins to their team, but few are capable of leading a high lotto team to the Playoffs.

There is no center in the league that was going to lead the Nets to anything more than a bottom 5 finish last year, that roster was just plain dreadful. It was the best tank roster yet outside of Brook, but thanks to King it was to Boston's benefit.

Here is my breakdown on each position:

PG - Ball in for Russell. I am a huge Russell fan, but I feel that this is a small gain for the Lakers comparing last year's Russell to this year's Ball. I don't expect Ball to be quite the scorer that Russell was, but expect quite an uptick in creating for others. Also Russell for whatever reason didn't do much better than replacement level as far as scoring for the season as a whole.

SG - KCP/Clarkson in for Williams/Clarkson. I again expect a drop off here from a scoring standpoint, but due to Ball I expect it to be minimized, and keep in mind that we didn't even have Williams for the entire season. I don't expect a huge amount from Clarkson, but expect him to be a little bit improved this season. Then when we add in defense we are now talking about enormous gains here. I consider this to be another gain overall.

SF - Ingram/Deng in for Young/Ingram/Deng. This is the wild card, because Young was actually a pretty good player last year out of nowhere, but we didn't have him all season either as he got shut down. Then there was Ingram who was actually pretty bad last year and Deng who was pretty injured and then shut down also. I think we all expect a lot out of Ingram this year, but how much more than last year is the question. Will it be enough to offset a good Young and a bad him last year. Will Deng redeem himself in year 2? I am going to call this one a bit of a downgrade, but with the potential to be a gain, possibly even a pretty big gain.

PF - Randle/Nance for both. I expect a small gain here from both of them improving with another year of experience and the Ball effect.

C - Lopez/Zubac in for Mozgov/Black/Zubac. I don't have to say anything more than the following, this is a huge, huge improvement.

Coaching - Walton again for both. I expect him to be better in his 2nd season as the full time man, and 2nd with much of this group.

Competition - The West was tough last season, but now it is beyond insane.

I think the Lakers are clearly a much better team, and will be even more improved than their record will indicate due to an even tougher schedule, but I stand behind my prediction of 8 to 12 more wins, so I will split the difference and say 10.

[Mirjalovic]

There is no maybe. Brook Lopez by far the best player than Dlo.

[Michael Lucky]

There is no maybe. Brook Lopez by far the best player than Dlo.

So much better he led his team to the worst record in the league.

Heck we may not even have Randle for most of the year since he'll likely be traded and he's probably our second best player.

[Mirjalovic]

There is no maybe. Brook Lopez by far the best player than Dlo.

So much better he led his team to the worst record in the league.

Heck we may not even have Randle for most of the year since he'll likely be traded and he's probably our second best player.

so was Russell.

Brook didn't even have Lou, Randle, Tariq, Zubac, Clarkson, Brewer, Young, or even Deng, Mozgov calibre. All he had was Lin and his fans.

[Michael Lucky]

There is no maybe. Brook Lopez by far the best player than Dlo.

So much better he led his team to the worst record in the league.

Heck we may not even have Randle for most of the year since he'll likely be traded and he's probably our second best player.

so was Russell.

Brook didn't even have Lou, Randle, Tariq, Zubac, Clarkson, Brewer, Young, or even Deng, Mozgov calibre. All he had was Lin and his fans.

Good thing he didn't have those guys in bold. Nets might not have reached 15 wins last year.


Also hate to say it, but Lin actually played really well in the games he played last year. A lot better than when he played for us anyways.

[VIPER8382]

Wins will be tough to find against the West, but there are some really easy targets in the East. It will be hard not to get 10 wins in 14 games against Brooklyn, Orlando, New York, Chicago, Indiana, Detroit, and Atlanta. So then we just need 26 wins in the remaining 68 games to gain 10 overall.

[Mirjalovic]

So much better he led his team to the worst record in the league.

Heck we may not even have Randle for most of the year since he'll likely be traded and he's probably our second best player.

so was Russell.

Brook didn't even have Lou, Randle, Tariq, Zubac, Clarkson, Brewer, Young, or even Deng, Mozgov calibre. All he had was Lin and his fans.

Good thing he didn't have those guys in bold. Nets might not have reached 15 wins last year.


Also hate to say it, but Lin actually played really well in the games he played last year. A lot better than when he played for us anyways.

Clarkson > Levert
Deng and Mozgov alone are better than anyone but Lin and Brook.

[SlimShady83]

Have some faith ... Just outside the top 8 OR with some Luck one of the guys have a monster season and we get that final spot

WHO CARES ABOUT THE EAST!? shouldn't even exist lol but on the side note we'de be a top 5 team in the east

Celtics will be #1 and I'm hoping they OR anyone really overtake the scrappy cavs

[VIPER8382]

FYI:
record last year with Williams was 19-39 for a .328 win pct
without Williams 7-17 for a .292 win pct
82 game pace with Williams = 27
82 game pace without Williams = 24
So this guy that you are assigning so much value to was only worth a total of 3 wins for a whole season, when he was replaced with nothing at all.

[VIPER8382]

Nets record over the last 2 seasons:
With Lopez - 41-107 - .277
Without Lopez - 0-16 - .000
So Lopez was worth 23 wins over an 82 game season!
I know it is a bit flawed as they likely wouldn't lose every game over 82, but I guarantee that neither of the last 2 season Nets teams would have hit double digit wins without Brook.

[Penberthy]

thats not math

[dontforget]

Sorry, the Brook Lopez hate is non-sense. Getting a Center that can score 20 ppg, stretch the court and shoot 35% from 3, and have a W/S of 5 is not an improvement because he couldn't with win with a team that featured Jeremy Lin, Randy Foye, Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis Jefferson around him.

Oh and when the Nets did manage to field a decent team around him his playoffs numbers are
2013: 7 GP 22.3 PPG 7.4 RPG 3.0 BPG on 47.2 FG%
2015: 6 GP 19.8 PPG 9.0 RPG 2.2 BPG on 49.4 FG%

Like I said, non-sense.

[VIPER8382]

record last year with Young was 19-41 for a .317 win pct
without Young 7-15 for a .318 win pct
So we were basically the same team with and without Young

fixed my poor copy and paste