JB7 wrote:ciueli wrote:Prestige wrote:We've been going on about how other teams are so bad and we're just too good to tank based on the personnel on the roster. I seriously hope they can prove it next season by actually winning. It would be a nightmare to discover we're just the best of the worst and we still don't have enough juice to be a solid playoff team.
So much depends on Ingram staying healthy and being an impact player again. Without him playing a significant number of games it's basically the same team we trotted out this year minus Bruce Brown, Kelly Olynk, and Chris Boucher as decent veteran bench pieces that actually won us some games. If there are other players missing games as well the record next season might not be much better than this season.
The current 7th place team in the East is under .500
The Bucks, sitting in 5th place, might be done, if Dame is done, and Giannis demands a trade.
6th place team is the Pistons. They have had a great year, but this is a team that has been rock bottom for years. Can they improve next year, or start to regress after a year playing inferior talent in the East.
Honestly, the Pistons rise this year, and the Magic last season are perfect examples of how teams can easily rise in the East.
The Magic are a perfect example of how even a good team loaded with young talent can falter when injuries hit. There's a good chance the same thing happens to us next season if Ingram can't stay healthy (you know, like he hasn't been able to to his entire career). We've also had trouble keeping Jak healthy (back issues), he's headed into his year 30 season and we literally have no replacement for him as a starting C right now and no salary flexibility to add anyone in the offseason.
To throw on to the pile, we'll be adding yet another two draft picks to a team that is already really young, we'll have to find minutes for our first round pick at least with no guarantee that player is good (rookies are usually mostly bad year 1), and then we'll also need to keep developing Gradey, Ja'Kobe, Shead, and Mogbo, none of those guys have shown they can be key pieces on a winning team yet.
The Pistons rose this year because they had a bunch of cap space to spend on win-now veterans to fill holes on their team, they still have a ton of salary flexibility with which to make moves and further improve. We will be right at the luxury tax line next season with no way to fill bench holes and relying heavily on our starting 5 to win games, a starting 5 that has literally never played together at all in a real NBA game so we have no idea if it will even work. We don't have a credible backup PF, no backup C, and we're an Ingram injury away from not having a credible backup SF, our projected backup PG is at 50.4% True Shooting and 33.3% 3pt percentage this season, that really tempers my expectations for this team next year.