Your NBA Team Sucks - A Glass Half-Empty Season Preview (Part III)

Kevin Durant's foot injury could de-rail Oklahoma City's season before it even starts.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

Ready for one more round of bad feelings? I know I am. Let's throw our stink on the last ten teams in the league. If you missed Part I (the ten worst teams from last year), it's here. For Part II (with the last few lottery teams and the first bunch of playoff teams), it's over there. And this is Part III, covering the best of the best. Well, the worst of the best. These teams suck.

Miami Heat

In case you didn’t hear, LeBron isn’t playing for the team any longer.

The team completely and totally fell apart in the playoffs last year whenever LeBron wasn’t on the floor. How are they going to survive a whole season without him? Dwyane Wade is pretty much guaranteed to break down. The last time Chris Bosh carried a team, the 2010 Raptors went 40-42. At least they can take solace in the fact that everything bad going on is Mario Chalmers’ fault.

Worst-Case Scenario: Wade’s knees fall apart as he tries to shoulder a greater load. Bosh can’t step up, Luol Deng and Danny Granger are washed up, Josh McRoberts never fits in, and the Heat lose 55 games.

Your NBA Team Sucks - A Glass Half-Empty Season Preview (Part II)

Uh-oh. Not again.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

Welcome to Part II of Your Team Sucks - explanations for why each team in the league is comically worse than you think they are. If you missed Part I yesterday, you can find it here.

Part I covered the 10 worst teams in the league last year (save for Cleveland, who we'll save for Part III tomorrow), so this will cover the 10 teams in the middle, including our first batch of playoff teams from a year ago. But we start with a few more lottery teams first.

New York Knicks

They were 24th in defensive efficiency last season. In order to improve this, they traded Ray Felton for the one point guard in the league who might actually be worse defensively - Jose Calderon. They also dealt their only serviceable defensive player in the same deal - Tyson Chandler went back to Dallas and all they got in return was Samuel Dalembert. This means that New York’s big man rotation is Dalembert, Amar’e Stoudemire, and Andrea Bargnani. There’s no possible way that they improve defensively.

The Way-Too-Long NBA Preview (Part II)

Chris Paul is ready to lead the Clippers to Los Angeles relevance.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

I began the end of the SuiteSports 2013-2014 NBA Preview yesterday with Part I of the Way-Too-Long Preview. This is Part II, the final installment.

Because the season starts today.

All the previous publishings can be found on the sidebar on the right-hand side, or you can just plow ahead with the 15 teams I didn't cover yesterday. Again, there is no secret code to be unlocked to derive meaning from the order. I pulled them out of a hat and then made sure my Finals pick was at the end. That's it. Now read it.

Because it's basketball season.

Los Angeles Lakers
2013 Record: 45-37
Over/Under Wins: 36.5
Odds to Win Championship: 40/1

Scouting Report: The Lakers’ odds to win the championship are hysterically funny. Compared to, say, the Pistons, their over/under line for wins is actually four lower (Pistons are at 40.5), but their odds to win the title are significantly lower (Detroit is at 75/1). This basically means that people are still betting on the Lakers to win the title in greater numbers than those betting on Detroit or other teams projected in that win range, like New Orleans (39.5; 100/1) or Atlanta (39.5; 150/1). Lakers fans, man. Gotta love ‘em.

The Way-Too-Long NBA Preview (Part I)

Dwight Howard has Houston thinking Championship.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

NBA season is right around the corner. Over the last two weeks, I've offered a pessimistic NBA preview (in three parts), and an optimistic NBA preview (also in three parts). This is the realistic NBA preview. In some instances, this will be a (paraphrased) repeat of what I said was the team's worst-case scenario; for others, a repeat of what I said was the team's best-case scenario. For others still, a totally new angle on what the season will be like.

In the interest of making things as confusing as possible, I've arranged the teams in random order (except for the teams I saved for last in today's Part I and tomorrow's Part II, but you'll get to that later). Do not try to discern a pattern for why a team is placed where - you won't find one. In each section, I've listed the team's record from last season, and two Vegas lines - their over/under for wins this season, and their odds to win the NBA title. You know, in case you live in a place where gambling is legal. 

Brooklyn Nets
2013 Record: 49-33
Over/Under Wins: 52.5
Odds to Win Championship: 10/1

Scouting Report: This team is going to be a lot like the 2010 Celtics, and not only because they prominently feature Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. It’s a team of veteran guys that realizes they don’t need to kick ass and take names on all 82 nights – they’re perfectly aware that they can go through the motions for days or even weeks at a time and still comfortably make the playoffs. All that really matters for them is if they can identify a clear rotation that will work come playoff time.

Your NBA Team Sucks - A Glass-Half-Empty Season Preview (Part III)

These guys think they're so cool. They're wrong. They suck. (Flickr)

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

In case you missed the first two installments of Your NBA Team Sucks, Part I can be found here and Part II can be found here. In Part III we cover the 10 best teams from last season (by regular season record), and while all of them made the playoffs last season, not all of them will this season. 

Golden State Warriors

Everyone is tripping over themselves to talk about how good the Warriors are going to be this year but ignoring a few key points.

First, David Lee is healthy again. The Warriors went on an impressive playoff run after he got hurt and they were forced to play small out of necessity. Harrison Barnes at power forward awarded the Golden State offense ample space with which to work, which they translated into a dynamite offensive performance (especially in Round 1). With Lee in the lineup, that spacing suffers.

Your NBA Team Sucks - A Glass-Half-Empty Season Preview (Part II)

Kobe Bryant. Not pictured - Kobe Bryant's Achilles injury.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

This is Part II of our Your Team Sucks series, previewing the worst parts of every NBA team for the upcoming season. In Part I, we covered the 10 worst teams from last season, and tomorrow we're covering the 10 best teams from last season. That means today, we've got the middle 10, including our first batch of playoff teams.

Toronto Raptors

In the first draft of this series, I didn’t write a section about the Raptors because I forgot to add them to my list. That’s how much they suck. I forgot they existed.

First of all, their “star” is Rudy Gay. The same Rudy Gay that had negative offensive win shares at the time he was traded from Memphis to Toronto last season. The same Rudy Gay that attempted almost 17 shots per game last season and sported a true shooting percentage 1.3 points lower than the lowest-ranked team in the league.

Rounding out the squad is Kyle Lowry (who is in a contract year and is surely bolting after the season), DeMar DeRozan (who is somehow even more inefficient than Gay), and Jonas Valanciunas, who is still at least two seasons away from being anything other than just a solid big man.

Worst-Case Scenario: Gay decides what has been holding him back from true superstardom over the last handful of years is positional flexibility, so he insists on playing point guard "like LeBron does." He averages six turnovers per game. Terrence Ross continues to come off the bench until Dwyane Casey realizes he can neither dribble nor shoot, at which point he is inserted into the starting lineup, just to play a joke on DeMar DeRozan. The Raptors begin to tank right after the All-Star break, justifying Aaron Gray's employment.

Philadelphia 76ers

Thaddeus Young, Evan Turner, Spencer Hawes, Jason Richardson, Lavoy Allen, Kwame Brown, Royce White, Arnett Moultrie, James Anderson, Tim Ohlbrecht, Tony Wroten, Darius Morris, Nerlens Noel’s knee injury, and Michael Carter-Whoops I Threw It To the Wrong Team. That’s 14 members of a 15-man NBA roster. Unless the 15th man is LeBreem-Abdul O’Nealajuwon, this team ain’t winning 15 games.

Worst-Case Scenario: Against better judgment, Nerlens Noel returns to the lineup after New Years, and his rebounding and shot-blocking presence vault Philadelphia back towards the middle of the lottery instead of locking up the worst record in the league by the All-Star break. 

Your NBA Team Sucks - A Glass-Half-Empty Season Preivew (Part I)

Hey. Charlotte Bobcats. You Suck.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

Welcome to the first edition of "Your NBA Team Sucks." Deadspin has done an NFL version, but we've gone ahead and borrowed the idea for the NBA. We aren't going as in-depth as Deadspin does with their NFL series - ours is broken into three parts, outlining 10 teams each. And, in the interest of fairness and positivity, we're going to follow it up with another three-part series "Your NBA Team Is Awesome" once this is finished.

The list runs in reverse order of last year's standings, so Part I will cover Orlando through Portland, Part II will cover Philadelphia through Golden State, and Part III will cover Brooklyn through Miami. Let's get started.

Orlando Magic

They won 20 games last year, the fewest in the league. They got the No. 2 pick in the draft and used it on Victor Oladipo, a shooting guard with limited ball handling and passing skills. Naturally, he’s going to start at point guard.