Connor Lothrop
Usually, a trade deadline gives us a better understanding of who the real contenders to win a conference are. However, after an intense flurry of swaps last week, the Holy Grail of the honor of losing to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals is looking more and more in reach for more and more teams. After deadline day, the top 5 teams in the East are separated by 6.5 games, with a gulf of 7.5 games separating the bottom 10 teams from the top of the pack. All of these teams made significant trades or were at least heavily involved in intriguing trade talks. And, for the first time in 15 years, Lebron James is out of the picture. In fact, the last time a team reached the Finals from the East without Lebron was 2010. That streak will be broken by default this year, but which of the top teams east of the Mississippi River (not you, Memphis or New Orleans) are best equipped to finish the regular season strong and make it to the Promised Land of a 4-1 Finals loss to The Splash Bros & Co.? Below, I ranked each team on how likely they are to represent the East in June.
5. Indiana Pacers (38-20)
Indiana currently sits at third in the East, but how long they will stay there is in question. Their main star and scorer Victor Oladipo went down with a season-ending quad injury on January 23 against Toronto. After that, the Pacers lost 4 on the bounce before winning their last 5. Up to then, the Pacers had been very reliant on Oladipo shooting to balance out their talented big men. This worked very well, as Oladipo averaged 18 points, 5.2 assists, and 5.8 rebounds. His 6 3-pointers per game at 34% allowed big men Domantas Sabonis, Myles Turner, and Thaddeus Young to thrive insidewhile sharing time. The additional floor stretching brought in by 6-8 SF Bojan Bogdanovic and his ridiculous 43% from behind the arc added another element to Indy’s game. In fact, they shoot very well as a team, knocking down 37% of their 3s. The Pacers are a very mediocre offense, with no active player averaging more than 16 PPG, and ranking 16th in offensive rating. However, they have the second strongest D in the Association, letting in a measly 104 points per 100 possessions. Don’t expect this to continue, though.
So far, Indiana has played the easiest schedule in the NBA, but that will change soon. They play Milwaukee and Boston twice, and every team in the top 6 in the West at least once before the playoffs. They are 4-6 against teams mentioned in this article. Their lack of star power and high foul rate will hurt them against deep, star-studded teams like Milwaukee and Toronto. They could have traded one of their many big men at the deadline for a creative ball handler like Jrue Holiday or Mike Conley, but they instead traded cash to Houston for a collection of role players that were immediately put on waivers. It will be hard to turn their collection of above average centers and 3-and-D wings into a playoff victory this year. Their best hope of winning a series is maintaining the 4 spot and using home-court advantage and a hot defense to beat a demoralized Boston team.
4. Boston Celtics (37-21)
Before the season, the Celtics were the de-facto pick to win the Lebronless East. They were easily the best bet on paper. But paper doesn’t win basketball games. Last season, they were within one game of knocking off Cleveland and clinching a Finals berth with a formula of team chemistry and role players stepping up. Those usually make a team candidates for regression, but the C’s had stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward coming back from rough injuries. Unfortunately, they regressed anyway. Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier led the charge last year, but both have regressed on all fronts as they have dropped into bench roles. Kyrie Irving has once again had trouble staying healthy. He also is averaging a lofty 2.7 turnovers a game, his highest since 2014, and his scoring rate has dropped off, from 25.2 in 2017 to 23.6 now. While he is still averaging career highs in assists and rebounds, his contract situation is killing morale. He has been slowly distancing himself from re-signing in Boston, and it has lead to such a drop off in chemistry that forward Marcus Morris says that nobody is enjoying playing there.
None of this helped by the Gordon Hayward situation. When Boston pulled in Hayward from Utah, they were expecting the forward who had 21.9 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 3.5 assists in his final year in Utah. Then in his first game in a Celtics uniform, he suffered a gruesome knee injury. Since coming back from that injury in November, he has been a shell of his former self. His scoring is half of what it was 2 years ago, he’s playing 10 fewer minutes a game, and his 3 pointers are falling 8% less often. He was supposed to come back and be important in Boston, but it looks like his injuries killed that. Between Hayward and the Irving situation, Boston has looked unimpressive.
There is hope for a third championship appearance in 200 days for Boston, though. The underlying numbers say they’re better than their record. They rank 3rd in the Simple Rating System and boast the 5th best defense in the league. They hold opponents to an effective field goal percentage of just over 50. They shoot the ball well and rarely turn it over. The pieces are there, they just cannot find a way to win ballgames. If they can get just a shred of last year’s magic into this team, then they can press into the Finals.
3. Toronto Raptors (43-16)
Toronto is probably a lock to make it to the conference Finals. They have assembled a squad with a bona fide star (Kawhi Leonard), savvy veterans (deadline pickup Marc Gasol, Kyle Lowry, Danny Green, and Serge Ibaka), and young guns ready to play in any role (Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam) and turned it into the 2nd best team in basketball. They are a great all-around team, with no real flaws. They boast the 7th best defense and the 8th best offense in the NBA, and have a candidate for Defensive Player of the Year in Leonard. They can pass, shoot, and defend with either starters or their bench mob on the floor. They are a team with a very, very high floor.
The problem is that their ceiling is lower than any team in the column except Indiana. They only really have one true game changer (Leonard); they are already outperforming their record by 3 games, according to Pythagorean W-L, which means they are getting lucky often. They are a top-10 team in nearly every category, but someone they will have to face in May is going to be better at a lot of things than them. In order to make it to the finals, they will have to ride Kawhi Leonard there all the way, and the rest of the team will need to step up the shooting and perimeter defense some. If that doesn’t happen, then they will likely face back-to-back disappointing playoff exits.
2. Philadelphia 76ers (37-21)
All hail the Big Four! All hail The Process! All hail the phantastic team building that has taken place in the domain of the Philly Phanatic! The 76ers were supposed to be one year away from being a real contender when the season kicked off. They had two young stars with big holes in their games and a collection of good players around them, but have established, through some great trades, a starting lineup with 3.5 legit stars (Tobias Harris is a very good player, but got no love as a Clipper, so he gets a half-star rating) without ravaging their bench. This team has as much upside as any team in the league except Golden State. Ben Simmons is the best point-forward in the game not named Lebron or Luka, Jimmy Butler is a dangerous scorer, and Joel Embiid might be a better defender than scorer, and he’s scoring 27 a game. Their starting 5 is rounded out by Harris, a good shooter and alright defender, and 3-point specialist J.J Redick. This starting 5 is the best in the East when they click, and they give Philly as high a ceiling as anyone in the East.
The downside of all those trades is that they traded a lot of bench assets. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Wilson Chandler, Dario Saric, and Robert Covington combined to score around 30 points a night and play great defense from the bench. Those guys play in LA and Minneapolis now, and the rest of the 76ers bench is well… underperforming. Mike Scott, Mike Muscala, and TJ McConnell average 18.4 points a night while all providing slightly above average defense. The worse problem is, the 76ers have only 2 guys who can shoot. Tobias Harris and JJ Redick are both shooting more than 5 threes a game (Redick is shooting 8) but when they have an off night, there is no perimeter threat. Ben Simmons has shot 3 threes all season and missed all of them. While he has been one of the most efficient paint scorers in the NBA, he is also averaging one 3-pointer every 19 games. Philadelphia can win this conference, but their bench will need to step up against teams with deeper lineups. Embiid and Simmons can’t play all 48 minutes. Philadelphia has a great chance to be the best in the East, but they could exit in the second round just as easily.
- Milwaukee Bucks (43-14)
The East is Milwaukee’s to lose. They’ve easily been the best team in the East, and maybe the league, all year long. They’re actually underperforming their Pythagorean W-L by a game, and the Simple Rating System has them number 1 in the game. Giannis Antetokounmpo (who for the rest of this piece will be referred to as the Greek Freak because I don’t want to type his name ever again) is the best player in the NBA right now. He tops the leaderboard in Defensive Win Shares and is top 5 in Offensive win shares, contributing to a total of 10.6 wins. He is scoring 27.2 a game to go with 12.7 rebounds and 6 assists. He shoots nearly 59% of his shots within 3 feet of the basket and makes 77% of them. The Bucks offense around him is excellent too, easily 4th in the league. Coach Mike Budenholzer surrounds him with 4 shooters like Malcolm Brogdon and Khris Middleton to leave lanes wide open for insane dunks and acrobatic layups. Center Brook Lopez actually leads the team in 3 point attempts a game, with 6.5. He’s 7 feet tall and raining threes. The Bucks are an excellent 3 and D team with the game’s best young player setting them up inside.
There aren’t a lot of holes in this team, but they still managed to plug a small one at the deadline by trading 4 second round picks for Nikola Mirotic, another shooting big man to bolster the bench. Now, they score, pass, play D, shoot, rebound, and do everything throughout the team. Their rise is very reminiscent of the Golden State Warriors 5 or 6 years ago. They were a team with all the pieces, but it took the right coach to unlock it all. Budenholzer tweaked Milwaukee’s scheme slightly to give them more freedom, and they were off to challenge Golden State. Of course, the Warriors never had an inside presence like the Greek Freak, but they had more impact 3 point shooting. The Bucks bench is just as strong as the best units Golden State can put in, with 5 role players averaging at least 6 points and contributing meaningfully elsewhere. The only way this team sinks is if they face injury or someone exposes their mediocre turnover rate. Other than that, this team has the best chance of any team not led by Lebron to beat Golden State and claim their first Championship in 48 years.
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