Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it livens up an NBA season.
Which teams are YOU most curious about? You might already have a defined answer, but if you don’t, a look at this roundtable might give you some ideas.
Let this be said at the outset: Florida is a wild and strange place, a land with a magnetic attraction to objects of curiosity. What are the NBA’s foremost points of curiosity this season? Let’s see what our panelists — not including Florida Man — have to say:
*
JARED MINTZ
As a native New Yorker, it’s kind of difficult to not lean Knicks here, but to be objective, I’m the most curious about the Miami Heat this season. Their possible outcomes probably have the widest range of any team in the NBA.
Last season seemed to be a two-steps-back, one-step-forward journey in South Beach, as the team was decimated by the departure of LeBron James in the offseason. They signed Luol Deng and do-it-all big Josh McRoberts, who played a whopping 17 games. On top of that injury, Dwyane Wade missed 20 games and Chris Bosh was diagnosed with a blood clot in his lungs, effectively ending his season around the All Star break.
That’s the bad. The good entailed acquiring Goran Dragic, whom they re-signed in the offseason, and the emergence of center Hassan Whiteside, who was a double-double machine in spite of showing signs of the immaturity that held him back his first few years in the league. This team adds rookie Justise Winslow to the fold, an NBA-ready wing with an incredibly high motor, who will be able to (at worst) immediately contribute on the defensive end.
You have to hope that a healthy Bosh, plus Dragic, Winslow and Whiteside, can compensate for the games Wade misses. With the depth this team possesses it’s feasible it can fight for the two-seed in the East. Then again, we’re looking at a team which played below .500 from December and onward last season. Even though you hope everyone will remain healthy, their success is far from certain.
SEAN WOODLEY
Orlando’s intriguing collection of young, talented players continued to grow with the addition of fifth-overall pick Mario Hezonja. It’s still unclear if any of the Magic’s young pieces are All-Star material, but the group including Elfrid Payton, Victor Oladipo, Hezonja, Aaron Gordon, Tobias Harris, and Nik Vucevic boasts too much ability and potential for Orlando to remain a 25-win team in perpetuity.
Scott Skiles is the new coach. In his career he has done two things well: instill defensive values and place heavy responsibility on the shoulders of young players. He could be the perfect coach to help turn around a defensively-challenged team that had 13 players 24 or younger at training camp.
BRYAN GIBBERMAN
The Washington Wizards. I talked about this in the MVP section, but it looks like Randy Wittman is finally going to unlock John Wall by playing with more pace and space. I can’t wait to see this. What happens with Otto Porter and Brad Beal’s development will also be interesting. If Washington wants to make a jump, Beal has to be better than he has been on a consistent basis and Porter must continue to improve. I’m also here for “Kris Humphries, three-point shooter.”
MATT ZEMEK
The Miami Heat certainly qualify as a team I’m curious about, but we all know Cleveland’s winning the East, so I’m ultimately led to the West. (It’s notable that most of the NBA’s “objects of curiosity” do lie in the East. No, really — they do. Locating points of curiosity in the East is an appropriate inclination from our staff of writers, given that there’s so much more uncertain territory in that conference.)
In some ways, the Los Angeles Clippers bring the same basic questions to a new NBA season: Will Chris Paul and Blake Griffin break through? Will the bench step up in the playoffs and provide more support for the superstars? How will Doc Rivers wear the GM and coaching hats this season? Will the knuckleheads on the team get out of the way? Will DeAndre Jordan shoot foul shots underhanded, as he should have started to do long ago? Will the team finally make a Western Conference Finals appearance, so we don’t have to write or talk about it anymore?
Yet, while those questions remain, new ones have been created: Is Steve Ballmer moving the franchise in the right direction? Has Doc learned how to blend and balance his dual roles? How will new knuckleheads Josh Smith and Lance Stephenson function in this environment? How will Paul Pierce — in many ways a player-coach for Doc Rivers (almost as much as LeBron is for the Cavs) — guide the knuckleheads and help them out? Will Pierce hit more playoff daggers?
This is still the most fascinating team in the NBA for me. Even if the end result (no West Finals) remains the same, the journey to that familiar conclusion is never boring.
