![]() ![]() Billy Donovan will get Coach of the Year votes with a team that a year ago was pining for a Play-In Tournament spot.īrooklyn Nets (25-14): The same question that hung over this team last season - What can they be if they have all three stars meshing and thriving? - has hung over this one. DeRozan, seemingly an overpay for a limited, aging player, has made a lot of us “experts” look silly by performing at a Kia MVP-worthy level. Big boss Arturas Karnisovas, after mostly a feel-out first season, got busy in adding Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso and notably DeMar DeRozan to last season’s acquisition Nikola Vucevic and holdovers Zach LaVine and Coby White. Now they’re the East’s only team topping. Giannis Antetokounmpo and the defending-champion Bucks are still among the East’s elite.Ĭhicago Bulls (27-11): One of the East’s two biggest surprise teams, the Bulls at the midpoint last season were playing. As far as the playoffs, then, the East - with the trade deadline, All-Star weekend and buyout market still to come - offers an intriguing collection of 12 teams vying for 10 chairs when the music stops.īelow is a breakdown of the Eastern Conference landscape midway through the season. Thus, it joins the two clubs - the Pistons and the Magic - that seem truly committed to rebuilds. Indiana? It will make its intentions known at the trade deadline, perhaps by making significant changes to its core. However, four others - Cleveland especially, but Toronto, Charlotte and Washington - probably would have grabbed their current W-L marks if offered back in early October and taken their chances from here. At least five - Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Atlanta - are underperforming according to their expectations. The second tier, by comparison, is vast - seven teams grouped tightly within four games of each other, all near. Brooklyn, Milwaukee and Miami have sniffed these heights before, while Chicago appears to be ending a slump that began when Derrick Rose left town. ![]() The Eastern Conference, approximately halfway through, looks to have a natural break after the Top 4, which conveniently suggests the conference’s likely homecourt holders come the playoffs. If not, well, they’re going to hold the tournament anyway. If so, this endurance test-slash-obstacle course that is 2021-22 could send everyone into a postseason worthy of the NBA’s diamond anniversary celebration. The league and its teams have to be hoping for an end to the madcap comings and goings of players, coaches, even broadcasting into and out of the COVID-created Health and Safety Protocols. This season is more traditional but defined by surviving endless potholes along the way, based on who is or isn’t playing on any given night. ![]() The 2020-21 regular season was shorter, tighter and largely about surviving the turnaround from 2019-20. ![]()
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