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The major moves of the NBA offseason have been made, and now it’s time to figure out just where each team stands in terms of the 2010 NBA Championship race.
So are the Lakers the favorite? Let’s power rank them all to find out.
TheSportsWatchers.com’s NBA Preseason Power Rankings
1. Los Angeles Lakers – Signing Lamar Odom was big for this team. Without him, there might have been a number of teams that I would have ranked ahead of the Lakers going into the 2009-2010 NBA season. However, Odom brings versatility, experience, height, and talent to an otherwise unimpressive Lakers’ bench. Odom also adds some reassurance should anyone in the starting lineup, Kobe Bryant included, go down for a significant number of games.
2. Boston Celtics – We never really did find out if the Cleveland Cavaliers had surpassed the Boston Celtics last year, because the Celtics couldn’t even get by the Orlando Magic without Kevin Garnett in their lineup. However, assuming KG is healthy (and maybe even if he isn’t), the addition of Rasheed Wallace all but assures that this team is more than capable of beating Orlando in a 7-game series. I also think they are a better team than the Cleveland Cavaliers, because Rasheed gives the team two versatile big men, of which no team in the NBA can match up with.
3. San Antonio Spurs – You have to really respect what the San Antonio Spurs did this past offseason. Knowing that the window for a Tim Duncan-led championship is quickly closing, the team decided to make one last push to surround Duncan with the talent he needs to help this team win a championship. Bringing in the basket-filling Richard Jefferson was a great start, and adding depth on the front line with DeJuan Blair and Antonio McDyess might have been an even better finish. Either way, this team’s success rest on whether or not Manu Ginobili and Duncan will be healthy come playoff time. But the additions the Spurs made this summer will allow head coach Greg Popovich to rest those two players more during the regular season, so there should be no excuses.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers – Yes, I’m ranking the Cavaliers ahead of the Orlando Magic, but I’ll get to the Magic later. With the addition of Shaquille O’Neal, this team finally has a presence inside the paint. Some worry that Shaq will clog up the lane and get in LeBron James’s way, but Kobe never had that problem when he was averaging 27 with Shaq on the team, and neither did Dwayne Wade or Steve Nash over the last 5 years. LeBron and Shaq will be just fine in terms of spacing, and they should get along in the locker room too. This team really needed another voice and talent outside of LeBron to take it to the next level, because clearly he was playing at another level during the Eastern Conference Finals, while the rest of the team should have paid the price of admission. However, I'm not so sure that Shaq will get the Cavs over the hump.
5. Orlando Magic – You can call it a slap in the face if you want to, but I do think that the reigning Eastern Conference Champion Orlando Magic won’t be back in the Finals next year. As you can see, I have them ranked behind 2 other Eastern Conference teams, two teams that got a whole lot better. The Magic, on the other hand, pretty much stayed the same. Replacing Hedo Turkoglu with Vince Carter may have been a slight upgrade, but Hedo was a much better distributor and fit better within the scheme of the offense, so I think some of Vince Carter’s upside gets negated by a lack of chemistry. Not to mention, the team will probably lose Marcin Gortat via a trade, unless they really intend to pay a backup center upwards of $30 million in a move that can only be described as Isiah Thomas-ish. That said, this team does have great talent, and they will have Jameer Nelson back at the point, so maybe I’m underrating them. However, as it stands now, this is where the Magic rank among the powers in the NBA.
2010 Preseason NBA Power Rankings: Western Conference
2009-2010 NBA Power Rankings: Player Edition
2010 NBA Offseason Storylines
All-Decade NBA Team 2000-2009
All-Next Decade NBA Team 2010-2019
Five Bold NBA Predictions: Eastern Conference
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