Burning questions for the NBA 2011-12 season

By Zach Lowe
December 22, 2011

The long-awaited NBA season is nearly upon us, and we’ve given you power rankings, division previews, roundtable predictions and tiers into which you can fit each of the 30 teams. Now let’s boil things down to 10 burning questions.

1. What happened to LeBron James in the Finals, and could it happen again?

Somewhere during Game 3 of the Finals, LeBron James lost the consistent aggression that makes him the game’s greatest player. It appeared in spots — a pick-and-roll drive into the lane around Dirk Nowitzki, a back-door cut during a Dwyane Wade pick-and-roll and the sort of smart dish to an open man that appeared passive but was really the right play.

But aggression in spots was not good enough for a championship, and it was not up to James’ standards. He refused to find a Plan B attack strategy against Dallas’ pick-and-roll defense when Tyson Chandler walled off Plan A, choosing instead to hot-potato the ball around the perimeter. The off-ball cuts didn’t come often enough when Wade was running things.

What happened? The Mavericks think they might have exhausted LeBron by running endless Jason Terry pick-and-rolls after Miami gave James the Terry defensive assignment. Mario Chalmers wouldn’t even address LeBron’s play in the Finals when I asked him about it last month. Dallas’ defense deserves huge credit, especially Chandler and then assistant coach Dwane Casey, but it’s clear something else happened to James. It says a lot about Miami that it nearly won the title even with James going through a funk that was so epically weird in part because of how coolly he seized crunch time against Boston and then Chicago in earlier playoff rounds. But Miami couldn’t win the title with James in that state, and there are great teams in Chicago, Oklahoma City, Dallas and elsewhere that can beat the Heat if they are in anything but top form.

2. Can the Magic win enough to keep Dwight Howard happy?

This is a storyline that impacts the entire league, from Orlando to New Jersey, to contenders across both conferences. The Magic had the scoring margin of a title contender in the regular season before their offense imploded in a first-round series against the Hawks — a team that happens to have one of the only centers (Jason Collins) capable of frustrating Howard one-on-one. Orlando lacked the off-the-dribble creators to compensate in that series, and its offense even in the regular season ranked only 14th in points per possession — average stuff.

The Magic didn’t really address this issue in the offseason. Jameer Nelson is a decent starting point guard, but he has never shown elite court vision. Hedo Turkoglu has the height, vision and creativity, but he’s getting older and slower. The Magic will use J.J. Redick on the ball here and there, but he’s not a top creator. Jason Richardson is a spot-up shooter against most good defenses.

Orlando’s defense will remain elite so long as Howard is there, but if its offense struggles again, this doesn’t look like a contender. And if it’s not, the situation could turn bad, and the league’s second-best player could be elsewhere.

3. Can Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant co-exist on offense?

The question is a red herring. Of course Westbrook and Durant can exist on offense! The Thunder were a top-five team all season in terms of points per possession, almost entirely due to Westbrook and Durant — and especially their combined skill at earning free throws. Only Dallas scored more efficiently in the playoffs, and though Oklahoma City’s offense took a small dip in efficiency during the playoffs (about 1.5 points per 100 possessions), that happens to most teams when the competition gets tougher.

But that doesn’t mean the issues aren’t real against good defenses in crunch time. It just means the issues go beyond the simplistic “can they co-exist?” question fans drool over in hopes of witnessing a developing feud. The Thunder’s offense fell apart at times in the clutch, devolving into Westbrook dribble-dribble-dribble isolations when Oklahoma City’s first options failed. Sometimes those first options involved Durant running off screens, something he had trouble with against Tony Allen. Sometimes they involved the near-indefensible Westbrook-Durant pick-and-roll — a play the Mavericks could defend by simply switching.

Blow those first options up, and Thunder fell into bad habits that are typical of a team that relied on isolations more than all but four teams (per Synergy Sports) and ranked near the bottom of the league in assist rate. This stuff speaks not only to the alleged Westbrook/Durant fit issues but also touches on coach Scott Brooks’ need to develop more creative options, Durant’s finding more ways to score with and without the ball, and Westbrook, still barely 23 years old, spotting passing lanes he missed last season.

There are small fixes that will make for incremental progress, and if the Thunder make enough such progress this season, the Durant/Westbrook story will fade.

4. Are the Clippers title contenders?

Who knows? But that uncertainty alone suggests how good this team could be. Chris Paul is the league’s best distributor, and he is blessed with more options now than at any point since 2008. His best assets — pick-and-roll passing, low-turnover play, solid rebounding, creating steals — mesh perfectly with the Clippers’ biggest weaknesses. Blake Griffin’s ceiling as a scorer alongside Paul is essentially infinite, provided he develops a reliable jumper. Dot the perimeter with shooters and add DeAndre Jordan as a lurking threat, and it will be a disappointment if the Clippers don’t rank within the top five in points scored per possession.

That is the offense of a contender. But will they defend like a contender? That will depend on Jordan learning to control his athleticism, sense passing angles and develop into the stopper he should eventually become. He and Griffin must communicate better, and the Clippers, with Chauncey Billups as an aging shooting guard, will struggle to defend the wings. The bench could be porous, with Mo Williams, Randy Foye and the inexperienced Eric Bledsoe backing up the guards, and almost zero NBA-quality depth behind the bigs. Can Vinny Del Negro build a slightly better-than-average defense out of these parts? If he can, the Clippers should play into late May.

5. Who falls first, and fastest: the Lakers, Celtics or Spurs?

It seems almost assured that one of these aging champions will take a steeper fall than expected in a compressed 66-game season. And if that happens, the questions then becomes: What are the repercussions on the trade market and in the offseason? As things stand now, the Lakers would appear to be the team in most danger of a big fall-off. Kobe Bryant has a torn ligament in his wrist, Metta World Peace is out of shape and Andrew Bynum will miss the first five games of the season after nearly destroying J.J. Barea. This team is just paper-thin.

The Kobe/Bynum/Pau Gasol trio should be enough to drag any supporting cast to the playoffs, and new coach Mike Brown will make sure this team defends. But creating offense will be an issue, and any team relying on Jason Kapono, Josh McRoberts and Troy Murphy for major minutes is in at least a bit of trouble.

The Spurs are deeper, with more young talent ready to contribute, and Boston has four All-Star-level players to the Lakers’ three. It helps that one of them, Rajon Rondo, is young and willing to play major minutes, but Boston is counting on three inexperienced players (rookies E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson, along with second-year guard Avery Bradley) to spell the old guys during a hectic season. They do have three reliable bench veterans in Brandon Bass, Marquis Daniels and Keyon Dooling, but the absence of Jeff Green means one injury could create a disastrous ripple effect.

In a worst-case scenario, you know the Lakers will be active on the trade market. Celtics president Danny Ainge is fearless in that regard, and he’s set to have major cap space this summer. The Spurs could also get to max-level cap space by using the amnesty provision on Richard Jefferson, and you just know these three franchises don’t have the patience to deal with long-term mediocrity.

6. Can Chicago recapture the magic and add enough scoring?

The Bulls are a legitimate threat to the Heat if all goes well, but that involves maintaining last year’s maniacal defense and adding a bit more scoring without burning anyone out. The defense should remain strong, though the Bulls could use a bit more savvy from Carlos Boozer. Chicago’s key bench players are all defensive-minded, so Tom Thibodeau should be able to survive the compressed season without overtaxing Luol Deng.

But to beat Miami, Chicago has to improve its offense. Adding Richard Hamilton won’t be enough, even if he adds some off-the-dribble creativity to the Kyle Korver catch-and-shoot sets the Bulls already run. Chicago suffered from a lack of variety last season; it ranked near the bottom of the league in possessions that ended in post-up plays or transition chances, and relied heavily on Derrick Rose to create on the pick-and-roll. It’ll need a bit more spice to outscore the Heat four times in seven games, and it has the talent on hand — especially if Joakim Noah looks the player he was before suffering an early season thumb injury.

7. Will the schedule hurt or help anyone enough to swing a team’s season?

It’ll obviously be better than usual to be young, talented and deep, but it’s always good to be young, talented and deep. On the flip side, being old and thin is always a risk, though it stands to reason it’s a bit riskier this season. A short-term injury has more of an impact with fewer games, and teams’ win-loss records might squeeze a bit closer than usual.

Beyond that, it’s a mystery, since the lockout-shortened 1999 season provided very few hard conclusions we can draw on now. You can find data to support any conclusion; some old teams did better than expected, some did poorly. Ditto for young teams. In general, scoring declined sharply, shooting percentages fell off a cliff and teams on average played at the slowest pace in NBA history. If those trends hold up again, could it help defense-first teams? Those already accustomed to playing slow-poke ball? It will be interesting to watch, but tread carefully in drawing conclusions.
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8. Is there a surprise team in the Western Conference capable of making the Finals?

The Lakers and Spurs are aging. The Mavericks are a solid No. 2 behind Oklahoma City, but they lost their defensive stopper in Tyson Chandler, and coach Rick Carlisle has to find a working rotation out of a dozen or so strange-fitting parts. The Grizzlies just lost their only reliable backup big man (Darrell Arthur) to a season-ending injury, and it’s unclear if they have quite enough outside shooting to space the floor consistently.

You could snag some pretty long odds right now on Denver or Portland making the Finals, and it wouldn’t be the craziest wager to make. The Nuggets will run 12-deep, they’ve got that high-altitude advantage to unleash on exhausted teams and they retained the same core from a team that nearly led the league in both points scored and allowed per possession after the Carmelo Anthony deal.

The Blazers pushed the Mavericks as hard as anyone in the playoffs last season, and though that push included one magical Brandon Roy game, the Blazers have the meat of a very interesting team — an elite two-way post player in LaMarcus Aldridge, the ability to go small with Gerald Wallace at power forward, a new point guard (Raymond Felton) with legitimate perimeter range, and a collection of flawed but versatile wing players who present challenges on both ends.

Heck, even the Rockets, a team that should have made the playoffs last season, has a bunch of young pups, some crazy efficient offensive players and a newly signed center in Samuel Dalembert.

Would you be shocked if one of these teams were in Oklahoma City for Game 1 of the conference finals? Remember the unpredictability of 1999 …

9. Is there a non-Howard landscape-altering trade out there?

If the Suns flounder, they’d be irresponsible not to at least put out feelers on Steve Nash, even if it would hurt at the box office and be a difficult salary-matching fit for most contenders. A Josh Smith trade feels inevitable for the Hawks, given their aversion to the luxury tax and the salary already committed to Joe Johnson and Al Horford. Utah is overloaded with big men and will have to move one of the Paul Millsap/Al Jefferson/Mehmet Okur trio in order to free up enough minutes for the young guys.

Chris Kaman is on an expiring deal and would fit wonderfully in any team’s big man rotation. Monta Ellis is always going to be on the block to some degree, and the Sixers will continue receiving calls (even if they don’t make them) on Andre Iguodala. Portland’s reported willingness to move Gerald Wallace in a potential Howard three-team deal signals the Blazers might be aggressive in shedding salary should things go badly.

We haven’t even touched on Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith, unrestricted free agents who probably won’t be able to return from China until March. Will they be willing to join a capped out contender for the pro-rated version of the veteran’s minimum? Or what about a team that has a chunk of its mid-level exception (San Antonio?) or the so-called “room” exception leftover?

An impact player or two will be on the move before long.

10. Will bad teams tank harder than usual?

The draft is going to be loaded, and there are going to be some very bad teams in Charlotte, Cleveland, Toronto, New Orleans and elsewhere. No NBA team loses on purpose, but as the compressed season goes badly for some teams, we might see veterans take a bit longer to recover from injuries. Teams might be willing to give young players more minutes, especially if front offices make it easy by dealing useful veterans at the trade deadline. We could see some wacky lineups in April.

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