NBA Prop Bets: Time is running out to lock in your 2014-15 NBA futures. There’s all sorts of good value on the board with regular season win totals, odds to win the division and playoff props. Let’s focus on the latter and examine three teams’ chances to make the postseason this year.
New Orleans Pelicans
The Pelicans could be locked out of the playoffs for a very simple reason: The Western Conference of the NBA is absolutely ruthless. The West’s best teams averaged over 105 points this past season, and for teams that remain near the dividing line, any deficiency on offense is going to continue to be punished. Is New Orleans now the owner of a complete team offense? That question can’t be answered in the affirmative. Superstar Anthony Davis is a great option in the post, but what about all the other situations in which the Pelicans will need another leader to step up and lead them? Tyreke Evans and Jrue Holiday are decent players, but are they good enough to get the Pelicans to the playoffs?
Austin Rivers and Eric Gordon also have to be able to come up big this season, giving New Orleans and Davis what they need in order to become a more recognized team, one capable of busting through the group of teams that won 50 games and barely got into the playoffs as a result. The 50-win season used to be a guarantee of a playoff berth. Now, it’s not even a lock that something close to 50 wins gets a team into the postseason. A total of 48 wins might come to mean absolutely nothing, and New Orleans will have a hard time getting there. Keep the Pelicans out of your playoff projections.
Pick: Won’t Make The Playoffs
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers don’t have Pau Gasol anymore. They don’t have a point guard any better than Jeremy Lin, a player who was average in Houston after that brief fling of excellence with the New York Knicks. Los Angeles is starting over with Byron Scott at head coach. It is starting over in terms of how it tries to rebuild itself, with an eye not on immediate progress, but on player development and building the technique of a team that can make consistent improvements.
While the Lakers try to internally and intentionally cope with a lost cause, they still have to go out and play the games. Kobe might be able to help at times, but he must do so with the limitation of having his health managed and evaluated. The reserves on this team might get nothing more than a few moments in the sun, but the Lakers are so out of their depth in the West that their bench has to have a starring role in ensuring that the team competes for a playoff spot. That is just not likely at all. There’s no bench to speak of. The Lakers looked terrible in the preseason, and even though preseason games are not (always or usually) indicators, Laker fans are already facing the cold truth: Los Angeles will finish at least several games behind the final playoff teams in the Western Conference. Pick: Won’t Make The Playoffs
Phoenix Suns
The case for the Suns making the playoffs is a simple one: This team already won 48 games last season, so it’s not as though the Suns have a long way to go in terms of improving to the degree where they’ll make the playoffs. Phoenix just needs a few more wins to become an annual playoff team with enough players who will want to come down to the desert to ply their trade in the professional ranks. The short distance between 48 wins and 50 is what gives Phoenix a lot of legitimate optimism that it can take the next step and get to the playoffs.
What will also help the Suns is that they’ve added some good pieces to their team. The drafting of T.J. Warren was a move in which Phoenix very possibly created even more freedom for the rest of its offensive players, including 20-point-per-game scorer Goran Dragic. Warren is a ridiculously skilled wing who can create his own shot. Warren made all sorts of trick shots and off-balance shots in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he was able to get his work done when defenses were designed to stop him.
With Warren joining Dragic, the Morris twins, and Eric Bledsoe, the Suns have so much speed and quickness in their backcourt that they’re going to have a hard time being stopped by an opposing defense. Warren is going to draw defensive attention, enabling the Suns get the kind of spacing they want. This will set up Phoenix quite handsomely during the season. Pick: Will Make The Playoffs
