Empty the Bench

Currently led by four talented contributors as well as former NBA player, coach, and front-office executive George Irvine, Basketball.org publicly launched in May of 2008 with the goal of “enhancing the abilities of basketball players, teams and coaches worldwide through the use of innovative technology.” We discovered them some months ago, and have since become big fans of their consistently smart, insightful analysis of everything hoops.

I had the pleasure to “sit down” with the site’s Jaime Irvine for a Q&A over email as part of their ongoing “5 on 5″ series with various NBA writers and bloggers. Check out the whole interview in its entirety; here’s just an excerpt:

4. This may be somewhat of strange questions. Of the playoff contenders today, who do you see not making the playoffs next year? In other words, which teams do you think have peaked this year or in the past few years and are destined for lottery-ville over the next few years?

There are quite a few candidates given the decline we’ve seen so far this season in perennial contenders and the emergence of young teams who will only get better as soon as next season. Speaking strictly of playoff contenders-not championship contenders-I think you have to count the Mavericks, Pistons, Suns, and Nets in this category, each for various reasons.

The one team in that group that has the “best” chance of missing out on the playoffs not only this season, but next (and who knows how much longer beyond that) is the Dallas Mavericks. The trade for Jason Kidd has long since revealed itself as ill-advised with Devin Harris flourishing in Jersey and Kidd and his massive expiring contract rumored to be on the trading block. Josh Howard seems to have worn out his welcome and no longer carries excellent trade value, and Dirk is growing increasingly frustrated with his team’s outlook as he moves towards the latter half of his prime playing days.

What’s worse, this team has stubbornly refused to nurture any sort of youth movement whatsoever for quite some time now; their top prospects are Jose Juan Barea and Gerald Green. Help won’t automatically be on the way, either, after sending those first-round draft picks to Jersey in the Kidd deal. The current outlook for this franchise is not a good one.

A hearty shoutout to Jaime and the crew at Basketball.org for the opportunity; look for him to be featured during our next TBA round of ETB’s Scribes of the NBA series.