StatBox Breakdown: The NBA’s four most unpredictable teams

The NBA regular season finally begins this week, and numerous major publications have put out their preseason predictions and prognostications.

Few, picks, if any, are usually bold or daring. Most are run-of-the-mill status quo predictions for the coming season. (Although we have a wide variety of semi-safe picks here at SheridanHoops in our season preview special.)

Miami will win another NBA title, with LeBron James as MVP. San Antonio and Oklahoma City will be the top teams in the West. Maybe Houston is thrown in there for a little variety. Yada, yada, yada.

But there are four teams that experts and analysts can’t really get a handle on, or a consensus of. There are two such squads in each conference. They are what we will call the most unpredictable teams in the league.

Out East, expectations and job pressure for two general managers has accelerated the clock for the rebuilding Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers.

In the West, the Denver Nuggets are facing a lot of change and several big voids to fill, while the Los Angeles Lakers face an incredible amount of uncertainty now and for the future.

Cleveland Cavaliers
There have been whispers over the past several months that general manager Chris Grant may not get another year with the team if Cleveland doesn’t reach the postseason in 2013-2014. And the moves the team made reflect that.

Grant gave Andrew Bynum a large, incentive-laden contract to pair with Anderson Varejao, whose last few seasons have also been derailed by injuries. Bynum didn’t play a single minute last season, but he’s a career 56.6 percent career shooter and has double-double potential.

Varejao was leading the league in rebounds per game last season, but he has played just 81 games over the last three seasons. He is in a contract year. Combine those two players with top overall pick Anthony Bennett, Tristan Thompson (who switched shooting hands in the offseason), the newly signed Earl Clark and Tyler Zeller and you have really crowded frontcourt, one that would reach the postseason if everyone remains healthy.

But how can we rely on Bynum and Varejao to remain healthy?

Kyrie Irving missed 23 games last season. Can he put a healthy season together? How will Dion Waiters improve? And how will once and future coach Mike Brown integrate new free agent signing Jarrett Jack?

That’s a lot of questions for one team, but in a poor conference, the playoffs are attainable.

Washington Wizards
GM Ernie Grunfeld is also on the last year of his contract and made a trade to reflect that Friday. Emeka Okafor’s neck injury puts his playing career in jeopardy, so Grunfeld acquired Suns big man Marcin Gortat in a five-player trade.

After averaging a double-double in 2011-2012, Gortat’s numbers slipped a bit to just over 11 points and 8.5 rebounds per game. Not only did Gortat play only eight games after the All-Star break last season, his defensive numbers were alarmingly better at home than on the road.

Gortat’s 99 defensive rating at home with the Suns last season is really good, but his 110 road defensive rating is really bad. So what kind of defensive player will he be with Washington, which did surprisingly well defensively last season?

Wizards Defense	Number	League Rank
Points	95.8	8
Field Goal D	44	5
3-Point FG D	34.9	9
Points Per Shot	1.17	8

If Gortat integrates well into the Wizards’ defense and the team improves on forcing turnovers and preventing the opposition from getting to the line, Washington’s defense will again be one of the league’s underrated units. Can Gortat and Nene mesh well together in the frontcourt?

If Otto Porter and Martell Webster can play well at the three, maybe Washington will make the playoffs after all. But there’s a lot to consider with this team, which makes them so hard to predict.

Denver Nuggets
The Nuggets have a new coach and general manager, their former star is now a Warrior, and another star will miss the start of the season as he continues to recover from a torn ACL. So yeah, predictions for this team are all over the place.

Sports Illustrated has them finishing 10th in the conference, while ESPN’s magazine has them seventh and once again reaching the postseason.

So how does Denver plan on replacing Andre Iguodala and Danilo Gallinari?

A heavy dose of the three-ball could be in order for new coach Brian Shaw. Wilson Chandler only played 43 games last season but shot a robust 41.3 percent from the arc. Randy Foye, signed from Utah, shot 41 percent from downtown and finished seventh in the league in made 3-pointers last season.

Nate Robinson also joins the team as a bench sparkplug after averaging over 13 points last season with Chicago and a career-high Win Shares per 48 minutes. In 12 playoff games last season, Robinson averaged over 16 points . He will make just over $2 million this coming season. That is what we call a bargain.

Speaking of bargains, J.J Hickson averaged a double-double in 80 starts last season in Portland and signed for just over $5 million per season with Denver. He put up career highs in Win Shares (6.9, just 0.8 fewer than Al Jefferson), PER, true shooting percentage and effective field-goal percentage.

Here’s the big question with the Nuggets: Do these additions make them a better team than last season? Are they a playoff team?

San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Houston, the LA Clippers, Golden State and Memphis are playoff locks. Everything else is really up in the air.

Los Angeles Lakers
Who is going to be healthy for this team? The reason Sports Illustrated picked LA to finish sixth in the Western Conference is probably the same reason why many picked this team to reach the NBA Finals last season.

You’ve got Kobe Bryant. You’ve got Steve Nash. You’ve got Pau Gasol. That’s really good, right? But Bryant may not be in such a hurry to return from his Achilles tendon surgery, Gasol still has his injury concerns and Nash is 39.

Then there’s the rest of the roster. Nick Young shot just 41.3 percent from the field last season. Jordan Hill and Wesley Johnson don’t exactly strike fear in the opposition. Chris Kaman shot over 50 percent from the field last season for Dallas, but in just 20.7 minutes per game. Jodie Meeks shot 38.7 percent from the field last season.

The season starts Tuesday.

I can’t wait for some of these questions to finally be answered.

Shlomo Sprung loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. His website is SprungOnSports.com. You should follow him on Twitter.