Teams Making Biggest Adjustments Going into 2012-13 NBA Season

With the start of the 2012-13 NBA season upon us, it's imperative to take everything into consideration when trying to figure out exactly how good teams are going to be in relation to last season.

One of the biggest ways to tell how teams are going to do early on in the season is to look at the changes they've made over the summer.

Some teams are great at getting off the ground running thanks to the continuity that they've held over from the previous season, while others are going to stumble a bit as they try to figure out how their new guys work well with their old guys.

The most important thing in a situation where new players are going to be involved is whether they tend to be good teammates or not. For the latter, it's an even bigger struggle to get the team up and running.

So, as the first month of the season unfolds, be sure to check out some of these teams as they put a new set of guys together in hopes of their very own title.

10. Minnesota Timberwolves

The Minnesota Timberwolves have heeded Kevin Love's request to put together a team that will actually help them, you know, win basketball games. The addition of Chase Budinger, Andrei Kirilenko and Brandon Roy give them competent wing players for the first time in Love's tenure there.

What big changes are they undergoing? Well they're a favorite to potentially steal a playoff berth should the team get healthy quick enough. Otherwise, it's going to be a bit of a lost season for the Timberwolves.

They've pinned a lot of their hopes on Kirilenko, a guy who spent last season playing ball in Russia, and Brandon Roy, a guy who both hasn't played in over a year and has no cartilage left in his knees.

It's going to be an adventure for this team for a bit with Love and Ricky Rubio injured, but what they can create in chemistry between the lesser players early on could contribute ten-fold down the road.

9. Phoenix Suns

What do you get when you replace Steve Nash with Goran Dragic? I can't rightly say, but it's certainly not the same team that the Suns had last season.

Dragic is a nice young point guard, but what he does for this team can't possibly equate to the beautiful game of basketball that Nash put together night-in and night-out for the Suns over the years.

Elsewhere, Phoenix added amnestied Luis Scola, embattled Michael Beasley, exiled Wesley Johnson and damn-near executed Jermaine O'Neal. Some parts look intriguing, others look like a scramble to put potentially productive guys on the roster.

The Suns could potentially challenge for a playoff spot in the West if things go well, but this team seems too weird overall for it to work out well enough for any kind of relative success.

8. Oklahoma City Thunder

What once seemed like a team that was destined to roll into this season and easily knock off 60 wins suddenly becomes a team with more questions than answers.

Kevin Martin is going to be filling the James Harden role in Oklahoma City after the team traded away Harden and went for financial stability over basketball stability.

Martin isn't the scorer that Harden was and he's not quite the teammate Harden was, either. What it all amounts to is whether the shooting that Martin and Jeremy Lamb bring to the table will be able to help the Thunder enough to win games.

The regular season won't matter much; what's going to matter is how the team comes together for the playoffs and beyond.

7. Orlando Magic

What happened to the Orlando Magic in the trade that sent Dwight Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers was complete and utter destruction.

The leftover parts of this team include Big Baby Davis, Hedo Turkoglu, Jameer Nelson, Arron Afflalo, a few rookies, and Al Harrington. What they have otherwise is a bunch of unproven guys and a few more who'll be out of the league before we know it.

This team probably won't plummet hard into the basement like other teams losing superstars have, but there's a good chance that they'll be one of the most unwatchable teams in the NBA.

What should keep fans' heads up over this season and next is the prospect of winning the 2014 lottery and drafting Andrew Wiggins.

6. Boston Celtics

While the additions to the Boston Celtics aren't the big-name guys like have happened around the league, they are often and extreme enough to make a big difference in the game they'll be playing this year.

With the recent additions, the Celtics could potentially get away with not playing a single player more than 34 minutes a game.

Paul Pierce has a legitimate backup this season with Jeff Green finally healthy and Kevin Garnett may have some help on the bench in the form of Jared Sullinger, Fab Melo and...(gulp) Darko MIlicic.

Jason Terry becomes the new and improved Ray Allen and Courtney Lee is an added bonus shooter off the bench.

One of the more intriguing changes for this team this year should be what role Rajon Rondo takes on with the team. He should be more involved in the scoring load and more vocal if this team is going to win a bunch of games.

5. Philadelphia 76ers

While the changes the Philadelphia 76ers have made seem like they're minimal, there are actually quite a few big changes going on in Philly.

The obvious one is Andrew Bynum coming in. They've got a dominant post scorer for the first time since Moses Malone and someone who can undeniably take over games on the offensive end.

However, they've lost their defensive identity in the process. Andre Iguodala and Elton Brand anchored their defense from the outside and inside, respectively. It's going to be interesting to see how this defense preforms with both of those guys gone.

Evan Turner is going to be taking over a starting role, Lou Williams is gone and Jrue Holiday is going to have to do more for this team to win games this season.

4. Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets went from invisible to right in the center of the spotlight almost overnight.

Of course there was going to be some level of attention paid to them after they added Jeremy Lin, but it seems like there was a pretty accepted general opinion that the Rockets weren't going to amount to much this season.

That is, until they traded for James Harden. Harden puts this team into playoff contention for sure, but how good is he going to be when he's getting the best defender every night?

There are going to be a lot of individual and team adjustments if Kevin McHale wants this team to work out for the better.

3. Brooklyn Nets

It's been a while since the Nets were a relevant basketball team; it was probably all the way back when they were in New Jersey. Jeez, time flies.

Seriously though, this Nets team is incredibly different this season than they were last season. It may not look that way on the surface, they've still got Deron WIlliams, Gerald Wallace, MarShon Brooks, Kris Humphries and Brook Lopez, but the differences are still going to be huge.

Obviously they added Joe Johnson, which is going to make a few things change, but when they did that, they shipped away everything that was left of their old roster, meaning they completely replaced the bench, save Brooks.

From there, you've got to look at the expectations of this team. They're expected to compete with the Knicks for relevancy in the East and easily make the playoffs. That pressure alone is a lot for a team to deal with heading into a season.

2. Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks have easily had the roughest year-and-a-half save maybe Orlando. They've gone from being NBA Champions with the expectations of signing Deron Williams, Dwight Howard or both, to a team that will boast Eddy Curry in the starting lineup on opening night.

Yikes.

They got themselves into this situation by taking big risks that completely flopped as time passed. Aside from letting Tyson Chandler go, they've lost Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Caron Butler and DeShawn Stevenson among other, less important guys.

Dallas whiffed on Williams and never got a chance to grab Dwight Howard, so what they ended up with was a summer stuffing their roster with the likes of Chris Kaman, Elton Brand, O.J. Mayo, Darren Collison and Curry.

Curry trots out as the team's starting center with Kaman out, starting for just the second time in four seasons.

1. Los Angeles Lakers

A lot of teams who have made changes are dealing with tons of questions surrounding the changes they're going through. The Lakers are only dealing with expectations.

Dwight Howard's back, Kobe's foot and the team's overall health is almost an afterthought at this point as the general population has already dubbed this team Western Conference Champions before a game has even been played.

Should they be concerned about their health? Maybe a little bit. But the biggest thing to concern them is how their new pieces fit together, how they're going to be dealing with the new Princeton offense folded into the system and how the defense shakes out with Dwight down low.

The Lakers were a good team last season, then they added two Hall of Famers. With that in mind, I think it's safe to say that they're confident they can deal with the upcoming changes.