Three-Man Weave: Which Eastern Conference contender will make it up to No. 2? (Ball Don't Lie)

With the draft and the bulk of free agency now behind us, it's time to start taking stock of what's transpired this summer and how it all figures to impact the upcoming NBA campaign. First up for consideration: Which Eastern Conference team looks best primed to grab the second seed behind You Know Who? *** Dan Devine :   I kind of can't believe that I believe this, but ... I think it's the Washington Wizards? I believe   Fred Hoiberg   is an excellent coach, but I'm not yet sure I believe that   firing   Tom Thibodeau — even if the separation was   a long time in coming   — makes the Chicago Bulls demonstrably better. The Atlanta Hawks might   take a step back   without former starting small forward DeMarre Carroll. His   new employers , the Toronto Raptors, might hit some bumps in the road after jettisoning three of last season's top eight (Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams, backup point guard Greivis Vasquez and frontcourt cornerstone Amir Johnson) in a defense-first roster reload. The Miami Heat — as much as they've invested in   their   starry   starting   five   — feel like a team dependent on an awful lot of health/chemistry-related ifs going its way to make that large a leap. [ Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball] Washington, on the other hand, seems poised to take another step forward behind All-Star point guard John Wall, rising sharpshooter Bradley Beal and dynamite dive man Marcin Gortat. While it certainly hurts to lose Paul Pierce, who was huge in the Wizards' playoff run, general manager Ernie Grunfeld has both given head coach Randy Wittman three new options to help replace "The Truth" — versatile veterans Jared Dudley and Alan Anderson, plus first-rounder Kelly Oubre — and opened the door for 22-year-old Otto Porter Jr., a revelation in the playoffs , to step into the larger role many envisioned when Washington tabbed the Georgetown product with the No. 3 pick in the 2013 draft. (And hey, if Martell Webster's finally fully recovered from last summer's back surgery and capable of shooting the long ball like he did before he went down, so much the better.) With all those wings in the mix, veteran guards Ramon Sessions and Gary Neal on hand to spell the star-studded backcourt, and top reserve big man Kevin Seraphin off   to Manhattan , as Seth Partnow noted at   the Washington Post's Fancy Stats blog , the Wizards' roster seems much better suited to more regularly playing small-ball lineups during the regular season than last year's model did. Given Wall's remarkable skills as a pick-and-roll playmaker capable of creating open 3-point looks with the threat of his penetration and the promise of his passing, pairing him with a screen-setting big and surrounding him with shooting — the kind of Gortat/Nene-at-the-five, Pierce-at-the-four configurations that blitzed the Raptors   out of Round 1 — seems like something that should be an everyday staple and not just an "in case of emergency, break open glass" postseason wrinkle. Having more able, younger swingmen at his disposal — especially if/when Dudley gets back to full strength after his own summer back surgery — could allow Wittman to worry less about overtaxing one particular stretch four, a   reported concern   with Pierce last season. That, in turn, could make it more likely that the somewhat   confounding success of   #PlayoffWittman   carries over to the regular season. "We know what we have to do, the pieces that I'd like to add moving forward," Wittman said after the Wizards bowed out to Atlanta   in May . "Brad and John are going to be here a long time. So we got to utilize what their strengths and capabilities are, and find the right people to put around them, which allows us to play the way that I think we were kind of playing in the [playoffs]." Grunfeld seems to have done a sound job of finding those "right people," and considering how good the Wiz looked before   Wall broke his left hand   — and   how   achingly   close   Washington still came to knocking off the Hawks — doubling down on Wall, Beal, Porter and that four-out, bombs-away style might well move Washington to the front of the trail pack. *** Kelly Dwyer : The Chicago Bulls, frankly, were an embarrassment last season. The squad held a 2-1 lead over a Kevin Love-and-Kyrie Irving-less Cleveland Cavaliers squad and were mere seconds away from getting an overtime shot at taking a 3-1 advantage in the Eastern semis when LeBron James’ game-winning three-pointer broke things. That shot allowed both its coaching staff and top players to act the role of the martyr instead of focusing on the task of downing an injured and top-heavy Cavaliers rotation in a best of three series.

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