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Also, last time the West had a lot more depth than they do now. They had 45 wins which I expect them to get again this year which would place them in the playoffs pretty safely.
They had 45 wins in a year when wins were up across the board, which still led them to missing the playoffs due to a tiebreaker.
I would expect a similar scenario this year (with a slightly better roster around him), which leads me to believe a 6th, 7th or 8th seed is the likelhood.
These are the assumptions I'm getting --
- Utah is not expected to get better
- Portland will have a sharp decline after returning their entire team basically and adding another piece
- Dallas is invisible, even though they have 2 of the 5 starters from the Warriors and the 2nd best coach in the West
- no improvement from Memphis despite who they added and they will automatically battle through a long year of injuries
- then you have OKC, which Westbrook is expected to play 80+ games (because they're bound to lose any games he miss); 2nd best player is a guy that everyone loves due to his persona and stache and if he was the 2nd best player on any other team, they'll be lottery bound. then, their 3rd best player (if you want to say its Oladipo) fell out of the starting lineup at times with a lottery bound team last season, who's still finding himself -- 3rd best player B (Kanter) is really only beneficial in stretches and is better suited playing no more than 30 minutes a night
All of these teams have issues (including LAC and SAS), but there is A TON of confidence in Westbrook literally doing it all for this team and doing it without missing any games. This is also factoring in KD not coming in during the season and helping them win 15-20 games they won from the 45 win season.
I'm ready for the season to see all this happen
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