The NBA is less than a month away and we could use a distraction on this day of no football.
Happy Tuesday everyone.
Tuesday and Wednesday are undoubtedly the toughest days of the week for me. Why? No football.
We’re all junkies, and because of our fix, it has been almost overlooked that the NBA season tips off in just under a month.
As Far as the Eastern Conference is concerned, I think we will see a format very similar to last year.
A LeBron-led favorite (Cavaliers) will be chased by one legitimate contender — Chicago with a healthy Derrick Rose — and after that, every team is for themselves.
The Wizards are getting a lot of recent face-time, but does John Wall have a jump shot yet? No. Is he exceptional at taking care of the ball? Not by a long shot. They have good big men (which means 10 times less than it did 10-years-ago), I like Bradley Beal and they can still play defense — although, they’re defense diminished dramatically when Trevor Ariza left for Houston. They replaced Ariza with Paul Pierce, who is finally losing the battle with ol’ father time. I could buy the Wizards grabbing a three-seed, but I’m not buying any potential to knockout the Cavs’ Big-three or a healthy Rose-driven Chicago Bulls team.
Other teams like the Raptors, Bobcats and Hawks have some solid players, but in the end they will just be bracket fill-ins for the Cavs and Bulls second-round matchups. The Pacers, Knicks and Nets all can slide into the final few playoff spots, but I see little potential other than a hot Melo series for any of them to go deep in the playoffs.
The West is a rich man’s version of the East.
Yes, the Western Conference playoff teams all had somewhere around 50 wins last season. Yes, the ninth-place Suns would’ve been a three-seed in the East last year. But at the end of the day, Oklahoma City and San Antonio are far superior to the rest.
Although I think the Clippers could give either an interesting series, their one-two punch of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin is not enough to stop the hungrier-than-ever Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant duo in OKC.
In my opinion, the Spurs are the best team in the west if they stay healthy. What they did to Miami in the finals last year was remarkable.
The next tier of the West would be Portland, Golden State, Houston, Dallas and Memphis. Put them in any order you like. After that, there are the rising outsiders. The Suns, Pelicans and Nuggets (depending on the health of Danilo Gallinari) are all going to be better, but it is hard to find a team to replace from last year’s playoff picture. The rest of the West is pretty bad.
I will say that my hometown Lakers went from being the “Showtime Role Players” of last year to this years “Showtime Washouts” (with leftover role players) with Jeremy Lin, one-legged Kobe Bryant and Carlos Boozer. What a lineup. Although they do still feature my personal favorite NBA player, Swaggy P.
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