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We are less than a month away from the season opener. Time to offer your predictions, the mild and the wild.
Here are mine:
-Toronto represents the East in the Finals
-A 50 win team misses the playoffs in the West
-Miami makes the playoffs
-The Blazers again seem too good to break up, but it's illusory
-LeBron does not make it past the first round of the playoffs--I am tempted to predict that he misses the playoffs, but I'm not quite ready to go there
-Anthony Davis wins the MVP
-Embiid wins DPOTY
-Doncic wins ROTY
-All-NBA 1st Team: Curry, Harden, KD, LBJ, Davis
-Most disappointing acquisition: this is a tough one--I'm taking Cousins and Melo out of the running because I think expectations are low for both; I'm picking DeAndre Jordan. While Jordan can be an excellent defensive anchor, he is going to be surrounded by one of the worst perimeter and team defending squads in the league. He'll still get his dunks and rebounds, but Dallas is going to be bad, and this will not be the year that Dallas turns around their defensive performance, which is the reason for bringing in Jordan.
-Acquisition that most surpasses expectations: Danny Green in Toronto. He can play both ends of the floor, and will fit in seamlessly with a team that has been a top defense & offense in the league for years.
-Fired coaches: Scott Brooks (probably should have already been fired, and there's nowhere to hide in the East anymore), Dave Joerger (the Kings don't know what they're doing, and Joerger isn't a very good coach, anyways), Terry Stotts (somebody has to take the blame for this team's shortcomings, and I don't think the Blazers are ready to lay it with the Lillard-McCollum pairing), Nate McMillan (a good coach, but expectations are unreasonably high in Indiana, imo), Tyronn Lue (a coach who has always been criticized is about to run a roster that makes no sense and captain a team that just went to 4 straight Finals to the race for the best lottery odds)
-COTY: Mike Malone (the Nuggets are good, and their record will show it)
-WCF: Warriors-Thunder
-ECF: Raptors-Celtics
-Warriors in 5
I don't know that I've seen many people saying the Pacers would be much more than that. Your first comment made me think you knew what you were talking about.
I don't know that I've seen many people saying the Pacers would be much more than that. Your first comment made me think you knew what you were talking about.
After going 7 and ending inches behind the eventual Eastern champs, Indiana's front office expects more than 50 wins & round 2.
There was this exchange between Pritchard and a reporter early in the offseason:
Toronto's lack of success (against Cleveland in the second round) ... does it make you feel you're closer? Or is it just like, 'Hey, we've got to move on?'
"It's funny. I took Thursday and Friday off and we came back in this week. It was after Cleveland swept Toronto. I looked at my guys, and I said, 'We beat a team that swept another team.' Does it affect our decisions, moving forward?
"I think it's only human nature that it does. ... We just took a punch from Cleveland, with LeBron playing at the highest level I've ever seen him play."
And this from Pritchard at media day: "I don't want to see us win 50 games and not be more prepared for the playoffs. I was very lucky. I was coached by some very good coaches … Larry Brown, Coach (Roy) Williams, Gregg Popovich … some of the great coaches. Sometimes they sacrificed some stuff in the middle of the season to make sure there was an opportunity to be right at the end of the season, which is what we're all about. Getting to the playoffs. That's our goal. We want to get to the playoffs, because you have to get to the playoffs to get to the second round."
This kind of talk indicates that someone expects to be in the second round, and feels very good about where they were vis-a-vis the conference's top teams last year. You don't manage expectations by suggesting that you'll obviously move farther along than you did last year.
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