Interesting teams next season in the West - Nuggets, Minny, Nola, OKC......

Denver too now that they are (likely) to get Millsap.
But if Utah loses Hayward they will miss the playoffs most likely. Same with the Clippers now.

IMO next year west playoffs teams if Hayward leaves will be
GSW, Houston, Spurs, OKC, Denver, Minny, Memphis. Pelicans and Portland fighting for the last spot.

 

imo... GSW, OKC, SAS, HOU, MIN, NOL, DEN, POR or MEM

 

The Wolves are gonna be very legit

 

Spoiler

Grizzlies
Jazz (obviously depending on Hayward's decision)
Nuggets (Millsap?)
Rockets
Spurs
Thunder
Timberwolves
Warriors
-----------
Blazers
Clippers
Kings
Lakers
Mavs
Pelicans (I guess the thinking here is a full year of Davis & Cousins & Holiday? Meh, think its more likely Gentry is fired & Pelicans implode.)
Suns

 

Pels are not interesting to me. They will be a failure once again. Overpaid massively for Holiday, need to dump Cousins and fire the coach.

 

I'm not convinced the Clippers will take a major step backwards. Obviously Chris Paul is way better than Bev but I think CP3 had needed that change of scenery for a while now. It may be addition by subtraction if Blake can stay healthy. Now they know who the man is, and Bev is going to bring that contagious intensity. Lou isn't a substantial downgrade from Redick, though his defense is much worse. We'll see. To be honest, I'm very interested to see how it plays out there. I believe in Bev.

Of course, I'm also interested to see if Doc gets to keep his job now that Jerry West seems to be running the show.

 

Blake is out till Christmas at least.

 

I don't understand how you expect OKC to be better than the Rockets. We were like 12 games ahead of them last year and we just added Chris Paul. Chris Paul is at least on the same general level as Paul George. Their best bench player now is who? Doug McDermott? Our bench is Gordon, Tucker and Nene so far.

 

CP3 is an all-time great. They're not sniffing the playoffs at the moment

 

That's not so long they can't make the playoffs.

 

Maybe if they were in the East.
In the West they will be dead by Christmas.

 

I'm just not so sure about that. A lot of it's going to come down to whether or not Hayward leaves Utah. What Memphis does. Etc. I think it's possible both of those teams could end up falling out of the playoffs. And the only team I've seen make moves that should push them into the playoffs that didn't make it last season is Minnesota.

 

Bev/Rivers
Lou
Luc/Crawford
Griffin (out for awhile)/Dekker
DJ

Meh, not that great imo. Minny's new lineup is solid

 

I watched some of those LAC/Jazz games closely. Chris Paul was single-handedly carrying that team

 

Denver almost made the playoffs and now Jokic and Murray will be one year older and better not ot mention possibly signing Millsap.
Portland will have Nurkic for the full year.
Memphis squad is much better than this Clips team as well.

 

Minnesota IMO will be the most improved team in the west, and the Clippers are going to be bad.


Off topic but Philly is the Minnesota of the west, especially if Embiid stays healthy

 

very simple.....between cp3/gordon/anderson/nene our rotation is composed of more oft-injured players

 

very simple.....between cp3/gordon/anderson/nene our rotation is composed of more oft-injured players

 

OKC is not interesting to me, nor is NOLA.

Minny and Nuggets will be interesting emerging teams to watch.