http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...-lebron-james-kawhi-leonard-change-everything 3. Houston Rockets (2) 2017-18 record: 65-17 Result: L, West finals Previous rank: No. 2 It has been a weird summer for the team that was maybe a hamstring away from an NBA title. Daryl Morey & Co. have earned the right for us all to assume they know what they're doing, but letting Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute go feel like significant losses -- especially if the recovery is based around signing Carmelo Anthony, who was very direct in telling the Thunder he wasn't interested in coming off the bench. They still need to resolve Clint Capela's situation, but assuming that gets settled, the Rockets will begin the season looking for production in unexpected places. That's something they do better than just about anyone. -- Royce Young Key additions: De'Anthony Melton, Vincent Edwards, Michael Carter-Williams and James Ennis Key subtractions: Luc Mbah a Moute and Trevor Ariza
I can buy that, the celtics are the best team in a laughable conference, while the West got extremely top heavy with not-so-bad teams fighting for the bottom 4 spots in the playoffs. I won't be surprised if the celtics have a really good record with the additions of a relatively healthy Iriving and GH.
Seems reasonable. Although I think the Rockets could have the best record in the West again if the Warriors decide to coast during the regular season like they did post-All-Star Break last season.
I agree with these ratings. Adding Irvine and Pretty boy to a hard working team with the young stars puts them ahead of us slightly, they will fight with sixers for the east crown. Stevens is an Excellent coach. Would trade him to Houston in a heartbeat..
That's fair. With the state of the East, Boston has a very good shot at winning more games than us even if we are better, which I'm not sure of. I do chuckle a bit at the Thunder shooting up that high based mostly on deliberate overstating of how much Carmelo Anthony hurt their (already flawed) team. Sure, replace his minutes with Patrick Patterson and surely the Russ show will be a contender this time!
The media and the Thunder are the same pieces of **** every time. It's always someone else's fault and why can't everyone see how great they are. If Brody shoots less than 15 shots they are competitive. If he shoots over they lose. He shot 21 attempts last season and will do more this season wasting any effectiveness from Shroder pulling Brody off the ball because Brody won't play that way. The Thunder never were a team and still aren't. Who will the media blame other than PG13 now that Melo is gone and Brody had no help. Triple-Double yay! Brody collecting those Adams rebounds while the team was sluggish on offense with no transition opps.
i actually think they'll make donovan the scapegoat this year. it's always someone else's fault. can already hear boris durke crying on bspn broadcast about how westbrook hasn't had the elite coaching harden has lol
Literally cannot see the argument for Toronto not being a top 4 team. Super deep, super switchy, replace DeRozan with Kawhi and Green. That team could win 70 games. Also don’t see how the marginal moves OKC made can offset the continued development of Donovan Mitchell, where they had already handled them without Rubio.
I’m ok with the Rockets being underestimated again, although I don’t think them getting dropped this soon is looking at all other factors. I think the Celtics are going to have a lot of initial growing pains integrating both Hayward and Kyrie (more Kyrie then Hayward) to a set of younger players who now have had significant starting line up roles/playing time. OKC always gets overestimated. Donovan may be the first 20 odd games first coach to be fired this year. Same with LeBron and LA especially now that he has so many hard heads on that team. LeBron will get them into the playoffs but could be lower than estimated. Raptors may be set too low, especially since Kawhi wants that payday. I don’t expect him to be 100% by October but if he is decent by January the Raptors may sneak up on the East. The rest is whatever. GSW is going to GSW and the rest of the teams will fall into line. The scariest team is Utah. Utah and 76ers should have swapped places or be seated closer together. They parallel each other a lot more then people think.
Am I overrating Minny by thinking they will end up closer to 6 (in the whole league) than out of the playoffs? I know Jimmy and Minny are having some issues but Minny was on track to being the 3rd best team in the West last year before Butler went down.
This is completely fair imo. I'd have us higher than the Celtics, but I can't argue with their rise in rankings.
3 of the top 5 teams in the power rankings are from the East. L O L Sorry, but as much exciting talent as Boston has, they are LIGHT YEARS away from competing with the Warriors or Rockets for a top 2 seed. The finals were a formality this year, the Eastern Conference and Western Conference finals respectively showed that there are strong contenders in each conference for the conference crown, but there is no competition for the WCF champs from the ECF champs. The bulk of the top teams all need to be from the West to take the rankings seriously. 1. GSW 2. HOU (big gap) 3. Boston Then a crapshoot for the rest of the top 10.
In terms of power Rox have more power than Boston. Their stars dont even work well together since Irving gets in the way of their defense and Hayward plays the same position as Tatum AND both thsie guys are coming off injury.
Nope not even close. Both those guys coming of injury and plays the same position as theur young stars. Maybe they will beat up the Leastern conf but they're not better than the Rox.
