I'm feeling about 47. The offense will be good. The defense will be bad enough to offset. A few extra wins for less toxic chemistry, but I don't see this as a serious threat to get a top three seed.
Guys this is definitely not the final roster. Let's wait until TC and revisit. New coach, new offense, defense, players, everything. It's going to be a long season no matter what. Here's to hoping they repair their reputation after the damage done last season. This offseason we finally paid a horrible price for a team that just didn't care last year. We also have several examples now of failing to capitalize off assets. Bad drafting, Parsons, Lin, Howard, losing one more game, not being proactive about the coaching situation. It seems two places we made bad decisions we were bailed out by an even worse decision by someone else. Maxing Bosh and Parsons
Hearing whispers that the Rockets are in the market for valuable contributors...*if* the price is right. Developing....
Health, progression of Capela will be the biggest differentiators. I'll assume moderate health and Capela is a slightly above average starting center. 42-40. Wasted season.
Barely sneaking into the first roung? With a first round playoff exit? That gets Les a little bit of extra income from the couple of home playoff games? Les never considers those wasted seasons.
Things will change because all the free agent moves and trades haven't shaken out completely, but teams that got better were already better than us and some teams that were better than us clearly got worse.. on paper. The Spurs and Warriors got better. The Spurs got marginally better. The Thunder are worse off, the Pelicans got worse, the Mavs look weaker to me, The Suns are worse than they were, Lakers are still weak, Portland doesn't look any different, Clippers remained the same, and the Grizzlies look the same and added another bug for the injury list. We lost Howard who didn't care and gained Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon. Bolstered the front court with Nene. I think we're clearly better even though we didn't get all the sexy names. It's like breaking up with a hot girl that runs you ragged only to get a decent looking gal that makes your life easy and ****s like a champ. Others might see you losing eye candy, but your life has improved. That's us. Yes, our defense will probably be weak, but who could we sign that was going to suddenly fix that? We already had Howard and Ariza and that was worthless last year. Hopefully having all 5 guys involved in the offense will get efforts on the defensive end to be existent. I predict over 56 wins. The West is a 2 horse race and one of the horses is aging.
Uhh, you do realize that the NBA season consists of 82 games. You have them playing 69. Just saying...
too soon. the roster isn't set, and neither is anyone else's to compare it with. but, i'll bite... i think we will be built to win a lot of regular season games and flame out in the playoffs. and i also see #3-10 as our range this year due to injury risks and also a weaker top of the conference after GSW and SAS... so 42-55 wins lol... which means i'd pick somewhere in the middle of that range as a best guess... which makes me vote for the 46-50 option with maybe a 6 or 7 seed.
We've been saying that for 5-6 years now .... and the Spurs just reload. They have the best coach in the game .... maybe the best ever. They'll keep winning until he retires.
54-28. 3rd in the West. Losing in the 2nd round of the WCF. The question isn't so much how good are the Rockets but rather...who in the West is really better than the Rockets? Clippers and GS for sure. SAS and Mem maybe...then who? Can we just rename the NBA "La Liga"? Because it's two teams, one cute fringe team, and then a bunch of bozos.
