Miami is the champion, but they are in the East. For Western teams, the target opponent you have to go through is OKC-- like it was the Lakers in the years past. How would you build a team to match up favorably with OKC?
Get a postman that can score at will and play both sides of the ball effectively (Dwight), bring in a guy for cheap who has something to prove (Brandon Roy), get you a good perimeter defender (Parsons). That's not going to do anything now, but it's a start. Also, have a great draft this year.
This is pretty much unrelated, but every thread like this I read today I just think of how we missed our window with the 08-09 team and what we could have done if our stars were healthy. Yao, T-Mac, Artest, Battier, Scola, Landry, Brooks, Lowry, Deke, Hayes... F-ck.
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I am just hoping to make the playoffs. Even a first round exit sounds pretty exciting. Beating the elite teams is so remote as to be almost unthinkable.
Play them the same way we have been playing them for the past couple of seasons. That always seems to work.
The Thunder we played during the regular season was not the same Thunder that upset (that's right, I said upset) the Spurs in the WCF. They've had a small taste of the promised land and will fight extra hard to get back to The Nexus. We will need 2 or 3 more years of building a championship-caliber team to hope to have a chance to beat them in the playoffs.
BTW you dont think Scott Brooks would put Thabo on Gogi to slow him down, like they did to Tony Parker
unleash the dragon on them and let westbrick get all worked up in guarding the guy. They're a team that won't beat you on the boards or with physical play so that's why we played them well.
