It's hard to judge at this stage for many reasons. Portland - has LMA truly elevated himself to the next tier? Is Wesley Matthews legit? These are the questions. If the answer is yes to both, than Portland may very well be the most complete team at every position. OKC - they are real, but are they built to do better in the playoffs without a serious scorer. Is their bench sufficient? SA - age/injuries. If they are healthy, they are the favorites LA Clippers - I think this is a very dangerous team. They are lurking in the shadows and could get super hot at any moment Dallas - Another dangerous team. Filled with vets and a healthy Dirk a Dirk. Houston - The questions with us is how are we going to evolve from last year to this year. What's the identity - we seem a bit Jekyl and Hyde on Defense. Is Jones the real thing - he tends to slip mentally a lot. Is Lin's performance thus far a real improvement or bit of a fluke? Can Harden evolve into a better leader....and stay healthy. Dwight....there's a big question there. Is he going to improve on that post-up game or if not, will he be willing to sacrifice that to make the team better and be a PnR player all the time? And what will be the impact of Asik leaving? That has huge repercussions. I think we are the biggest wild card in the west - that much is for sure. Predicting anything right now is just a guess. You get enough predictions and someone will get it right our of sheer luck.
Nope. There are only 3 divisions, so one team in the top 4 is a second-place team within their own division. The reason why we are 5th right now is because Portland and OKC are in the same division (both with better records than us), and the Clippers are a division leader. It's an antiquated rule that really needs to be abolished. Divisions mean very little in basketball since you will play (for the most part) every team within your conference 4 times. Honestly, they just need to do away with conferences all together, and have all the teams play each other the exact same amount of times. They can then move to a 1-16 playoff seeding, and that will ensure that only the most deserving teams get into the playoffs.
