Agreed. It's about matchups in the NBA. If you have the size and talent on the frontline, Miami can forget about it.
That's true to a point, but that talent has to be premium and that frontline has to be really good. As good as the Lakers are on the frontline, they'd be an underdog against the Heat, most likely. Putting the Rockets in any of these argument are laughable, hell can the Rockets even beat the Nuggets or Mavs in a 7 game series.
Their window is much smaller than what one would think. There is very little chance that they are going to be able to keep this current team together. Harden and Ibaka will both demand close to max contracts . Granted they still have Durant and Westbrook for the foreseeable future but it will still take some roster retooling to put together a championship caliber team on Presti's part. Having said all that they are going to be in running for the next five years at least.
Both Miami and OKC are up against the cap, but when you are contending for a championship each year that's just how you roll (look at the Lakers in the 2000's, and now they're finally having to cut back and admit the Kobe era is done). In my mind OKC will be able to re-sign Ibaka easily. The question is how much does Harden want, and is he really ok taking Ginobili's role as a perennial 6th man of the year? Even if he leaves though, OKC will replace him easily with Ron Harper types, former alpha dogs that are in their twilight and willing to dominate bench players for the vet min and a chance at a title. Like Terry or Stackhouse on the Mavs. What scares me more about OKC than Miami is the Durant Westbrook combo. Wade and Lebron are largely redundant, and once Wade loses his hops in 1.4 years he won't be able to play such great defense anymore either (he still loves to block people from behind, amazing how he can do it HGH). But between Westbrook and Durant, you've got two A+ slashers to the rim and then one A+ outside shooter. Just think about that for a minute. Durant is taller and longer than Michael, Kobe, and Lebron. And he shoots better than all of them. When was the last time we've seen an all-world talent of his caliber shoot so good? It's going to be scary watching Durant go through this process Lebron just finished up. And he's going to be the reason Lebron has 2 or 3 championships in his career instead of 6 like Mike.
This is easy. Make Wade sleep with Lebrons mom. Better yet, make Bosh do it. Or even better, have Lebron and Wade double team Lebrons mom.
If the draft trades go down this line up would be a nice start: Howard..............Camby DMO...................Patterson Parsons...............bud Martin ..............Lee Dragic.................filler from trades