The East will have a new expansion, losing one of the better teams of the past couple of years, New Orleans. Boston has gotten worse over the past 3 years. Also 3 years ago Milwalkee was a much better team, and Philadelphia was a much better team. The only teams that have gotten better over that period, are Detroit, New Jersey, Miami, and Indiana who was already good. How is the East any better than what they were. Miami was still a sub 500 team but they are a lot better I will admit. The top teams have gotten better, but overall its still very weak.
The East is not better than it was a few years ago, it' worse. Sure the champs came out of the East this year, but after Detroit and Indiana, there is a significant dropoff in the rest of the division. Boston got into the playoffs with some atrocious number of wins like 36. And they got that record playing against other horrible teams in the East, so they are probably worse than the record alone indicates. I think bringing in three solid-to-very-good players, not to mention starters (SF,Cat and Cato), who have been playing together for five years, will give the Magic a significant boost. I say 6 seed, easily.
Not only do I think they'll have a better record than they ever saw in Houston, I think there will be a public re-evaluation a year from now about which team really got the better end of the trade.
I think the Magic will win about 45 games this year which will probably put them at first in the division and maybe 3rd in the eastern conference. SF3 / Cat have always played well against the eastern conference, and Cato should be one of the east's best big men but they dont have Yao this time around. However, Dhoward and Gooden shoud help leverage that;. Playing more games against the weaker conference should help their record and most likely there will be some upsets.. I wish them all luck! J
^ Some people are real crazy. This is a 18-win team who are on the verge of losing its best player and maybe 2nd or 3rd best player and add a point guard who can't play point guard, a decent shooting guard, a 2nd-3rd rate center (don't tell Magic fans these just yet, though!) and a rookie who isn't expected to contribute right away. Not to mention that they have an inexperienced and unproven coach. Somehow some people would think they win 50. What a crazy world we are in! On paper, they are worse than the Cavs and the Cavs aren't winning 50 either.
Imagine if Orlando had taken Okafur instead of Howard. They would have had a very good team for the East.
I'm just thinking that the Steve/Cat/Cato/Taylor rockets won 45 before with Rudy. This squad will be better than that one. Jameer Nelson should provide some help and Dwight Howard will get some help from the league in scoring some easy points. Gooden can score some, and they can always pick up a Tmo or Collie or Scales or Braggs. That division is horrible, the east is weak, and they will win some games when West powers dog it, implode, or show up injury skunked. There will be some dogs in the West, too. They can win a bunch of games. Will they ? Who knows. It's certainly possible. I'd like to see Stevie dual with Iverson in a shoot first shootout.
On paper so were the Bucks and Celtics, who both got into the playoffs last year. Milwaukee had no right to be as good as they were when T.J. Ford went down, and they still finished around .500. Celtics rode Paul Pierce to something like 37 wins, they had nothing else. No way the Cavs should've slipped out of the playoffs, IMO. Magic are gonna be much improved, and considering the Hornet are moving West and Bobcats won't win 20 games, they'll have a good shot. Here are my projected win totals for the Eastern conference playoff teams: Indiana: 58 - 24 Detroit: 55-27 New Jersey: 48 - 34 Miami: 45 - 37 New York: 44 - 38 Orlando: 43 - 39 Cleveland: 41 - 41 Milwaukee: 40 - 42 It should drop off severely after that... Raptors really screwed up the draft. Philly's a year away, I think. Hawks, Bobcats, and Wizards are gonna be brutal. Celtics and Bulls will be respectable, but will fall just short of the playoffs. Dwight Howard will be much better than Kwame Brown was his rookie year. Expect something along the lines of 11ppg 7rpg 1.5bpg
Yeah, he's blowin hot air because he isn't putting money on the line that the Magic win 50 games. He didn't even say that. If you really want to make an interesting wager, why don't you bet someone that the Rockets will win more games than the Magic next year.
I'm ethically opposed to gambling, so no, I'm not taking your bet. You can call that hot air, if you like. Besides that, I think 50 wins is a little high. I'm thinking more like 48.
I think the Magic will be a lot like the Heat were last year...but worse. The pieces are very similar but with Steve and Cat taking most of the shots with their low 40% FG shooting, it won't be pretty.
This is not like gambling because neither one of us benefits from it. We only donate the money to Clutch tip jar. Choose an offer, I bet: 1) Magic will win less than 48 games. 2) Magic will win less games than the Rockets. Any taker welcomed.
I really don't think that Cat will be there next year, even though he and Steve have been a team. In some ways they are redundant, now that the Magic have Nelson, and they'll for sure lose him when his contract comes up. There are reports that they plan on using Steve at the 2, so he can show them what he can really do. It would not surprise me, that they ship Cat/Gooden to MIA for Buitler. There has been talk of sending them to GSW too. I'll bet they sign some FA's too. So, I expect it to be more like: Cato/Pachulia/Rooks Howard/Hunter/Garrity Hill/Butler/Bogans Francis/Stephenson Nelson/FA That'll be a young team, with Stevie as the star. If Hill is healthy, it would not surprise me if he brought the ball up ... That really could be a very good team in the East, even with two rookies starting. Everyone has said the Nelson is the most NBA ready player in the draft, and that Howard does stuff that people are totally blown away by. It should be interesting as they mature.
With the talks about Steve or Cat or whoever not gonna be there with Orlando, let's make the bet clear. My offer is good once the trade goes thru, and it stands no matter what happens after that.