1. OKC (deepest team) 2. Denver (champion tested) 3. Dallas (will be better from Finals experience) 4. Houston (Sengun & Eason back) 5. Sacramento (Derozan addition) 6. Minnesota (no Towns, will decline) 7. Phoenix ( Tyus Jones underrated pickup) 8. Memphis (Ja back) 9. Golden State 10. Lakers 11. Pelicans 12. Spurs 13. Clippers 14. Jazz 15. Portland I think the Rockets will be great defensively this season with Fred, Dillon, Eason, Smith & Amen I think Adams will set screens that will open up the lanes for Green, Amen, Reed, Cam I think our bench will outscore majority of other benches and we'll have a top 4 team in the West
I still don’t trust our offense. All of our shooters are streaky and Sengun can’t carry every night. I think 7-9 seed.
The Clippers are still not that bad and Memphis should be higher. GSW is under the radar now. Melton and SloMo are really good defensive additions, Hield is a good shooter.
Provided teams are healthy, I see something like this for the West: 1. Thunder (they are only getting better year after year until payroll issues) 2. Mavs (they got better in the off-season, I think 2/3 interchangeable with Nuggets) 3. Nuggets (they keep bleeding guys to other poaching teams but Jokic is still insane also they paid their core) 4. Wolves (I still see them being contenders with the KAT/Randle swap but long term, they will trend down) 5. Suns (unless something terrible happens, they are still going to be a playoff team) 6. Grizzlies (I think Edey is going win Roty with the minutes he'll be getting and people already forgot how good Ja is) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Lakers (I doubt the NBA will let the Lakers miss the playoffs with father/son duo narrative) 8. Rockets (I have us anywhere from 7 to 10 range but unless our guys take major steps, I think we'll still be fringe playoff team) 9. Kings (I still think that Haliburton trade is terrible and Kings are going nowhere) 10. Pelicans (I think not having a center, they will learn quickly it's a bad idea as we did with smallball Rockets) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Warriors (Curry is injured and I doubt Kuminga can carry them in the early half of the season) 12. Clippers (Kawhi gone and Harden has to carry a bunch of scrubs, this sucks for us if Clippers are bad since OKC has their pick) 13. Spurs (They added Barnes and CP3, they could sneak into the play-in if things go well) 14. Jazz (Idk what they are doing, they refused to trade Lauri, who we could use btw, they seem to just enjoy being mediocre) 15. Blazers (Blazers are just bad, Scoot looks like a bust but Clingan looks promising) tl;dr The West is a bloodbath, if we win 50 games, some miracle will have happened. We really need Sengun/Green to take a big step up this year for us to make the playoffs. I think if we don't make the playin again, it'll have been considered a failure.
We'll either be the 9th-10th seed...the Grizzlies will be relevant again. The Clippers will not be good this year and we'll be competing with them for the last play-in spot.
1) Thunder 2) Memphis 3) Dallas 4) Warriors 5) Nuggets 6) Suns 7) T-Wolves 8) Rockets 9) Kings 10) Clippers 11) Lakers (NBA will rig lottery so they get Cooper Flagg....extends LeBron years to age 44) 12) Pels 13) Spurs 14) Jazz 15) Blazers
