16 days since the last post... I think that's a record. I still check out the pads virtually everyday and I figured it's about time I post something.
So far this season has been interesting. The most notable surprise has to be the mediocre performance by the Heat. Are they even better than last years team featuring Jermaine O'neal's corpse, Michael Beasley smoking too much weed and D-Wade? And how about those Raptors? I just have to mention that so far so good on my preseason prediction. They definitely are not the worst team in the league. In fact, they may wind up in the hunt for the 8th playoff spot... that race in the east might be between 8 teams, but still. Plus, if Andrea Bargnani continues on his tear of 28 pts/gm over the last 5 games.. I will officially admitt I was wrong about the guy. Last night against the Sixers and Sunday against the Celtics Bargnani quite honestly looked like a young Dirk Nowitzky and I wouldn't be surprised if Bargs made the allstar team this year.
I figure that we have seen enough basketball to make educated predictions on who will make the finals as well as predict where our favorite teams will end up. If we wait any longer to make these predictions then they won't be as exciting because usually by January predictions are easy to make (except for the West playoff positions).
Here's how I see it. The Finals: Lakers vs. Bulls Lakers in 5
Why?: I almost put the Jazz vs bulls because one, it would be hilarious seeing the jazz vs jazz 2.0 in the finals and two, I realized recently that if the Lakers lose Gasol to injury, they don't have a chance.. they are deep everywhere but in their bigs and Bynum is already out. I think the Jazz are the second best team in the West (mainly because I can never support, cheer for or predict good things for the spurs).
Also, The bulls are my favorite in the East because the combination of Rose, Boozer and Noah seems seems awesome to me and good enough for second best in the east. Second to the Celtics, but the Celtics seem to be having a bad stretch of injury problems and due to their age, I'm betting on a key player or two being out for the playoffs.
And for my favorite team prediction?.. The Raptors will be 38-44, 9th in the East. Not to shabby considering everyone wrote them off to start the season. But the raptors beat the Celtics for the first time in 12 meetings on sunday and they have a couple of really good trade assests. Reggie evans is an expiring contract and a league leader in rebounds and Peja Stojakovic is also an expiring contract worth 15 million who is a great player for a contender or a team looking to free up cap space for next year. Together that's 20 million in expiring deals plus they are two players of value who teams have to take a look at.
Well, that's it for my predictions... for all of you Pads followers, I wanna know what your predictions are. Who's gonna be in the finals and why? And how is your favorite team going to do this year?
I'm Miller Regent... The end.