The way things are now, we aren't anywhere near contender status. I doubt we are even 'dark horse' status at the moment.
Injuries have prevented us from seeing this team at its best or 90% of the season.
I actually think we have a better shot at upsetting Miami than Chicago.
Chicago will just crush us on the glass and the bench war, and their defense is brutal as well.
For us to have a realistic shot at making the finals we obviously have to get ridiculously lucky:
*We have to get past the Heat and force them to shoot from the outside like we did last year- where they were on fire. I doubt they'll ever shoot like that against us for 5 games in a row ever again. Problem is their team is deeper and tougher.
*We have an advantage inside against them and if we can take away their penetration and fast break (which we are very good at doing) then we could pull some kind of miraculous upset. Problem of course is that they are liable to have at least 3 games where either one of Wade, James or Bosh goes off. Bosh won't be as big of a factor because of KG, but an older Pierce and Ray guarding Lebron and Wade is just a recipe for disaster, and Ray+Pierce's defense is going to make it tougher for them to keep their legs when we need them hitting open jump shots.
It's just very hard to envision us beating them 4 of 7 games- it is possible though. I'd say maybe we have a 15-20% chance of everything going our way in the above mentioned.
If we somehow got past Miami in the first round, and got to the Bulls in the ECF or 2nd round, we would have to pray that Rose is still struggling from injury.
There is basically no way we can beat this team because of their size and depth if they are at 100%.
We are just too shallow of a team. Our starting five will be fine, but our horrid bench will be out rebounded, out scored, out defended, out hustled. There isn't one thing we will have an advantage on them with our bench and they'll take advantage of us unfortunately. We'll basically have to pray that we shoot the lights out in the opening game in Chicago and can somehow pull off a win to make them nervous.
Winning Atlantic doesn't mean anything to me now. I'd rather we get everyone healthy and get our rotations playing together.
Schedule is tough but it's a good time to test our defense and give our bench some very needed practice against 500+ teams.
Topic: "We might win the Atlantic!"... (looks at schedule)... N/M (Read 8741 times)