This was a disappointing loss, but this is frankly somewhat expected.
Last season I predicted that the team would start slow, but then get better as guys started to adjust to new roles. That's exactly what happened.
This season I predicted the same, and I have no reason to expect it to go differently. We replaced the longest tenured player on our roster and one of our highest usage guys. I expect it will take the team 10-15 games to build chemistry, for everybody to get used to playing together, for Mazulla to work out his rotations and gameplans,etc.
We were also playing a team that finished with the #1 seed last season and has a full year of chemistry under their belt, so they already have everyone in sync.
I only really had one question mark about this roster, and that was the question of how much Paul George still has left to offer on the offensive end. He answered that question today quite emphatically.