east: heat, bulls
west: thunder, lakers, mavs
if the nets somehow managed to sign Nene and trade Lopez / picks for Dwight (admittedly very unlikely), i might be tempted to include them as well, depending on what role players they signed for support.
the knicks could be a contending team if they signed the right supporting pieces, but i don't think they have the money to do so -- plus they wouldn't want to compromise their cap space for next summer.
i think memphis will have a bit of a let down this year after their surprising post-season run this summer.
Thunder v. Heat is my Finals matchup.
You really think the Heat and the Bulls are going to be so dominant that we won't even have a chance? That's some real good negative thinking, there.
i think our team may be good enough to take either the Heat or the Bulls to 6 games, if our team is healthy.
I'd say that's more of a chance than most would have given the Mavs last year. It's also much more of a chance than many here would have given us before 2009-2010, when we were "done as a contending team". When we were healthy last year we were easily dispatching the Heat during the season. When we were very unhealthy in the playoffs we were a missed layup from being tied 2-2 with the Heat.
you may be right about the mavs last year, but then dirk went and turned into the best player in the playoffs. he was unstoppable. who on the celtics is going to do that this year for 4 series?
many were writing off our team in 2009-2010 as well, it's true -- myself included, after the horrid regular season. the team was certainly surprising in the playoffs, but let's remember that they fell short, and there haven't been any major improvements to the team since then. in fact, the roster outlined at the start of this post is significantly less impressive than the 2010 team that made the finals.
last year, we did have a lot of success against the heat early in the regular season when they were still putting it together and we had a reasonably healthy shaq and / or perk. later in the regular season when the roster more closely resembled the roster in the original post, the heat handed our butts to us. in the playoffs, we hung with the heat fairly well prior to rondo's injury. it is open to debate whether or not our team would have beaten the heat if rondo had not been injured, but i am of the opinion that though we very well may have taken them to 6 games and been very competitive, we would ultimately still have lost.
