I wanted to Bump this, to give everyone a chance to reflect on how their view has changed since the season started.
<-- Maybe not any longer See fuckers!!!! You should listen to me! I almost even got the stats right too! I hope I'm dead wrong about Matthews though. He has become one of my favorite players now. Reminds me how I felt about Kersey, back in the early 90's.
My 48 win prediction may be pretty pessimistic, in hindsight. Which isn't like me--I'm usually one of the wild optimists. I guess I didn't appreciate how much we'd benefit from all the great perimeter shooters. It reminds me of that 52 win Sonics team that just killed with three point shooting. Funny thing is our current team may even be more loaded with great three point shooters. We've got 4 guys hitting 39% or better, while that team only had 2.
Anyway, if I'm allowed to change my prediction, I'd adjust it up to 54 wins and (finally) a trip to the second round.
I'm sticking with my 47 and 6th seed prediction. That's 37-33 the rest of the way. Considering our ridiculous remaining schedule, I think it's pretty reasonable. Dame needs to improve his shooting quite a bit to get to 44% though.
I had a feeling that they might gel, which is why I added that comment. We have guys that have room to grow, we have a new center, there just seems to be some good cohesion. After watching the Giants win the World Series in 2010, I am a big believer in team chemistry. Sometimes, you don't need great chemistry when you have enough talent, but players need to know their roles. I feel like this team has great cohesion and chemistry, and that oftentimes brings players to new heights. I think that's what we're seeing thus far. I pray it continues, and I pray for player health. I had my expectations, but I also felt they were pretty close last year, so them really growing and taking a step forward wasn't totally unexpected for me.
I predicted 48 wins, so (barring a disaster) I was uncharacteristically pessimistic. In years past I was always either dead on or wildly optimistic. Not sure what happened here. I suppose we were pretty lucky in the health department--if Lillard, Matthews, Robin and Batum weren't ironmen this year, we'd have had a much worse record because of the shitty bench. Seriously--4 of our 5 starters are on track to play all 82 games. How often does that happen? I will say I seem rather prescient about Robin and my now-patented Twins Theory:
