I would hate Hiesley too, but he's the mastermind behind the OJ Mayo for Kevin Love, Mike Miller deal. Chris Wallace is an idiot for the most part, but at least we have a center for in the future in Marc now and cleared up cap space.
The Raptors won 41 games last year, and they're now on pace to 29 games. That's a pretty steep drop off, even though they didn't really lose that much talent. They were missing a good interior defensive player last year, and that's what they added in Jermaine O'neal. It's strange to me that they were not at least close to what they were a season ago, if not better. As for the Clippers, they loaded up on injury-prone players and guys with a history of playing on dysfunctional teams. I had zero expectations for them. Philadelphia is a good choice too. I forgot about them. The Brand acquisition was a total flop this year.
I think most people would've told you that even if the JO experiment failed to live up to expectations, the Raptors would probably tread water and cling to a late playoff seed (even moreso, if they knew Bargnani would re-emerge). The problem is that the JO trade depleted two of the Raptors' greatest strengths from the last 2 years: strong PG play and a deep bench. We thrived off of 48 minutes of high-level point guard'ing when TJ Ford and Jose Calderon co-existed. This year, Jose failed to live up to his contract (possibly because of a nagging injury) and his backups have been scrubs for the most part. Our bench was filled with the cheapest additions we could find because we were so close to the cap, and they've been useless.
Dallas Mavericks? I mean, I wasn't expecting them to win the championship, but they're barely hanging onto the 8th seed. Josh Howard has been disappointing. Kidd has been disappointing. Carlise who was supposed to give us a boost with his style of offense has been disappointing. Dirk's regressed since previous seasons (at least his consistency). The team has already lost to or struggled against multiple times against teams whom they should be beating. They've lost by 20+ points a ton. They've got to be in the discussion.
8th seed was basically reasonable expectations for the mavs. they were done with homecourt advantage and championship contention the second the jason kidd trade happened.
They've actually been doing pretty well without Redd. I think he'll be on the block this summer, considering how many teams need shooters.
I had the Raptors in 7th anyway. So them sucking isn't that much of a letdown for me (though as a Celtics fan its hysterical).
Injuries undid a lot of teams this year, so in that respect its a bit unfair of me to pick someone like the Clippers. Toronto should've returned to the playoffs and they are the team I thought of when I read the title. Calderon had a real roll, O'Neal would take a bit of physical pounding from Bosh, and Bargs actually had a bounceback year. I wonder if they would've been better or worse keeping Sam Mitchell. I didn't think Billups was that valuable to Detroit. They're another team that has disappointed me even though they've mostly avoided the injury bug.
Raps were a bust. I think we did a prediction for the west on the Blazers board... I might be too lazy to go back and look for it.
Toronto, and i'm kinda disappointed in New Orleans, thought they'd be much much better than they are now!
GS or Clippers were never expected to be good. NO, Philly and Raptors have fallen very shy of the pre-season projections.
Only 15 teams in the conference. And if I looked at the standings right now, for the first time, I'd assume that Chris Bosh and Caron Butler missed most of the season. Toronto and Washington are totally disappointing. Brendan Haywood turned out to be very very valuable to Washington. I didn't expect the Clippers to be good but I definitely didn't expect them to be this bad. Not surprised by the Clippers. No Baron Davis and Monta Ellis missed the opening of the season. Most surprising record for me? Cleveland. I love Cleveland. Love LeBron. Always root for them in the playoffs. But they only won 45 games last year. Who had them being 61-13 at this point in the season?
