I think Portland is better than Washington (!) and Dallas. And on par with Denver and maybe Orlando and San Antonio.
Washington could be pretty good, assuming Arenas is at full speed and Foye should be at minimum a nice addition to their guard rotation. I suppose there's fudge factor in any of these subjective rankings. As for being better than Dallas, until we do better than getting swept by them in the regular season I'm not ready to say this Blazers team is instantly better than the Mavs, especially if Marion is effective backing up both Nowitski and Howard.
Dude take off the I'm tired of all the sunshine you blow up everyones ass. Can we see a gritty analysis that has a critical element? Endlessly singing management's praises and never finding fault with anyone it gets old man. Seriously, quit holding back man you're better then that, give it to us straight!
We were tied for 6th last year. If someone would have predicted what actually happened, you would have called them out as a homer, and been wrong. Maybe the homer factor isn't is big as you think.
We were tied for 5th. Orlando, LA, Cleveland, and Boston were the only teams who won more games than us last season. So how does a team that will have improved and grown this season end up dropping? The answer is they won't. Blazers a top 5 team, no less.
That's absolutely correct. And what is up with people thinking San Antonio will be so good? That team is old and brittle and will go nowhere. Orlando will be worse without Turkoglu and lmao @ Dallas.
I think SA and Dallas get so much respect because they are teams that have competed at the top of their conference year in and year out. Portland has had it's one good year and people (especially national analyst) aren't convinced Portland will keep going forward each year. Last summer NO was the new darling of the western conference. A young up and coming team that will be competing for the Western confrence title for years. I don't even know if Ptd is the new darling this summer, but even if they are . . . Denver and Dallas both made it out of the first round and have either gotten better or remained the same. SA is a proven contender that was hurt last year. I could see why the Blazers are ranked where they are. Personally, I like predictions that put the Blazers lower . . . it's fun to be the surprise of the league.
Before last season and all of the injuries to the Wizards they were: 45-37 in '03-'04 42-40 in '04-'05 41-41 in '05-'06 43-39 in '06-'07 Pretty much a .500 team with the nucleus of Arenas, Jamison, & Butler. Never played any defense and never seriously contended for a title. Mike Miller and Randy Foye are supposed to put you over the hump? I'm not buying it.
I would put Chicago up above washington, but I would put us up around 4-6 (added) I still think relevant Western Conference goes LA SA Denver, Portland, Dallas (tied) I really haven't watched enough eastern conference teams to rank them
