With November wrapping up today, its kinda crazy looking the the west. I mean you have your obvious good teams like the Lakers, Nuggets, and Mavs. Then you have your middle of the pack teams like Utah, Portland, Houston, SA, and maybe the Hornets (who might be below this group.) Then you have all these surprise teams like OKC, Sac, and the Suns. Im not gonna even bother saying much about clips, wolves and warriors. However it was shocking to see minny beat denver. Anyway the three teams that are sorta a wild card right now are OKC, Sac, and the Suns. Suns - Looks like this is a playoff team unless they fall apart or lose nash or amare. Infact they look to be a someone who will get a top 4 seed. I do expect the Lakers to pass them though at some point. Any team that STARTS Frye cant be this good and make it last. OKC - Some thought they could make the playoffs. 9-7 which really isnt much different from us. They also killed Utah in Utah a few nights ago. I still think they finish around 39-44 wins fighting for a low seed (7-8) but still hard to see them getting in. They def look like a team that will be hanging around all year. Sac - This has to be the biggest shocker to me. On paper this team looks like winning 10 games would be asking a lot. I am not sold on this good early season play. I do think they come back to earth soon. However you can make the case that when martin returns... they get better.... or do they? But still 8-8 is pretty soild considering they have already won half as many as last year ALREADY! With that said... 35 wins would be a stretch IMO. NBA is kinda weird. The older teams dont really play hard on a night to night basis till January IMO. I mean, the young teams seem like they always strat to fizzle out once mid season comes. This year im guessing it will be teams like Sac. With that said, picking the 8 playoff seeds is very tough at the moment... even more so with our awful play of late. Right now I'd say.... Lakers Mavs Suns Nuggets Jazz SA Blazers Rockets however that leaves out OKC and Hornets. Its gonna easily be a 10 team race and who knows... maybe Sac makes it 11 but i cant see them keeping up this pace with or without martin.
Actually, the nothing has surprised me this year. I knew the Spurs were old and injury prone and would struggle to make a high seed in the playoffs. No surprise about OKC. They live & die with the jump shot. That's enough to get you to the playoffs, but not thru them. Houston as a .500 club with terrible talent is also easily predictable with Adleman as coach. My only surprise is how poorly Portland is playing. We beat most the bad teams (as we should), but still can beat the better teams. This is shaping up to be a long season.
