09/23/2017 is not 3/27/2018. Superstars mean much less if your team is not in the playoffs, does not have home court advantage or strengthened a berth through a 14 game win streak.
I mean, I didn't know Houston would be that good, but pretty much. This type of response is reserved for your predictions now.
"Most likely finish 5th". Maybe you shouldve taken my advice. Should I call out everyone who either laughed/talked shit about my prediction for this team considering yesterday a bunch of people got on me for being too negative?
Yeah I did in the prediction thread. However @Orion Bailey refused to count my prediction because I didn't give a number. It's okay though, I expected 4th seed, not 3rd.
Northwest Division with 4 of 5 teams in the Playoffs and the 5th knocking on the door. Pacific Division with 1 0f 5 teams in the Playoffs. It doesn't really mean much since Division are almost worthless any more but it's quite the contrast.
From NBA.com: "Wild Northwest The Northwest Division this season will go down as the most competitive in the current six-division format -- and it's not even close. The team that finishes last in the Northwest this season will be only three games behind the team that wins the division crown. There's never been a last-place team within less than 11 games of the winner in this current format, which has been in play for 14 seasons." BNM
Do you think injuries to key guys on pretty much every team kinda kept everybody close? I know there is more to it than that, but Milsap, Gobert, Butler, Roberson(Not a star, but pretty important to OKC) all missing big chunks kinda threw monkey wrenchs out there. We were pretty damn lucky when it came to injuries this year for once.
Injuries are part of the game, and being one of they youngest teams in the leagues tends to result in fewer games lost to injury. Old guys tend to get hurt more and take longer to recover, and in some cases just take games of to rest. All four of OKCs best players played more games than Dame. Their bench has also been healthy all season. Their top 4 bench players have all played more games than Dame (and Chief and Moe). If you look at their top 9 players, Roberson is the only one who will play in fewer than 76 games). Of our top 9, Dame, Chief, Moe and Shabazz will all play fewer than 76 games. Even if you include Roberson missing 43 games, their top nine rotation players will miss a total of 65 games. Our top 9 will miss 64 games. OKC's failure to meet expectations has very little to do with injuries. Losing Butler definitely hurt MIN, but three of their starters will play in all 82 games. None of ours will. The real problem is Thibs plays his starters into the ground. That leads to injuries and fatigue. Even with a healthy Butler, they were bound to fade late in the season. Not as much as they did, but their early season record was fool's gold due to the fact that Thibs was playing all of his starters big minutes. Ultimately, you play the games with the guys you have. We were on fire before Moe got hurt. His late season injury hurt us, as did losing Dame and Ed for a couple games. BNM
Boston sort of shows you can win through injuries...traded their allstar IT, then Hayward went down then Kyrie....still putting wins up.....depth is crucial to success
