I'm finally talking myself into getting psyched for the upcoming season. My team, the Cavs, are gonna be awful most likely. Nevertheless, this season has plenty of interesting stories. And 100 games to root against the Heat. OKC Thunder, with their crazy idea that drafting players builds a better team than buying players, are the obvious bandwagon to jump on this season. And if they win it all maybe we can prevent basketball from turning into baseball.

My predictions

Miami wins 68 games - #1 in the league. I don't think they can beat Boston, Orlando, or L.A. in the playoffs this year though. They'll have to wait until they luck into having a good center. Size matters.

East playoff teams will be Miami, Orlando, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Milwaukee, New York, and Washington.

West playoff teams will be L.A. Lakers, Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Utah, Portland, Houston, and either Sacramento or L.A. Clippers surprising thanks to their young guys. Gordon and Griffin vs Evans and Cousins.

I may be just dreaming, but I'm thinking my Pistons can be better this year than anybody is predicting. I say they could sneak into the playoffs at the 5th seed, and if they can avoid Boston/Orland/Miami, they could win the first round before getting crushed.

Also, I'm hoping that Bosh, Lebron, and Wade all break both their legs early in the season and are out until next year. Just for the fact then I'd get to hear less about them on ESPN.

As for my preseason predictions, I see it like this:

East Playoffs:
#1. Heat
#2. Magic
#3. Celtics
#4. Bulls
#5. Pistons (it will happen!)
#6. Milwaukee
#7. Washington
#8. New Jersey (my underdog pick of the year)

West Playoffs:
#1. Lakers
#2. OKC
#3. Dallas
#4. Phoenix
#5. Portland
#6. Denver (really depends on the Carmello situation)
#7. San Antonio
#8. Utah

Championship: LA vs. Heat. (The league will make sure this happens... $$$$)
Champion: LA

King James & the Miami sound machine are going to kick everyone's ass on their way to a championship

OKC wins it all this year.

they couldn't even get out of the first round last season.

Yeah, giving the Lakers they're only challenge last year was nothing!

Also, I believe last year I was the ONLY person to predict OKC to even MAKE the playoffs!

it was something but not enough for them to go all the way this season.

We'll see.

I am not convinced OKC will get #2 spot in West like 90% of analysts predict. Last year OKC was in contention for home court advantage but still sputtered toward the end of the season and fell several spots to #8. That tells me that teams were caught off-guard by OKC at first but then adjusted toward end of year so OKC isn't as good as their record.

lol

I was predicting a mid 20s season for the Raptors, but after seeing them in preseason I'm dropping it to under 15, with a chance of under 10. We look like the worst offensive team in the league. Bargnani and Calderon are shooting like 30%, the former can't do shit without open shots which he isn't getting now, and the latter desperately needs a player to set picks for him which nobody on our team that. After that our best guys are Barbosa, Jack, Kleiza... that's fucking horrible. This is one of the least talented offensive teams I've ever seen. And the d should be bottom 5 if not worst in the league.

This is going to be ROUGHHHHH. Like the Bulls in 99 when everyone retired and they had Kukoc as their best player and mostly scrubs.

Predictions

East

1. Orlando Magic
2. Miami Heat
3. Milwaukee Bucks
4. Chicago Bulls
5. Charlotte Bobcats
6. Boston Celtics
7. Detroit Pistons
8. Cleveland Cavaliers
9. Atlanta Hawks
10. New York Knicks
11. New Jersey Nets
12. Indiana Pacers
13. Philadelphia 76ers
14. Toronto Raptors
15. Washington Wizards

West

1. Los Angeles Lakers
2. Utah Jazz
3. Dallas Mavericks
4. Portland Trailblazers
5. San Antonio Spurs
6. Oklahoma City Thunder
7. Phoenix Suns
8. Houston Rockets
9. New Orleans Hornets
10. Denver Nuggets
11. Sacramento Kings
12. Memphis Grizzlies
13. Minnesota Timberwolves
14. Los Angeles Clippers
15. Golden State Warriors

MVP: Dwight Howard
COTY: Stan Van Gundy
ROTY: Blake Griffin
DPOY: Dwight Howard
Executive of the Year: Miami Heat
Most Improved Player: Greg Oden
6th Man of the Year: Roddy Beaubois

Champs: Miami Heat (d. LA Lakers)
Finals MVP: Lebron James

That was a ugly first quarter to start the season.

Heat not looking soo good.

I hope the other 30 teams are watching. Play a zone against the Heat and they can't score.

Lebron taking over

The only time the Heat looked good this game was when Lebron was playing with scrubs and it looked like the Cleveland offense

Wade and Bosh are both -20... they looked disastrous off Lebron

And once again, Lebron disappears when it counts. Nowhere to be seen after his little 'run'

well it's only the first game & it's a long season

HEAT 0-1

From last night's game:

Boston seemed to not have changed much from last year's pitfall, will have a super strong first half then run out of gas in second half and let teams back into the game. If they draw Chicago in the first round of playoffs they are very beatable.

Heat needs much work, let's see how they look at end of season but if it takes a long time for them to develop their chemistry, there is a small chance that they could get 5th seed (w/ home court advantage against divisional winner 4th seed). Anyway they will be scary in the playoffs no matter their seed.

Houston looks for real but then again they always have close opening season games with Lakers and last year they sputtered off after a strong first half of the year. Kyle Lowry should help their team a lot when he returns so based on 1st game they could still be a top 3 seed in West.

Lakers will cakewalk through the West again.

That's exactly what I was thinking while watching the second half. It looked no different than any Cleveland team, except that they may have been worse.

A few others pointed out lack of chemistry, but I don't buy that. The big 3 have actually played together quite a bit in the Olympics and being friends, they shouldn't have looked as inept as they did.

I think they're going to look great against 90% of the league during the regular season, but come playoff time it's going to look a lot like what we saw against Boston. I just don't think they're well built to go against teams that play strong defense or have a lot of big bodies to clog the lanes.

Wade and James play too much of the same game, they have no real inside presence and no great ball distributor. Boston, and a few other top teams, has all that.

Michael Beasley could really have a huge breakout year in Minnesota based on how bad Chris Bosh played. It may be the system in Miami that makes the PF look bad rather than the player is bad.

so let me pull out my calculator here

Heat are on pace to finish 0-82