re: ESPN's 2016-17 NBA Western Conference predictions. What are your predictions?

Davis B3rtans

Kid's a fricking shooter and an underrated defender. He won't score 21 every night but if you let him get comfortable out there he'll make defenses pay for sleeping.

Clips are a bad, bad matchup. Austin Rivers' eyes light up whenever he gets Mills on him, and to be honest, Pop has never really had a defensive answer for CP3. He just carves us up. Throw in the fact that the Clipper bigs like to play more physically than ours and Jamal Crawford's ridiculously effective streetballing, and that's just not a matchup I'd be confident in.

If we do make it to face GSW, I think we hold our own.

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I mean, the Rockets did get better on paper.

1. If you watched them last year, you would know Dwight was a non-factor. He wasn't good on defense last year (or offense for that matter).

Capela was better than Dwight this past season both statistically and you could see it watching the games. Not-to-mention Dwight was a root cause of chemistry problems.

In case you don't believe that Dwight wasn't the best fit, the Rockets had a record without Dwight over the past 2 seasons of 34-18 (.653). With Dwight, they had a record of 63-49 (.562).

They actually played better when he didn't play. So addition by subtraction.


2. One of the problems with the Rockets on offense (even though their offense has been good since Harden joined the team), was that they shoot a lot of 3's but are only average at best at making them. Their 3 point percentage has been middle of the pack.

Well, by adding Anderson and Gordon, they have added two guys who can really shoot the 3 and space the floor. Harden with better shooters around him to space the floor even more will make him an even better scorer.

Mike D'Antoni has a lot of weapons with Capela being a very good roll man in his pick and roll offense with Harden handling the ball and 40% 3-point shooters spacing the floor.

They really could have one of the best offenses in the league.

In addition to Anderson and Gordon, they added Nene as a back-up center. He's getting up there in age, but is still a solid player.



3. Their defense is the question mark. They were pretty bad on defense last season and still finished with a .500 record. So even if they just maintained their 21st ranked defense from last season, they'd improve by being much better on offense.

If you believe that being better on offense can improve the defense by getting more chances to set up in the half-court after made buckets, then they may improve a bit.

And maybe they surprise people and have an average defense ranked about 13th or 14th.

Who knows. But they certainly improved.

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Seriously, going back and reading these predictions is fun.

Yea I was down on them too but wasn't expecting this much of a drop off. I'd say they're my favourite atm to get the 8 though.

I'm surprised you had MEM so high

This is purely based on the rodeo trip going well. If it doesn't go ahead and swap gsw with sas

1. SAS
2. GSW
3. HOU
4. LAC
5. UTA
6. OKC
7. MEM
8. PDX
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9. DEN
10. NO
11. DAL
12. MIN
13. SAC
14. PHX
15. LAL