Phx-Suns.Net

Here's the thread where we can predict the regular-season records of every team. I'll go first:

East:
1 Bucks
2 Hawks
3 Heat
4 Nets
5 Pacers
6 76ers
7 Bulls
8 Hornets
9 Celtics
10 Knicks
11 Magic
12 Pistons
13 Cavs
14 Wizards
15 Raptors

Analysis: I think the Bucks will have a championship swagger that will carry through the regular season. Hawks have a ton of depth and young talent on their roster and similarly I think they'll have a swagger from performing so well in last year's playoffs. Love their roster.

I like Miami with Lowry and Tucker and their other additions; they'll play hard every night. Maybe I have the Nets too low, but I don't like the drama with Kyrie and all the distraction that will bring. I'm pretty high on Indiana; I like Carlisle as their coach and think they'll be pretty scary once Oladipo and others are healthy.

I almost wanted to pick the 76ers to miss the playoffs due to the Ben Simmons drama, but they have a ton of other talent and won't drop that far IMO. Trading him for a decent return could raise their ranking a lot. I also have the Celtics missing the playoffs; I just don't like their roster outside of Smart and Tatum, and I don't like the coaching change for them. Brad Stevens got them several crafty wins every year.

As for the non-playoff teams, I also have the Knicks missing the playoffs; I think last season was a fluke and I don't like their shooting or playmaking at all. It just looks like a bunch of chuckers and has-beens and never-wases to me. I think Orlando may be a little bit fun and frisky this year, but I don't think it will translate to many wins. I'm curious to see how well Detroit plays with Cade Cunningham, but other than that I don't think I want to watch that group much.


West:
1 Suns
2 Jazz
3 Nuggets
4 Mavs
5 Grizzlies
6 Clippers
7 Lakers
8 Warriors
9 Blazers
10 Timberwolves
11 Pelicans
12 Kings
13 Spurs
14 Rockets
15 Thunder

Analysis: I did consider our Finals run last season to be something of a lucky break. But I look at the West this year and I feel like most other teams stayed stagnant or got worse, while we got better in some of our key areas of weakness. So I actually think we have a great chance to run it back. I still really like Utah as a regular-season team that stacks up wins; the playoffs are another story.

I may be overrating the Nuggets, but I love Jokic and think Porter Jr can mostly fill in for the missing Jamal Murray; also really like Will Barton, Aaron Gordon, and Jeff Green for them. I am putting the Mavs in the #4 spot mainly because I dislike most of the teams that come after them, and as a nod to Luka. I love the Grizzlies' young core and think they'll shock a lot of people this year. I think Ja will also take a leap.

After this point I just don't believe in any of the remaining teams. It may be crazy to put the Clippers at #6, but I think without Kawhi for essentially the whole season, they're pretty mediocre. I don't think Paul George can carry a team by himself, and they've lost a few key pieces from last year. Lakers at #7 may be my craziest pick of the year, but I just really don't like the team they've put together. Super top-heavy with three guys who are all very questionable in terms of age/health and fit with each other. Who holds the ball, Lebron or Westbrook? Also they literally turned over their entire team other than 3 guys from last year! They fill out the roster with a bunch of low-rate random bantha fodder. I just don't like it and I think they'll have at least one major injury to their big 3. I also am not afraid of their 3-point shooting and overall defense. I think they're extremely overrated.

I put the Warriors at #8 but am not very high on them. I think they're also being extremely overrated; some folks have them above the Suns (!) as the best team in the West (!). That's absurd. They'll be missing Klay Thompson for a large part of the season, and he won't be 100% when he does return. They have a bunch of guys I don't trust such as Wiggins and Wiseman. Andre Iguodala is a savvy vet but really old, and Draymond doesn't give you much on offense. I like Jordan Poole but that's about it.

As for the rest, well, meh. I don't like what the Blazers did this offseason. I think their defense will be atrocious and they still don't really have any good forwards. I think Dame gets upset before the trade deadline. The Pelicans are already facing Zion injury problems. The Spurs will be trying to get to 26 wins so that Pop can get the all-time coaching record, but they have an extremely thin supply of talent. The Rockets and Thunder will probably be openly tanking for most of the year.

Postseason/award predictions:
WCF: Suns over Nuggets
ECF: Bucks over Nets
NBA Finals: Suns over Bucks (the rematch, baby!!)
MVP: Giannis
COTY: Monty Williams

East:

1. Bucks
2. Nets
3. Celtics
4. Hawks
5. Heat
6. 76ers
7. Pacers
8. Knicks
9. Bulls
10. Raptors
11. Hornets
12. Wizards
13. Magic
14. Pistons
15. Cavs

West:

1. Jazz
2. Suns
3. Nuggets
4. Mavs
5. Lakers
6. Blazers
7. Warriors
8. Clippers
9. Kings
10. Grizzlies
11. Wolves
12. Spurs
13. Pelicans
14. Rockets
15. Thunder

Not really ready to predict post season, but for awards:

MVP: Doncic
ROY: Jalen Green
DPOY: Draymond Green
MIP: Mikal Bridges (have to homer somewhere...)
COTY: Udoka

Will try to add some commentary later.

Edit: changed my COTY pick from Carlisle to Udoka.

These are strictly regular season predictions. Also I’ll rank them 1-15, but I’m going to put them into tiers where I could really see those teams finishing just about anywhere in the tier.

West:

Tier 1:
1. Phoenix Suns
2. Utah Jazz

Tier 2:
3. LA Lakers

Tier 3:
4. Denver Nuggets
5. Dallas Mavericks
6. Golden State Warriors
7. LA Clippers

Tier 4:
8. Portland Trail Blazers

Tier 5:
9. Minnesota Timberwolves
10. Memphis Grizzlies
11. Sacramento Kings
12. New Orleans Pelicans

Tier 6:
13. San Antonio Spurs
14. Houston Rockets

Tier 7:
15. OKC Thunder

East:

Tier 1:
1. Brooklyn Nets
2. Milwaukee Bucks

Tier 2:
3. Miami Heat
4. Atlanta Hawks
5. Philadelphia 76ers
6. Boston Celtics

Tier 3:
7. Chicago Bulls
8. Cleveland Cavaliers
9. Charlotte Hornets
10. NY Knicks
11. Indiana Pacers

Tier 4:
12. Toronto Raptors
13. Washington Wizards
14. Orlando Magic
15. Detroit Pistons

MVP: Kevin Durant
DPOY: Giannis Antetokounmpo
MIP: Darius Garland
6MOY: Tyler Herro

Finals: Nets over Suns

I skipped over all posts so I didn't get group think:

East
Bucks
Philly
Hawks
Nets
Heat
Celtics
-----
Knicks
Bulls
Hornets
Pacers
----
Raptors
Pistons
Magic
Cavs
Wizards

West
Suns
Jazz
Warriors
Nuggets
Mavs
Clippers
----
Lakers
Grizzlies
Spurs
Pelicans
-----
Blazers
Minny
Kings
OCK
Houston

ECF
Philly over Nets

WCF
Suns over Clippers

Finals
Suns over Philly

DPOY--Ayton (my heart, not my head)
MVP--Embiid

With the teams ~1/4 way through the season, and with some interesting starts from teams across the league, I thought it would be fun to go look at this thread again. I was surprised only a few of us posted. So I threw it into a spreadsheet and measured how far we were all off. (Basic rules were every place you missed a team by, you added a point.)

I was shocked 3 of us tied for the East, while having very different predictions.



And we are much better at predicting the West...

Split T in the early lead...

Superbone wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:35 pm

Split T in the early lead...

Yeah, he smoked us in the East. Had 6 teams exactly right, or 1 off. Nobody else had more than 3.

I whiffed pretty badly on the Pacers and Hawks. I still think the Hawks will improve, but the Pacers I was just wrong about. And I don't feel bad for missing on the Wizards, who I think will sink a bit before the season is through. I should have factored in the Westbrook Ewing theory potential for them.

In the West, I grossly underrated the Warriors. Lots of folks were saying they'd be great this year, but I didn't quite buy it. I thought they would need more time to become good. I thought they'd be a middling team until Klay came back and would then spend a month or more getting used to having him back. I thought they'd roll into the playoffs as a 7-8 seed that nobody wanted to play. Seems safe to say I was wrong about that one. But otherwise I feel pretty good about my West predictions.

Yeah I think the Wizards are going to come back down to earth, and the Hawks will start soaring. It will be interesting to see how these move by the mid-point of the season.

We were all way off on the Wizards…I thought I was higher on the Warriors than most but I was still way off. I thought they’d be a dangerous mid-seed in the playoffs, but they look like a juggernaut from the jump. Indy nailed the Warriors and Lakers pretty well which is giving him his lead in the west.

I'm happy to say that I nailed the Lakers being mediocre. I'm 0 spots off on them so far. LUCK THE FAKERS

Split T wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 30, 2021 3:21 pm

We were all way off on the Wizards…I thought I was higher on the Warriors than most but I was still way off. I thought they’d be a dangerous mid-seed in the playoffs, but they look like a juggernaut from the jump. Indy nailed the Warriors and Lakers pretty well which is giving him his lead in the west.

As a group, we were an average of 9.5 spots off on the Wiz. Again, I think they will fall back quite a bit as the season goes on and Beal gets less and less engaged.

Ouch. I should stop with this prediction game. Still time for things to shake out, but it's safe to say I was waaaay off on the Cavs, and the Warriors... or that Thunder would be worse than the Rockets.

OK, Mori reminded me about this. Now that we are just over half-way, here are the results.

Split now taking a big lead... But we all got better, meaning our preseason predictions are closer to current state than they were at the 1/4 mark.

And like last time, *most* of us were really wrong about the east.

If only I had flipped the Grizzlies and Lakers, my west would look real good.

Hawks are throwing everyone off in the East

Split T wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:12 am

If only I had flipped the Grizzlies and Lakers, my west would look real good.

Hawks are throwing everyone off in the East

Hawks, Cavs, Bulls were all to some degree hard to see being where they are. Who would think that the mighty Hawks, a team that seemed to be on the cusp of competing for the Eastern Conference throne, would fall so low? And I don't think anybody really thought the Cavs would be interesting this year, yet they're one of the brightest and most fun teams in the league.

Out West things are a lot more normal and predictable. Not everybody nailed things like the Warriors being awesome or the Lakers being bad, but in general we knew who the good teams would be and who the bad teams would be.

I liked the Cavs but I only went as far as making them the 8th seed

Split T wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 21, 2022 10:34 am

I liked the Cavs but I only went as far as making them the 8th seed

You are only off by 2 spots! The rest of us are off by 7, 8 or 9 spots on them.

Ouch.

We have 16 games left in our regular season:

I can't believe how crazy the east is right now, but Split had a pretty good handle on it from the beginning.