Portland to win the West

you keep dwelling on this pace of play/losing roy thing but seem to be forgetting the most important part about these Blazers: that's EXACTLY what cost them last year. Aside from Roy who was gimpy and Andre Miller who had floppy tits last season, the rest of this Blazer team is designed to play at a decent pace (not frenetic, but definitely not slow-it-the-f-down). Miller, who slowed pace about as much as a point guard could for a team on that Blazers squad, was what was holding them back. Their poor stretches in the Dallas series were mostly when he was on the floor and the Blazers went at a snail's pace. Aldridge, Batum, Wallace, Crawford, all those guys are better in a more uptempo system. Yeah it's producing very mixed results right now but that's expected when you put that team together with completely new guards/without a training camp and have to figure it out on the fly. There is nobody in the West who I'm fully confident that Portland can't beat with or without home court, and you constantly laughing about every road loss while conveniently never mentioning that they've also won in OKC comfortably without the last 2 minutes even factoring into the result shows some bias. The growing pains that come with assembling a team this hastily in this shortened season will show on the road more than anywhere, when the playoffs start I don't see a single team that will definitely handle them. If you are, please point that team out. Dallas with a 4th quarter lineup of Dirk-Kidd-Terry-Odom-Mahinmi? Denver with Gallinari-Nene-Lawson-Fernandez-Chandler? OKC with a point guard that has a negative basketball iq and a coach who can't even get Durant a higher usage rate than Westbrook? Clippers are really the only team that matches up extremely well with them, and they have the worst coach ever/ton of young guys who haven't been in the playoffs yet. If the playoffs started today the Blazers probably wouldn't win the west, but I have absolutely no idea how you could possibly believe that they have 100% no shot to win this mediocre conference 3 months from today. Of everybody I've watched so far in the west, their best ball is as good, if not better than any other west team's best ball.

Also, you have to remember that the Knicks were a 27-23 8 seed the year they made the finals. Wacky things may happen this strike-shortened year too.

lotta ass kissing going on around here ...what is this "smartbets" ATS record anyway? ..how did he do last year as well? ..thanks

Hey SB,

Not sure if you revealed your picks. Who do you like winning the east, west, nba championship? thanks