The Thunder season starts on Wednesday night against my former favorite team the Sixers. I would say guarded optimism is my feel going into this first Thunder season ever without Kevin Durant. Here’s one thing which steps out immediately to me in regards to the West, other than Golden State and Utah–I’m not sure anyone else in the West improved themselves enough to make a significant difference from where they finished last season.
Golden State should be a prohibitive favorite to win the West, while the Lakers, Kings, and Suns should finish in the bottom three in the West.
Utah should be better. I’m not sure if that means they can climb to say a No. 6 seed or so, but I give them credit for making some moves to become a better team.
Minnesota with new head coach Tom Thibodeau and their stable of young talent should be an interesting team to keep an eye on as playing defense becomes part of the process in Minnesota.
But after you get past the Warriors it would appear there will be a great deal of parity between San Antonio, the Clippers, OKC, Portland, Utah, Memphis, Houston, Dallas, Minnesota, and perhaps New Orleans and Denver.
As far as our Thunder they should be an extremely watchable team with Russell Westbrook making a run at a regular season MVP if the Thunder can get into that 50-52 win range at regular season’s end. Steven Adams is evolving into one of the league’s better big men and there’s the question if Victor Oladipo can morph his game with Russell Westbrook to form one of the better backcourts in the NBA.
It feels like a very long time ago that the Thunder lost in Game 7 to the Warriors. The sting from Durant’s July 4th defection is gone. It’s over. I’m fairly certain he’ll be booed out of the Chesapeake Energy Arena in February, but for me it will be more of an indifferent silence.
I’m ready for the NBA season to begin. Ready to see what Billy Donovan can do with this extremely young roster. I’m still hoping Presti has another trade in mind somewhere during the season to take the roster a notch higher, but really even with Durant’s exit Oklahoma City should be a fun team to follow.
Perhaps, Zach Lowe will enter the Daily Thunder Western Conference Regular Season Seeding Contest to make it even more interesting for me. That would be cool. Nothing more from me on the election until Election Night. It’s time to get my game face on for the Thunder season.