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Sounds fairly reasonable to me. I could see OKC having a better regular season record than the Spurs next year because you know they will be resting people a lot.

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People keep saying that, but the Spurs have topped the WC three of the last four years including a lockout season that supposedly favored young teams. As you well know, no one played 30 mpg for the Spurs last year, they had 22 more games missed from injury, and they still finished three games ahead of the Thunder in the regular season.

Anything can happen, but I'm not sure picking anyone over SA is justified right now. Dallas is fine at 5, but I have a hard time seeing Houston dropping all the way to eighth. They might be a little worse, but not much. Houston 6, Memphis 7. Suns/Pels/GSW fight it out for the 8th seed. Any of the three would be at least a 4 in the East.

It's funny to me how the Spurs are very rarely predicted as the top seed, even after finishing first 3 of the last 4 years.

Welp, missed Ulrich saying the same thing already. Apologies.

Take this with a grain (or a ton) of salt, but Harden seems to have gotten better on the defensive end. At least for Team USA http://dimemag.com/2014/08/report-james-hardens-defense-impressing-team-usa/

Not saying it will 100% transfer to the regular season, but I'm optimistic. If Harden commits to defense and Ariza keeps up what he did in Washington (the problem the first time in Houston was he was our first option, now he is our 3rd) I can see us as the 6th seed.

[This message has been edited by TajMaballer (edited 8/12/2014 4:49p).]

Obviously if one of Houston's two best players misses significant time to injury that will change their outlook on the season. They lost Asik and Parsons, but they finally have a real perimeter defender who happens to be an acceptable third option on offense. I'm not counting on Harden being any better on defense; I suspect this is a short term change because he's embarrassed about everyone making fun of him, not a long term commitment to defense. However, this is year two of Harden/Howard and they do have a number of young guys who ought to be decent contributors on one or both ends. I'm sticking with Houston at 6, maybe 7.

ESPN Eastern Conference Summer Forecast

1. Cleveland
2. Chicago
3-8. Who cares

I like to hate on ESPN as much as the next guy, but that's exactly how I would project the East.
1. Cleveland
2. Chicago
3-8. Nobody cares and it doesn't matter because they are all bad.