Season Begins Tomorrow - My Expectations

I believe we will fall somewhere in the middle these first few weeks out of the gate. .500 Ball isn't too far of a stretch.

One thing I'll be watching is just how "seamless" the transition from Ime to CJ actually was on all levels. The best way for an assistant coach to takeover a team that made it to the Finals and came up two games short is to use the "It ain't broke, so don't fix it" approach. That's pretty much what CJ has said from the jump. But as the season gets going tonight, we'll quickly determine if CJ was an upgrade, tread water or a bust. His game philosophy will begin to take over Ime's.

Now, Brad got out in front of everything and took it upon himself to fix one of the glaring examples that left us Title-less. He made some personnel changes to fix and shore up the bench. One of those is a bust for the year. But for the most part, the improvements to the bench are looking far better than last year's even with DG gone. That's where I'm going to hand my hat in the positive column for the next few weeks. Our bench is going to catch on and in the end look a lot like 2008's bench if not already.

The East got a lot more treacherous. There will be only a few nights off and even those potentially can and will blow up in one's face if you don't bring your A game night-in and night-out. But you've got PHI, MIA, BKN, CLE, MIL, TOR and maybe CHI all breathing down your necks every night. It may resemble a bloodbath for a while.

Now I've said that given our depth, we shouldn't need everyone to go off every night for us to win consistently. But it's time that we see more complete, consistent tandem games with Brown and Tatum. Brown has shown up ready for duty. We saw Tatum struggle out of the gate. But these two need to put up numbers ala Westbrook night in and night out so opponents don't know who to guard and throw up their hands in disgust and quit. The assist/fgm stat is really looking good. Let's hope that carries over to the season. It's curtains for the rest of the league if those two put up 20+/10/10 all night long. 98-0. It's no longer My Ball/Your Ball or I'm on/You're off each night. It's now Our Ball/Our Team and let's dish out for easy, wide-open practice threes, quit forcing the action and get everyone involved. That's championship basketball. It's time and long overdue.

dboss has already highlighted what will kill us. TO's and whether opponents can drive a Mack Truck down our lane, consistently. We can shoot our way out of defensive holes in the short run, but not if you're going to win a championship.

I'm not going to be too worried about injuries this year as much as I have been in the past. We'll see.

As usual, looking back on what I've just written, nothing is clear cut, one way or the other. Hence, I'm with dboss in that we should expect .500 ball here for a while until Christmas. May look a lot like last season. But I'm hoping this team as currently constructed will catch on much quickly than last season' team did.

db