MiamiSPX wrote:This is like the 6th year in a row where preseason claims "the East is going to be a bloodbath" are incorrect. Unless people meant that there would be a bunch of teams that are equally awful.
My take was absolutely that the East would be horrible this season, we had multiple teams taking steps backward (Bulls, Hawks, Nets), that's why I had the Raptors in the play-in barring injuries.
I absolutely didn't foresee the Bucks and Sixers being as putrid as they have been, though the Sixers were always more vulnerable to injuries as they are a top heavy team with injury prone stars and I thought that Paul George contract was a huge gamble, likely to blow up in their faces given the number of games he's played in the past 5 seasons. The Bucks have no excuse, they shouldn't be 2-7 in spite of having Doc as a coach and their aging roster, part of it is just losses to some of the best teams in the league (Cavs 2x, Celtics, Mavs).
The Pacers have stumbled a bit but they were always a bit of an illusion as everyone knows they play no defence and they were just really lucky to get to the EC Finals. Haliburton hasn't looked the same since last season when he came back from injury, serious injuries are very unkind to guards who rely on their speed and quickness to compensate for their small size, a player like that can fall off quickly due to that.
For the rest, the Knicks are starting off slowly with a completely new group, they will take time to figure it out. The Magic lost their best offensive player and star, not surprising they haven't been as good without him as they were heavily reliant on his scoring being a defence first type team. The Heat have underachieved in the regular season for years, Butler is not the player he once was, at 35 with his injury history that's not a surprise. If you look deeply at what's going on not that much of it is a surprise.
