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In a fairly surprising turn of events, Basketball Prospectus & ESPN Insider has our Atlanta Hawks projected to finish with the second best regular season record in the Eastern Conference.

http://blogs.ajc.com/mark-bradley-blog/2012/08/23/so-the-remade-hawks-wont-be-as-good-er-not-so-fast/

The team is only projected to win 48 games, but would finish behind only Miami. I'm not sure which part is more surprising:

-That we could jettison our leading scorer (JJ) and top wing defender (Marvin) but still manage to win most of our games. Or,

-That the rest of the Eastern Conference will be so dreadful that no other team can put together 50+ wins.

Not sure if this prediction pans out. Another ESPN prediction poll has us finishing the season just under .500 and making the playoffs as the #8 seed. This seems more likely based on the makeup of our team.
(That is unless Devin Harris channels his younger self and comes up big in his contract season.)

Questions to ponder:

1. You guys think we'll manage to finish better than we have in 16 years as the #2 seed?
2. Think the rest of the East will be THAT bad?
3. If L Drew does get us the #2 seed, doesn't that validate his abilities as a coach and demand he be brought back on a longer term contract?
4. Anyone else hoping we finish at .500 but still miss the playoffs while getting lucky & ending up with a top 3 draft pick?
5. Would we have our pick of top free agents next year if our ragtag team of 2nd/3rd tier players overachieve?

Awesome, but not really a big deal, because Bulls will be hurt for most of the year, and Ray Allen left and Paul Pierce will have injury problems for the rest of his career. the Pacers are good, but Hawks are better when Horford is healthy.

of course like most Hawks fans, i'm interested to watch the Nets. Deron has never played with a great SG, but Joe has played with a great PG in Nash, but Joe's number in PHX was below par.

#2 i dont think so. I HOPE so, but i dont think so.

IMO the hawks will be no worse than they were last year , a number 5 or 6 seed. I think its pretty foolish to think the Hawks will finish above the Celtics.

I doubt that we finish as the #2 seed but I think we can finish with a 3-5 seed. The 4 teams in the Atlantic (Bos, NYK, Brook, Philly) will beat up on each other a lot this year while Miami is the only competitive team in our division.