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Celtics, Cavs, Lakers, Magic, Spurs, and Magic should all be great teams this coming season.

Other than the above mentioned teams, who do you guys think has made good improvements. Who is a sleeper team.

For me, it has to be the Washington Wizards.

They should have a healthy Arenas and Brandon Haywood. They have a good coach in Flip Saunders. They have added Mike Miller, Randy Foye, and now Oberto. I also think JaVale McGee is going to be one of the most improved players. They also have Blatche, Stevenson, and Nick Young.

IMO, the Wizards are going to be a scary team. They are one of the deepest teams in the league that no one is talking about.

Your thoughts.

Wizards were already hard for us to beat the last couple of years. They're a very annoying team to play, because of the Jamison/Garnett and Butler/Pierce matchups and would be a bad playoff draw.

Definitely agree with you, R2G. All the guys you mentioned plus Jamison and Butler. They're gonna be a tough out for anybody.

Wizards as well as the Raptors in the east, same with Charlotte. I think many are going to be surprised how much better Diaw will be, and how much better Chandler is going to fit in to that system, making them a better team over all.

They should be ok, they've had a decent lineup for a while, but it just hasn't worked out.

Was it ever determined if that preseason ranking of #3 or whatever in Sporting News was a typo? Surely it was?

They're a lot like we were in '07-08 - a team with a lot of talent and chips who couldn't really put together, who then got thown deep into the lottery due to injuries. We wound up with a young star, a veteran star, and the #5 pick; similarly, they have 3 veteran stars (probably none as good as Pierce or Al, so it evens out) and had the #5 pick.

But, I'm not convinced it will work out so well for them. We traded the #5 for another veteran star; they traded it for a couple of role players (I'm not too sold on Foye - I feel like they'd have been better off basketball and money wise adding a young guy with the pick itself.)

I guess the other reason it worked out for us was just the transformational effect of KG on the whole team - even if the trades looked even, he took us from underahchievers to ...achievers - if we had overachieved we would have won 70 games and not seen any game 7s in the playoffs.

I think the intangible effect of KG is why it's not so simple for teams to do what we did; Washington should be a playoff team but I think they're in the middle of the pack with Miami and Atlanta.

sd1306 wrote:Wizards as well as the Raptors in the east, same with Charlotte. I think many are going to be surprised how much better Diaw will be, and how much better Chandler is going to fit in to that system, making them a better team over all.

Exactly who is going to play defense on the Raptors?

canman1971 wrote:

sd1306 wrote:Wizards as well as the Raptors in the east, same with Charlotte. I think many are going to be surprised how much better Diaw will be, and how much better Chandler is going to fit in to that system, making them a better team over all.

Exactly who is going to play defense on the Raptors?

to answer your question. no one.