Denver seized control of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western conference with a huge victory at Golden State on Thursday, meaning that the Warriors likely will go down as the best NBA lottery team in history. The playoff race in the West was more competitive than ever this season - with all eight playoff teams on pace to win at least 50 games. But the conference battle could be more intense next season with Portland adding both Greg Oden and a lottery pick, and the Clippers having Elton Brand for a full season (presuming he decides not to opt out of his contract this summer). Sacramento isn't going to be bad next season either; however, I don't think we're going to have many 50-win teams next year. I think we'll have maybe 10-11 of them, and the point margin will be a lot more spread out. Next season, the West will go right back to beating up on each other a little bit more. And what this all boils down to is that this season will certainly be a historical one...
The Boston Celtics have completed the best turnaround in NBA history by going from 24 wins to 63, entering last night's game at Atlanta. The previous best was when San Antonio improved from 20-62 to 52-26 in (go figure) Tim Duncan's rookie season in 1997. And Boston can essentially thank Paul Pierce for making these trades happen. After all, if it weren't for Pierce breaking his foot and missing 24 games (Boston only won 2 of those games), there wouldn't have been much motivation to make the kind of switchup that the Celtics front office did this past summer...
So as good as the Western conference is this year, I believe that they're going to be even better next year: there just aren't going to be as many 50+-win teams as there are this year. I'm really excited to see what Oden can do against the best the NBA has to offer. He was a men amongst boys at Ohio State, and it's about time he started earning that $5 million they originally payed him... It also should be interesting to see who the Blazers pick up in the draft this year's draft to complement Oden. The current NBA season is anything but close to being over, but it's definitely worth looking forward to next season, where it's very likely the West will be that much better... Kinda scary, huh?
