Alas, the 2016 All-Star Weekend is almost here, and for the first time ever, the league has taken its All-Star Game outside of the United States, into Toronto.
With the defending champion Golden State Warriors rolling, whether or not the Spurs can knock them off their perch remains to be seen. But for the first time ever, the NBA has two teams with 42 wins through 50 games. How can we forget about the Jekyll and Hyde Cavs in the East? Will they be dethroned? Oh, and there's that little Blake Griffin drama as well.
With that in mind, here are five bold predictions for what promises to be a lively, if not unconventional, second half of the NBA season.
The Cavs Won't Make The Finals
This is more obvious than everyone wants to admit. Despite LeBron James' herculean efforts -- his 26.87 PER ranks fourth in the league -- this remains an unbalanced basketball team with an immensely dysfunctional offense that has yet to figure out how to thrive with both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. The Tyronn Lue experiment has yielded mixed results thus far, but don't forget that Cleveland ranks just 10th in field goal percentage and 9th in 3-point percentage.
Perhaps the biggest question mark moving forward is how much Lue actually wants to run and if Love accepts his role playing with the second unit. But just as importantly is the fact that the East features an upstart Raptors team on the verge of its first 50-win season in franchise history.
What makes Toronto -- winners of 14 of 16 games -- so tough is a steadfast commitment to quality defense, a trait that head coach Dwane Casey has demanded. His young team has responded and ranks better in overall defensive efficiency than the Cavs. Plus, the two-headed monster of All-Stars Kyle Lowry (21 points per game on 39 percent 3-point shooting) and DeMar DeRozan (23 points, 4 assists) is a formidable opponent on the perimeter. The Cavs, undoubtedly, are in trouble.
Clippers Won't Make It Out Of First Round
Last year's epic 3-1 collapse in the conference semis at the hands of Houston reaffirmed what I and many others have said during the Chris Paul era: The Clippers, despite elite talent, are not a championship basketball team.
The 2015-16 season has involved plenty of wins to be sure, but we are once again left to speculate just what exactly is wrong with this team. The Griffin drama is significant because he remains an enigma: A great player, yes, but is he a guy you can legitimately build around? That seems debatable at best, but what isn't debatable is that Paul has never himself even reached the conference finals. A basketball Houdini with every trick in the book, Paul is approaching his 31st birthday on a team that features championship-level talent and coaching, but not championship-level execution.
The Western Conference, meanwhile, is full of land mines every which way you look. Assuming the Clips don't finish higher than the fourth seed -- they will enter the break 4.5 games behind red-hot Oklahoma City in the third spot -- that means potential dates with feisty Memphis, crafty veteran-laden Dallas or even upstart Utah loom in the opening round of the postseason.
Two Teams Will Win 70 Games!
The league's lone 70-game winner was Michael Jordan's 1996 Bulls, which won a record 72 en route to the title. But conventional wisdom simply doesn't make sense with the Warriors and Spurs -- not this year at least.
Neither team has yet to lose a home game, and while we can't help but think of the Splash Brothers and the stellar duo of Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge -- who is averaging nearly 26 points in six straight February victories -- the unsung anchor of both teams is defense. Golden State, for the second straight year, ranks first in defensive efficiency. San Antonio -- as I recently chronicled -- ranks third in field goal percentage allowed and is tied for first in opponent points per shot.
The hard thing to understand about the NBA is just how grueling an 82-game schedule becomes. Back-to-backs, though less frequent than years past, take their toll, and lockdown defense is about the only thing you can control. Both the Warriors and Spurs employ extremely deep lineups that only enhance the defense-minded approach of Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich.
This Is It For Durant And Westbrook
Maybe OKC's window has passed, maybe it hasn't. But the megastar Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook tandem is down to its final act for the Thunder. Durant, 27, will become a free agent after this season and several teams -- including his hometown Washington Wizards -- will have enough cap space to sign him. Meanwhile, 27-year-old Westbrook, a Southern California native who starred for UCLA, hasn't been thrilled with newly minted head coach Billy Donovan, according to a source. He himself enters the free agency market following the 2017 season.
During their eight seasons together, KD and Westbrook have been one of the game's most explosive and exciting duos, but have also fallen short when it matters most. Their one finals appearance came in 2012, when LeBron's Big Three ousted them in five games -- and don't forget either that the prodigious scorer James Harden was on their squad as well.
The Thunder, for all of their athletic prowess and talent, have never been tough enough, mature enough or disciplined enough to capture a championship. One has to wonder if they aren't dissimilar to the really good but not great teams of the '90s -- think Seattle, Utah, New York -- that could never overcome MJ's Bulls or Hakeem Olajuwon's Rockets. After OKC fails to get it done this year, we can expect a monumental change: Either Durant will jump ship or Westbrook will be dealt in fear of him not resigning the following summer.
Love Will Be Traded
For a double-double machine -- as Love has been throughout his tenure in Cleveland -- he certainly draws ire for more than he probably deserves. In fact, the 27-year-old power forward has rebounded at a more efficient clip this year. Then again, GM David Griffin didn't deal potential superstar Andrew Wiggins for a far less efficient Love than his All-NBA days in Minnesota.
The recent firing of coach David Blatt was strange because no coach with that record had ever been fired. Lue's responsibility in large part will be to incorporate Love into the half-court offense: Get him block touches and mid-post looks, and even use him as a playmaker, not merely a pick-and-pop 3-point shooter. Surely Lue knows that the window to win is rapidly closing.
Love -- who signed a five-year, $110 million extension last July -- still commands a hefty trade price. It might behoove Griffin to trade him before the deadline. The Cavs have a plethora of capable bigs and there would be plenty of suitors for Love that have enough cap to absorb his max salary.
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