2007-2008 NBA Blog Previews: Northwest Division

by Atma Brother ONE on Oct 22, 2007 3:39 PM PDT in NBA

Progress! I can now count the days until the the 2007-2008 NBA Season without using my thumbs! It's time for a little Northwest Division madness in the 2nd annual NBA Blog Previews.

The West has become a conference of the have's and have nots. The upper echelon of teams are really, really, really good and the rest are either mediocre or have dreams of being mediocre. Even though the Northwest Division isn't as stacked as it could've been had Greg Oden not suffered from that knee injury, Kevin McHale not made his last move as a Celtic hooking them up with KG, and the Sonics not practiced some serious age discrimination, I still see it as the NBA's Have division.

Utah Jazz- Have: Terrible fans.
Denver Nuggets- Have: Talent at every position.
Portland Trailblazers- Have: To wait a year or two before they get a very good team.
Minnesota Timberwolves- Have: A need for a real GM.
Seattle SuperSonics- Have: Two young ballas with some crazy skills.

You HAVE to check out these Northwest division previews from this great collection of hoops bloggers including the Jazz ones:

Utah Jazz
Daily Basketball
Taking it to the Rack
Basketball John

Seattle Supersonics
Sonics Central

Portland Trail Blazers
TrueHoop
The Inferno

Timberwolves
TWolves Blog

Denver Nuggets
Nugg Doctor

Blog Previews Archives
CelticsBlog NBA Section

Thanks to Jeff Clark of the mighty CelticsBlog for organizing the blogger previews.

Here's how the Northwest Division will go down:

Denver Nuggets- I can't wait to see this squad take the court- AI, Melo, Camby, KMart, Nene, Najera, and Stacey Augmon. Wait a second- the Plastic Man? Major props to the 16 year vet for staying in amazing shape. He's the anti-Jerome James.
Utah Jazz- Those loser fans don't deserve this solid team. The Jazz are one good SG away from being in the same discussion at the Mavs, Spurs, and Suns.
Portland Trailblazers- 2-3 years from now they're going to look at Oden's injury as a blessing for the great lottery pick they're about to get.
Seattle SuperSonics- At least with Kevin Durant and Jeff Green they'll be entertaining. I would've liked to see them keep Ray-Ray as a mentor for Durant.
Minnesota Timberwolves- The word around NBA circles is that the Timbersmurf's "braintrust" Kevin McHale thinks that he can salvage the season by trading the team's next 5 first round draft picks to the Chicago Bulls for Joe Smith.

Great Dennis Scott! This guy's been around awhile.

Seriously though, how did this iron man get the nickname The Plastic Man?

What's your prediction for the Northwest Division?

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Comments

Northwest Division

First of all, get off the Utah Jazz fans! Sure, like every other community they have a few jerks. Saying that the whole lot of them "don't deserve this solid team" is a lot like saying the whole NBA is just made up of thugs and criminals 'cause there are a few Zach Randolphs and Ruben Pattersons out there. Please.

Overall, the Jazz fans are a solid group. They fill the arena on a nightly basis and back in the Stockton-Malone days, Utah was considered one of the toughest places in the league to play. At least the fan base is passionate and cares about the team. They aren't Warriors or Knicks fans, but they're not Hawks fans either.

Second of all, solid picks. I expect Denver to surpass Utah this year as well and they could potentially challenge for the western conference crown, especially if JR Smith finally puts it together and provides the complementary wing scorer they need. Portland fans better keep their fingers crossed that this heel problem Roy has been experiencing goes away. They could slip to four or even five in the division if the injuries keep mounting.

by SilkySmooth on Oct 22, 2007 5:44 PM PDT reply actions

Plastic Man...

got his name because Augmon was one of the best defenders and seemed to be "plastic" with the way he was all over his man. That brings back great memories because I loved watching UNLV back then. Unbelievable that he could still be playing now.

Nothing better than "The City".

by philsmith75 on Oct 22, 2007 6:26 PM PDT reply actions

Craziest thing about Augmon

is that uni he's wearing. I mean wow, doesn't get much uglier than that. Unless of course you added a gradient to the background, but c'mon, who would ever--

Holy mackerel.

by ivanbe on Oct 22, 2007 8:08 PM PDT reply actions

Haha

Yeah, that one gave me a good chuckle.

by olympicmike on Oct 22, 2007 9:12 PM PDT up reply actions

I would disagree

about Utah being a SG away form the elite teams in the west. I think they matched up well against the Warriors in the playoffs and the Warriors were the talk of the league at the time. But they won 50 games last season, and I'm not sure they've improved themselves at all this season, unless Ronnie Brewer comes through (and Sloan plays him!). Also, it's tough to predict Boozer will continue to stay healthy, since he's had such an injury plagued career.

I'm also not such a big fan of Denver, as I don't like Iverson. But if K-Mart can recover from his SECOND microfracture surgery, that would obivously be huge.

by San Francisco Slim on Oct 22, 2007 10:48 PM PDT reply actions

Anti-Warriors

Atma Brother, you seem to have noticed all of the photos in my Jazz preview, almost every one from the Jazz-Warriors series...Still, when you look up Andrei Kirilenko on youtube or google images, you don't get videos of amazing blocks -- instead you see Baron Davis absolutely demolishing Andrei.

The Jazz and Warriors play a couple times at the beginning of the season, hopefully my team backs up their playoff victory.

by la287 on Oct 23, 2007 3:50 PM PDT reply actions

To tell you the truth

I'm honestly worried the Warriors won't win a game against the Jazz this year. I'm not a big fan of their style of play (god what's with all those fouls and rough housing in this day and age of the NBA?) and I can't stand their whiny and classless fans (that last game in SLC against the Spurs was just an embarrassment), BUT they are a very, very solid team. Like the Spurs and Lakers they're one of those teams the Warriors match up extremely poorly against.

But who knows? The Warriors still managed to split the regular season series against the Jazz last year.