Cavs look great

You don't fix that kind of chemistry by snapping a finger.

If I saw right OKC is now 3.5 games behind Phoenix and Denver has pulled even with them.

Season defining type game tonight with a home game against Golden State - a game OKC desperately needs to win. Won't be easy given the opposition and coming off of the front end of a back to back.

RoadDawg55 said:

Tequilla said:

The elephant in the room is that LBJ is still the most dominant player in the game ... He's still very good but he can't will his team to higher levels like he did in the past.

I'm feeling slightly vindicated in my opinion that LBJ was as great as he was more from winning the genetic lottery than having the intangibles that make up the great players

Tequilla, LBJ is what he is. He has been a great player and he probably is now starting to decline. That said, he never played with a Shaq or even Pippen in his prime. He played with Wade in decline.

Regarding OKC, it's January. There are no must win games in January. It's looking like you might be right and it could take until March or even the end of the season to lock up a spot, but there is still plenty of time. Brook Lopez for Perkins would be a big move too, but sometimes moves like that tak50 e time.

LBJ is a great player ... but he's a fringe Top 10 player of all-time to me and not in the Top 5 of all time like so many want to crown his ass for. You could even make an argument that he's more in the 10-15 range.

For most of his career, he's competed in a dreckfest known as the Eastern Conference which has helped pad his playoff numbers and trips to the Finals. It's easy to downgrade playing with Wade now and say he was old, but he was 29 the first year that LBJ played with him and Bosh was 26. Bosh had to transform himself playing with LBJ much like Love will have to - if anything, I think what is going on with Love right now is further showing how good of a player Bosh is versus validating that Love is some terrible player.

OKC is approaching the halfway mark of the season (38 games in - in comparison the Suns have played 41 games). OKC is already at 20 losses. There's 3 months left in the season (approximately 90 days) and OKC has 44 games left. That's basically on pace for a game every other day the rest of the season (and we know that there's a lengthy all-star break coming up). My point being that there are going to be some scheduling losses coming up. Tonight may be a good example of one in playing the best team in the league on the 2nd night of a back to back.

I've said all along that 50 wins are going to be needed to get into the playoffs in the West. Phoenix is on a 46 win pace at the moment taking their season long winning percentage over 82 games. That COULD give OKC a little extra breathing room. But for them to get to 46 wins to match Phoenix's pace, OKC needs to play .636 ball the rest of the way - which is probably doable. 50 wins gets you to a 73% winning percentage the rest of the way ... which only Golden State and Portland are playing at so far in the Western Conference. Point being that the margin for error is almost gone and the odds are that OKC is going to have to get themselves in at the last week or two of the season.