Eastern Conference Preview - Part 2 Happy Opening Night! now on with the preview... 10 - Toronto Raptors Just look up a season preview from the past couple of years….will Vince stay healthy? If though, then the Raps can contend for a playoff spot. But they're not as good as their playoff run from 2 years ago even with a healthy Vince. Antonio Davis will continue to be a distraction until he is shipped out of town. One bright spot though could be rookie Chris Bosh, the 4th overall pick who's trying to be the second coming of...Tyson Chandler. They don't have much other scoring help out there for Vince, so its possibly gonna be a long season. And if Vince gets hurt, it'll be a long and *boring* season. Although not as long and boring as this team preview was. 9 - Miami Heat The Heat have assembled a good core of young players in the past few years, namely Caron Butler, Dwayne Wade, and now Lamar Odom. Add that to holdovers (read "contract albatross") in Eddie Jones and Brian Grant, and that's a good start. A good start to 9th place in the East. They could win some games, but there are still a lot of questions. Who exactly is gonna play the point. I suppose Wade or Odom, but neither is a proven (or traditional) point guard. And for those teams with size, the Heat are in real trouble. I mean their front line outside of Brian Grant is AWFUL. Samaki Walker and Loren Woods awful. And losing your hall-of-fame coach a week before opening night isn't gonna help. Its fun to see the Heat and Knicks being so bad after they almost ruined basketball forever in the mid 90's with their thug-ball. The Heat have the decidedly better future than the Knicks though, especially if they could find someone to take Eddie Jones off their hands. 8 - Boston Celtics Yes, they would've ranked higher if they hadn't done the Walker trade. But I still think that was a good trade for the Celts. Walker will soon find out like Kenyon Martin did that 20 and 10 is fine and good, but you need to be a special player to get a max extension (Shawn Marion notwithstanding). And Walker is the kind of guy who would let management know how he felt every step of the way. And while Raef LaFrentz has a bad contract, he's still a solid player. And If you've seen the new slim and trim Vin Baker, it may be 1998 all over again for the Vin man. But even after counting on LaFrentz and Baker to produce, Paul Pierce will still have to score 40 points a game. And he just might. Oh and by the way they have no established point guard either. And this is a playoff team (maybe). Oh...THAT'S why they call it the "Leastern Conference". Teeheehee, now I get it. 7 - Orlando Magic This team is practically a mirror image of the Celts. They have one star, and not much else. McGrady is an even more prolific scorer than Paul Pierce, but he possibly has even less help. They signed Juwan Howard in the offseason, but they already had a similar player in Drew Gooden. As far as traditional big men they're very sparse (like most teams), and like other teams they don't have a legit point guard. Makes you wonder how valuable Jay Williams would be just about now. I mean if he could walk and stuff. (rim shot). What the Magic do have is "G-Force" Gordan Giricek, and you know what? That's good enough for me. Expect McGrady to carry the load once more…and become the KG of the Eastern Conference Playoffs. 6 - Chicago Bulls That's right. I'm putting the Bulls this high. #6 in the conference. Yes its because I'm a Bulls fan. But look at all the teams behind them. They're all severely flawed as teams. The Bulls are the most offensively complete team on the list so far, so that's why they're #6. You can argue that the Celts or Magic could have a better year based on their star power, but in reality there isn't much difference between their expected records, and you could have each of them 6,7 and 8. Make no mistake, I EXPECT the Bulls to make the playoffs, and if they don't blame must be placed on either Cartwright or the personnel. I'm not really sold on Cartwright yet, especially in his rotation decisions, but perhaps not having to worry about playing Jay Williams and a new group of Vets will help out. This team has loads of talent, and just needed help in learning how to win those close games that they seemed to throw away so many times last year. With Pippen and Gill now on the team, along with Rose and Marshall, the team has a core of productive veterans (not just old bench-warmers) who can take this team to playoff level. This is far from a guarantee however, if the team starts off badly before the yearly "West Coast Circus Trip of Death" things could go sour quickly. Of course there are always injuries to worry about, as has been already shown in camp with Rose, Chandler, Fizer, etc. All those factors considered, the present and future of the Bulls comes down to the "C-Unit" (I read that somewhere) of Chandler, Crawford, and Curry. Its easy to extrapolate their performances in the latter half of last year, but remember that most of the teams at that time have given up. The true test in the teens' progress will be this year. No Excuses :) The top 5 tommorow....