gunsnewing wrote:Wow you are more optimistic than me. I don't think the pieces fit what Woodson is trying to do. Defense will be worse with the addition of Bargnani and a healthier Amare. Melo at the 4 can't defend and rebound. Tyson is old and injury prone. Woodson won't play the young guys for consistent minutes. The vets will break down again at the tail end of the year. And JR will regress both physically and mentally. Felton is not a starting calibur pg on a contending team. Can't run an offense other than dumping th ball to Melo and occasional lobs to tyson and can't defend scrub PGs. Hopefully Murray explodes onto the scene and Woodson is forced to play him
Guns, are you doing that thing where you predict we lose within the 5 minutes of a game starting (but you really think/hope we'll win and you sort of reverse jinx it) except you're saying it before the season even starts? 
It actually worked pretty well last season so keep it up lol
I think we'll start out rough due to the loss of JR unless someone else picks up the offensive slack... time will tell if Bargnani will be that guy but right now we don't know if Amare will healthy enough, if Iman and Felton will be consistent enough, or if the rooks (possibly 3 of them) will have a smooth transition into the NBA level of play and can contribute. You're right that Amar'e and Bargs are weak defenders but we're losing our second best scorer in JR for a while so they may just fill that need. I hope they have an early training camp like they did last year and come in in great shape again. I didn't expect the hot start we had last season either so who knows...but I'm not expecting a miracle this year either. I do think we got better though because Bargnani + Metta > Novak + Cope. We only have 11 players on the team as of now (assuming K-mart comes back) so I'll reserve further judgement until we have all 15. Also, we really need to hire an offensive assistant coach for Woody. It's clear he needs some help in that department.
One positive is that we have retained our core rotation players and those we brought in likely won't mess with the chemistry too much. With the Nets...sure they have a LOT of talent but they also just injected a couple of very strong personalities into a team that already had a few. THERE BETTER BE MILLIONS OF ARTICLES ABOUT WHETHER PIERCE/KG/DERON/JJ CAN F'IN COEXIST.
I freaking loathed all those articles about Melo/Amar'e coexisting when it was clear they were actually good friends and if anything never got a real shot at playing together with Amar'e perpetually injured due to his back, knees or fire extinguishers. That discussion was everywhere for two years straight. The nets better not get a pass on this. Bring on the drama!
