to make the playoffs after the Tobias Harris trade. They won't be sneaking up on anybody this year. Things are different when you're the hunted as opposed to the hunted.

>The Lakers return exactly one starter from a bad team. The
>Celtics and Heat and other teams that made these kind of power
>moves had to scrape together what they could in MLE and vet
>min signings.

The Lakers were a 4 seed before Lebron got hurt. Now we will have 2 of the top 5 players in the league on the floor and they will make everyone around them better. Sure there are adjustments to make like there are for everybody else but the Lakers are in a good position right now. If you had told me last year we'd be starting the season with this roster i would've been super excited and I still am.

>Williams and Harrell were the two best bench players in the
>league last year and finished games (Williams in particular).
>Beverley started and took tough defensive assignments. Zubac
>is an average starting center with some room to grow. Shamet
>was a pleasant surprised and started games for them; he's also
>still very much improving. Basically right there you've got
>five of their top seven guys from last year on a team that
>made the playoffs in the West. Gallo was trash in the
>playoffs. Only real loss is SAG but they have depth at the
>position between Williams and Beverley. That's pretty good to
>me when you add the Finals MVP and a league MVP finalist.

I'm not trying to take anything away from the Clippers and it will be fun to see how the season plays out.