If you were like me your emotions this offseason were up and down like a sine wave. The Neil Olshey debacle felt horrible, the signing of Blake Griffin felt great, Vinny Del Negro's picked up option felt terrible, then the Jamal Crawford signing felt anti-climactic (though I feel better about it now). The trade for Lamar Odom was scary, the Grant HIll acquisition felt good, the weird front office power-trinity felt... Clipperesque (fuzzy and cheap), then the Ryan Hollins, Ronny Turiaf, Willie Green pickups felt... uninspired, but then I liked the Matt Barnes signing.
Then the pre-season happened and Odom's conditioning was woeful, but there's some high hopes surfing in on DeAndre Jordan's preparedness. Blake Griffin looks good, so does Chris Paul but Grant HIll's injured and Chauncey Billups is kinda nowhere. But then again Eric Bledsoe showed some stuff and Matt Barnes played like he belongs in the NBA.
Despite all of this drama, after reading other supposedly more knowledgeable people's opinions about the Clips, I realized I'm feeling ridiculously, dangerously positive about the team's potential this year. Despite the fact that we don't know if any of the team's training camp improvements are going to play out when the games count... I'm feeling bullish.
I like the second year of the Griffin/Paul era quite a bit. I'm picking the Clips for 54 wins and the third seed in the West.
Where's everybody else? (I'd make this a poll but polls are for chumps, and with the new layout I can't figure out how.)
I went ahead and put in a poll for Raffo. -LJ