Before the start of the season, many are predicting already (including me) that the 2 teams that will face coming into the NBA Finals will be the Lakers and the Nets.
Now the Lakers are below 500 and currently at the 9th position and the Nets are in a 8 game losing streak, currently in the 7th place and only 1.5 games above the 9th spot Hornets.
Right now the Nets are in a big trouble. I think one problem of the team is their inside defense because most of the time they are playing small ball and it doesn't work for them like in this game. They gave up 64 pts in the paint against only 32 for them. I think this is one of their problem. They don't have good defenders inside the paint that can stop those bigs in the opposing team. Durant might sit up for a bit longer and TBH, it will be hard for them to go up again.
This is the thing about the current situation. We are talking about a situation where people are buying into Lakers vs Nets finals at the start of the season, and since we know that probably won't happen, we do not really know what's going on. I know that it is not an easy thing to do but that doesn't mean that we can't adjust.
I just know that Lakers and Nets will not be in the finals, so who will be? Suns and Warriors from west looks like the two best candidates easily, Heat, Bulls, Bucks all look like they are doing fine but none of them are clearly better than the other, so I can't really say who will be from the east, a bit depends on the trades that will happen as well. Trade deadline is approaching very quickly and teams would need to make changes in order to reach to a place where they could actually make sense in order to go to finals.