Some people expected this team to be the 4th best in the NBA. They are not.
While they may be close to Toronto, both teams are pretenders. GSW, Cle, (a mile down the road) SA, and (a couple miles away) LAC are the contenders. Every other team should be building for the future, in my opinion.
This doesn't mean that teams should tank. They should play hard, develop youth, and try to win basketball games.
Keeping this in perspective has helped me to not overreact to a Detroit loss or a close game against Philly.
that's why i have fallen in love with the Lakers young core. they're getting lots of time to play and develop, and they're still playing hard and winning games. they dont need another pick; they've got their main guys and soon will be in that 40 win range. Free Agents will see that, and i wouldnt be surprised to see some big name players joining the lakers soon. almost like how Al saw us: a young, hungry core that played fun basketball and was on the upswing.
I think you've fallen a little too in love with said core. They've gotten a bit lucky so far record-wise. Their point differential is 5th-worst in the league -- if it stays at its current level, they'd be much more likely to finish with fewer than 30 wins than over 40. If luck didn't exist, they'd probably be 7-15 and on their way to a 27-28 win season. Luck often evens out over 82 games. If they don't start playing better, that's probably where they're headed.
Of course, they're a young team and might start playing better. But right now, their record looks rather inflated.
TP
People have to look beyond the numbers at times. For instance some people said they didn't predict the precipitous drop-off in the Nets' record last year. But when you looked at the metrics like expected wins/losses it was easy to see the trend.
Addressing Green_bballers comment above, Brad and Danny have to be very careful about how they present this team. While you may think they are pretenders (I think that remains to be seen), they aren't viewed that way in the NBA. They're viewed as a very good team -
on the brink of contending - and moving towards a youth development program destroys that image. That's going to hurt with prospective FAs. That may cause problems in the locker room as well. Some teams become contenders because they believe they are one. Other teams fold with those kind of expectations on them.
Remember these Celtics average 25.6 years of age. I think that makes them the 5th youngest team in the league. That's still a lot of development to go. Thus I think Brad and Danny are presenting the team in the light of being an up-and-coming contender and I think they're right to do so. They're still young, they're still improving and they still have a huge amount of valuable draft assets to allow improvements either via draft or trades.
green_bballer, your final sentence is dead-on. Perspective is the key here and a reasonable one prevents someone from over reacting whenever something good or bad happens.