Cream Of The Crop: The Portland Trailblazers are easily the team on top of the Northwest. After making one of the biggest trades of this off-season, the team gave up star John Wall as well as Derrick Favors among others, but many feel the acquiring of Dwight Howard, Manu Ginobili, and more makes up for it. Howard was the Denver Nuggets franchise leader in points, rebounds, and blocks. As one of the last true centers remaining in the league, look for him to outperform his matchups almost every night, especially with teams looking out for Jamal Crawford, Joe Johsnon, andManu Ginobili on the perimeter.

Wow, that’s a lot of shooters! With a rebooted line-up, Portland has now gone from a team on the outs looking in to one that just might win it all. If they can just add one or two pieces to their bench, they’ll be a legitimate threat to go for it all. Don’t put it past them to still do that with the bench they have now.

Young, Wild, and Free: Despite a complete re-tooling of their roster, the Denver Nuggets aren’t looking to bad. losing players like Dwight Howard and Manu Ginobili, you’d expect the Nuggets to be dead meat, but really, they seem to still have enough to make it into the playoffs. John Wall seems to be becoming an elite point guard. Dion Waiters is now getting more shots with Ginobili’s departure. Cody Zeller and Derrick Favors are young and athletic. That being said, their bench could really use a sparkplug scorer. It seems contain numerous “glue guys”, and no one that can really provide a scoring punch. If they can fix that issue, don’t count Denver’s youth movement out for a playoff spot in the West this year.

Dangerous When Healthy: Minnesota’s roster is not bad at all, but they’ll be without 3 of their key pieces for the foreseeable future. Chase Budinger has been injured for most of the off-season. The T-Wolves drafted young paint defender Nerlens Noel fourth overall in this year’s draft only to have him out for what will likely be the entire 13-14 season. Otto Porter was drafted just a couple of spots below at 7^th, and he just practiced for the first time this season less than a week ago. Get Porter and Budinger back ASAP and Minny will probably be getting some upset wins and more this season.

A Game-By-Game Process: The Utah Jazz are a big question mark. They could do alright, if some teams get the injury bug going around. They could be the worst team in the West if things don’t work out. They’ve got a great rookie in Victor Oladipo, who seems as if he may be the best player in his draft class. Michael Beasley took a significant pay-cut, while not dropping off too much in his performance on the court. Their bench has a ton of guards, if they can get some bigs, Utah just might hit .500.

 Better Than Last Year: If you’ve been around the NLL in the last couple of seasons, you know that GM Boyd left the Thunder in pretty bad shape upon his departure from the league. Enter Nenjabin, who has re-tooled the Thunder into a team filled with young players, with a light mix of veterans. With the new acquisitions of Andrea Bargnani, Alec Burks, Jimmy Butler, Channing Frye, and Dennis Schroeder, the Thunder are really building a team. It’s still a process, and while this is the NLL, teams don’t turn things around so fast. Hopefully it’s only up from here in OKC.

Division MVP: Dwight Howard. If Portland will just get him the touches, Superman will produce, he proved that for years at Mile High. Couple that in with his rebounding and blocking abilities, and Dwight will be the Northwest’s MVP, while likely also having a shot at the the whole league’s MVP title.

Division ROTY: Former Indiana teammates Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo should be battling it out for Rookie of The Year all season long. Zeller is replacing a town hero, Oladipo is supposed to be Utah’s savior. Both should be getting a decent amount of touches. I can’t choose between one or the other, but if Oladipo stays a Utah’s sixth man, Zeller just might beat him out because he gets more minutes.

Projected Finishes:

1.    1. Portland Trailblazers: 54-28

2.    2. Denver Nuggets: 44-38

3.    3. Minnesota Timberwolves: 40-42

4.    4. Utah Jazz: 37-45

5.    5. Oklahoma City Thunder: 32-50