Maybe this will play out differently than we expect. Regular seasons can be like that. Did anyone outside of the 313 area code really see the Pistons winning 60 games last year? Did anyone outside the 617 see a Celtics team missing Jayson Tatum for most of the way at 56? Regular seasons have their own unique rhythms and play out at their own pace.
Maybe some team in the Eastern Conference will do that.
But I don’t see it. This is what I see, less than a week before we tip off the NBA season:
Eleven teams that can make a legitimate claim to win anywhere between 44 and 49 games. Again, maybe these other teams can surprise us, but these are the four excluded from that list (alphabetically): Brooklyn, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington — and of those four, only the Bucks aren’t likely to better their win totals of a year ago.