Portland Trail Blazers

Who is this Raymond Felton? Jamal Crawford? Gerald Wallace? Did I totally miss something in the NBA the past couple years? These guys are ballers. And they have LaMarcus Aldridge and gotta-be-about-to-retire Marcus Camby. But man, what a fun team to watch. Making the Lakers looks like old men in this second half. The only place where LA seems to have an advantage is Bynum, who outweighs everyone on Portland by 50 lbs.

They also have this French guy off the bench who looks pretty good. I like teams like this - teams with a mix of players with different skill sets - they can play inside, they have dribble penetrators, slash style players, a few shooters, a few long guys on defense, and look to go about 8 guys deep. Mavericks had this last year. Only thing Portland seems to be missing is "the man," the guy everyone else knows is getting the ball toward the end of the game - the Nowitzki, Kobe, Wade, Durant type of player. Maybe someone will emerge this year. But teams lacking this type of player often end up like the Atlanta Hawks of the past couple years, out of the playoffs pretty quickly. Then again, the Chauncey Billups Pistons were kind of like that and still won.