Roll out the ball and let's play!

Training camp has arrived, so the season is just around the corner. If by "just around the corner" you mean a month away. With training camp here, it's also time for predictions to come out of the woodwork. I'm not going to track them all down this year like I did last year (no time!), but I couldn't help noting John Hollinger's season preview. You can catch his views on the Sixers here. In short: he predicts them to come in 3rd in the Eastern Conference. I think he might be a bit optimistic (although not necessarily), but I also think that his thinking is going to be more or less in line with the views of most mainstream sportswriters. That's a sea change from last season when Hollinger, and most writers, predicted the Sixers to come in last. And that's definitely a change that I could get used to.

Some more previews and predictions

I came across a nice preview of the Sixers by Marc Narducci. Nothing staggering, but he gives a nice run-down of the players likely to be competing for playing time this season. I will just pull out one paragraph from the preview to comment on:

Dalembert will benefit from the team's offseason trade for rugged power forward Reggie Evans. He will provide next to nothing on offense but averaged 7.0 rebounds in 17.1 minutes for the Nuggets last season and could nearly double that average with the Sixers. Most important, he'll take some heat off -- and maybe fouls away from -- Dalembert by offering physical help on defense.

I absolutely think Reggie Evans will help, but I'm not sure he'll really help Dalembert stay out of foul trouble. After all, my impression is that Dalembert gets most of his fouls because he's late on rotations. Not sure how Evans corrects that problem, unless he hacks the man before Dalembert can get there!

Also, John Hollinger has posted his predictions for the season over at ESPN.com. The actually write-ups are behind the Insider subscription wall so I haven't read them, but he projects the Sixers to be last in the Eastern Conference with just 21 wins (and just one win better than the Clippers who he projects to have the worst record in the league). I think the Sixers will do substantially better than that, but I'd be curious to know what Holllinger's reasoning is for predicting such a terrible finish. If anyone reading has access to insider, let me know!