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Oklahoma City Thunder (Projected Record: 52-30)

Oklahoma City won 47 games last year on the back of insane clutch performance from Russell Westbrook and riding a stout defense to keep them close enough in games to let Westbrook do his thing. They performed like a 43 win team if you looked at their point differential, which goes a long way to explaining how a team can add talents like Paul George and Carmelo Anthony and only expect to pick up five additional wins.

The Thunder are now much deeper with talent than they were last year. They now count Westbrook, George, Anthony, Steven Adams, Andre Roberson, and Patrick Patterson as positive plus-minus contributors within their major minutes rotation. In fact, within that group, Carmelo has the worst projected plus-minus impact, such is the talent level. Patrick Patterson has a knee issue that may prevent him from reaching the expected performance level I have him pegged for based on his time in Toronto.

The Thunder could possibly overachieve again this year relative to these expectations for a couple of reasons: (1) not only did they improve their talent overall, but they got talent that should fit very well together and (2) their defense should be even better, allowing them to hang around in games and then let one of their three star scorers try to close it out.