ESPN's experts have an interesting prediction for this season.
Nobody outside the building expects much from the Los Angeles Clippers this season.
ESPN released its Summer Forecast on Monday, and the panel projected the Clippers 11th in the Western Conference at 33-49, down in the bottom five of the conference.
The skepticism is understandable given everything hanging over the franchise, but the panel is really projecting the uncertainty rather than the talent, and that gap is where this team can make a lot of smart people look silly.
ESPN's Tim MacMahon summed up the outside view plainly.
"The Clippers, after failing to make it out of the first round of the playoffs the past five years, hope to move on from the Kawhi Leonard era," he wrote, adding that the agreed trade sending Leonard to Toronto remains on hold while the league's investigation drags on.
ESPN's reporting has also said Leonard and the Raptors are operating under the belief the deal eventually gets done.
Either outcome beats the current limbo, because a completed trade would bring back Brandon Ingram, who averaged 21.5 points for Toronto last season, along with Gradey Dick and a pile of draft capital.
The Floor Is Higher
This roster just went 42-40 and finished ninth in the West during a season full of turmoil, with James Harden leaving for Cleveland in a trade-deadline deal.
The return in that deal is the reason for optimism now.
Darius Garland gave the offense a real organizer down the stretch, averaging 19.9 points on 43.8 percent three-point shooting in his 19 games after arriving, and this season he gets a training camp, a full year and an offense built around him instead of a midseason crash course.
The Depth
The supporting cast quietly got deeper while everyone stared at the investigation.
Rui Hachimura crossed town on a two-year deal and has defended that decision by pointing to the opportunity in front of him.
One look at the roster picked out Kris Dunn's defense and rookie Keaton Wagler as potential X-factors, and the front office kept working the edges of the roster this month by adding Jalen Pickett for guard depth.
None of those names move a forecast on their own, but rosters that beat projections usually get there on this sort of depth.
The forecast itself shows how reachable the play-in field is, with Phoenix holding the eighth spot at a projected 42-40, the exact record this team just posted, and Portland and the Lakers slotted only a few games better.
Proving everyone wrong from there does not require anything fancy.
Garland runs the show from day one, the defense stays organized around Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr., and the Leonard saga resolves into either a healthy star or a package of players who can actually take the floor.
Ty Lue just coached this same group to 42 wins through all of last season's chaos, so the baseline is already nine wins above the forecast.
A 33-win projection assumes almost everything on the roster breaks wrong, and there are too many capable players here for that math to hold.
