NBA Preview - Western Conference - Southwest Division

September 22, 2006 - The NBA’s Southwest division has been dominated by the San Antonio Spurs. However, since Avery Johnson’s arrival in Dallas, the Mavericks have been threatening the Spurs’ divisional dominance. The Mavericks’ ability to spread the court and their deep bench poses a problem for the 3-time NBA Champion Spurs. But while these two teams will battle it out for first place, 3rd place is going to be wide open this year. With Houston expected to be better than last year, and with Chris Paul’s continuing emergence in New Orleans, the race for 3rd in the Southwest is going to be extremely fascinating. If these three teams do not knock each and everyone of each other out of the playoff race, the team that finishes in 3rd can and should make the playoffs. Houston has the most ground to make up after going 1-15 in the division. New Orleans may have finished 9 games back of Memphis but had a better record within the division. And Memphis is a constant playoff team that loses few games at home.

1. San Antonio Spurs - Don’t worry Spurs’ fans. San Antonio will run this division once again. The Spurs won this division by 3 games last year, and they boasted a 13-3 divisional record. The Spurs are just too good for even the reigning Western Conference Champions to be considered the favorite over them. They had an average point differential of +6.8 points per game. That was tops in all of the NBA. The loss of Nazr Mohammed was offset by the acquisition of Francisco Elson and Jackie Butler. The Spurs were hurt by small ball in the playoffs and thus they made some acquisitions to hopefully counter that. However, the Spurs win their games down low with Tim Duncan, and as long as he is on this team, you can automatically check off the Spurs as going to at least the 2nd round. But the really scary thing about this team is that the Spurs have their big 3 (Duncan, Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker) locked up, and nobody else is under contract 2 seasons from now. Which means this team will have plenty of money to spend and build around those superstars in 2008.