I do disagree... I think we can contend for the title this year because we have a number of avenues to improve. One avenue is simply the guys playing together longer... fifty five games is the equivalent of 2 collegiate seasons and they could continue the improvement during the playoffs. Other teams will improve as well but as we are the least experienced among them (as a team) we should improve faster.
The other avenues, in no particular order.
Archie Goodwin is gradually improving and its easy to see that he has a wealth of potential. Probably the most important thing is for him to get more comfortable shooting and there is nothing like game experience to give it. Ramp his minutes up slowly - something like 1 minute more every 4 games as a target, which would allow him to reach 25 minutes by the end of the season. But tie the increase to his defensive performance, which Hornacek has already done I think. Insert him into the game at the same juncture every game so he can be mentally prepared for it, predictability of that kind should help his comfort level. Horny could be doing that already but I don't keep track.
Dragic and Bledsoe can play better together than they have so far by having more direct interaction between them. Now one runs the offense for a while and the other cuts and circulates like a SG, then they switch roles. Recently I gave a list of maneuvers to accomplish the direct interaction and the basic idea is to have split seconds during which the defense is unsure which of them will wind up with the ball, giving them the opportunity to guess wrong. I had another thought about them screening for each other to pick on a weak defender - if there isn't a noticeably weaker one, just choose one and pick on him. Its bound to make the other team wonder what they're up to and it will tire the picked on guy - what you really want to accomplish is getting them to alter the way they defend the screens, which adds a bit of confusion. Or maybe it'll disturb their substitution pattern.
Okafor or Len may get healthy enough to play. We can definitely use stronger rebounding and defense when Plumlee is off the floor and to a lesser extent when he is on it. Fifteen minutes or so from one of them would be enough though it would probably be hard to limit a healthy Okafor to that amount. I wouldn't even rule Kravtsov out of having a role, in spite of SirStephan's (and others) complete disdain for him. Not fifteen minutes but maybe half that - as needed. He is not a stiff except when it comes to shooting - he is even somewhat athletic for a guy his size. He's big and strong and he has played for his national team with some success. I'm not giving up on him until I see for myself that he simply cannot cut it in the NBA. Heck, the regular season is for finding out things like that and I'd like to see him on the floor long enough to get into the flow a few times.
I think we've seen the best of Channing Frye already but I think Markieff can improve some - he just needs to bring it every game. He needs to come on the floor and get into attack mode immediately, regardless of the who we are playing. To me he seems rather timid at first when we play the better teams.
We can keep up the fastbreak pressure more consistently than we do now. Ish Smith has performed well enough to help with that. (I'm glad to see others having a good word to say about him of late.) He can't shoot for sh*t but the other guys just need to work harder to get themselves open so he doesn't feel the need to do it - he prefers to pass the ball.
