3 teams in the East that the Miami Heat will surprisingly finish ahead of

Yes, while they still have Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwiddie, and DeAndre Jordan, will they be as good as they have been? Kyrie Irving is his best self when he has full reign over the basketball, but we’ve seen how that ends up, from his pre-LeBron days in Cleveland and just last year with the Celtics.

If you think about the fact that playing a great brand of team-oriented basketball is what led the Nets to the finish that they had last season combined with the previously mentioned facts about Irving, things may not bode well for the Nets. KD can quell this dynamic when he returns because the Kyrie factor is at its strongest when he’s the best player on the team, but that likely won’t be the case during this upcoming season. That is why the Miami Heat have a better than good chance to be and finish better than the Brooklyn Nets during this upcoming season.

Lastly among this trio of surprising teams are the Indiana Pacers. They were able to land T.J. Warren and Malcolm Brogdon during the offseason, which is quite the haul when you consider pairing them alongside Victor Oladipo, but Dipo will be out for a large part of the beginning of the season. Even when he does return though, he won’t be in tip-top form for at least a little while. This should not only prevent them from reaching their full potential for a quite a while, but his absence in the first place will inevitably be a blow in itself that could see them fall a bit too far to be a top-six team in the East.

While the games still have to be played, the above is all factual with no innuendo or rhetoric involved, that is just what it is. While some may see these as minuscule factors in the grand scheme of it all, that would be flawed thinking as the situations from these three teams see there projected best player or best player from last season unavailable to them. That is why the Miami Heat will surprisingly to most, finish better than the three teams mentioned above.