It's time to kick off our fifth annual Summer Forecast series. (Last year, it was a Winter Forecast due to the lockout.)
Over the next two weeks, we'll roll out our predictions for how each team will do this season, as well as the 2012-13 Rookie of the Year, Best Newcomer, Worst Newcomer, MVP, conference champions and NBA champs. We'll also examine which teams will make the biggest turnarounds this season and which teams could be in for the most turmoil.
To do so, we surveyed 100 of ESPN's best basketball minds, including contributors from ESPN.com, the TrueHoop Network, TrueHoop TV, Daily Dime Live, ESPN TV, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, espnW, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Insider, ESPN Fantasy, ESPN Games, ESPN Dallas, ESPN Los Angeles, ESPN Boston, ESPN Chicago, ESPN New York, ESPN Stats & Information, ESPN Topics and ESPN Analytics.
We'll start with the conference that features the reigning NBA champs.
To participate in the discussion and perhaps get your opinion published on this page, #NBApicks is the Twitter hashtag to use. Or you can just follow along @NBAonESPN.
Let's begin ...
Forecast: 2012-13 Eastern Conference Standings
* -- Teams tied in win total ordered by decimal rankings from our experts' predictions.