I can see the look in your eyes when I walk around town. I can hear it in your voices as you discuss the first game of the season for the Portland Trail Blazers in 2018-19. Fans in Rip City want to know how far this team could go and where they could fall in a tougher Western Conference.

So here we go.

As winter wound down in 2018, the Blazers got hot at the right time. Portland went 15-1 starting Feb. 8, including a 13-game winning streak. They played their tails off, jumping from 2.5 games above .500 to nine in a little over five weeks.

Yet come fall, people in Portland have started to write off last season's late push as unrepeatable; completely out of the norm. That’s something I don’t buy as impossible, certainly not in the aggregate.

The Trail Blazers were able to win a huge chunk of games last year because basketball is not played on paper. To that end, you can’t count on anything — including your skepticism. Nothing is ever perfect. You never have enough depth. Streaks come and go.

This purview was the public relations campaign by the front office since the summer, but it does hold some truth. It is possible for everything to go right, at least as likely that it’ll all go wrong.

To that end, the Blazers start the year with patience running thin and some worrying developments. Ed Davis is gone, Maurice Harkless is still battling injury issues, and there wasn’t much added to the roster.

But this is why we play the games, and why Portland will once again tune into Blazers basketball in 2018. Let’s take a look at what is the best, worst, and most likely scenarios for Portland this season.

Best Case Scenario

In a realistic view of the Western Conference, it appears to be a two-team division yet again. The Warriors and the Houston Rockets will sit atop the West, and I expect the Golden State to be the favorites no matter what their rivals do.

The benefit for Portland is that their main competitors — the Utah Jazz, New Orleans Pelicans, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, and Oklahoma City Thunder — all have huge question marks.

While every team has injury concerns, the Jazz and Pelicans take top billing. Each has two players — Rudy Gobert and Anthony Davis — who are critical to their respective success and more prone to injury based on history. Denver has yet to show us they can do anything. The Thunder are already missing Andre Roberson, and the Lakers could be an absolute garbage fire heading up to the trade deadline.

Meanwhile the Blazers could work hard to remain a Top 15 defensive squad. Stotts will integrate the offensive tweaks he talked about during the offseason. More threes and more ball movement will boost their scoring and efficiency.

With that said, and without projecting a total meltdown by every single team 3-8 out West, Portland has a ceiling of a No. 4 seed.

Worst Case Scenario

It's obvious that the Blazers are a top-heavy roster, and any time spent sitting due to injury from their Big 3 will hinder them. A bad season for Portland is a continuation of what happened last season, but without the slick winning streak stuck in the middle.

That doesn’t sound so horrible until you realize what that actually looks like.

Heading into that 15-1 stretch, the Blazers had a .537 winning percentage. If they had continued on that pace instead of going bananas on everyone, they would have finished with a record of 44-38.

For clarity, 44-38 would have been the 10th-best record in the West last year.

Portland could find itself regressing back to the mean this season. Harkless and Evan Turner already have injury concerns, and Zach Collins is not yet Davis. The Blazers could revert back to their old habits on offense while missing Davis on defense. A couple of nagging injuries to their role players here and there could expose how uneven this roster is. If the West is as strong as many are predicting, Portland could end up outside the playoff picture.

Most Likely Scenario

It's fair to have some reticence about the purported leaps many teams are set to take this year out West.

I'm not convinced that Anthony will be a boost for Houston in the regular season. Gobert or Davis sitting out for their teams in an impactful way reasonable. Denver could be good, but the Blazers are more proven. I don’t know if 33-year-old LeBron James is worth 40 games in the West the way he was in the East. I have middling confidence in the Thunder, and Roberson is their Harkless.

What I do know is that this Portland coaching staff has often made the best pie they can without top-quality ingredients. They also have a set of stars in Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum who believe in them. Each will try to enact the new tweaks that Stotts has talked about.

Seth Curry looks to be exactly what Portland wanted in a replacement for Shabazz Napier. His shooting should go a long way in getting more 3-pointers up, per Stotts’ mission statement.

Portland's biggest variances will be how they dip on defense with Davis gone and if they can move the ball more on the attack. Losing Davis was big, and most of his minutes will go to Collins. But we’ll also see a boost of Jusuf Nurkic to more than 30 minutes per game, and he is underrated on that side of the ball. Likewise, if preseason has taught us anything it’s that the team does seem ready enact changes on offense. They looked more decisive, their passes crisper.

My realistic prediction for the season is the Blazers finish somewhere between 44 and 47 wins, and battle for a No. 7 or No. 8 seed.