With just over two weeks left in the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder sit in fourth place in the Western Conference at 44-31. With a 3 1/2-game advantage on the ninth-place Los Angeles Clippers, it would take a truly remarkable collapse for the Thunder to miss out on the playoffs. And Carmelo Anthony doesn't see that happening.

The forward made a maybe-not-so-bold prediction Wednesday, guaranteeing that the Thunder will make the postseason.

"We'll be there. We'll be there," Anthony said Wednesday. "I think we're confident enough to know that we'll be there. Where? We'll see when that time comes, but I believe we'll be there. It's something we planned on doing when we put this team together. It's something at the beginning of the season, this is what we were looking forward to. This is why we put this team together." "I think the expectations were put on us," he said. "Yeah, of course we wanted to have a better record at this point in the season with the team that we have, but our expectations was to be the best team we could be with the understanding we have the opportunity to do something great. And we have an opportunity to make a run in these playoffs and potentially play for a championship.

This has been a bit of a disappointing season for the Thunder, who were expected to be in the upper echelon of the West with the likes of the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, not hanging around the middle of the pack. Anthony, though, apparently believes their struggles will be forgotten once they get to the playoffs.

"That's the goal, that's the ultimate goal," Anthony added. "Everything along the way, up until then, it was a little bit expected because it was something we put together so quickly; we had to make adjustments and whenever you put something like that together it's going to take time for it to work. But this is a learning curve for all of us. But I think in two weeks, a week-and-a-half, two weeks, we continue to do what we do, take care of our business and I think people will forget about the regular season and focus on the postseason."

Well, sure people will forget the regular season if you go on a bit of a run in the playoffs. But if you struggle in the postseason too, the jokes are only going to intensify. But anyway, shoutout to Melo for being brave enough to guarantee his team will make the playoffs when they have a 3 1/2-game lead with seven games to play.