Like my last couple posts this all comes from before the season began. I didn’t change anything based off of the first week or so of games. Enjoy and let me know what you think I got right/wrong! Sorry for typos.
1. Despite the fact they’re the two biggest favorites to come out of the west according to our friends in Vegas, only 1 LA team will make it out of the first round of the playoffs- This isn’t really a shot at either of these teams as much as respect for how strong the Conference is top down, as well as how much one key injury could quickly change either of their fortunes. Additional hot take, the best team in the state of California still plays ball in the Bay Area.
2. Somebody other than Philly finishes as the 2 seed in the East- Reminder Philly got rid of their best player from last season. The defense might be the best in the league, but I’m not convinced I see a top 10 offense there. Somebody out East will get off to a hotter than expected start, see that their is an opportunity to crash the party at the top of the conference, make an aggressive win now move, and wind up slotting between Milwaukee and the sixers. My two favorite fake trades are: Chris Paul to Miami or Kevin Love to Boston.
3. Speaking of fake trades: Minnesota finally unloads Andrew Wiggins- I don’t know where, but if I had to pick a team I’d go with the Knicks in a deal that involves a lot of overpaid power forwards on expiring deals. Maybe Bobby Portis and Taj Gibson can continue their tour of the NBA together? Those two for Wiggins, Jordan Bell and 2 second round picks sometime around January sounds about right. ***if this goes down watch out for Minnesota to a make move on D’Angelo Russell next offseason. They have interesting young pieces and wing depth the Warriors would covet in a potential deal. Culver or Okogie plus some rotational pieces might suffice.
4 A Western Conference Team will miss the playoffs that would’ve been a top 5 team in the East- The West is so loaded that at least one 45 or so win team with Steph Curry, Lebron James, Damian Lillard, Zion Williamson, Karl Anthony Towns, or Luka Doncic on it won’t be playing playing in the postseason.
The argument to get rid of conferences and just reseed the top 16 teams seems to be brought up every year and most of the time I don’t really care. Some 42 WCF team sitting at home while an ECF team with 40 wins goes on seems pretty trivial, but this year could be lunacy. Those 6 names above might account for 15 of the most players in the league the next half decade. Letting half or so of them sit at home while Boring Indiana, or an in over is head led Zach Lavine Bulls team gets wiped out by the Bucks by 20 a game after they only could muster 39 or so wins is suboptimal at best.
The NBA is freaking out about the situation with China, but between tanking and having its best players on the sideline for the most important part of the season so that worse teams can continue threatens the game at least as much. Adam Silver is the GOAT or commissioners of North American sports during my lifetime. If he’s as good as I think he is he’ll address this sooner rather than later. He needn’t look further than what’s happening with general interest and attendance in MLB if he needs a warning.
5. Despite all the hype around the offseason in LA and Brooklyn, the teams that we’ll look at in 10 years and say they had the best offseason are New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Memphis- The sheer draft capital these teams acquired is absolutely incredible. OKC pulled in 11 (!!!!!) first round draft picks and pick swaps this offseason withoutn even accounting for SGA. New Orleans pulled the best prospect in the draft since Lebron, Lonzo Ball is my favorite pick for breakout year and I’m betting on those draft picks from LA becoming extremely valuable as long as Rob Pelinka is calling the shots in Lakerland. Memphis got the second best prospect in the draft, another guy I view as a starter long term in Brandon Clarke at 21 and did a better job than anyone in turning their present cap space into future draft capital.
If you were trying to figure out the teams in the best shape for 2025 I don’t know if you could come up with a better 3 than these franchises.
6. Looking into the future Nieckell Alexander Walker will be seen as a better player than at least one of the Darius Garland/Coby White guards drafted at least 10 picks ahead of them- I have all these guys in the same class of I know that they will be able to score a little bit, but will they become to create for others and/or play defense at a high enough level to be anything more than just a scorer than a bench long term? NWA’s size makes him the most intriguing of the bunch to me.
7. Mitchell Robinson will have a better career than DeAndre Ayton. Dznan Musa will have a better career than Marvin Bagley- Last year I predicted Robinson and Musa would go on to have better careers than Bagley. I felt so great about my Robinson pick I decided to try and take it to the next level this year. Musa did nothing, but he was one of the youngest players in the league on a deep team. I remain high on him. Bagley should be decent but I still don’t see enough defense or 3 point ability from him becoming any more than an empty calories Julius Randle kind of player.
8. Steph Curry wins MVP- I know the team around him will be trash, but I’m still expecting a Russell Westbrook type of narrative/scoring explosion combination that will propel him to enough wins to earn the award.
9. Denver finishes with the most wins out west- the two most overlooked aspects of regular season success is continuity and depth. Denver might be number one in the league in both of these categories. They return 93% of their minutes played last year and add a guy who would be a solid starter for most teams in Jerami Grant and a fun wild card in Michael Porter Jr. The Nuggets should be able to capitalize on knowing each other, as a lot of these new teams go through some initial growing pains of figuring out how to play with each other. They were also hit by the injury bug last year and some regression to the mean their would help as well. There’s a lot of reasons to believe these guys will be better than last year when they won 54 games. Just a couple win improvement should be enough to get them the #1 seed.
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