Opinion
The 2022-23 NBA season kicks off this week, which means it’s an apt time to make some outlandish predictions for what may just happen.
I’m actually on debut when it comes to making fearless NBA predictions, but I’ve put my neck on the line by popular demand. No, I’m serious! A bunch of Roarers who enjoyed laughing at my NRL predictions have asked for this.
So, if this content makes you crawl up into the foetal position and want to listen to some Marilyn Manson, go ahead, but blame them.
For the faint-hearted, just a warning: there will nothing banal or yawn-inducing here. Don’t expect any “Westbrook gets traded”, “Giannis wins MVP” or “Boston fans will act like Neanderthals” prognostications, because those are predictable predictions. Instead, I’ll be getting out wide. Real wide!
Let’s start the ball rolling in Colorado.
With Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jnr hopefully back to full health, and savvy off-season additions in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, the Nuggets are essentially adding quality three starters, and four rotation players, to last year’s team.
As such, Denver will be a serious handful this season.
That’s without even mentioning that Nikola Jokic – the two-time MVP – is a question that no team yet has an answer for. On offence, anyway.
This team is well-coached, and an absolute juggernaut on offence. Can they play enough defense – with their unstoppable offence – to win the title? I think they can.
Nikola Jokic. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
In full transparency, I don’t think this is actually going to happen.
I’m not on an island of one either, as Rudy current has the odds of 275/1 to take home the MVP trophy. Hmmm, juicy. If you like wasting your money, that is.
However, the name of the game here is ‘fearless’, so I’m going wide and throwing this one out there, and if you squint very hard, you can almost see the possible narrative: Gobert turbocharges Minnesota’s defence, and they win 55-plus games to finish in the top three in the West.
The advanced analytics crowd go feral and inundate us with numbers that prove Gobert’s incredible impact on winning. Whilst based on that, the portion of the voting NBA media that get bored easily, thus fall in love with the contrarian angle of moving away from Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, etc, and award Gobert the Maurice Podoloff Trophy.
Not happening? Probably not, but you can’t accuse me of being boring. Or of having brains.
(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The season hasn’t even begun, and already there’s tension in Title Town.
By now we’ve all seen the footage of Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole during a scrimmage. It was pretty shocking viewing, and once it was leaked, it forced Green to make a public apology, and take a leave of absence from the team.
With Green’s impending free agency, the Warriors already had a massive decision to make.
He wants another big contract extension, but as great as he can be on defence, and as complementary as he can be to Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on offence, as his athleticism wanes, he doesn’t have a lot of physical attributes to fall back on. He was almost a liability at times during the Finals.
Combined with his potentially chemistry-destroying punch, and the Warriors now have to weigh up whether a 32-year-old with this much baggage is a wise investment for the future.
As crazy as it would seem to break up a championship-winning core, the Warriors may decide it’s time to say a proactive goodbye to Green’s distractions, emotional outbursts, and non-existent jump shot, whilst getting something back in return.
Jordan Poole is congratulated by Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
In 1973, the Philadelphia 76ers set the record for the most losses in a season with 73. For those counting at home, that means they won just nine games all season. That’s pretty putrid.
Sadly, you can expect a number of teams to try their hardest to ‘beat’ that loss total this season, in the hope of drafting Victor Wembanyama.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve extensively scouted an 18-year-old prospect from France, but those who are paid to do so tend to drool uncontrollably.
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When Wembanyama played his first games on US soil a few weeks ago, it became clear the scouts’ drooling wasn’t them being hyperbolic. The highlights of the 7’4” French freak’s games made no sense to the human eye. It was almost ‘Uncanny valley’ stuff, as he blocked shots and hit three-pointers with ease.
If he can avoid injury – a fair concern for a player of his height and build – then there is no question, he will be a guaranteed NBA star.
With that potential comes teams tanking, and tanking hard. Teams will be desperate to increase their odds of winning next year’s NBA draft lottery, and that means trying to lose as many games as possible. Given this, I predict one team will have more losses than any other franchise in history.
Let’s do the maths.
The Warriors, Grizzlies, Suns, Clippers, Mavericks, Nuggets, Twolves, and Pelicans are all making the playoffs. However, two of them will have to qualify through the Play-In Tournament with the teams that finish ninth and 10th. That leaves the Blazers, Kings and Lakers battling it out for those two spots.
If the Lakers lose LeBron James or Anthony Davis for an extended period, they’ll be in a real fight to finish ahead of the Kings and Blazers, and could therefore end up in 11th spot, and out of the Play-In (even if I think they’re better than the Blazers).
Forget “fearless”, it’s quite feasible, and as a proud Lakers fan, I shall now wash my mouth out with cyanine.
https://twitter.com/KatieMox/status/1780695947481174464 https://twitter.com/CWilliamson44/status/1780696642917994703
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