![]() ![]() Then come the Bulls, Raptors, and Nets, all more veteran-heavy teams with fairly limited upside and potential for blow-ups if things go south. Both teams could be a bit worse and fall into the lower tier, but also have upside for hitting the Hawks/Knicks tier as well. ![]() Both teams can count on natural progression from their younger players, while the Pacers also made some nice free agency adds with Bruce Brown and Obi Toppin. 500 level when their point guards (Tyrese Haliburton and Markelle Fultz) were healthy. The next tier up are the Pacers and Magic, two younger teams who played at an around. The rest of the conference can be lumped into three tiers, in my opinion. I feel similarly about the Hawks, who have very good players but shaky depth and a star in Trae Young who is maybe the worst defender in the NBA. New York should be very good in the regular season as well, but they don’t have a Tier I or even Tier II star, so it’s tough to see them winning more than a round or maybe two in the playoffs. Overall, I think Milwaukee, Boston, and Cleveland are the highest floor regular season teams, but Miami and Philadelphia probably have more “championship equity” than Cleveland barring a star leap from Evan Mobley. This is also pending the Harden and Lillard trades, which could bump or lower the Heat or Sixers depending on the packages. Obviously, it’s unlikely that three teams end with 52 wins, two at 46, and two more at 41, but again, these are rough. I’ll also share some very, very early predictions on how I think the NBA playoffs might go. I will note as I did in the division previews that I don’t do the math to make sure that these projections are mathematically possible – they are simple guesses based on needing to play 82 games. Now that I’ve completed all my division previews and given brief thoughts on every team’s offseason and 2024 outlook, it’s time for a bit of an overview on what that will look like at the conference level. ![]()
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