NBA TIP OFF: WESTERN CONFERENCE BOLD PREDICTIONS

By E. Spencer Kyte | Posted 2 years ago

The season tipped off Tuesday night with a pair of high0profile games, but the action really gets underway Wednesday, with 11 games on the schedule.

After dropping a collection of gutsy calls for the Eastern Conference, we’re back with a bold prediction for every team in the Western Conference, where major postseason injuries will impact a pair of recent contenders, recent champs are looking for a return to The Finals, and much, much more.

What kind of craziness can you expect?

Here are some ideas.

Dallas Mavericks: Luka Doncic Starts Making Demands

Luka Doncic signed his super-max extension this summer, which means he’s not leaving Dallas any time soon, but the Slovenian superstar is too good to continue burning seasons outside of championship contention.

The pairing between Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis hasn’t worked out overly well, and while the Mavericks have some quality rotation guys, they’re not a group that profiles as legitimate championship contenders unless Porzingis stays healthy and returns to playing like an All-Star.

When that doesn’t happen — because it’s not going to happen — Doncic is going to start voicing his displeasure and communicating what he’d like to see happen with the roster. This is a dude that complains about every call, so there is no way he’s going through another season with a subpar supporting cast, not when some of these contenders are doing whatever it takes to add impact pieces.

If Dallas aren’t a Top 4 team throughout the first half of the season, expect to hear a lot of talk from Doncic and about how frustrated he is with the makeup of the Mavericks roster.

Denver Nuggets: Nothing Changes Without Jamal Murray

Denver would certainly prefer to have Jamal Murray healthy and on the court all season, but the impact of the Canadian guard being out of action after suffering a major knee injury in the playoffs last year won’t be as great as most are anticipating.

In fact, the Nuggets won’t miss a beat.

Reigning MVP Nikola Jokic will continue to amaze, Michael Porter Jr. has the potential to be the biggest breakout star, and there are plenty of secondary pieces capable of picking up the slack with Murray on the shelf. This team is well-coached, has a ton of depth, and will remain in the hunt for home court advantage in the playoffs all season long.

They’re jtoo good to take too much of a step back.

Golden State Warriors: Early Success Prompts Big Trade

Golden State has the veteran pieces and pedigree to get back into playoff contention after missing out last year, but they also have the young players and contracts necessary to make a major move as well, and with a good start to the season, the Warriors will pull the trigger on something massive.

There is going to be a star player or two that gets frustrated with their situation during the first two months of the season, at which point, Bob Myers will pick up the phone and offer a combination of Andrew Wiggins, some of Golden State’s young players, and picks in hopes of getting something done.

The window for this group to make one more run at a ring is closing rapidly, but Steph & Co. are still good enough to be contenders, and would become favorites if they add another All-Star to the mix midway through the year.

Houston Rockets: Worst Record in NBA

Houston has a bunch of interesting young players — second-overall pick Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Kevin Porter Jr. — and they could put up a lot of points, but they’re going to give up even more and finish with the worst record in the league.

The veterans on this roster are going to end up getting released or traded and second-year head coach Stephen Silas is going to have to endure another rough campaign with limited success, but that’s kind of what Houston is going for right now, right?

This is Year 2 of a full rebuild and while a couple of the pieces show promise, they have no intention of being contenders for the next couple seasons, and unless another team aggressively works towards being less successful, Houston should be in line for another Top 3 pick in next year’s draft.

Los Angeles Clippers: Play-In Tournament Participants

Just like the Philadelphia 76ers in the East, the Clippers are going to go from perennial contenders to scrapping for a spot in the postseason this year.

Kawhi Leonard isn’t going to be back until late in the season, if at all, and while Paul George did an admirable job without him in the postseason, a full season as the lead dog with an old, injury-prone, middling lineup is a recipe for a major step backward and a play-in tournament appearance.

What really sinks the Clippers is that they have so much money tied up in aging, not particularly attractive pieces like Eric Bledsoe ($19M next season, though not fully guaranteed), Marcus Morris ($16M and $17M the next two years), and Luke Kennard ($13M and $14M), while also having no first-round picks to deal either, which means adding someone other than a buyout is out of the question.

This team is a Paul George injury away from being a disaster, and is still going to have to fight hard to make the playoffs even with a major year from PG.

Los Angeles Lakers: LeBron James, MVP

Maybe that’s not bold enough for your liking, but it feels bold because it’s going to be a narrative-driven, lifetime achievement award more than anything else.

Look — the fact that LeBron was considered the MVP favorite last season before he was hurt was preposterous, but that’s the kind of sway this man has, and so when the Lakers are hanging out near the top of the Western Conference a couple months into the season, LeBron will start with the “Washed King” nonsense, someone in the media will start asking why LeBron isn’t getting more MVP consideration because of “all that he does for the Lakers,” bringing up how he hasn’t won the award since the 2012-13 season, and James will end up with his fifth trophy, putting him in a tie with Michael Jordan, one back of Kareem.

It was going to happen last season, but he got hurt, so as long as he’s healthy and his performance doesn’t fall off a cliff, this is happening in 2021-22.

Memphis Grizzlies: Jaren Jackson Jr. Makes the Leap

The first three seasons of Jackson’s career have been hit and miss, as he’s flashed the upside that made him a Top 3 pick, while also dealing with injuries and inconsistency. But “Triple J” turned 22 last month, which makes him younger than the four players Memphis selected in the first round of the next two drafts, which makes him a prime candidate for a major breakout season in 2021-22.

Steven Adams is in town to do the grunt work down low, freeing up Jackson to play the four and showcase his diverse skill set. He averaged 17 ppg and shot a tick under 40% from deep on 6.5 attempts per game in his sophomore season, and a little more strength, a better understanding of the game, and a stronger supporting cast around him could push that north of 20 points this year.

Jackson has all the tools to be a two-way menace and a multifaceted Robin to Ja Morant’s Batman in Memphis, and this is going to be the year when he takes that next step.

Minnesota Timberwolves: KAT Stays, Anthony Edwards Goes

Everyone is ready for Karl-Anthony Towns to be the next superstar that demands out of his current miserable situation, but while Minnesota is still going to be bad this season, it’ll be Anthony Edwards that gets shipped out in a major deal designed to keep Towns happy and committed to remaining with the Timberwolves.

Edwards flashed when KAT was sidelined last season and is a much, much more attractive piece than D'Angelo Russell, whom Minnesota would love to move, but won’t be able to because his deal is gross and he’s not a real difference-maker, which is why so many teams have been happy to move on from him.

There is a new regime coming into the front office in Minnesota — one that isn’t married to Edwards — and moving a 20-year-old with legitimate superstar potential is the kind of thing that can net you a quality haul that impacts both the present and the future, and allows the franchise to once again try to build something of substance around the immensely talented Towns before his current deal winds down and he does ask out.

New Orleans Pelicans: David Griffin Shoots for the Moon

New Orleans general manager David Griffin has been stockpiling draft picks the last couple years, amassing a war chest of future assets that look promising on paper, but don’t help the team at present, and the pressure is starting to mount for the team to show improvement.

Zion Williamson is playing for his third coach in as many seasons, the roster was re-made for the second consecutive offseason, and they remain a muddled, confusing mess.

He might not get a deal done, but there will be talk all season about the big swings Griffin is willing to take in order to surround Williamson with the kind of pieces that quiet the “Could Zion walk?” discussions that have already begun.

He’ll try to land Dame. He’ll kick the tires on a Ben Simmons deal. He might look into Kyrie Irving if Brooklyn looks to move the mercurial point guard and he shows an inclination towards playing basketball again in the future.

He needs to do something because every year that goes by where the Pelicans fail to make the playoffs or struggle to be legitimate contenders brings the team one year closer to Williamson wanting out of New Orleans.

Oklahoma City Thunder: Poku Breakout is Coming

Aleksej Pokusevski is a 19-year-old string bean that was OKC GM Sam Presti’s obvious target in the 2020 NBA Draft — a toolsy upside play that either turns into one of those guys that washes out of the league in a couple years or blossoms into a legitimate cornerstone for the rebuilding franchise selected with the 17th overall pick.

After playing 45 games (28 starts) last season, a sophomore breakout campaign where Pokusevski starts to make Presti look like a genius is coming.

Oklahoma City keeps adding young, rangy pieces and has no choice but to give them minutes, as there are no real veterans on this team, save for Derrick Favors. With a full season of run and a chance to really settle into a role, projecting “Poku” to have an early Andrei Kirilenko-like season where he averages 16 and 8 with a handful of assists, steals, and blocks each night and a few “Did you see what Poku did?” moments seem realistic.

This feels like the season where the Thunder have to play things out a little more — to start making decisions on some of their young players or when to begin adding veterans into the mix — because they have an obscene amount of draft capital over the next few years (12 first-round picks over the next three drafts) and can’t just keep cycling in more and more projects every year without committing to an approach and a core.

Pokusevski proves he’s a big part of the future by turning in a breakout campaign in 2021-22.

Phoenix SunsDeAndre Ayton’s Ascent Continues

DeAndre Ayton’s numbers fell a little last season, but his impact rose, and then in the playoffs, the former first-overall draft pick was the best player on the floor at times as the Suns made a run to the NBA Finals.

This season, Ayton’s ascent will continue, and he’ll make a case for an All-Star appearance by averaging 18 and 12 with freakish efficiency and more of the defensive growth he showed in the postseason.

Redistributing a couple more shots and a few more minutes to Ayton this season shouldn’t be difficult and his performance in the postseason shows that it’s warranted. He averaged 14 and 11 last year in 30 minutes and 10 shots; two more shots per game, with his efficiency gets him to 18 points per, and a couple more minutes means a chance to grab that additional board.

It’s not a massive statistical jump, but this is going to be the season where everyone recognizes Ayton is a major problem and ready to be one of the top young superstars in the league.

Portland Trail blazers: Welcome to Portland, Ben Simmons

It just makes too much sense, which probably means it’s not actually a bold prediction, but it’s hard to come up with anything bold about Portland, a team that remains stuck in the middle class in the Western Conference, destined to finish anywhere from third to eighth and lose in the first round of the playoffs with basically the same supporting cast and approach they’ve had for the entirety of Damian Lillard’s career.

We know the tandem of Dame and CJ McCollum isn’t enough to get the Blazers passed the best teams in the West, so why not pull the trigger on a deal for Simmons — McCollum and Robert Covington for Simmons and Tyrese Maxey works in terms of the money; the GMs can figure out the picks — make another move or two on the edges, and see if you can morph into a more dynamic team on the break?

Simmons isn’t a great fit with a big like Jusuf Nurkic (he’s 27 and expiring), but running out a group that consists of Dame, Simmons, Norman Powell, Nassir Little, and Larry Nance Jr. is interesting, with Maxey becoming the focal point of the second unit and replacing Little in the closing group.

Portland needs to shake things up and replacing Terry Stotts with Chauncey Billups and bringing in Nance isn’t enough.

C’mon Neil Olshey — pick up the phone, call Philadelphia, and roll the damn dice!

Sacramento Kings: Luke Walton, First Coach Fired

Luke Walton is not a good coach.

He looked like he might be a good coach when he was sitting in the big chair with the Golden State Warriors at the start of their incredible 2015-16 season while Steve Kerr was convalescing, but since then, Walton has gone 160-230 and it’s pretty clear that he’s not the answer at the front of the bench in Sacramento.

Now, the Kings are an oddly constructed team that could also stand to make a deal or three — and will never live down taking Marvin Bagley III with the second pick in the 2018 draft — but the first thing they need to do is remove Walton and get someone else in there to lead this group.

No one likes advocating for people to lose their jobs, however there is ample evidence that this isn’t working and isn’t going to be fixed why simply shuffling pieces around. Walton has had this group for three years and they’ve yet to make any real progress, so why wait another season to see if this is the year everything comes together?

Walton is the first coach to get his walking papers and the Kings start the process of righting the ship after that.

San Antonio Spurs: An Ugly Year Ahead

The Spurs finished 10th in the Western Conference last season with a 33-39 record, and there is little reason to believe they will even be that competitive this year.

As much as you want to bank on the infrastructure and culture built by Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford, the talent just isn’t there, and much like their NFL counterparts the New England Patriots, they’re at a point where a full rebuild and change in regimes is probably in order, if not overdue.

The emergence of Keldon Johnson was a nice little story last season, but is he ready to be the No. 1 option for an NBA team in Year 3? Dejounte Murray has never blossomed into the overall terror his top-end projections suggested he could potentially become, and the rest of the team consists of complimentary pieces and youngsters that haven’t panned out.

What makes things more difficult is that San Antonio doesn’t even have the ability to be a weigh station for bad contracts in exchange for picks and prospects because they don’t have the salaries to make those kinds of deals work. That’s great for their long-term financial health, but not particularly helpful now, which means the ugliest year in quite some time is on the horizon.


Utah Jazz: Best Record in the League (and It Won’t Matter)

The Jazz are going to have the best record in the NBA.

They finished first in the Western Conference last year, added Eric Paschall, Rudy Gay, and Hassan Whiteside to an already strong collection of talent, and have an outstanding coach in Quin Snyder. They are an excellent team with quality depth, a ton of guys that know their roles, and will finish at the top of the Western Conference standings for the second year in a row… and for the second straight year, it won’t matter because when it comes to the playoffs, this team just can’t get it done.

Everyone wants to point to Rudy Gobert as the issue, and he is, but not because he gets dragged all over the court on the defensive end when teams go heavy pick-and-roll and leave him to choose between staying home to guard the rim or closing out on a shooter in the corner. The problem with Gobert is that you can’t do anything with him on the offensive side of the ball, which means teams can focus on everyone else on the court and leave Gobert to get his four or five dunks and tips per night while clamping down on Donovan Mitchell and the rest of Utah’s creators.

This is a team built for regular season success and it will come, but unfortunately for the Jazz and their fans, this group isn’t good enough to get to the Finals, and the 2021-22 season will end in heartbreak and disappointment… again.

Get updates on the launch of OSDB Plus and sign up for the OSDB Newsletter.