With pre-season around the corner and the NBA regular season just weeks away, Sportsnet’s panel of basketball experts look ahead to the 2015-16 campaign by answering these burning questions:
Which 2014–15 playoff team is most likely to fall short of the playoffs?
Craig Battle, Senior Editor: Brooklyn and Portland (tie). Neither is getting anywhere near the post-season.
Dave Zarum, NBA Editor: Portland. Their win total from last season (51) will likely be cut in half (if not worse). It’s not just losing Aldridge that hurts, but Nic Batum and Wes Matthews were essential to Portland’s success over the past few seasons. Replace those three starters with Ed Davis, Gerald Henderson, and CJ McCollum and, well, expect to lose. A lot.
Evan Rosser, Senior Editor: Brooklyn. Made the playoffs last year as a 38-win mess. Lost Deron Williams; added Andrea Bargnani. At the least, Indy and Miami leapfrog them.
Steven Loung Associate Editor: The Brooklyn Nets. Miami will have Bosh back and healthy, a full season of Dragic, oh, and Wade’s still around. Not to mention, the Pacers will be getting back Paul George for real this season. I don’t see how the Nets, a team that actually willingly signed Andrea Bargnani, can possibly leapfrog those teams or any others that made the playoffs last season.
Donnovan Bennett, Staff Writer: Portland Trail Blazers. As much as I wanted to say Dallas or Brooklyn the disparity of talent on Portland’s roster is shocking. Who on their depth chart besides Damian Lillard would be a starter for another good team? Chris Kaman? Gerald Henderson? Mike Miller? They lost their best defender and perimeter defender in Wes Matthews. They lost their best player and interior scorer in LeMarcus Aldridge. The rebuild in Rip city will be long and arduous.
Which NBA team will see the biggest jump in wins this season?
Bennett:Minnesota Timberwolves, mainly because their floor is so low. They only won 16 games. They could double that and still be a bad team. They’ve drafted well and kept their core intact. With another year of internal growth they should be respectable even in the super deep Western conference.
Battle: Miami. They won 37 last year despite losing Chris Bosh just as it looked like they could take off. With decent health, they should be good for at least 10 more wins.
Rosser: Minnesota could come close to doubling its 16 wins from last year. Especially with Denver, Dallas and Portland all looking weaker in the West. The Blazers have a long way to fall from last year’s four seed, and there’s only so far Chris Kaman can carry a team.
Loung: The Thunder will make the biggest jump in wins this season. Durant and Westbrook back at full health are going to power this team near the top of the Western Conference. The Blazers will see the biggest regression this season. Nothing went right for them in the off-season and the trend will continue into this season.
Zarum: Utah Jazz. After a horrid start to the season they quietly went 21-14 over the last three months of the season thanks to a defensive identity led by breakout centre Rudy Gobert. Factor in another year of experience for what was the NBA’s youngest team and the return of a healthy Alec Burks (who average nearly 15/4/3 before a shoulder injury cost him the season) and Utah could be playoff-bound.
What star player is most likely to be traded during the season?
Battle: DeMarcus Cousins? Sacramento is a mess with a strange, meddling ownership, and a newly installed coach who reportedly started shopping his star player without front-office consent. Anything could happen here.
Loung: DeMar DeRozan. As tough as it would be to see the well-loved Raptor leave Toronto, he does have an expiring contract and will undoubtedly command a max deal in the off-season. Does Ujiri want to pay that price? If he doesn’t then dealing him at the deadline should bring in an attractive haul given DeRozan’s excellent locker-room attitude, on-court toughness and sometimes-unstoppable scoring talents.
Bennett: Carmelo Anthony. Carrying a max-contract player on a rebuilding team just doesn’t make smart business sense. He’s not a fit in Phil jackson’s triangle, he’s not a fit in Derek Fisher’s defence-first mentally and he occupies the ball in similar spaces as the teams first-round pick. Carmelo is in the win-now stage of his career and that is not a realistic proposition in New York right now.
Zarum: Cousins is the safest bet, but I’ll go with Derrick Rose. Already looking ahead to free agency and the emergence of Jimmy Butler, last season’s addition of Pau Gasol has changed Rose’s role in the Bulls’ offence — and not for the better. A horrid string of injuries may be the biggest contributor, but if Chicago gets off to a slow start I wouldn’t rule this out.
Which player in a contract year is most likely to get PAID next summer?
Bennett: Does LeBron James count? He’s not technically in a contract year but he has an opt out to his two-year deal and every year is an opt out when your leverage is being the best player in the world. Kevin Durant will garner the biggest sweepstakes as he is more likely to jump ship but both men will garner their respective max values barring an unforseen catastrophic injury or off-court issue.
Loung: The easy answer here is Kevin Durant, but to make things more interesting I’m going with Bradley Beal. Only 22 years old and just starting to scratch the surface of his tremendous dormant talent, Beal has Ray Allen-type potential with that sweet stroke and there will be many teams looking to poach him away from the Wizards with the fattest of offer sheets in hand.
Zarum: Beal makes sense, especially given the sparse depth at SG in the NBA today. But I’m going with another two-guard, DeMar DeRozan. If he continues to take another step forward, however incrimental, the Raptors’ best player is poised for a massive pay day. As in: $20 mil +.
Believe it.
Battle: Like, other than Kevin Durant? In terms of unrestricted guys, if Hassan Whiteside can stay on best behaviour, he could go from one of the league’s biggest bargains to a max player under the new salary cap. A jump of something like $20 million per year.
Rosser: Kevin Durant. Toronto and Washington go all-in for him, OKC is forced to match in an effort to keep him.
Who’s your 2015-16 MVP?
Rosser: Tempted to say Kevin Durant, coming back strong in a contract year, but I’ll go with Anthony Davis. He puts up crazy individual numbers (which will only get crazier), and does everything for a team that squeaked into the playoffs last year, but should be a solid six-seed and maybe a little higher this time around.
Battle: Russell Westbrook. This award comes down to so many relatively unpredictable things: health, health of teammates, opportunity, team success, etc. So I’m going with Westbrook, who is a wrecking ball.
Zarum: Based on the disproportionate ratio between the player’s ability and the surrounding talent, Anthony Davis clearly has the best shot. Take him off the Pelicans and they’re poised to win the draft lottery. With Davis? A five-seed in the West isn’t out of the question.
Bennett: LeBron James. Even in a losing effort, the NBA Finals was a refresher course for everyone who suffered from LeBron fatigue to see just how special he is. Steve Nash is still being persecuted for winning back-to-back MVPs, so voters will pump the brakes on putting Steph Curry in the same class this soon. Anthony Davis will be the analytic answer but even with Alvin Gentry at the helm won’t win enough games to garner support. The award is LeBron’s to lose once again, and if he didn’t take a two-week sabbatical to rest his back, orchestrate trades, and go to the BCS national championship last year, he’d probably have won it in 2014-15, too.
What’s a reasonable expectation for Andrew Wiggins in year No. 2?
Battle: Something like his January split from last season: 19.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 steals, to go along with 47-percent shooting from the field and 34 percent from three. The three-point shooting will be the hardest benchmark in that mix to reach, but he’ll need to continue to develop there as he makes a push for all-star consideration… for 2016–17. Making the squad this year is probably a long shot.
Rosser: He plays on a 25-to 30-win team, averages 18-20 ppg and isn’t outshined by his brother, Nick.
Bennett: All-star invitation. If he’s healthy there is no reason he can’t be among the best swing men in the NBA. He is already elite defensively and proved his durability by playing in all 82 games. He’s added additional muscle in the offseason and is primed for a big season in his sophomore campaign.
Who will win Rookie of the Year?
Zarum: Emmanuel Mudiay. No question. He’ll have a ton of minutes at his disposal on a team ready to rebuild around him, and despite questions about his jump shot will be able to get to the rim at this level. I expect him to lead all rookies in scoring, and that tends to translate to ROY votes.
Loung: Jahlil Okafor. I still believe he was the best prospect in the entire draft and for him to slide to No. 3 is just plain criminal. He’s going to make Minnesota and L.A. regret passing on him.
Battle: Jahlil Okafor. With Joel Embiid healthy, Okafor might have had competition for a starting spot and crunch-time minutes. But Embiid is out for a second straight season. Okafor gets all the minutes he wants opposite Nerlens Noel. The only question here is who’s going to pass him the ball? I have less faith in him having fun on the court this season than I do in him finding a way to manufacture stats.
Rosser: Justise Winslow
Bennett: My heart wants to say Norman Powell but he won’t get the minutes a traditional ROY will garner. My head says DeAngelo Russell. Playing in LA he’ll have his fair share of prime-time games even though the team is struggling. Jahlil Okafor will probably affect his team’s winning the most but Russell plays with a flair that will generate excitement.
The Lakers and the Knicks — the NBA’s most lucrative franchises — have never been less relevant. What do you realistically expect from each this season?
Battle: A wildly disproportionate headlines-to-wins ratio. Carmelo could get bandied about in trade talks, Phil Jackson will give an interview decrying the NBA’s focus on spacing or analytics or something like that, Kobe will refuse to answer questions about whether he’s going to retire or not, etc. And they will both lose a whole bunch.
Rosser: Less than 50 wins between them. Phil Jackson continuing to troll basketball fans everywhere by denying the existence of the three-point line.
Bennett: Competition for the number one overall pick and fan bases calling for their coaches to be fired. The Knicks are used to this at this point as they’ve been in a downward spiral since the Jeff Van Gundy era. Being a bottom feeder is new to LA. Pau Gaol and Dwight Howard both left and took less money to go elsewhere in consecutive off-seasons. The most the Lakers have gone is two straight post-seasons missing the playoffs. The way the West is it could be a while before they are back.
Zarum: Both will be disasters, of course. As always, it’s going to be fascinating to see how Kobe fits in alongside one of the NBA’s more randomly assembled rosters (…that’s not a good thing), while the Knicks will try desperately to rid themselves of Carmelo Anthony’s contract and start over for good.
Will Kristaps Porzingis prove to be a bust?
Battle: Too soon to tell. He’s too thin to contribute in a major way this year, but everyone at the draft knew that going in. A fair judgment will take place in a couple seasons.
Bennett: No. But he won’t be a positive contributor right away. Due to foul concerns and questionable shot selection he may not get the minutes he needs to grow right away. However, he’ll prove to be a positive contributor over time. He’s not another Andrea Bargnani. He has the aggressive nature and tough makeup to survive in the NBA.
Zarum: I think he’s going to be a good one. As Battle noted, we likely won’t have an answer this season, but long-term he has the skills and more importantly the drive/mindset to put in the work to get better. Too many tools there to fail.
What’s Paul George’s ceiling this season? Will we ever see the 2013-14 borderline MVP candidate version ever again?
Bennett: He won’t be in the MVP conversation but an all-star game invite and comeback player of the year talk is realistic. The MVP conversation is so deep now in comparison to two years ago. James, Curry, Harden, Westbrook, Durant, Davis, Paul, even Wall all affect winning in a way greater than George in his prime.
Rosser: He’s definitely capable of equaling his individual performance from 2013-14, but the team’s less relevant.
Loung: I wrote about this, but long story short, I firmly believe George can become a top-10 player again and he will certainly be in the MVP discussion again at some point as well.
Battle: His six-game sample from the end of last season wasn’t pretty, but that’s no long-range indicator considering the injury he was coming off of. He could easily be an all-star candidate. Until the Pacers get him a supporting cast, though, he’s highly unlikely to get MVP hype again any time soon.
Will a healthy Durant and Russell Westbrook co-exist? Or did Westbrook’s breakout solo performance last season further alter the dynamic in OKC?
Bennett: Both are injury prone so there is no telling how many games they’ll actually play together. Last year was testament that although they are devastating on their own, they need each other to win. Durant is a free agent in the upcoming off-season. Westbrook is a free agent in the next off-season. If they finally win that elusive title together, this year might go a long way in determining if they finish their career together as a duo.
Zarum: Despite his amazing solo effort, Westbrook learned last season that he can’t do it alone, meaning there’ll be plenty of motivation to return to the two-headed-monster formula that brought them to the Finals a few years ago.
Battle: They’ll be fine.
Rosser: They carried a team to the Finals in their early 20s — nothing wrong with their chemistry.
How will the new playoff format come into play this season in both conferences? Do you foresee it making any difference?
Battle: It won’t make any difference in-season. It’ll just clean up playoff seeding a bit to avoid unfortunate incidents like Spurs-Clippers in the first round last year. Now, to clean up the fact that 45-37 OKC missed last year’s playoffs while two sub-.500 Eastern teams made it…
Loung: I think the new playoff format will play a big role this season, in the East in particular. Take a team like the Raptors who have used a weak division to their advantage to help lock up advantageous seeding. That could potentially be thrown out the window now and it’s all because of this new rule.
Bennett: It will determine home court in the first round and change the complexion of some of the playoff races at the end of the season but ultimately the best teams will win their respective conferences just as they always have. The benefit from a fan perspective is since the jockeying for playoff position will last a bit longer, we should see less situations where stars are sitting at the end of the regular season.
New Spur LaMarcus Aldridge has been known to be a somewhat tepid rim protector. How will he mesh with Popovich’s system, and how much will the Spurs style change to compliment their newest star?
Rosser: Shouldn’t have a problem buying into Popovich’s message, and the coach has proven his adaptability a number of times. Serious contender.
Bennett: Tim Duncan will play even less minutes, but more minutes at centre beside Aldridge and David West. Any points Aldridge gives up at the rim will be out-weighed by the plus-value he brings on the other end.
Zarum: There’ll have to be some adjustment simply because Aldrige’s unique and versatile game gives them options alongside Duncan that San Antonio hasn’t had in years, if ever. But the ‘Spurs way’ isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Battle: He’s a versatile player and will maintain the spacing that makes the Spurs’ offence so dangerous. I don’t think the Spurs’ style changes at all this season, not until Tim Duncan walks away.
There have been a number of aesthetic changes around the league. Which teams’ jersey/logo/court redesign do you like the best? Least?
Battle: Worst: The 76ers. Is Philadelphia known as “Phila”? Do locals call it that? I mean, I get that ‘6ers jerseys used to say “Phila” on them, but I don’t get why that’s a reason to start doing it again. Now, if they read “Philly”… Best: The Bucks.
Rosser: Saw the Raptors’ new jerseys at Media Day and they were way nicer in person than I expected them to be. The Bucks’ are probably the best designed, but I’ve been a sucker for any jersey with PHILA across the front ever since this happened:
Zarum: Yes, the Raptors jerseys looked really slick in person at Media Day — clean and effective — but I really like those new Bucks digs, specifically the home jersey. That said, their new court design looks pretty dreadful. The Clippers new logo/jersey is by far the worst of the bunch. Incredibly un-inventive and bleh (yes, a technical term). The most fascinating to see up close will be the Hawks. The knee-jerk reaction is to shield your eyes at that neon catastrophe. But I suspect, like the Raptors, they’ll look better than expected in-person.
Bennett: I’m the anomaly who really likes both the Raptors and Clippers new looks. Both are modern and sleek and make sense with their brand identity. However, I think the best new look belongs to the Rockets’ new alternates. The colour scheme is given an upgrade with the inclusion of black and grey but the “Clutch city” uniforms pay homage to their history and traditional colours. The Hawks uniforms are a hot mess. Terrible colour and unnecessary design elements. Their uniforms look like the uniforms of a basketball team in a TV show or movie when the film studio doesn’t want to pay the NBA to use licensed uniforms.
