Did you know the Northwest Division produced four of the top six seeds in the West in 2018-19? While the spotlight shines on Houston and the California teams (no, not you Sacramento), this far-flung corner should once again produce multiple contenders away from the national gaze.
The method behind the projections
The analytic model I used to generate each team’s projection starts with the individual players. I estimated each player’s plus-minus per 48 by using a mix of four all-in-one metrics, each of which is good individually but has blind spots. Then I age-adjusted each rating for the coming season. For players with significant injuries, I added a dollop of subjective special sauce. For rookies and overseas players, I also had to generate subjective estimates.
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Central |Atlantic |Southeast| Pacific | Southwest
From there, I had to estimate lineups and minutes for each team. I was generally an “optimist” as far as lineups – i.e., I assumed teams would eventually play their best players. I also capped how bad any position or player could be at a replacement-level figure. Let’s call this the “Melo rule” after what happened last season — just because a destructively bad player is getting minutes to open the season doesn’t mean he can’t quickly be replaced with someone less awful.
Two final adjustments come at the end. First, I had to add wins to the East and subtract them from the West to adjust for the schedule differences between the two conferences and the significantly better ratings I had for the West teams. Finally, I closed with subjective adjustments to account for things the numbers can’t – likely trades, tank teams, coaching and front office, etc.
Don’t like where your favorite team ranks? There are two key reasons: 1) I have to look at the “mid-case” scenario for all these teams – we can’t assume your best player will play all 82 games, or that your rookie will make an immediate impact, etc., etc., and 2) I hate your team and am overtly biased against it.
Let’s start at the top. The Denver Nuggets aren’t getting huge buzz as a Western contender yet, partly because of their underwhelming postseason. Even before the baffling disappointment against Portland, the Nuggets barely eked out a seven-game series over San Antonio. Questions remain about how this roster translates to a playoff environment, and they’ll linger until a Denver season doesn’t end in excruciating fashion.
But in the regular season, this team will be a division champion and top-four seed in the West unless something goes very wrong. The Nuggets return largely intact from a year ago, except the much more versatile Jerami Grant replaced Trey Lyles, and rising perimeter talents like Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Malik Beasley and Monte Morris have another year under their belts. The Nuggets did benefit from some atypical injury avoidance — it’s unlikely their two centers combine to play 162 games again, for instance — but the bench is also strong enough that an injury to anyone except Nikola Jokic is basically a non-factor.
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To reach the highest levels, the Nuggets need another starting caliber wing player. The playoffs exposed this weakness, as they relied too much on limited defensive specialist Torrey Craig in key moments. Denver paid Will Barton to fill that role last summer, but he missed half the season and was shot-happy and inconsistent when he played. He didn’t fit with the starters at all, and even in a ball-dominant sixth man role he may be an inferior option to playing through Morris and the Nuggets’ slick-passing bigs. With Grant in tow, they could potentially turn and use Mason Plumlee’s expiring deal to bring in more perimeter help. Doing so might open a bit of daylight for intriguing board machine Jarred Vanderbilt.
Barring a trade, the best scenario would be for Beasley to claim the job. He’s 6-5 and Harris is 6-4, a combo that leaves Denver quite small on the wings, but Beasley’s shooting (40% from 3 last year) and athleticism provide the cleanest fit if he proves he can defend starters. That last part is still wobbly, especially if he has to check 3s.
Two other internal candidates warrant mentioning. Juancho Hernangomez faded last year after a strong start, perhaps thrown off by a core injury that required postseason surgery. But he’s a bigger option than Beasley at 6-9 and a plus rebounder at the 3, so he should push for a bigger role if he’s making shots. Michael Porter, should he ever be healthy, is another possibility; as a youth, his YouTube-friendly game featured deep, accurate shooting and pogo leaping, but his tape also revealed minimal interest in defense or passing. There is undeniable talent here, but his knees may never allow him to show it, and at last viewing his game still needed considerable refinement.
With so few questions in the present, plotting Denver’s future may be the more interesting pastime. Paul Millsap, Hernangomez, Plumlee and Beasley all have expiring contracts that are extension-eligible. It seems highly implausible to extend all of them with the Nuggets having a $31M margin to next year’s tax line, so they may need to get more creative to keep such a strong bench around their Jokic-Murray-Harris core.
For half a decade, Denver has been in the business of developing players and building out the roster, and it has done tremendous work. Now comes the more challenging phase of building a contender: deciding which pieces are worth paying and finding replacements for the ones that depart.
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Prediction: 52-30, 1st in Northwest division, 3rd in Western Conference.
Utah may have had the most interesting offseason of any team. I’m not sure it was the best, mind you, but definitely the most interesting. After basically outplaying Houston for five games only to lose because they kept bonking wide open 3s into the side of the rim, the Jazz decided enough already. They may go down again, but not like that.
Essentially, Utah bet on fit over talent. In this case, maximizing the Jazz’s biggest talents — Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and Mike Conley — was the overriding concern, and it meant Derrick Favors had to go to make way for more shooting. Favors is really, really good, but he was a fifth wheel on a Gobert-centered team. Instead, Utah (over)paid Bojan Bogdanovic to take Favors’ spot, giving them a knockdown wing shooting threat who opens the floor while pushing Joe Ingles at the 4. The Jazz will hate Bogie’s contract in a couple of years, but this team is in win-now mode.
The Jazz’s offseason turbo-boosted the starting 5’s offensive ceiling — good luck guarding Conley and Mitchell with an open floor — but acquiring Conley via cap space left some significant gaps and little money with which to fill them. In particular, they’ve put massive pressure on Gobert defensively to be a one-man forcefield against all things inside the charge circle. Replacing Favors with Bogie is a pretty stark downgrade on that end, leaving near-zero rim protection or rebounding supporting Gobert at the other positions. (Considering that the other four starters had a combined Rebound Rate of 26.5 last year, Gobert needs to lead the league in Rebound Rate just for the Jazz to break even overall.)
The bench will be worse too, even though Ed Davis is one of the league’s best backup centers. Jeff Green on a minimum is a much better proposition than, say, trading a first-round pick for him and paying him $10M, but the concern is the same regardless — on a roster so thin at the 3 and 4, he may end up playing a much bigger role than a contender would like. However, one underrated element is Green’s extreme durability — he missed a year due to heart surgery but has had no other serious injuries in 11 NBA seasons — which does prevent the Jazz from having to rely on the far worse options deeper on their bench.
Questions abound behind Conley and Mitchell in the backcourt. Dante Exum teases and occasionally exhilarates in between all the injuries and turnovers, but he has yet to consistently maintain a level that would make him a plus backup at point guard. Repatriated 2017 stash Nigel Williams-Goss is a high IQ, low ceiling guard who lacks burst; he needs to establish his shaky outside shot as a threat to open up the rest of his game. Emmanuel Mudiay is the opposite; he’s big and athletic and showed flashes in New York last season. The focus on his shooting and decision-making have largely overshadowed his equally deficient defense, but a talented player lurks in there if the Jazz can draw it out.
To round out its bench, Utah cobbled together three draft picks in the 50s and used them on upperclassmen wings, although they somehow managed to not select Terence Davis with any of them. Miye Oni won a pretty underwhelming Summer League competition for a roster spot by showing some brief flashes of athletic pop, while the other two (Jarrell Brantley and Justin Wright-Foreman) signed two-ways. I’m not sure I’d bet on any of the three making an impact, but if you’re looking for a sleeper to win a roster spot, keep an eye on French import William Howard – a tall, stringy wing who can be too casual at times but has deep, easy shooting range.
Overall, the shaky depth likely suppresses Utah’s regular-season win total enough to deny it postseason home-court advantage. But come playoff time, with the top seven players getting all the run, this team could be much more potent. At the very least, it won’t go down in a hailstorm of bricks like it did last year.
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Prediction: 49-33, 2nd in Northwest division, 6th in Western Conference.
Portland earned the West’s No. 3 seed two straight years and reached the conference finals last year despite losing Jusuf Nurkic. However, betting on a repeat requires a pretty deep faith in their front office and coaching staff to navigate some major roster hurdles. The Damian Lillard-CJ McCollum backcourt remains lethal, but with three new starters and many bench question marks, the Blazers’ return to the postseason isn’t assured.
This looks like a team that is pointed more toward the 2020-21 season anyway, with youngsters Anfernee Simons, Zach Collins and Gary Trent thrust into more prominent roles without a safety net. The defense, in particular, could suffer – Nurkic and the departed Moe Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu formed a rock-solid frontcourt.
Locking down Hassan Whiteside to fill Nurkic’s spot until the All-Star break (the rough expectation for his return) will help stem the bleeding; Whiteside led the league in rebound rate and was third in block rate. But in terms of overall defense, he’s a major downgrade, while offensively he lacks Nurk’s feel for dribble handoffs and short rolls. Likely small forward starter Kent Bazemore has struggled with injuries and inconsistency the past two years; he may not be much of an upgrade on Evan Turner, let alone Harkless. Collins’ time is coming, but asking him to guard starting 4s next to Whiteside is a huge leap of faith.
Off the bench, Rodney Hood is a solid bet at his salary number. Yes, he’ll tease you with random 20-point games and then disappear for two weeks, and his heavy-on-midrange, light-on-free-throws style is less efficient than it looks. But he’s a capable shooter off the catch who can fill two wing positions, and talent at these spots in the $6M range is scarce. Hood’s glaring lack of physicality makes further upside a tough sell, but at the margins Portland can get his motor running hotter and work more 3s into his shot mix.
The rest of the bench is somewhere between “shaky” and “unproven,” especially on the perimeter. Simons and Trent are the backcourt depth; while both were impressive in summer league and seem to have bright futures, they’re only 20 and being asked to play major minutes on a Western Conference playoff contender. Behind them, Mario Hezonja is on his last chance. An annual first-team, all-layup-line performer, he’s never been able to figure out 5-on-5.
Up front, life could be rough until Nurkic returns. Anthony Tolliver is great in the locker room but nearing the end as a player, and it’s a bit scary that he might be the only legit 4 on the roster. Pau Gasol is 39 and recovering from a foot injury. Nassir Little was a decent gamble with a late first in a weak draft, but he’s unlikely to contribute this year. He needs to develop his skills or he’ll just be a 6-6 power forward. But his athletic tools and motor form a nice foundation. Based on recent history he’ll likely spend the year hidden away while the Blazers’ player development machine gets to work on him.
One other item to watch – Portland sports the league’s highest payroll and sits $12M deep into the luxury tax. Owner Jody Allen hasn’t cut off the cash spigot (her brother, the late Paul Allen, operated similarly), but a slow start against a rough early schedule with no Nurkic could change her mood.
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The sunbreak in my cloudy Portland forecast is that the Blazers are in pretty good shape to upgrade their talent base with a trade, and GM Neil Olshey is a deft in-season dealer. But in the absence of a significant acquisition, they need to hope Lillard plays at least 75 games and their bets on the kids pay off. In a conference with 10 playoff-caliber teams and only eight spots, they look vulnerable.
Prediction: 41-41, 3rd in Northwest division, 10th in Western Conference.
Minnesota probably doesn’t have enough help around Karl-Anthony Towns to make the playoffs in a loaded West, and any injury to him would almost immediately torpedo its chances. That said, the Timberwolves have embarked on an encouraging recovery from the Jimmy Butler-TimberBulls crack-up by pulling together some sweet value deals over the summer. By trading up to the 6th pick in the draft, getting Shabazz Napier and Tyrone Wallace for free, and adding Noah Vonleh, Jordan Bell and Jake Layman on low-cost deals, Minnesota quickly spruced up a tattered bench unit.
Alas, the sins of the past still haunt the future. With $47M in 2020-21 cap committed to Andrew Wiggins, Gorgui Dieng, and Jeff Teague the starting point guard by default after the offseason pursuit of D’Angelo Russell fell short, Minnesota has work to do both on it cap and its roster to build a true playoff team around the gifts of Towns.
Towns is in the first of a five-year extension with no options, so the Wolves still have some time before he starts getting itchy. Under new management post-Thibs, they’re also looking at time horizons beyond Thursday. Minnesota signed mostly one-year deals and declined to match an offer sheet to Tyus Jones, so its books stay clear in 2020-21. Merely stretching Dieng next summer would get the Wolves to about $20M range in cap room, while other moves (Can I interest you in a Canadian small forward?) could grant them max space. They still face a difficult pathway to putting another star around Towns, but you can at least see the road from there.
The young wing combination of Jarrett Culver and Josh Okogie is the other key element of Minnesota’s future. Culver needs to improve his shooting but also had very few off-the-catch opportunities in a Texas Tech system centered on his creation skills. His size, defense and smoothness on the ball hint at a valuable player down the line despite lacking eye-popping athleticism. Okogie made some wow plays as a 20-year-old rookie – including a clean spike of a James Harden step-back – but needs to improve his shooting and refine his erratic halfcourt decision-making to be a long-term solution at the 2.
In the meantime, try to hunt down some Wolves games and appreciate Towns’ brilliance. Hidden from the masses in the far north, he has a combination of shooting ability and offensive rebounding that makes him arguably one of the 10 best players in the league. On his own, he may be good enough to keep Minnesota in the playoff race until April.
Prediction: 38-44, 4th in Northwest division, 11th in Western Conference.
For an offseason that began with, “We’re going to Mike Muscala’s house to recruit him!” Oklahoma City‘s became shockingly eventful. League insiders wondered how long they’d keep writing $60M luxury tax checks to lose in the first round, but Paul George provided an answer before Clay Bennett’s ownership group could. The hefty payout from trading George, Westbrook and Grant (eight firsts! AND Shai Gilgous-Alexander!) should jump start a rebuild that otherwise might have been painful, as this team badly needed to clean up its bloated books.
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The pivot to rebuilding took all of five days, and Oklahoma City managed to hoard future picks without completely eviscerating the product. In fact, if the Thunder keep this new roster intact all season, they have an outside chance of making the playoffs. Unfortunately, there is little chance of that happening in real life. In particular, the expiring contract of Danilo Gallinari is far too juicy a trade morsel for the Thunder to keep him past the trade deadline.
Nonetheless, the current roster is pretty decent. Chris Paul is running point, and last I checked he was still a genius – albeit one who has lost a step. The risk/reward equation on his giant contract may serve to keep him in OKC a while longer (He’ll make $44M in 2021-22. Any takers? Anyone?), but having the Point God assures a minimum level of quality in the short term.
Gilgeous-Alexander is a silky, high IQ guard who lacks explosiveness and needs to shoot better, but he has everything else in abundance and can learn under Paul’s tutelage. From the front office side, I’d also be hard-pressed to name a player who had more effusively positive background reports – the Thunder got a good one there.
Finally, until his inevitable trade, Gallinari provides a perfect stretch complement to the two guards and Steven Adams’ rim runs.
The bench looms as a major issue, however, as surrounding the Thunder’s four studs is what’s become their usual mishmash of low-skill wiry projects. Teenage rookie Darius Bazley, who skipped the NCAA entirely last year, is the latest to join the tribe. (Fact that may interest only me: They drafted Bazley over the older but more ready Brandon Clarke in the pre-George-trade days when they still thought they were trying to win this year.)
For now, Thunder fans can have some fun watching some of the younger guys (hopefully) develop while they ponder important long-term questions: Can Gilgeous-Alexander emerge as a star? Does Paul have positive trade value? Can Adams show more dimensions to his game? Will Terrance Ferguson ever dribble?
As we contemplate the future, also watch out for deep sleeper Justin Patton. Signed on the cheap after injuries marred his first two seasons in Minnesota, the former first-rounder has athletic pop and a workable skill set.
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Short-term, the Thunder should be able to stay around .500 for as long as they keep Paul and Gallinari. But with one foot already firmly planted in a rebuild, look for them to go whole hog by the trade deadline.
Prediction: 35-47, 5th in Northwest division, 12th in Western Conference.
(Photo: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports)
