NBA Standings Predictions: Western Conference
Some Teams: Good. Other Teams: Not So Much.
NBA Season is almost here!
Bench Units has focused a bit less on the NBA lately, mainly due to the Paralympics, the fact that there has been no NBA basketball since July, and some fairly compelling listening statistics that assure us that our audience would rather listen to us pretend to know what we’re talking about on the frontier of wheelchair basketball than able-bodied. Maybe people think that we’re more qualified to cover the sport that is actually accessible to us as individuals, to which I would argue that I’m qualified to cover neither.
But Bench Units is still just a medium for me and James to narcissistically broadcast our conversations about the stuff we care about and, by that simple formula, the NBA should still get some coverage.
Truth is, I was a bit less excited for the coming NBA season than I remember being at any point in the last few years. As has been chronicled previously, I will take on the challenge of watching any basketball you can put in front of me, but something about a season in which Brooklyn would presumably waltz to the title and star players everywhere would continue to make it about them didn’t fill me with a huge amount of intrigue.
But anyway, I put some NBA Preseason games on in the background over the last few days and it reminded me that there really is a lot to be excited about this coming season. It also got me thinking that, because I threw myself into watching every second of Tokyo 2020 Wheelchair Basketball, I haven’t spent the summer trying to hypothesise what various teams might look like when the NBA season starts up again.
That all changes now, as myself and James are going to throw down some baseless predictions over how the final standings will look exactly 1,230 games from now. Here’s how it’s going to look:
#[Position in Standings] - [Team Name]
Mark’s Take: I think that Team Name will finish at Position in Standings because they obviously haven’t been wasting their time and resources on the branding or marketing of their club. They must be all about results.
James’s Take: I know Mark to very rarely be wrong about anything, but I have to disagree with him on this one, and all the others, because that is literally the entire point of this exercise.
Hopefully there will be a little more meat on the bones than that example, but you get the point!
Note: I like to figure out my rankings by first figuring out who is destined to finish last and working my way up from there. I’m going to start my list from #15 in the West.
#15 - Houston Rockets
Mark’s Take: Looking at the current state of the Rockets forces even me to acknowledge James Harden’s value. Oklahoma City are still in a multi-year quest to finish bottom of the standings for as many drafts as they can, and I’d still argue that this Rockets team has both less actualised and potential talent on the roster. They’re so bad that John Wall, who absolutely nobody is coming to rescue with a trade for that contract, has effectively volunteered to sit out so he doesn’t have to play with this amorphous group of young guys. Turns out beggars can be choosers.
I am willing to claim that I know exactly two things about Houston: Jalen Green will get some serious buckets, and Eric Gordon will be somewhere else by the time the games get serious. The only other certainty I have is that I won’t watch a lot of them this year.
James’s Take: I’m almost with you on this one. I anecdotally like Sengun, Christopher, and Garuba as draft picks, and I think Jalen Green has a real chance to be great, but that’s some way down the line. The only thing that’s making me disagree with you is the absolute dedication the Thunder have shown to being the worst team in the NBA. The Rockets will be bad, and I love the idea of John Wall having his bags packed, waiting to get a call that some other team is interested in rescuing him, but I think the Thunder might have take the bottom spot for me.
#14 - Oklahoma City Thunder
Mark’s Take: I don’t think the Thunder are going to be good, but I’m far more interested to watch them than I am to watch at least the three teams ranked directly above them, so I guess that’s something.
Bunch of guys I like, but they plan to go nowhere and that will be exactly what they do. They were 16-19 when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played last year, and they had to sit him out the second half of the season so that he didn’t sabotage their efforts to work their way down in the lottery. Mission accomplished: they went 2-23 in the last 25 games of the season. They then had the 6th pick in a highly-touted 5-player draft in which the 5th-best guy went 7th. Don’t know what to make of Josh Giddey long-term but, similar to most of these guys, the plan isn’t for him to be any good this year.
They’ve got enough intriguing guys that they’ll catch some teams sleep-walking against them and scrounge some wins, but it’s all about the lottery for these guys.
James’s Take: Anyone who is reading this and cares about the NBA, do me a favour. Google “OKC Thunder Roster 2021” and tell me how many NBA quality players are there. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was pretty good when he played last year and could continue to improve, Luguentz Dort is an elite wing defender and might be the strongest man alive, but apart from that I’m struggling to see how half these guys can make up a roster that could even pretend to want to win basketball games. Pokusevski and Giddey might be fun but not good in a few years, and more or less the rest of these guys may as well be randomly generated NBA 2K characters.
#13 - Sacramento Kings
Mark’s Take: Disclaimer: I think Davion Mitchell is awesome and I wish he’d been drafted almost anywhere but here. I also like De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield and Jahmi’us Ramsey. I listed 5 guys on the Kings that I like, they’re all guards and will be competing for 96 minutes of court-time, maybe eased slightly by the fact that none of Sacramento’s wings have any serious claim to real minutes.
Man, the rest of this roster is grim. Safe to say I will not be tuning in to watch Maurice Harkless and Terence Davis man the Small Forward spot. Harrison Barnes is good, but I don’t know how much I trust a guy who should be a plus-defender when last year’s Kings had a historically bad defensive rating. If he actually is useful to a good team, I don’t see him being in Sac for long. Richaun Holmes is a cult hero for reasons I don’t understand. This whole thing is a shambles.
James’s Take: I agree that Mitchell could be good, and I’m all in on Haliburton and Fox being great for years to come, and Hield and Ramsey are players who can help another team where only two of them have to play at once. Mo Harkless and Harrison Barnes are the sort of wings that *insert NBA team that need a wing* sign as a last resort because they look the part but don’t really deliver. Like the age old thing of a ‘Three and D’ wing that can’t really shoot the ball or stay in front of anyone. While we’re talking about people who should be good but aren’t, may I please introduce Richaun Holmes. He had an alright couple of years as a stretch five, but he’s a long way from shooting 35% from three in the 2016/17 season, having shot 18% last year on 0.2 attempts per game.
Oh, and Luke Walton is bad at his job. He got a head coaching job based on his time as the interim head coach of the Warriors, based on the ground breaking idea of playing 5 great basketball players at once.
#12 - San Antonio Spurs
Mark’s Take: Another West lottery team that has an entire roster comprised of guys who might be pretty useful in a different spot, but the sum of the parts doesn’t amount to much.
Nothing but respect for the Spurs, even after they did the unthinkable and cut Luka Samanic before the season started. Them making the play-in tournament wouldn’t stun me, just because of their organisational competence, but I think the guys in their young core are a weird mix being too late to make a leap (Dejounte Murray, Derrick White, Lonnie Walker IV, Jakob Poeltl), or are at least a year early (Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell, Josh Primo, apparently Luka Samanic). Either way, I don’t see who’s carrying them to wins this year. The only way the Spurs become relevant is packaging a bunch of these guys into a trade for a star, but even that doesn’t raise the ceiling that much.
James’s Take: The best thing the Spurs did this off season was cutting Samanic immediately after the game in which he turned the ball over and didn’t sprint to stop the breakaway layup on the other end - this is possibly the most Spurs thing of all time. I don’t think they’ll be very good this year, but I could see their defence being pretty solid this year and that keeping them in the mix for the play-in spots. They’ll be as well coached and well put together as ever, so who knows what magic they might work.
#11 - Minnesota Timberwolves
Mark’s Take: Ugh. I hope this year’s Timberwolves team is more excited about them than I am. I imagine that might be more easy for Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell, proud owners of two of the least-deserved max contracts in the NBA. They finished 23-39 last year. That’s eight wins less than Sacramento or New Orleans.
This team’s offense will be good enough to win them some games, but nothing about them will lift them any higher than that. Nobody with any significant role on their team has ever had anything to do with winning basketball. Ricky Rubio could not wait to get out of there, and he’d been prepped for it while he was around 10+ years ago when they also sucked.
Russell would make a hell of a street-baller, but he might be tied with my guy Jrue Holiday for shortest stretch of good games required to make an All-Star team. Towns scores about as effortlessly as he plays defense. I don’t know what Anthony Edwards is yet, but he’s not getting them to the playoffs in his second season.
James’s Take: Running a team with Karl-Anthony Towns as your star player and winning less games than Sacramento should be a crime. They’ve been a train wreck for basically his whole career, and they show very few signs of getting better, on court or in any area of the organisation. Anthony Edwards might be great in a few years, but that doesn’t really help them this year, and I think trading for Russell was a terrible idea, because it was either always stupid, or they actually thought he was going to be the answer to their problems. To be fair to them, it was the answer to the problem of ‘having Andrew Wiggins on their roster’.
#10 - New Orleans Pelicans
Mark’s Take: Is this the year they make the playoffs? Probably not. But, if they make it this far, someone will be quite unhappy at the idea of seeing Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram in a couple of winner-takes-all play-in games.
I’ve been high on the Pelicans for the last couple of years, and it just hasn’t happened for me yet. Last year was a tough watch. I have more faith in this year’s roster composition, but the West is too good for them to do any better than scraping the play-in.
Shout-out to these guys for drafting Trey Murphy III, who might already be their third-most important player. He’s ready to go straight out of the box and actually unlocks some lineup flexibility using the rest of their young guys.
James’s Take: I think Trey Murphy was a cool pick up, and is a very complimentary player, and that seems to be the direction that David Griffin has gone in this year. They have a roster full of players who are well equipped to play with Zion. The problem is that Zion is going to be out for at least another two and a half weeks, so putting the ball in the hands of Brandon Ingram and Devonte’ Graham might make for a rough enough start that the season gets interesting.
#9 - Memphis Grizzlies
Mark’s Take: I wondered what was happening with Grizzlies management when they let Justise Winslow walk away, then I remembered that I have never once been proven right about Justise Winslow, so I guess they get the benefit of the doubt.
They made the playoffs last year after beating the Warriors in the play-in, and actually played a relatively competitive 5-game series against Utah. Jaren Jackson Jr barely played and could bring them another dimension that they really need. There’s spots in their rotation that I don’t fully trust, but they seem to have put at least a passable defense out for the last two seasons regardless of who is on the floor.
Memphis drafted Ziaire Williams with the #10 pick, and the whole high-upside final stab at the lottery move reminds me of what Denver did taking a flyer on Michael Porter in 2018. If this pans out anything like that did, the Grizz might be one more year away from vaulting all the way up the Western Conference.
James’s Take: For some reason, the Grizzles being in 9th has seemed really clear to a lot of people - including both of us, apparently. I think they’re clearly better and have a more coherent plan than the teams below them, but I don’t think they have enough to move up at all. Ja Morant could take another leap towards stardom this year, and Jaren Jackson Jr is a big with loads of potential. I like Melton, Clarke and Brooks as solid NBA players too, so I think they’ll have enough to nestle in among the play-in teams, and will feel pretty good about making it through when they get there.
#8 - Los Angeles Clippers
Mark’s Take: Speaking of my guy Justise Winslow: man, did he ever stick it to his former team with this one. Jumping ship from Memphis to LA and moving up exactly one spot in my theoretical standings. Take that, Grizzlies.
This ranking is based on the idea that Kawhi Leonard does what he believes is best for Kawhi Leonard and sits out the entire season to rehab his ACL. No problem with him doing that, but even the most optimistic of Paul George optimists don’t see PG picking up the slack for a whole regular season.
There are some pieces that I like on this team, but they also have Marcus Morris and Eric Bledsoe. They showed they’ve got some guts when they beat Utah and pushed Phoenix to 6 games without Kawhi, but I don’t see this group challenging to top the West without their best player. I can see PG having a huge season, maybe aided by a breakout from Terence Mann, to keep them afloat, but I can’t look at the Morris/Bledsoe/Winslow/Reggie Jackson/Luke Kennard supporting cast and see them as anything but too inconsistent to really be a threat.
James’s Take: I’m with you on this one more or less. They just paid Terrence Mann a good amount of money to keep him around, so I could see him figuring prominently in the spaces that Kawhi has left this season and I think he could take a step forward from last season, but I also have no faith in Bledsoe to be any good or in Jackson to be as good as he was last year. They’ll be well coached and solid defensively, and if Kawhi makes it back by the end of the year they could make some noise in the first round, but I can’t see them being much more if he’s not 100%.
#7 - Golden State Warriors
Mark’s Take: I’ve done my best to read up on predictions that more qualified people have made for the season, and one thing I’ve firmly identified is that nobody knows what to do about the Warriors.
I’ve seen them called to finish everywhere from #2 to outside the playoffs, so maybe plopping them in the middle of that range is a bit of a cop-out. If you forced me one way or another, I would say that the fact they haven’t really used pre-season to run out their young prospects means that they’re preparing to go the whole hog and win games at all costs. Worth noting that their luxury tax bill is $180,000,000 for the season, so I kind of get why they have to be as superficially successful as possible to justify that kind of spending.
Even with that in mind, I see them struggling at least until Klay Thompson gets back, and whatever ground they make up once he’s back on form will probably be enough to scrape their way into the playoffs. Talk about a team that not a single #2 seed will be happy to see in the first round.
James’s Take: I can see the Warriors making it up to about the 5 seed as a sort of middle ground between best and worst case scenarios. Obviously, the worst case scenario is that 28 year old Klay Thompson got injured and is now coming off a horrible injury as a 31 year old, so he may never be the same, unfortunately. The best case scenario for them involved Klay’s combination of height and shooting aging well.
The Warriors have enough shooters who can make good decisions that I think they could be better than a few of the teams above them in this ranking, but it might be because I have some bad things to say about those teams rather than being a massive fan of what Golden State are doing.
#6 - Portland Trail Blazers
Mark’s Take: For me, this is where we start to get serious, and where we start to acknowledge how ridiculous the west is. I think Portland got better over the offseason, and they still end up in the exact same spot they did to end last season. I love Damian Lillard unconditionally. He threatened a trade to try and force his team into action, and they responded by upgrading their bench, switching coaches, and getting a hand-in-glove role-player fit in Larry Nance Jr. Dame might still want a trade, but he’s seen that the team made an effort and is prepared to give them an honest-to-goodness shot once again. That’s a superstar, folks.
The problem is that they still have too much of their team based around two small guards, and their defense will probably still suffer for it. I actually think that the path for the Blazers to finish higher than 6th is to stumble to start the season and trade away CJ McCollum, at which point any significant return of better-fitting pieces might be enough to vault them into serious contention.
James’s Take: My entire take on this is as follows: Love Larry Nance Jr, think he’ll help. Don’t like Chauncey Billups, think he’ll actively harm them. Dame might average 40 for a month again and lift them this far, but I could see them a few spots lower than this if not.
#5 - Dallas Mavericks
Mark’s Take: Another team who theoretically got better, but ultimately not enough to close a lot of ground. They’ve looked good in pre-season, but some of that is the fact that Luka Doncic doesn’t know how to sleep-walk through exhibition games yet, so they’re playing closer to their ceiling right now than most teams are trying to.
The good news is that Kristaps Porzingis does genuinely look to be moving around a lot better, and is more engaged on both offense and defense. If that keeps up, Dallas’ outlook could change dramatically.
Ultimately, I’m not that worried about where the Mavs might finish in the standings. They’ve gone into their last two playoff appearances as the lower seed, and I have almost no doubt that they would have taken down virtually anybody other than the Clippers, who are about the one team constructed to handle Luka. They’re better suited for the playoffs than the regular season, and the teams slated to finish above them should be very wary of that.
James’s Take: Luka is now in the same group as guys like LeBron, KD, Harden that I think will just get you a top 6 seed if you roll them out with competent basketball players and a decent coach. If Porzingis can play at a level near the higher end of his potential, Reggie Bullock contributes like he did in New York and everything else stays the same, they have the ‘competent basketball players’ bit down.
Can Jason Kidd be a decent coach? He couldn’t in his last head coaching job, but let’s see if a stop on LA’s coaching staff has changed him at all.
#4 - Denver Nuggets
Mark’s Take: Ranking Portland, Dallas and Denver appropriately in the 4-6 spots was really difficult, seeing as each roster is essentially the “MVP Candidate + stuff” formula.
If we’re ranking “MVP + stuff” teams, then it’s only fair to let the team with the actual reigning MVP have the benefit of the doubt. On top of that, our other teams in these 4-6 sub-rankings all have fit questions among their best players, and Jokic’s basketball skillset erases concerns around stylistic clashes better than maybe anybody since prime LeBron James.
To really hammer it home, it’s worth noting that about-to-be-unleashed Michael Porter Jr is clearly better than anybody on Portland or Dallas’ non-Dame and non-Luka portions of their respective rosters. If Jamal Murray gets back with any significant chunk of the season still to go, Denver are the team I’d give a chance to crack the top 3.
James’s Take: I agree here that if Murray comes back at around 80% the Nuggets could be in business. They might end up in a sweet spot with Porter Jr coming into his own as a number 2 by the time Murray returns, allowing him to take a back seat in terms of creating for others. In saying that, handing the best passing big man of all time the ball and running to the basket or the corner is a pretty good way to lighten the shot creating load for Murray. Could end up a few spots further down if things don’t break right or Murray doesn’t return because they have a lot of weird fits, but they still have a chance to be great.
#3 - Phoenix Suns
Mark’s Take: Just to make it completely clear, me ranking the reigning Western Conference Champions behind two other teams does not mean I rule out a repeat Finals appearance from them. If I had to make that pick right now, they might even be my choice.
I just don’t see them going pedal-to-the-metal again for the whole regular season, and I don’t really blame them for that. Chris Paul is getting older, even if he’s putting fine wine to shame, and you would figure that Devin Booker has established himself enough now that he isn’t playing all 82 games with the intent to prove that he’s the real deal.
The one concern here is the DeAndre Ayton situation. After being a revelation in last year’s playoffs and being phenomenal in a very defined, streamlined role that complemented the Suns’ star guards, Pheonix have declined to give him the contract extension he was hoping for. Having Chris Paul around should be enough to keep him on the straight and narrow, but I do worry that he might feel the need to prove himself more now, and that could tinker with chemistry. Just pay the guy and this all goes away.
James’s Take: I agree with this take wholeheartedly. They got incredibly lucky last year, making it to the finals with a healthy Chris Paul as well as a healthy Ayton, and practically no other injuries until Saric got hurt. Him not being there to anchor their second unit could hurt them at the start of this year, and obviously that’s more important during the regular season when your main guys are taking nights off. Still a well built team with title aspirations this year, but this is about right for the regular season.
#2 - Los Angeles Lakers
Mark’s Take: Groan. I loathe the Lakers.
Them being knocked out of the playoffs in the first round last year was a great moment for me. Take that, Anthony Davis. May as well have stayed in New Orleans.
They weren’t healthy last year, and the last time they were healthy saw them win the title, so it’s only fair to assume they’re better than the #7 spot they got last year.
I actually think they’ll be a better regular-season team than they will be in the playoffs, which is unusual for a LeBron team. They can build a regular-season defense that will get them past the fact that their whole roster is ancient, but I think the playoffs will see teams target their defensive weak links to an extent that even AD can’t mitigate.
James’s Take: I’d have them here too. I think they’re built in a way that lets LeBron take his foot off the gas a bit during the regular season on account of being old, and letting Russ and AD take charge on random Tuesday nights in February should be enough to get it done. There are questions about how these guys are all going to fit together, and while I agree that they’ll be good this year, it’ll be in spite of Westbrook, not because of him. I trust Vogel to cobble together a good NBA defense, as he always does, and even though they looked bad during the preseason, they looked good when LeBron and AD looked good, and that’s all that really matters sometimes.
#1 - Utah Jazz
Mark’s Take: The Jazz fell apart in the second round of the playoffs last year, to the point where giving them the #1 spot in my rankings feels like I really need to justify myself.
Playoff woes aside, this team could have rolled out an exact repeat of last regular season and still sleep-walk into the playoffs. The formula works when teams don’t see you 7 times in a row.
But they learned from defeat and actually got better with their summer additions (mainly Rudy Gay and Eric Paschall), and that’s to the point where I think they can tinker with their formula and try new things while still keeping a stranglehold on the top seed. Milwaukee used the regular season as a test lab for last season, and it saw them drop from 1st to 3rd but ultimately win the title. I don’t see Utah winning the title until they can prove they have more tools in the box, but the combination of defense and shooting isn’t going anywhere. No other team has an easier formula to replicate game-to-game, and that has to count for something.
James’s Take: I’m so glad I didn’t have to talk you in to this. The Jazz have the least turnover of the big teams, are healthy, well coached, well built, shoot a ton of threes and have the most impactful defender in the NBA on their team in Rudy Gobert. I can see a repeat of last year, barring injury of course, with the Jazz showing up to games, shutting people down at the rim on one end and shooting 40 threes a game on the other end. It’s a formula that has worked for them before in the regular season, and they can withstand missing a guy with a minor injury for a few nights with all the ball-handling and creation on their roster.
We might have to write about what needs to happen for this to translate to success at the end of the year, but until then, I have the Jazz running rampant through the West.