The NBA Season Isn’t Finished: It’s Just Begun

 The NBA season just ended with the Lakers beating the Heat in the Finals. Really though, it ended in June last year, when the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Anthony Davis. Once LeBron James got his hands on arguably the best two-way big in the game today, anyone who had been paying attention to basketball for the past decade or so could have guessed how this season would end. LeBron isn’t getting any younger, but he doesn’t seem to be getting any older either. That means teams with championship aspirations are going to have to beat Los Angeles this offseason, or they’ll have no hope of beating them in the playoffs (barring—basketball gods forbid—catastrophic injury). In no other major sport does the preseason favorite win the title as often as in basketball. With so few players per team, the talent level on each team goes much further in deciding the results than in, say, football which has about 50 players on a roster. With the 2021 season rumored to start in January, the next three months stand to see a lot of player movement as teams gear up for the championship run.

There are a few teams who may just want to sit on their hands and see how things play out. Teams like the Warriors and the Nets stand to get their stars back, and should have a chance to compete with fully healthy rosters. The Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, can just give their young guys—Jokic, Murray, Michael Porter Jr, Bol Bol, etc—another year to develop together and they should be formidable for years to come in the west. Same goes for the Boston Celtics with their young core, although they’ll need Gordon Hayward to live up to his $128 million contract (and they could probably afford to sign an actual big man). There will be a lot of differing opinions on what the Houston Rockets should do this offseason, but if you ask me, they’ll probably just keep doing what they’ve been doing; feeding James Harden and shooting a ton of threes.

Then there are the teams that are in good position, but probably need to make one more move to compete at the highest level. The Milwaukee Bucks, for example, should do one of two things; they can bring in another star to complement Giannis (Khris Middleton clearly isn’t going to cut it), or they can dedicate every ounce of their organization’s vast resources to teaching the Greek Freak how to shoot threes. Either of these routes would result in Milwaukee being an obvious eastern conference favorite. Staying in the east, the Philadelphia 76ers have already made their first big move; bringing in Doc Rivers to coach a team that was one bounce away from reaching the NBA finals last year against the Raptors. This squad still needs shooters to space the floor for Simmons and Embiid (Danilo Gallinari would make a lot of sense here), but just the addition of a guiding hand like Rivers’ should put them in place to make a deep playoff run. When you look at the team Rivers just left, the Los Angeles Clippers, they obviously need a head coach now, but their primary goal this offseason should be retaining Montrezl Harrell (18.6 PPG, 7.1 RPG), who’s set to be an unrestricted free agent. They’ll also consider whether Paul George is really the best complement to Kawhi Leonard, and may want to move him for someone like *whispers* Chris Paul. The Toronto Raptors are in a similar position with unrestricted free agent Fred VanVleet, who has stated that he prefers to stay in Toronto. They also need one more impact guy if they want to compete for a title. Demar DeRozan is expected to decline his player option with the Spurs—did someone say reunion? The Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks both have solid cores, but need to add a piece or two before they can compete in a stacked western conference. Same goes for the Trailblazers, who snuck into the playoffs this year with a losing record. With the Warriors healthy, the young Sacramento Kings improving, and Popovich’s Spurs presumably returning to some sort of normalcy, this won’t be the case again next year. If Portland can’t get Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum some help, they could find themselves on the outside of the playoff picture looking in.

If you thought I forgot about the Miami Heat, you’re mistaken. The Finals weren’t as competitive as a six game series would imply, but that doesn’t mean the Heat aren’t in great position for next year. If they add some more veteran presence to this roster, they could make another serious title bid. Unrestricted free agent Paul Millsap could give this team some extra leadership and punch off the bench, and at this stage in his career, he’d likely be willing to take a pay cut to play for a championship (although he may have just as good a chance if he stays in Denver). It’d also be silly to ignore the defending champs in free agency. If there’s one thing we know about teams constructed around LeBron James, it’s that they’re never finished. The Lakers front office will surely be looking for ways to improve this team’s depth to take even more of the burden off LeBron’s massive shoulders, and Los Angeles has always been a premier destination for free agents—even more so now that they’re the team to beat. With plenty of game-changing free agents set to hit the open market (Andre Drummond, Evan Fournier, Hassan Whiteside, and Davis Bertans as well as previously mentioned players), the stakes are high for this offseason. Whoever can walk away from the next three months with one or more of these guys will have a great chance to walk away with a banner next fall.