Reintroduction to the NBA title race: The cases for and against the odds-on favorites

Since last we experienced real, live, honest-to-goodness NBA basketball, we’ve seen 32 trades featuring nearly 70 players and an armada of future draft picks, plus an estimated $2.15 billion in contracts signed in free agency. That number doesn’t factor in 17 new contract extensions, including what stands, for now, as the richest pact in the history of the sport.

That’s a lot of deck-chair shifting to sort through as we get set for the start of a new season and try to wrap our arms around which teams are most likely to find themselves in championship contention come June. So, as training camps open, with the hopes of the teams who made those deals and signed those contracts largely untarnished by collisions with reality: let’s!

According to BetMGM, six teams enter the 2023-24 campaign with championship odds of 15-to-1 (+1500) or better. (Here’s where we note that, last year, the number was seven … and that the team that actually won the title wasn’t one of them. Keep hope alive, fans of the Clippers, 76ers, Cavaliers, Mavericks and everyone else!)

Those teams feature nearly half of the members of last season’s All-NBA squads. They also feature some major questions that will need to be answered before they can hoist the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.

Let’s get reacclimated with the NBA’s expected upper echelon by considering the cases for and against those top six teams. We begin in The Good Land:

Milwaukee Bucks (+375)

The case for: As elevator pitches go, you could do worse than this: “The team that won the most games in the league last season, and is led by a guy who’s finished top-four in MVP voting for five straight years, also just traded for Damian Lillard.”

Before running aground in the first round of the playoffs against the eventual Finalist Heat, Milwaukee had run roughshod for months, going 29-7 — a 66-win pace — after Khris Middleton returned to the lineup in late January. Recapturing that form after swapping out stalwart two-way guard Jrue Holiday might take some time. But these Bucks have a higher ceiling than last year’s model, thanks in part to how much the less balanced but more incendiary Lillard raises their offensive floor.

The arrival of one of the league’s most lethal and multifaceted scoring forces should unlock whole new worlds of offensive devastation for new head coach Adrian Griffin. Giannis Antetokounmpo has never played with a pull-up shooting or pick-and-roll facilitating threat anywhere near Lillard’s level. Lillard has never played with a big man as ferocious heading to the rim or as skilled making plays in space as Antetokounmpo. The results could be terrifying.

Defenses already panicked by the prospect of Antetokounmpo marauding to the rim in transition will now also have to deal with the specter of Lillard pulling up from 35 while everybody backtracks to the paint. They can’t duck under Giannis’ ball screens, for fear of Dame raining fire. They can’t blitz two defenders at the level of the screen, lest they let Giannis get rolling downhill with a head of steam. They can’t suck in weak-side or corner help defenders too early, because that’s an easy pitch-and-catch to a spot-up marksman — Middleton, Brook Lopez, Pat Connaughton, people’s champ Bobby Portis, newcomer Malik Beasley — capable of raising up and cashing out.

In Mike Budenholzer’s tenure, the highest the Bucks finished in non-garbage-time offensive efficiency was third. If Giannis and Dame can find synergy early, and if the complementary pieces stay healthy, this group could (maybe should?) beat that. And come the postseason, when elite defenses have been previously able to gum up the works against a Milwaukee side with multiple vulnerabilities — Holiday’s occasionally shaky ball-handling and decision-making, Middleton’s lost half-step due to injury, Antetokounmpo’s errant free-throw shooting, etc. — the Bucks can now give the ball to an 89.5% career free-throw shooter who helms elite half-court offenses every year and boasts one of the lowest turnover rates among high-volume ball-handlers.

Losing Holiday’s genius work at the point of attack could result in some slippage for a defense that finished fourth in the NBA in points allowed per possession. But with Lopez, last year’s runner-up in Defensive Player of the Year voting, still patrolling the paint in drop coverage and Antetokounmpo still lurking as one of the league’s most fearsome help defenders, Milwaukee should still have enough rim protection, length and smarts to remain a top-10-caliber defense. Pair that with one of the league’s most efficient offenses, and you’ve got a title favorite.

The case against: It starts with health. The veteran-heavy Bucks are relying on Lopez, 35, who missed nearly all of the 2021-22 campaign following back surgery; Lillard, 33, whose shelving late last season might not have been injury-based but who missed more than half of ’21-22 after abdominal surgery; Middleton, 32, who missed more than half of last season with knee issues; and Antetokounmpo, who’s just 28, but who has missed 35 games over the last three seasons with a variety of issues, suffered a back injury in Game 1 against the Heat that kept him out for Games 2 and 3, and had knee surgery in July that kept him from suiting up for Greece at this summer’s FIBA World Cup. Significant absences from any or all of those four cornerstones would deal a serious blow to Milwaukee’s championship aspirations.

It also remains to be seen how Griffin reshuffles the rotation after Milwaukee sent out two starters (Holiday and shooting guard Grayson Allen) for one (Lillard). With Connaughton likely slotting into the starting lineup, who makes up the reserve wing corps? Can Jae Crowder, who barely broke a sweat after arriving in Milwaukee at February’s trade deadline, perform in a larger role? Are the young Bucks that Jon Horst plucked from the draft — rising sophomores MarJon Beauchamp and A.J. Green, second-round rookies Andre Jackson Jr. and Chris Livingston — ready for prime time?

Milwaukee answered the question of who’d be backing up Lillard over the weekend, signing Cameron Payne, recently waived by the rebuilding Spurs, to take the reins. But after missing a bunch of time with injuries the last two regular seasons, and largely underperforming the past two postseasons in Phoenix, it’s an open question just how much the Bucks will be able to trust the former Suns reserve in a playoff series. For that matter: How trustworthy will Griffin prove to be? By all accounts, Antetokounmpo believes in him; otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the reins for Budenholzer after last year’s disappointing finish. But we’ve never seen him make high-leverage strategic decisions in the games that matter most. The Bucks aim to be playing in a lot of them; how well Griffin fares could be a major factor in how far they can go.

Boston Celtics (+400)

The case for: Another compelling elevator pitch: A team that might’ve been one rolled ankle away from a second straight Finals* just augmented arguably the NBA’s best wing tandem with All-Star-caliber bookends.

* Yes, that elides the whole “they were down 3-0 to Miami in that series and wound up losing Game 7 at home by 19” thing. But this is the case for, right?

Jayson Tatum’s coming off consecutive All-NBA first-team nods and a season in which he became just the seventh player to average 30 points, eight rebounds and four assists per game with a true shooting percentage north of .600. And for all the arched eyebrows over Jaylen Brown’s record-setting contract, it’s worth remembering that he earned it by making All-NBA in his own right, averaging a career-best 26.6 points per game while co-anchoring the only team in the NBA to finish in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency last season.

Boston has a .639 winning percentage when Tatum and Brown play, with four conference finals trips in the six seasons they’ve been together. Their presence on the perimeter establishes the Celtics’ floor. The two newcomers to TD Garden, though, could determine their ceiling.

After seeing their offense sputter against the Heat in the conference finals — especially in the half-court, where a Boston attack that finished third in the regular season scored at a rate that would’ve ranked 25th — the Celtics sought both more firepower and increased versatility in the frontcourt. They found it in Kristaps Porziņģis, who combines rare shooting skill for his size (38.5% from deep last season on six attempts per 36 minutes of floor time) with excellent rim protection in drop coverage and an improved capacity to go get a bucket down low. The towering Latvian scored 1.18 points per post-up last season, according to Synergy Sports’ data tracking, fourth-most among high-volume low-block attackers — a useful mismatch-creating weapon against defenses built to slow Boston down by switching.

The problem: Nabbing Porziņģis from Washington cost the Celtics longtime talisman and elite point-of-attack defender Marcus Smart. But then the Dame deal presented Boston with an elegant solution: Go get Holiday, who, when last he saw Lillard in the playoffs, absolutely demolished him. (And who, if he plays for Boston, then can’t play for Philadelphia, Miami, New York, or any of the other Eastern suitors who were reportedly interested in his services.)

The erstwhile Buck is also an elite point-of-attack defender with a ton of big-game experience, while profiling as a better shooter and more efficient offensive player (in the regular season, at least) than Smart. Pairing him with the similarly rock-solid Derrick White surely had the Bucks and several other Eastern hopefuls muttering curses under their breath — and, alongside the Jays, KP and the immortal Al Horford, might’ve given Boston the best starting and closing groups in the league.

The case against: At the risk of repeating myself: Health, depth and stability. Those upgrades came at a price that left the Celtics thin at key spots.

After moving Grant Williams to the Mavericks in a sign-and-trade and shipping Robert Williams III to Portland for Holiday, Boston’s now extremely reliant on the availability and performance of Porziņģis, who topped 60 games last season for the first time since 2016-17 and missed this summer’s FIBA World Cup with plantar fasciitis, and Horford, a 37-year-old entering his 17th season with more than 38,000 minutes on his NBA odometer whom the C’s kept out of half their back-to-back sets last season. (For what it’s worth, Porziņģis is reportedly a full go at the start of training camp.) And after sending out Smart for Porziņģis and Sixth Man of the Year winner Malcolm Brogdon for Holiday, the Celtics will now likely need Payton Pritchard to be ready to shoulder a much larger burden than he’s had through three pro seasons … which, considering the former first-round pick had previously been looking for the exit if he didn’t get a chance to do more, might be music to his ears.

It’s possible that some of the candidates that personnel chief Brad Stevens has assembled to fill those key reserve roles — bigs Luke Kornet, Oshae Brissett, Neemias Queta and Wenyen Gabriel, wings Lamar Stevens, Dalano Banton, Svi Mykhailiuk and rookie Jordan Walsh — will seize the opportunity to shine in the spotlight. If they don’t, expect Stevens — who still has first-round draft picks in 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 to play with, an enviable position among bona fide title contenders — to be opportunistic in hunting upgrades on the trade market. (Finding matching salary might be tricky, though: Nobody outside Boston’s top six makes more than $5 million.)

It’s also possible, though, that Boston’s takeaway from watching Denver’s path to the promised land was that you can win it all by relying on only six or seven guys if you’ve got the right six or seven guys. Therein lies the gamble. We’ve seen Holiday come up with monstrous plays on the biggest stage to win a title; we’ve also seen him struggle from some of the same bouts of shaky decision-making and errant jump shooting that have plagued Smart. We just saw Porziņģis have perhaps the best season of his career in D.C.; we also haven’t seen him do anything of consequence in a game of consequence in more than three years, and have never seen him do it past the first round. The Celtics’ moves made them a better team on paper. Now we find out how that holds up in practice.

Denver Nuggets (+500)

The case for: Our simplest elevator pitch yet: They just won the championship!

Denver marauded through the 2022 postseason, going 16-4 and outscoring opponents by 9.2 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions — the best mark of any champion since the Kevin Durant-era Warriors. Michael Malone’s club finished with style, too: a four-game sweep of the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, followed by a five-game domination of the Heat, helmed by an immortalizing performance from Nikola Jokić, who became just the 11th player in league history with multiple regular-season MVPs and Finals MVP honors.

After a summer of clubbing, dancing, horse races and mostly just being left alone, the big fella’s back. (Seems thrilled.) So, too, are Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Michael Porter Jr., as Denver brings back the entire starting lineup from last season’s title run, which blitzed opponents by 12.7 points-per-100 during the regular season — one of the best marks of any big-minutes lineup in the league — and was nearly as dominant in the postseason.

All five are between 25 and 30; this is a group squarely in its prime, with size, shooting and skill all over the court, and the benefit of both continuity and ascendant high-end talent. It’s reasonable to wonder whether the combination of a championship hangover and other teams reloading could prevent Denver from defending its crown. Go back and watch that playoff tape, though, and it also feels pretty reasonable to believe the Nuggets might just reduce any would-be throne-takers to rubble.

The case against: Recent NBA history hasn’t been too kind to defending titlists. The only teams to repeat as champions in the past 20 years were the Kobe-Pau Lakers (2009, 2010), the Big Three Heat (2012, 2013), and the KD Warriors (2017, 2018). It’s tough to play 100-game seasons back-to-back without something going pear-shaped … especially when you’re as reliant on your starting lineup as this Denver team figures to be.

Only seven Nuggets logged more than 300 minutes in the 2023 playoffs. Two of them are gone, with Bruce Brown getting the bag in Indiana and Jeff Green heading south to Houston. The Nuggets will look to replace them from within with a mix of intriguing young talent (they see Christian Braun as an “apples to apples” replacement for Brown, and could give a longer look to rising sophomore Peyton Watson) and seasoned veterans (Reggie Jackson’s back as a reserve ball-handler, Justin Holiday comes in for spot minutes on the wing).

If those replacements can take steps forward, Denver might not miss a beat. (Keep an eye on rookies Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett and Hunter Tyson, too.) If it takes time for the Nuggets’ second unit to coalesce, though, the champs might be a bit slow getting out of the gate — which, in a conference featuring more teams loaded up to compete and fewer easy W’s on the schedule, could put them behind the 8-ball in the race for seeding. And when the competition’s this fierce, it might only take one break going against you to send you home early.

Phoenix Suns (+650)

The case for: The Suns went 14-5 with Kevin Durant in the lineup, outscoring opponents by 4.5 points-per-100 with KD and Devin Booker on the floor together on the strength of an offense that produced a scorching 122.2 points per 100 — a league-best-level of explosiveness. They were the only team to even put a scratch on the Nuggets’ armor, thanks to a pair of blistering performances by the two all-world scoring maestros, before bowing out in six with Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton watching from the sidelines.

The Suns still have Booker and Durant. Now, though, they also have Bradley Beal, imported at the cost of Paul, Landry Shamet and a bushel of second-round picks to provide another All-Star-caliber source of shot creation and on-the-move marksmanship. Your mileage may vary on whether moving Ayton for Jusuf Nurkić, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson represents an upgrade, but Phoenix brass clearly believed a shake-up was warranted, and there’s a chance that a healthy Nurkić could provide a brand of complementary playmaking and defensive stability that Ayton struggled to consistently provide.

The Suns are betting that the Booker/Durant/Beal trio, with Nurkić and Drew Eubanks screening and diving, plus more shooting and versatility on the wing — remember, Phoenix cleaned up on the minimum-salary-contract market — will be deeper and more dangerous than what was essentially a two-man team by the end of that Nuggets series. The wager that could absolutely blow up in their faces. It could also produce a team with enough offensive answers to win four playoff series.

The case against: Once more, with feeling: It starts with health!

Durant, who just turned 35, is about to hit the 43,000-minute mark for his career and hasn’t played more than 55 games in a season since rupturing his Achilles tendon in the 2019 Finals. That he still looks like Kevin Durant more often than not when he’s on the floor, following that injury and at this age, is remarkable. It’s the moments when he doesn’t, though — either because he’s missing several weeks with a leg injury, or because, as was the case in his last two playoff losses to the Celtics and Nuggets, he’s not quite as able to overcome defensive physicality as he once was — that could pose a problem.

That’s especially true if Beal, who has missed 84 games over the past two seasons, and Booker, who’s been shelved for stretches in that same span with hamstring and groin injuries, wind up unavailable or limited. Yes, the Suns have more legit rotation options this year than they did after last season’s Durant blockbuster. (One of them, Damion Lee, has already been sidelined by a meniscus injury.) But as nice as it is to get serviceable players like Yuta Watanabe, Keita Bates-Diop, Josh Okogie and Year 16 Eric Gordon out of the bargain bin, you don’t want to have to rely too much on guys you find at that price.

That’s true of every team, of course. But for a team as top-heavy — both in terms of talent and financial outlay — as the Suns, the danger is particularly acute. (I’m thinking “make sure to build in some extra time for stretching and treatment” with the fellas.)

Los Angeles Lakers (+1200)

The case for: It took nearly four months and a massive trade deadline reshuffle for the Lakers to find themselves. They did it, though, and after that midstream reorientation, the team that had largely been wandering in the wilderness since the bubble managed to relocate its identity: L.A. went a West-best 18-9 after the trade deadline before beating the only Western teams with better net ratings in that span, Memphis and Golden State, in the first two rounds of the playoffs before falling to Denver.

Carp on his inconsistent offensive production if you must, but Anthony Davis was the best defensive player in the 2023 postseason; there aren’t many players who can say they controlled the terms of engagement in a playoff series against Stephen Curry, but that’s what he did. Combining him with LeBron James — even at age 38, even going into Year 21 — gives the Lakers as good a chance as anybody of having the best two players in any game or series, which remains a heck of a head start when you’re trying to trace a path to the promised land.

This Lakers team features a more formidable supporting cast, too. Austin Reaves, coming off Team USA duty, is back on a sweetheart of an extension — less than 10% of the salary cap every year! — to provide the kind of pick-and-roll playmaking, free-throw hunting and shotmaking that can reduce the burden on L.A.’s Hall of Famers. Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka kept the good vibes rolling with a very strong offseason, re-upping deadline additions Rui Hachimura, D’Angelo Russell and Jarred Vanderbilt, signing Heat playoff riser Gabe Vincent and capable combo forward Taurean Prince, and taking minimum flyers on the likes of Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes and September surprise Christian Wood.

The result: This team goes a legit 10-deep in playoff-caliber athleticism, shooting, size, length and skill, before you even get to youngsters like Max Christie and rookie Jalen Hood-Schifino. Second-year head coach Darvin Ham’s got more options to deploy this season — more playable bigs to match size with size, more wing depth if he needs to downshift and play small, more potential ball-handlers and screen partners, etc.

If all else fails, though, Ham can always dial up the fastball he spent last season finding: “Surround LeBron and AD with shooters who can defend.” Sometimes, the other guy hits it. But you can strike a lot of dudes out with it, too.

The case against: For one thing: Nikola Jokić can hit that fastball, really hard and really far. And if AD wasn’t the answer for getting it by him, I’m not sure that Hayes, Wood or any other big man in forum blue and gold will be. (Don’t say Rui. Please don’t say Rui.)

For another — and listen, I’d like to stop saying it, too, but these teams keep leaning on extremely good veterans with ever-fattening medical charts — there’s health and availability. After missing 26 games in 2022-23, AD hasn’t made 60 appearances in five years; after missing 27 last season, LeBron has only done it once in that span. The Lakers have been awesome pretty much whenever James and Davis have shared the court (without Westbrook, that is) since 2019. They just, you know, need that to happen more … especially if shooting continues to be an issue.

L.A. finished last regular season 24th in 3-pointers made per game, 26th in 3-pointers attempted, and 25th in team 3-point accuracy … and declined in all those categories in the playoffs, with only Reaves (39-for-88, 44.3%) and Hachimura (19-for-39, an eye-popping 48.7%) consistently posing a credible threat from the perimeter. Can Russell, certainly a willing shooter and a pretty accurate one before going frigid in the playoffs, thaw out enough to retain his value to the starting lineup? Will Reaves maintain his elite accuracy with defenses now locking in on him as a priority in the scouting report? Will Hachimura revert back to the below-league-average distance shooter he’d been for most of his career? Can Vincent (37.8% from deep for Miami in the playoffs, but 33.9% for his career) and Prince (37.2% career) knock down enough shots to help decongest things in the half-court?

If so, the ceiling on the Lakers’ offense — which, somewhat stunningly, has finished in the bottom 10 in points scored per possession in four of LeBron’s five years with the team — vaults higher. If not … well, they’ll have to just keep grinding opponents out on the defensive end. They might be good enough to do it. It’s just a tough way to live.

Golden State Warriors (+1400)

The case for: They’ve still got Stephen Curry.

OK, that’s not entirely fair. Draymond Green’s still maybe the most versatile and devastating defender in the sport, and now he’s back and paid and there’s no sucker-punch TKO stormcloud to disperse before the next scrimmage. (There is the maybe-not-so-small matter of that multiple-week ankle sprain, though.) After losing two seasons to devastating leg injuries, Klay Thompson led the NBA in 3-pointers, averaging 24 points per game on .603 true shooting in the second half of the season before running out of gas in the final four games against L.A.; now another offseason removed from those injuries, he should enter the season in better rhythm, better shape and more motivated than ever.

Pair them with a full dose of Andrew Wiggins, who missed more than half of the 2022-23 schedule dealing with a personal matter, and the perpetually underappreciated Kevon Looney, and the Warriors still boast one of the league’s best lineups. A healthy turn from two-way chaos agent Gary Payton II, whose brief, bizarre, injury-plagued sojourn in Portland is now in the rear-view mirror, might help Golden State crank its defense back up a notch after slipping out of the top 10.

So: Curry’s not the whole case. He’s still an awful lot of it, though.

There remains nothing quite like Steph on offense: perpetual motion producing primal fear, an offensive system unto himself. The Warriors won the 2021 championship because he willed it. They survived Sacramento in Round 1 because he did the same.

As long as he plays like this, shoots like this, opens doors like this, Golden State has a puncher’s chance. What it needs, though, is another way to create openings, a way to fight southpaw — particularly when Steph needs a break. They found one in longtime nemesis Chris Paul, who’s no longer the All-NBA firebreather he was when his Clippers and Rockets crossed swords with the Warriors in the playoffs, but who’s still as brilliant a pick-and-roll practitioner and tactical savant as there is in the sport … and who, if he’ll take on the role, could be the sort of playmaking answer Golden State’s second unit has sorely lacked.

It’d be hard to blame Paul for not leaping at the chance to come off the bench — something he’s literally never done in his 18-year NBA career — just because he’s the new guy in town. But that mission, should he choose to accept it, could pay handsome dividends: the opportunity to renew his Phoenix partnership with Dario Saric and run opposing reserves ragged; the introduction of youngsters Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody to the kind of hard-knocks schooling that could elevate their games; the ratcheting-down of regular-season minutes to stay fresher for the postseason.

There’s really only one box in this league that Paul’s yet to check. If he buys in, balls out and, for once, stays healthy, this Warriors team just might get him there.

The case against: Green said at Warriors media day Monday that he’s a “pretty fast healer,” but even if he’s able to come back from his ankle injury in time for opening night, he’ll still be playing catch-up on his conditioning and timing. And if he’s a step slow, the Warriors’ defense will be, too.

With Green on the floor last season, blowing up actions and wreaking havoc, Golden State gave up 110.3 points per 100, a mark that would’ve led the league over the full season. With the eight-time All-Defensive Team selection on the pine, though, the Warriors hemorrhaged points to the tune of a 120.1 defensive rating; that would’ve ranked 29th. (Shouts to the very young, very bad Spurs.) As vital as Steph is to the functioning of the Warriors’ offense, Green serves a similarly central role to them getting stops. They won’t rise to the top of the standings or linger long in springtime unless Steve Kerr and Co. can keep the 33-year-old mastermind in working order.

(On the plus side: Draymond being out a few weeks opens up a spot in the starting five, potentially giving Kerr and his staff the chance to see how a Curry-Thompson-Paul backcourt looks alongside Wiggins and Looney. That alignment is probably too small to consistently start, but Golden State would be smart to tinker with it.)

Last year’s club didn’t have enough quality depth to reduce the burden on the stars. Are Kuminga and Moody, former lottery picks now in Year 3, ready to earn Kerr’s trust and cement their spots in the rotation? Can vets like Saric, Cory Joseph, Rudy Gay and Rodney McGruder capably fill roles? Can any of the young players on the fringes — rookies Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis, two-way contract signees Usman Garuba and Lester Quinones — make a case for more playing time?

Golden State doesn’t need those players to suddenly skyrocket to stardom. But, in keeping with the broader theme of this list of favorites, a Warriors squad relying on the 35-year-old Curry, 33-year-old Green and Thompson and 38-year-old Paul will need to manage minutes, which will require some innings-eating from the rest of the roster. Golden State’s core might still have the goods to win the 16-game sprint. That won’t matter, though, if they can’t get through the 82-game marathon.