Which NBA teams will be the top dogs five years from now?
There’s no mystery as to which team is currently on top of the NBA. The Golden State Warriors are pretty clearly better than everybody else right now. But will Golden State still be on top half a decade later?
Of course it’s impossible to definitively say who will be where in five seasons. This is the NBA, where the only wise thing to expect is the unexpected. But based on assets teams currently have, it is possible to have a fairly good idea of how things will shake up.
This is a ranking of all 30 NBA teams, from best to worst, on where they should end up five years from now. There were a lot of factors that went into this: young talent, slightly older talent, draft picks held and franchise quality.
Good, young (18-24) players are the best indicators of a team’s future success. They’re more reliable than draft picks, and while many NBA players will be getting progressively worse over the next five years, the young guys will be getting even better.
Older players were next on the list in terms of importance. They might be slightly past their primes in half a decade, but there are a lot of talented 30-year-old NBA players out there.
Next came draft picks. Teams like the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers are not automatically rated to be good in five years just because they have a stockpile of draft picks. The chance of a team really nailing even half of their draft picks is pretty slim.
So although draft picks do matter, their fickle nature puts them under the proven commodities that are NBA players.
Finally, last on the list is franchise quality. This includes the coaching staff, front office and location of a team. The Miami Heat won’t have most of their current team in five years, and they don’t have many draft picks, but they do have the benefit of being in South Beach.
Explanation time is over. Let’s get to the good stuff, and find out who the best NBA teams in 2020 will be.
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