NBA Power Rankings: 7 teams enter season as legitimate title threats
By Phil Watson
The first set of NBA Power Rankings at HoopsHabit have arrived and, wow, is there a crowded field of teams that could hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June.
The NBA season tips off Tuesday night with a doubleheader on TNT that features the defending champs,
the league’s most-hyped rookie in more than a decade
and two teams in Tinseltown that made dramatic offseason moves.
More from Hoops Habit
- 7 Players the Miami Heat might replace Herro with by the trade deadline
- Meet Cooper Flagg: The best American prospect since LeBron James
- Are the Miami Heat laying the groundwork for their next super team?
- Sophomore Jump: 5 second-year NBA players bound to breakout
- NBA Trades: The Lakers bolster their frontcourt in this deal with the Pacers
The Toronto Raptors will hang their championship banner in the rafters at ScotiaBank Arena Tuesday night and the players (at least those still in town) will get their rings before tipping off against the New Orleans Pelicans, who will be without rookie Zion Williamson for what ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported would be a “period of weeks.”
He hurt his right knee during the Pelicans’ preseason game against the San Antonio Spurs on Oct. 13. The chilling part of a “period of weeks” is that the period — by definition — could be two weeks … or it could be 52.
After a frenzied offseason in which nearly half of the players in the league will begin this season with a new address, the landscape in the upper echelon of the league has been altered significantly.
There are up to seven teams that enter 2019-20 as legitimate contenders to win the NBA title … and none of those teams are the Raptors or the Golden State Warriors, who met in the NBA Finals just four months ago.
For the NBA as a whole, the league is probably just thrilled to be getting the focus back on games and players instead of politics and human rights after a disastrous turn of events that alienated China — a country that produces 15 percent of the NBA’s basketball related income.
There could be salary cap repercussions down the line over the incident, which could be troubling for teams that spent a combined $3 billion within the first 24 hours of free agency opening on June 30.
With that, here are the first set of NBA Power Rankings for 2019-20, a preseason snapshot of what the chips could look like once they settle in mid-April 2020.