NBA: 10 burning questions for the 2019-20 season
By Phil Watson
9. What teams have the early edge?
The real NBA is not like a video game — you can’t just throw a star-studded roster together and immediately expect to dominate.
There are many real-world examples of this phenomenon. Lest we forget, the 2010-11 Miami Heat added LeBron James and Chris Bosh to Dwyane Wade and lost eight of their first 17 games — with many calling for coach Erik Spoelstra’s head — before settling in.
There will be a ton of teams making major adjustments to their lineups and rotations to start the 2019-20 season and that might provide an opportunity for a team such as the Denver Nuggets — who return most of their core intact, having added Jerami Grant to the mix without losing anything substantial, to take advantage early.
Denver returns All-NBA center Nikola Jokic with young guards Jamal Murray and Gary Harris and veteran Paul Millsap and — unlike most of the contenders in the league — won’t have to spend the first month of the season learning the names of all the new guys.
This is a factor that will become less and less important as the season progresses and the newly assembled teams settle into their rotations and lineups, but a strong start as those teams make those transitions could equal an extra place or two in the standings for a club like Denver.
Given the home-court advantage the Nuggets enjoy being a mile high above sea level, that could be an important factor in playoff matchups with homecourt advantage.
The Milwaukee Bucks are another team with a decent amount of continuity. While they have an almost entirely new reserve group, only Malcolm Brogdon is gone from the starting five.
The Philadelphia 76ers have Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris back to help stabilize the adjustments of Josh Richardson and Al Horford in what could be the deepest starting group in the league (and it will have to be with that bench).
Add the Portland Trail Blazers into that mix as well with Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum the clearly established 1-2 punch, even as they integrate several new faces.
The early part of the season could be huge for these teams as things only figure to get more difficult as reinvented clubs get more comfortable.