Bold Predictions for the Rest of the 2022-23 NBA Season
With fewer than one-quarter of the NBA regular season remaining, it's time for a fresh, just-out-of-the-oven batch of bold predictions.
Like always, this exercise will strive to balance plausibility with ambition. Not all of these guesstimates are surface-of-the-sun hot, but they do rage against prevailing consensus, even if only lightly.
They are not presented without conviction, either. I actually believe in them. Am I 100 percent certain across the board? Absolutely not. But my confidence level sits no lower than, let's say, 67 percent at any given stop.
Final programing note: There will be no playoff-series prophecies here. We'll save those for a different time. These predictions will focus on what's left of the regular season and then encompass the play-in tournament.
Ready? Set?
Let's step out on some limbs, of varying sturdiness, together.
Damian Lillard will Make FIRST TEAM All-NBA
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Damian Lillard is having one of the quietest historically awesome seasons in recent memory. And he's churning out these mind-melting returns returns at the age of 32.
Luka Dončić (33.4) and Joel Embiid (33.0) are the only players averaging more points per game than Lillard, who's 32.5 are a personal best—and come on a career-high 58.5 percent shooting inside the arc. He's also downing 37.5 percent of his 11.3 three-point attempts per game, which is just stupid. And he's canning 91.7 percent of his career-high 9.5 free-throw attempts, which is just stupid, as well.
The NBA has never seen volume and efficiency married quite like this. And no, that is not hyperbole.
Among the 30 times in league history that a player has averaged more than 32 points per game, nobody has ever spit out a higher true shooting percentage than Lillard's current mark of 65.2.
Related: Duh-amn.
Predicting an All-NBA First Team bid for Lillard doesn't seem especially scintillating when framed this way. But Stephen Curry was a virtual lock for one of the two spots before his left shoulder injury. He is back and still has time to reclaim that throne.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander isn't going anywhere, either. (Probably.) His abdominal strain might limit him the rest of the way, but he has the total-minutes edge for now, and his case gets ever stronger if the Oklahoma City Thunder stick ahead of the Portland Trail Blazers in the standings.
This is all to say: One of the First Team All-NBA slots will go to Dončić. The other is far less settled—but will invariably, and deservingly, be awarded to Dame.
Betting Favorites will NOT Win MIP or DPOY
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This prediction carried significantly more spice prior to Sunday. Sixth Man of the Year was initially looped under the umbrella, but the folks over at FanDuel now have Immanuel Quickley (-110) as the prohibitive favorite (as he should be). I can't bring myself to presume voters will choose Malcolm Brogdon (-120), Norman Powell (+4200), Malik Monk (+6500) or someone else over him.
Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player are different beasts—in my humble, yet still very loud-mouthed opinion. Let's start with the former.
Jaren Jackson Jr. (-160) leads the field by a pretty heavy margin. His case writes itself—and I already wrote about it, too. But this isn't about his functional credentials. Those are beyond reproach.
His court time? Not so much.
Jackson is averaging fewer than 28 minutes per game. If he wins Defensive Player of the Year, he'll be just the third player to do so while failing to eclipse the 30-minute threshold—and the first since 1986-87, when Michael Cooper took home the honors.
Voters might overlook this. This year's DPOY landscape isn't especially inspiring. It also isn't without genuine alternatives.
The Milwaukee Bucks have usurped the Memphis Grizzlies to nab the league's best defensive rating and play two tantalizing candidates in Brook Lopez (holy rim protection) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (holy everything). Draymond Green is criminally undervalued at +8000. Bam "Guards Literally Everyone" Adebayo is quality value at +900. The official prediction: One of these four players will win DPOY over JJJ.
My Most Improved Player skepticism is more straightforward. Lauri Markkanen (-220) is the odds-on favorite. That's not egregious. He's amid a smack-you-in-the-face breakout. But Jalen Brunson (+350) and Mikal Bridges (+2100) are spitting out intriguing cases, and Tyrese Haliburton (+6500) is successfully making the leap from fringe star to All-NBA candidate or lock.
Then, of course, there's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+650). He has made the hardest leap of all, going from fringe All-Star to viable candidate. The Oklahoma City Thunder are currently managing his minutes in the wake of abdominal strain, but he has already played enough to satisfy undefined availability quota. More importantly, his ascent into megastardom is more meaningful than Markkanen capitalizing on volume and opportunity without materially adding to his strengths. Voters will recognize SGA for as much. I think.
The Mavs and/or Clippers will Miss the Playoffs
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First thing's first: Both the Dallas Mavericks and L.A. Clippers will make the play-in tournament. That is not the playoffs. Around these parts, the postseason doesn't officially begin until the final eight seeds in each conference are settled and first-round matchups are underway.
Once we reach the real playoffs, one of the Mavericks or Clippers won't be there. Maybe even both will be watching from home after bowing out during the play-in tournament.
Perhaps this isn't scorching enough for true takemasters. That's fine. But FiveThirtyEight gives the Clippers a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Mavericks, meanwhile, check in with an 80 percent chance of cracking the first round of the postseason.
Both marks are too high for my tastes.
Dallas is now 2-5 in games with Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving. Just about every loss has been a crunch-time heartbreaker, and the Mavs are handedly winning the minutes their stars log together. But this team can't get stops. Dallas is bottom five in points allowed per possession since Jan. 1, and opponents are enjoying parades to the rim during the Dončić-Irving reps.
Maxi Kleber is back, which helps. But the Mavs defense hasn't necessarily hit rock bottom. Rival offenses are hitting under 30 percent of their triples when Dončić and Irving play together. That isn't going to hold. And Dallas will be up you-know-what's-creek without a paddle if Jason Kidd ever decides to expand the Luka, Kyrie and Christian Wood sample.
Even so, the Clippers might be the better bet to miss the playoffs. Sure, they are deeper, and more talented, and actually built to play defense, and were crescendoing before the start of February. They also seem to have an affinity for self-sabotage.
L.A. is 3-6 since the trade deadline, with a 15th-ranked offense and 25th-place defense. Worse: This slide was totally, unequivocally avoidable. Adding Russell Westbrook was always going to be a risk. It may have been indefensible no matter what. But it's sure as hell unjustifiable given the context in which he's being used.
The Clippers are starting Westbrook, for some reason. They have used him to close games, for some other reason. L.A. is getting blasted when he plays with both Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, which happens quite often, for another reason.
This regression to unspectacular ambiguity is not on Westbrook alone. He isn't calling the shots. It's more so on head coach Ty Lue, and Head of the Campaigned for Russ Club, Paul George, and of course, the front office for acquiescing to the Campaigned for Russ Club, at all.
More damningly, this isn't just a Westbrook thing. Terance Mann has been bounced from the starting five (by Russ) and seen his minutes dip. Marcus Morris Sr. is still front and center. There is no world, frankly, in which he, Westbrook and Eric Gordon should all be averaging more floor time than Mann. And if you're going to play Russ so much, for the love of sensibility, give more run to Nicolas Batum or Robert Covington over the silhouette of Morris.
Yes, the full-strength Clippers are constructed to be better than this. Whether they're smart enough to recognize that, though, is up for debate.
New York Will Win OVER 50 Games
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This won't seem bold enough at first blush. The New York Knicks are riding a nine-game winning streak and have emerged as national media darlings since the trade deadline. But they still need to go 12-4 over their final 16 games to bag at least 51 wins. That's hardly a given.
They're going to do it anyway.
Many have cited the Josh Hart trade as a turning point. It was. But it wasn't the defining one. Head coach Tom Thibodeau removing Evan Fournier, Derrick Rose and Cam Reddish from the rotation looms as more meaningful. And more to the point, the Knicks have not only been on the climb since the trade deadline. Their ascent started earlier—much earlier.
New York is fourth in offense and ninth in defense, with a top-four net rating, since Dec. 1. That's a stretch spanning 44 games, more than half the season, making it more of this team's normal than some extended flash or flicker.
Both Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle have burst onto the fringes of the All-NBA discussion during this time. (Randle has a much better shot of party crashing the forward ranks than Brunson does of edging out the vast array of guard candidates.) Immanuel Quickley has, quite literally, emerged as the Sixth Man of the Year favorite—and so much more. Since the turn of the calendar, he's averaging 15.7 points while downing 40.6 percent of his threes, 56.8 percent of his floaters and playing exhaustive defense.
To that end, no team's bench has fared better during this time. Quickley and Hart receive most of the shine, but Isaiah Hartenstein's play has picked up at both ends. The Knicks' reserves own the NBA's highest point differential per 100 possessions since Dec. 1.
Winning 75 percent of their games to close the season is still a gargantuan ask. But the Knicks have one of the five easiest schedules in the Eastern Conference, according to PlayoffStatus.com. And let's be realer than real: Thibodeau isn't about to curb minutes at the top of his rotation when New York remains within reasonable striking distance of home-court advantage to start the playoffs.
Go ahead and do what so few did before the start of the season: book the Knicks for 50-pus victories.
A 10-seed Will Make the Playoffs
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A 10-seed winning two play-in games and snaring a real playoff spot is an ending befitting the bedlam unfolding in both the Eastern and Western Conferences.
There is a more discernible hierarchy in the East. The Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks are the five best squads, hands down, albeit not necessarily in the listed order. The Brooklyn Nets lack star power but have a deep roster, replete with all the wings, and a large enough cushion to stick in sixth place.
Conventional wisdom would suggest the Miami Heat will lock up No. 7 after breezing through the play-in. I'm not quite ready to go that far; the offense is brutal. But Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler exist, so let's accept it as fact.
Handing out that final spot isn't nearly as simple.
The Atlanta Hawks continue to Jekyll-and-Hyde all over the place. Jakob Poeltl's rim protection and screen-setting have been big for the Toronto Raptors, but the half-court offense is still all sorts of clumpy and sad. The Washington Wizards have been, like, kind of good for more than two months. But you should trust their transition defense at your own peril—or, preferably, not at all. The Indiana Pacers loom so long as Tyrese Haliburton isn't shut down. The Orlando Magic are a legitimate defensive force and have not (yet) thrown in the towel.
Good luck identifying a decided favorite among this group. Any one is capable of running off two victories against some combination of the others.
It gets even more chaotic in the Western Conference. I won't dare to discuss seeding locks here. Five losses separate the fourth-place Phoenix Suns from the 13th-place Portland Trail Blazers. Anything is on the table.
Emerging from the play-in as a 10-seed should be harder in the West than the East. Both the Dallas Mavericks and L.A. Clippers could be sitting in those seventh and eighth spots.
Still, just consider some of the more likely 10th-place candidates: A Los Angeles Lakers team with (maybe) both LeBron James and D'Angelo Russell back in the lineup? Or a New Orleans Pelicans squad (maybe) getting back Zion Williamson?
The Utah Jazz are doing everything in their power not to finish 10th (or better), but neither Shai Gilgeous-Alexander nor Oklahoma City Thunder currently plan to go away. And does anyone really want to face Damian Lillard in sudden-death settings?
No 10-seed has won even a single play-in game so far. This year's parity near the bottom of the postseason chase is powerfully chatoic enough for that to change.
Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass and accurate entering Monday's games. Salary information via Spotrac.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
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