Bold Predictions for the Final 2 Weeks of the NBA Season
Fewer than two weeks remain until the 2023-24 NBA regular season winds to a close. It will go by in a flash and leave us all exhausted—emotionally, physically, the whole shebang.
Chaotic stretch runs tend to have that effect. And this year, like most others, we're in for an anarchic finish.
So much is left unsettled. Playoff pictures may be solidifying, but they're miles from cemented. The annual end-of-the-year Tankathonapaloozabowl is in full "Ah, right, April basketball" bloom. Critical injuries are jeopardizing or warping immediate outlooks. Pivotal returns are here or nearing, and they could swing not just the conclusion of the regular season, but the entire playoffs.
Sounds like a good time for some 11th-hour predictions with a side of extra spice.
This trip through the crystal ball will look only at regular-season stakes. Postseason positioning, win-loss records, award outcomes and the like are all fair game. Anything that will unfold during the playoffs (i.e. Who wins the 2024 NBA Finals?) is off the table.
Though the bolder-end-of-the-spectrum takes is the goal, this mustn't be conflated with inauthentically inflammatory. Yours truly must believe these predictions will come to pass. That inherently caps just how daring this exercise can be.
But plenty of topics and scenarios remain without consensus determinations. This space is meant to touch upon—and forecast—the most notable of those.
19 Teams Will Finish with Winning Records
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When's the last time 19 teams finished the regular season above .500?
Uh, that would be never. (Hat tip: Dan Feldman of Dunc'd On Prime.)
Until now. Maybe.
Actualizing this prediction is on the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets. The other 17 teams above .500 are far enough away from break-even that epic stretch-run collapses won't yank them to net-neutral-or-worse territory.
Houston may warrant more confidence in this department than Golden State. The Warriors remain weirdly finicky at home, and head coach Steve Kerr still feels like he's searching for a rotation that yields any sort of consistency.
Then again, the Rockets have one of the league's five hardest remaining schedules and are still without Alperen Şengün. They deserve all the credit in the world for how they've fared without him so far, but they gorged on a favorable schedule for his first seven absences. What happens if (when?) Jalen Green stops playing at an All-NBA level? Or if Fred VanVleet and Jeff Green cease going bananas from deep? Or if opposing players start banging in some threes of their own?
None of these questions or red flags are enough to blow my optimism to smithereens. Maybe that makes me a romantic. Or naive. Whatever.
Nineteen teams finishing with winning records would be cool. Since that hope is alive with two weeks left in the regular season, we might as well pander to its possibility.
At Least 3 Centers Will Make All-NBA
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Including one center per All-NBA team used to be the rule. Not anymore.
The positionless era of the selection process is upon us—a shift deemed almost universally reasonable, but also a bummer for non-guards. That's especially true for centers.
Talented towers are available in ample supply. A ballot without at least three centers says less about the state of the position and more about the talent at guard as well as the value (and opportunity) ascribed to primary ball-handlers, most of whom aren't bigs.
For a while, it didn't appear like there would be an adjustment period to the new world order. Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid entered the season as the sole All-NBA locks among centers, but that two-player pool has since winnowed down to Jokić alone since Embiid's meniscus injury made him ineligible.
That doesn't mean we're in line for a one- or even two-center All-NBA population. We'll get three. Heck, there might even be four.
Anthony Davis feels like the next-closest lock alongside Jokić. He is about to clear 2,500 minutes for the first time since 2017-18, remains a defensive dynamo and elite play-finisher and has even seen his perimeter shooting tick up during the month of March.
From here, we journey into the Land of Guesswork. I'm willing to bet Domantas Sabonis cracks one of the three All-NBA squads.
People tend to harp on his—and the Sacramento Kings'—overarching flaws. But averaging around 20 points, 14 rebounds and eight assists with a true shooting percentage near 65.0 objectively bonkers. No one other than Wilt Chamberlain has hit Sabonis' current benchmarks. That seems good.
Don't rule out another center candidate or three, either. Rudy Gobert is about to run away with Defensive Player of the Year. Could that get him in? Bam Adebayo is valued more for his playoff versatility, but he has the immediate defensive impact and box-score numbers to stake his claim. And you better believe Victor Wembanyama will have his supporters.
Positionless All-NBA teams will likely result in fewer centers making the cut down the road. Just not this year.
Victor Wembanyama Makes First-Team All-Defense
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It speaks to the absurdity of Victor Wembanyama that this doesn't sound very bold upon first consideration. And yet, here's every NBA rookie who has made an All-Defense team:
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1969-70)
- Hakeem Olajuwon (1984-85)
- Manute Bol (1985-86)
- David Robinson (1989-90)
- Tim Duncan (1997-98)
That's it.
Know how many of these newbies earned first-team All-Defense, though? Zero. Zilch. Zip. Wemby would be the first.
Strike that, let's go ahead and say he will be the first.
Perhaps this sounds outlandish to some. After all, the San Antonio Spurs are inside the bottom 10 of points allowed per possession. But their defense ranks above the 75th percentile with Wemby on the floor, which is no small feat when you consider the lineups in which he's spent a majority of his time.
San Antonio's stinginess with the surefire Rookie of the Year supports the eye test. He can be everywhere, at any time, even when a shot contest or rotation seems out of reach. His IQ is already through the roof, just like his wingspan. He doesn't get overwhelmed or indecisive when tracking both ends of a pick-and-roll or the cutting and passing lanes behind him.
If you're a fan of counting stats, he's got those. He leads the league in both blocks and stocks (steals plus blocks) per game by a comically sized margin. And if you're into numbers beyond the box score, well, he has those, too.
Opponents are shooting almost 11 percentage points worse than their average inside six feet against him, which is one of the 10 biggest differentials among nearly 200 players to contest at least 200 such looks. Rival offenses also see their rim and floater-range frequency and accuracy fall off a cliff when he's playing.
Slotting Wembanyama for second-team All-Defense no longer qualifies as daring. He's a shoo-in for at least that—so much so that becoming the first rookie ever to get recognized as one of the league's five most valuable defenders is absolutely in play.
A No. 10 Seed Makes It Out of the Play-In Tournament for the First Time
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Do I actually believe this? Or am I simply hell-bent on continuing to predict it until it actually happens, because it will eventually happen?
Call it a little of both. While I don't feel particularly confident in any of the 10th-place candidates, the circumstances higher up the standings allow for wild-card outcomes.
Let's start with the Western Conference, where the No. 10 spot will likely go to either the Houston Rockets or Golden State Warriors. The latter is the better candidate to go on a play-in tear.
Golden State doesn't necessarily deserve the benefit of the doubt, but it has the talent to manufacture lightning in a bottle and rip off a pair of consecutive wins over anyone. Plus, most of the teams the Warriors must potentially go through—most likely two of the Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings, New Orleans Pelicans and Dallas Mavericks—are portraits of unflappability.
Houston, meanwhile, is no pushover. The defense is hellfire, the team is catching fire from distance, and Jalen Green is exploding at the right time. Will the Rockets have Alperen Şengün (ankle) available? Potentially. You can feel better about their chances if they do. He arms them with someone who can surgically disrepair defenses in the half court.
Out in the Eastern Conference, 10th-place optimism has more to do with question marks in seventh, eighth and ninth than the likely holder of the final play-in spot, the Atlanta Hawks or Chicago Bulls.
Sure, The Windy City's finest have been weirdly competent for more than half the season. The Bulls are well north of .500 since beginning the year 5-14. And if both Jalen Johnson and Trae Young are healthy, the Hawks will look exponentially more appealing...on paper. (In practice, like always, is a different story.)
More than anything, though, the East's other (most likely) play-in participants—two of Indiana, Miami and Philadelphia—are banged up.
We all know the Heat don't care about their place in the standings. But their roster is decimated by injuries to go along with an enduring lack of perimeter shot creation. Joel Embiid is his nearing return from a meniscus injury, but he hasn't played since Jan. 30. There's no guarantee that he'll be in MVP form right out of the gate.
Meanwhile, Tyrese Haliburton appears to be rounding into form after looking like a shell of his early-season self following a hamstring issue. That's great! But the Pacers defense remains shaky, and Bennedict Mathurin's season-ending shoulder injury stings more in the wake of the Buddy Hield trade.
Somebody Will Notch A 50-Point Triple-Double
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There are only 16 triple-doubles with 50-plus points on record across the regular season and playoffs. They have been tallied by a grand total of seven players:
- James Harden (five)
- Russell Westbrook (four)
- Elgin Baylor (two)
- Wilt Chamberlain (two)
- Richie Guerin (one)
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (one)
- Luka Dončić (one)
Luka has the most recent 50-point triple-double, having tallied it during a December 2022 victory over the New York Knicks. He's also my pick to notch another over the next two(ish) weeks because, well, duh.
Harden and Westbrook are past the point of their primes in which they're viable threats. After Dončić, the next-best option is probably Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo or, stealthily, Domantas Sabonis.
Far be it from me to rule out Victor Not-From-This-Galaxy Wembanyama. But I have a tough time believing the San Antonio Spurs will play him enough minutes for him to reach the 50-point threshold..
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a good dark-horse candidate—though, everyone is pretty much a dark-horse candidate—if he's healthy enough and the Oklahoma City Thunder become obsessed with playoff seeding. Anthony Edwards looms here, too.
I could totally see LeBron James flipping off Father Time and spitting out his first career 50-point triple-double at the age of 39. But that feels more like a postseason F U than mid-April defiance.
So, yeah, this is where I'm at—flapping my arms uncontrollably, gasping for air despite it being readily available, in a feeble attempt to cope with all the heat emanating from this prediction.
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.
Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.
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