2020 Season Power Rankings: November (10-1)
Jan 7, 2020 10:53:54 GMT
Walt Frazier, Mike Krzyzewski, and 5 more like this
Post by Jerry West on Jan 7, 2020 10:53:54 GMT
No matter what happens this season, the Sacramento Kings are making the playoffs, even if 2 of their 4 starts got injured. Why? Because of their division, where their competition best players are the following: Danny Green, DeAndre Jordan, Josh Richardson and R.J. Barret. You can make a case for Sacramento’s 4th best player, Eric Bledsoe, being better than anyone on that list.
Despite the questionable move of trading FVV for 2 young Point Guards when you are in win-now mode and drafting long-term project Sekou Doumbouya, the Kings are still better than last year with the addition of DeMar DeRozan, CJ McCollum and Eric Bledsoe in exchange of Jimmy Butler, the injured John Wall and an excessive amount of role players.
Expect smooth sailing from here on out until the playoffs.
9 – New York Knicks Billy King (9-5)
The Knicks made the puzzling move of nearly maxing Aaron Gordon in the off-season, paying 120 million to a player who is clearly on the decline at just 24 years old, and with that, NY mediocrity seems to be set for another 5 years, it seemed like a good time to move forward and start a rebuild with how strong the Eastern Conference is looking, specially after drafting Jaxson Hayes and with Luke Kennard playing better than Aaron Gordon himself, but NY decided to stick with it.
And with that this is where you can expect to see them through the year, between the 8th and 16th spot fighting for one of the last playoff spots in the East, just like last year where they won the right to face the then future champions Bucks in the first round.
Thank God Kawhi Leonard doesn’t load manage in D5, because if he did, I’m not sure the Bulls would be a playoff team.
After handing out their future to Indiana in order to acquire Rajon Rondo, the Bulls are in a complicated spot, with DeMarcus Cousins out for the entire year and the constant fear of a Kawhi Leonard injury, not to mention the chance of Kawhi opting out this year with the Bulls already close to the hard cap.
This a team that can contend for a title but still needs a couple of moves to get there, even after their GM striking gold in the draft with the excellent draft selection of Tyler Herro. It might be just a question of how long he is staying in Chicago, since he is the best trade piece the Bulls own in order to try to get something out of DeMarcus Cousins 34 million contract.
What a quick turn around for the Brooklyn Nets who finds themselves just 2 games back from the top seed in the conference despite Kyrie Irving injury.
Sure, the Nets are about to enter cap hell, but that doesn’t matter when you already have enough quality players already in your roster to build a championship roster around. Despite a young roster lead by controversial Kyrie, the Nets are the first true contender to enter our Power Rankings.
Just like last year, the Boston Celtics are in contention for D5 title, not only that but they are set to contend for the next decade, but will that ever lead to an actual title with the pairing of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons? Specially when that leads to a talented player such as Jamal Murray to play outside of his natural position. I don’t expect the Celtics to make any moves, but they certainly have the tools for it with still all their picks available and the amount young pieces they on the roster who aren’t even starting, such as Harrell, Jeremi Grant, Miles Bridges and Nassir Little.
Honestly, talent wise, the Celtics should be better than their record, but it seems like the only solution on the table right now is time.
The D5 champions made a brave move by retooling this year and getting younger while they do it, but that doesn’t mean 2 of their important pieces aren’t getting older. Luckily for them, they have Dejounte Murray and Myles Turner to step in as soon as Marc Gasol and Lou Williams start showing signs of declining, and the beauty of it, is that their start players in AD and Beal are so young that they can still be part of their championship timeline.
I’m not favoring the Bucks to repeat this year, but with the amount of talent their 2 top stars have and with the prospects they got, it probably wasn’t AD’s last title in Milwaukee.
What an amazing start to the season by Minnesota without John Wall, mostly because of the exceptional defense they have been playing. Problem is, their superstar player Blake Griffin, who leads the team in rebounds and assists while having another exceptional year from the lane and not turning the ball over, might be having a season ending injury. Which leaves Minnesota in a tough spot, with his contract expiring this year and him starting to get to a point in his career where he might never return to his former self again.
I’m not sure what’s the direction to go from here on out in Minnesota, the West is clearly up for grabs after Denver, and they ended the month with already a 4-game advantage over 3rd place Sacramento Kings but with lack of young talent outside of starting Point-Guard Lonzo Ball there’s no where to turn in Minny if Blake goes down.
Either as buyers or sellers, I would expect the Wolves to be active on the trade market.
Last year it wasn’t a fluke for Miami, they are a good/great team. Question is, can they take the next step?
It will seem hard for them to move on from what has been a great starting frontcourt of Steven Adams and Enes Kanter, but Domantas Sabonis is knocking on the door. Can they possibly be a successful team in 2 years with them paying nearly 100 million dollars to 3 players who are at their best in the Center role? I don’t think so, but weirder things have happened.
Also let’s all not forget to vote for Enes Kanter for the All-Star game this year, the Turkish center is currently averaging nearly 24 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists while adding over a steal and block per game with 52% FG shooting and 88% from the line.
2 – Charlotte Hornets James Kay (12-4)
After adding LeBron James to their roster in the off-season and with PG opting in to the last year of his contract, this is it for Charlotte, it’s now or never, and the talent is there, with 3 superstar players leading the charge and another possible All-Star in Kris Middleton. The problem might be the rest of their squad.
With their hard cap situation already costing them their draft choices last year plus not allowing them to use the MLE, the Charlotte Hornets didn’t have the chance to fill out their roster with better players, particularly when you have Amir Johnson, Nerlens Noel and Tony Snell using nearly 30 million of your cap space in questionable contracts.
Despite their Big 3 being the best in the league, it’s not good news for Charlotte that they ended up on the wrong conference this year where they’ll need to fight teams with superstar talent since round one while Denver seems to have an easy cake walk to the finals on the other side of the country. And with that, everything seems to be lining up for…
After a crushing lost in the finals last year and with their team arguably getting worse, the Denver Nuggets have never been in a better spot. The West sucks and the East is such a blood bath that whoever reaches the finals might be to tired to face Denver at 100%.
Sure trading Terrence Ross for Trevor Ariza and paying IT 30 million when you could just start Delon Wright are questionable moves, but hey, who am I to judge? And how much does that even matter when you have MVP James Harden leading the league in points, assists and steals. Is there even a question at this point about who is the best player in the league?
Enjoy the sight-seeing during the regular season Denver, just be careful around Miami.