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Five Questions That Will Define the 2023-24 NBA Season – The Ringer
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Can the regular season be saved? What’s Pat Riley’s next move? We zoom out and examine the biggest questions that will shape this season.
The NBA preseason is upon us, which means the real thing is right around the corner. Which players, teams, and story lines will drive the title race—and news cycle—over the next six months? This week, The Ringer is doing its best to provide an answer in Five Columns That Will Define the ’23-24 NBA Season. So far, we’ve looked at the players, teams, rivalries, and trade candidates. To wrap it up today, we’re looking at the questions.
October in the NBA is a time for certainty—for bold predictions, absolutist assertions, and irrational confidence. Every general manager, of course, did exactly what they set out to do this summer. Every star is primed for his best season. And all of us in punditry land know exactly how the season will play out. So, yeah, about all that …
You know nothing, Jon Snow. And neither do I. That’s the beauty of sports. That’s why we watch the games. Predictions are silly and easy and fun. We’ll keep making them as long as you keep watching/listening/clicking. But it’s far more interesting to consider everything we don’t know.
• Five Players
• Five Teams
• Five Rivalries
• Five Trade Candidates
• Five Questions
Will Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo be as awesome as we all believe? Can the Celtics, now armed with (former Giannis sidekick) Jrue Holiday, stop them? Can any other team in the East crash the party?
For that matter, can anyone stop Nikola Jokic? Or a Nuggets repeat? Will Chris Paul actually fit with the Warriors? Is he starting? Finishing? Will the Luka Doncic–Kyrie Irving experiment work? (And what if it doesn’t?) Can Zion Williamson play a full season? And how great might the Pelicans be if he does?
I could do this all day. But my editor said I get only five questions, so here are the biggies …
I know, the question sounds a bit dramatic. But, really, I’m not the one asking it. Adam Silver is, along with the NBA’s 30 franchise owners. Why else would they create an in-season tournament that, literally, no one in the world asked for? Why else would they institute a sudden crackdown on “load management” after years of being so hands-off regarding player care? Why else would they impose a new, 65-game minimum to qualify for the most prestigious season-ending awards?
Answer: because there’s a growing concern that the regular season has lost some allure. (And, well, because the NBA is currently negotiating with media companies to shell out tens of billions of dollars in a new broadcast rights deal.) There’s a palpable lack of sizzle, especially in the early weeks of the season.
Blame the 82-game schedule, if you must. Blame sports science and conservative medical staffs. Blame modern stars, who routinely play fewer games than their predecessors (where have you gone, A.C. Green?). Blame Kawhi Leonard. Blame the millennials. Blame cord-cutters. Blame changing viewing habits. Blame shorter attention spans. Blame social media.
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But the fact is, NBA teams and players do not treat all 82 games like they matter. And fans have noticed.
“We are really emphasizing that this is an 82-game season,” says Joe Dumars, the Hall of Fame guard who’s now the NBA’s head of basketball operations. “Everyone should want to play 82 games. And that’s the culture that we are trying to reestablish right now.”
Will new rules aimed at curbing player rest help the situation? Silver certainly hopes so. Will the new in-season tournament and the awarding of the first NBA Cup add a little pizzazz, a little urgency to the early part of the season? Eh, maybe?
Which prompts one more pesky question: If none of this works … then what?
If you boiled down the Celtics offseason to simply “who’s in” and “who’s out,” it would look something like this:
In: Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis
Out: Marcus Smart, Robert Williams III, Grant Williams, Malcolm Brogdon
Intangibles aside, Boston made two clear upgrades: Holiday and Porzingis have effectively supplanted Smart and RWIII in the rotation. Pundits, here and elsewhere, rushed to declare the Celtics’ starting lineup (or their top six) as the best in the NBA. As for everyone beyond those six? Well, that depends on how you feel about Payton Pritchard and, uh, Luke Kornet.
Will the Celtics miss Brogdon and Grant Williams? Almost certainly. Will that even matter if their top six are as great as everyone believes? Can the Celtics win it all next June without reliable depth? That’s the truly fascinating question here—and not just in Boston.
The Suns have assembled a superteam—plucking Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to join Devin Booker—at the expense of all their depth (and then tried to replenish that depth by trading a high-level starter, Deandre Ayton, for role players). The Bucks made the summer’s biggest splash by acquiring Lillard while sending out two key players, Holiday and Grayson Allen. The Heat let two starters (Max Strus and Gabe Vincent) walk away while waiting for a Lillard trade that never happened. The Warriors traded their third-leading scorer (Jordan Poole) for a 38-year-old, oft-injured legend (Chris Paul) and lost their sixth man (Donte DiVincenzo) to free agency.
And then there are the defending champs. The Nuggets’ starting unit remains intact, but they lost their sixth man (Bruce Brown) and their seventh man (Jeff Green) this summer.
Stars win in this league, we know. You don’t make the Finals without them. But role players and reserves can tip a quarter, a game, a series. Hell, a sixth man turned starter won MVP of the 2015 Finals. An undrafted guard helped secure the 2019 title. The Lakers won it all in 2020 … then crashed and burned after jettisoning all of their key supporting players. The stars never do it alone. Depth matters. How much? Check back in June.
A reminder: LeBron James powered the Lakers to the Western Conference finals last spring. At age 38. Age 38! It was ludicrous then, and it remains ludicrous now. By every available metric, James had the best year-20 season the NBA has ever seen. And now he begins year 21—a milestone reached by only six others—with all the same burdens and aspirations he had in year 10.
LeBron will turn 39 in December. And still, he’s expected to lead the Lakers on a title run. Which, honestly, doesn’t seem far-fetched, given how dominant he remains. ESPN has James ninth in its preseason player rankings. (The Ringer had him 12th in June.) With a little luck and a little health (and a fortified rotation), James can plausibly chase a fifth ring. There’s no precedent for any of this.
And yet the Lakers aren’t the only team pinning its title hopes to a past-their-prime star. The Warriors are still fueled by 35-year-old Stephen Curry, who was already in uncharted territory for a player of his size and age. And now, Curry’s hopes for a fifth ring depend, in part, on the resilience of 38-year-old Chris Paul.
The Suns traded every last draft pick, role player, and office chair to build an all-or-nothing superteam—and their title hopes depend on a 35-year-old, post–Achilles tear Durant, who has played in only 58 percent of his team’s games the past three years.
Even the East’s two top contenders, though anchored by younger stars, have placed a lot of faith in aging vets. The Bucks just traded all their remaining assets to put a 33-year-old guard next to Giannis, and their defense depends more than ever on Brook Lopez, who will turn 36 in April. Meanwhile, the Celtics are also counting on a 33-year-old to fortify their backcourt while praying that 37-year-old Al Horford can still hold down the frontcourt. And, oh yeah, the Heat are still massively dependent on 34-year-old Jimmy Butler, whose bruising style doesn’t exactly lend itself to longevity.
Modern training has extended careers and forced us all to revise our expectations. So is age just a number? The Lakers, Warriors, Suns, Bucks, Celtics, and Heat certainly hope so.
It’s way too soon to speculate about potential Embiid trades. It is impossible not to speculate about potential Embiid trades. Both of these things can be true—and indeed, they are. We’re living in the era of forced trades, in which it seems like the next superstar meltdown is always looming. Will Embiid be next?
That might depend on how soon James Harden—Embiid’s costar and the NBA’s career leader in superstar meltdowns—gets his wish to be traded, before his disillusionment destroys the Sixers’ title hopes. It might depend on whether Sixers president Daryl Morey can snare another star in an eventual Harden deal … or, alternatively, whether Morey can extract enough assets in a Harden deal to parlay, eventually, into the next star. Or maybe it depends on whether Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers’ dazzling young guard, is ready to be Embiid’s costar now.
It almost certainly depends on how far the Sixers advance in the playoffs this spring—and, after that, on how well they do in the offseason, when Morey could have enough salary cap room for a max player (or two).
That’s a lot of ifs and hypotheticals and caveats for one team. And in this league, in this era, the clock is always ticking on a franchise’s relationship with its superstar. Embiid will turn 30 in March. He has an MVP trophy, two scoring titles, and five All-NBA awards on the mantle. But he’s never been to the conference finals, and his costars keep abandoning him. First Butler, then Ben Simmons, now Harden.
And considering Embiid has already lived through this soap opera before—the Simmons holdout nearly wrecked the 2021-22 season—it’s fair to wonder how much more he’ll endure before deciding it’s his turn to run for the exits.
Damian Lillard wanted Miami, and Miami wanted Damian Lillard. In today’s NBA—where superstars usually get what they want and Riley usually gets what he wants—that’s often enough to make a deal happen. Except this time, it wasn’t, leaving us all to wonder: What now?
Amid all the talk of age and championship windows and ticking clocks, it’s possible that no franchise has greater urgency than the Heat. Because, for all of the club’s talent and brainpower—from coach Erik Spoelstra to general manager Andy Elisburg—Riley remains the franchise’s heart and soul and mystique. He is Heat Culture, embodied. He’s the one who swaggers into the free agent pitch meetings, dumps all those championship rings on the table, and makes stars swoon. And he’ll be 79 next March.
The whole world expected Riley to land Lillard this summer, just as he landed Butler in 2019, LeBron and Chris Bosh in 2010, Shaquille O’Neal in 2004, and Alonzo Mourning in 1995. (And yes, Riley has whiffed a few times too; but no one can match his haul over the past three decades.) The Heat under Riley are forever plotting their next blockbuster, their next coup. Will it be Giannis? That seems unlikely, with Lillard now in Milwaukee. Embiid? Doncic? Williamson? Donovan Mitchell?
Miami has the track record (three titles and seven Finals appearances since 2006), the star power (Butler and Bam Adebayo), the nightlife, and the weather to attract the best of the best. And the Heat still have Riley, presiding over it all, just waiting for the moment to flash all those rings again. No one can predict how much longer he’ll do this or whether there’s one more blockbuster in the bag. But bet against him at your own peril.
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