Hollinger: Predicting how the NBA Western Conference’s bottom 8 will shake out – The Athletic

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Hollinger’s 2023-24 projections: East’s Bottom 8 | West’s Top 7
Pity the second-tier playoff hopefuls in the West. Seven of the 15 teams are at least to some degree all-in on this season, eight would be crushingly disappointed with anything fewer than 45-plus wins and playoff games in May and at least four will spend well into the luxury tax. It’s a tough ask to expect any of the conference’s teams on the rise to elevate much this season.
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The conference’s middle class enjoyed a brief respite during last season’s unexpectedly down year. It helped teams such as the Sacramento Kings and Oklahoma City Thunder add 18 and 16 wins, respectively, and a theoretically tanking Utah Jazz team stay in the playoff race until the final week. Do not expect the conference to be so kind this year; while the West may lack a single overwhelmingly dominant team, the quality runs deep.
Consider the basic math problem that at least 11 teams are legitimately aspiring to make the playoffs this year; three of them will end up in the draft lottery. Even the bottom looks stronger; last season, Houston and San Antonio both lost 60 games, but the Rockets completely overhauled their roster while the Spurs added French prodigy Victor Wembanyama. With the possible exception of Portland, there are few easy nights in this conference.
One further note before we get into the meat of my predictions: The margins in the West also are incredibly small between the top 11 teams. We’ll see if the standings end up this congested in practice, but good ol’ variance (injuries, opponent 3-point shooting, fortune in close games, etc.) could have a lot to say about the eventual playoff seeding order and about which three of the “Aspiring 11” end up in the lottery.
OK, now for the good stuff. Here’s how I see the bottom half of the West shaking out, along with team-by-team record predictions:
Projecting the Blazers’ record this season is difficult for a couple of reasons. Let’s start with the fact that this franchise is clearly willing to suffer abject humiliation if it advances its lottery odds, so it’s possible the Blazers play perfectly decent basketball for three months then finish the season 1-27 in their final 28 games or something. But of greater relevance at present: We just don’t know what other moves this team might have up its sleeve to offload veteran players such as Malcolm Brogdon or Robert Williams in the wake of the Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday trades.
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Even without Lillard, this roster doesn’t lack talent, but one would certainly describe it as incomplete. Being effectively frozen out of free agency while it resolved the Lillard situation was unhelpful; Portland has at most nine players you could envision playing rotation-caliber minutes without straining a muscle, and even that count includes two rookies. Depth will be a major concern.
Let’s look at the roster from the top, though. Committing to a five-year, $160 million contract for Jerami Grant was an odd choice that seemed made mostly to keep Lillard with the program, but he bailed on them the next day. The Blazers best play here is to see if they can parlay that contract into a first-round pick at the trade deadline, because the out years could get ugly right as the Blazers are trying to become good.
Nonetheless, a potential frontcourt of Grant, Deandre Ayton and Williams is nothing to sneeze at. Ayton, in particular, could be a lot better in Portland than he was in Phoenix. I’ve always wondered how much he could score with his face-up game if he became a focal point of an offense. He might not be super-efficient that way, but he offers a decent floor for a team that could desperately use one. He’s likely overpaid for what he is, but getting off Jusuf Nurkić’s money before the downside of his 30s hit was an ancillary benefit.
Portland also has backcourt talent worth getting excited about, even if it needs more time to jell. Scoot Henderson likely will take over as the point guard after going third in the 2023 draft, and while his shooting is a question mark, his athleticism and passing is not. Like Ayton, he might end up as more of a volume midrange shooter than a highly efficient scorer, but Henderson should be a decent-to-good starter by the second half of his rookie year and has pre-injury Derrick Rose upside. Next to him, high-flying 2022 lottery pick Shaedon Sharpe can coast through games at times, but he put together an impressive closing stretch last spring, averaging 23.7 points over the final 10 contests and posting a 57.3 true shooting percentage after the All-Star break.
Somewhere in this mix, Anfernee Simons averaged 21 points on 58 percent true shooting at the age of 23, but he may be the odd man out given his combination of contract (owed $75 million over the next three years), defense (or lack thereof) and likely role behind Henderson and Sharpe. Trading him for a player of equal ability who could bookend Grant at the forward spot would be a much more sustainable roster build going forward.
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Trail Blazers vacancy: Wanted, a leader and go-to player to replace Damian Lillard
The Blazers matched a fair offer sheet (three years, $33 million) from Dallas on Matisse Thybulle — an elite disruptive defender with clear offensive limitations — but otherwise didn’t use any of their exception money, partly because they came so close to the tax line once they (over)paid Grant. Even after the trades, the Blazers are only $5 million from the tax; a high lottery pick could push them over next year before they even sign any players. Again, trading Grant or Brogdon could radically alter this situation. Either way, the Ayton trade is a tell that Portland is looking at trades and internal draft-and-development rather than leaning on the siren song of cap space.
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Finally, keep an eye out for Portland’s other three rookies besides Henderson. The Blazers selected Kris Murray 23rd and Rayan Rupert 43rd on draft night, then picked up Toumani Camara (52nd) from Phoenix in the Ayton trade.
Murray doesn’t scream upside but could be a plug-and-play back-end rotation player, a smooth 6-foot-7 lefty who is the twin brother of Sacramento’s Keegan Murray but hasn’t established himself as strongly as a perimeter threat. Rupert is long-armed and, um, long-term; he has clear defensive potential, but the French teenager’s offense is a work in progress at best. He likely needs some G League seasoning to figure out the rest. (While we’re here: Yes, the Blazers have a G League team! Our long national nightmare is finally over!) Camara was a late pick who is still adjusting from playing inside to the perimeter, but he was one of my favorite draft sleepers; don’t be shocked if he steals some rotation minutes as a backup four.
No matter what, Ayton, Henderson and Sharpe will be here all year, and Williams likely will be too, so this team won’t be Process-level bad. Nonetheless, with paper-thin depth and the guard talent still figuring things out, the Blazers are still a long way from good and should have no trouble landing at a win total that ensures plentiful ping-pong balls come May.
Before we talk about the 7-foot-4 French unicorn in the room, let’s discuss the rest of the Spurs.
San Antonio was awful last year, so let’s not twist this, but that awfulness was also spiked with some truly unfortunate shooting luck. Surely the Spurs were the unluckiest team in the league in 2022-23 in terms of opponent shooting. There are various online outlets measuring such things, and usually, it makes a very small difference in the fortunes of most teams. But the 2022-23 Spurs were not most teams.
San Antonio opponents shot a league-best 39.1 percent from 3, a whopping 1.2 percentage points difference from the next-closest team, and this did not appear to be a result of surrendering particularly high-quality looks. While the Spurs hemorrhaged points in other ways, they gave up the fewest 3-point attempts in the league and had one of the lowest portions of opponent 3s taken from the corners (which are typically wide open shots). Yet Spurs opponents shot a blistering 44.7 percent on those corner 3s, 2.8 points worse than any other team fared on such shots and a mind-blowing 6.0 points off the league average.
So, yes, the Spurs were going to see their defensive numbers improve this season regardless of what the lottery gods handed them. That’s true for two reasons: 1) Yikes, they were 30th, so this can only go in one direction, and 2) their opponents may actually miss a 3-pointer or two this season.
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Beyond the arrival of Wembanyama, the Spurs have a few other reasons for optimism. Devin Vassell, the 23-year-old shooting guard, played only 38 games last season but could be a top-15 player at his position with his combination of solid defense and 3-point shooting, especially after adding more off-the-dribble downhill attacks to his repertoire in an injury-shortened third season. Locking him up on a fair extension with no options for the five seasons after this one was an organizational win.
Keldon Johnson is undersized for the four and needs to shoot more consistently, but he is a very strong downhill driver who likely will spend more minutes at his natural small forward spot due to the presence of Jeremy Sochan, who was an inconsistent teen a year ago and must improve as a shooter but showed obvious tools as a defender and off-dribble attacker that could make him a long-term starter. He’ll likely get first crack at the job this year. At the point, Tre Jones is probably a bit overstretched as a starter, but he’s a solid game manager who gets the ball to the right spots, and the analytics numbers suggest he’s a much better overall player than you might think.
The Spurs also have some veteran depth thanks to taking in players from other teams’ salary dumps. They somewhat surprisingly cut Cameron Payne, but Devonte’ Graham, Cedi Osman and Doug McDermott remain. All are likely short-timers who might be moved by the trade deadline, but they do provide a floor that didn’t exist a year ago. (The Spurs also still need to cut or trade another player; my money is on Khem Birch, but they could buy out another veteran.)
Nonetheless, development is the order of the day. The Spurs likely will find minutes for Blake Wesley and Malaki Branham in the backcourt, both of whom are just 20, although neither made much of an impression a year ago and both desperately need to improve their decision-making. Also, keep an eye on two-way big man Dom Barlow and second-year forward Julian Champagnie after each had an impressive summer league.
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Victor Wembanyama delights Spurs fans during scrimmage: ‘I’m here because of Wemby’
Finally, Wemby. He’ll have some adjustments to make in terms of strength, physicality and playing style, but he’s also a basketball alien who did something unimaginable virtually every time I saw him play last year. Even now, he might be good enough to vault the Spurs higher than they might prefer in the standings. He destroyed the French league as an 18-year-old, then looked improved in multiple areas during his preseason games for the Spurs. By the second half of the season, he may be one of the best players in the conference. Obviously, the sky is the limit long-term as long as he doesn’t get hurt.
If Wembanyama delivers, that alone should keep the Spurs out of the lowest rungs of the standings. While it’s unrealistic to expect the Spurs to contend for a playoff spot given the depth of decent-to-good teams in this conference — and San Antonio’s disincentives to join them right away — jumping to a respectably bad 30-35 wins definitely seems in the cards.
As I mentioned in my over-unders column, I think Houston is in great shape to exceed expectations this season.
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The Rockets have some interesting elements to their offseason that I didn’t really talk about in that piece, in terms of how they built out the rest of their roster. Houston is in the midst of a balancing-act season where it is trying to move up in the standings but doing it while still figuring out which young players are the keepers.
The offseason was a pretty dramatic thinning of the herd for an ostensibly rebuilding team: Recent draft picks Kenyon Martin Jr., TyTy Washington, Usman Garuba and Josh Christopher were shown the door, with only Martin bringing back any compensation in return; overmatched Daishen Nix was waived after inexplicably receiving 914 minutes of NBA playing time in 2022-23.
Nonetheless, more decisions remain. Take Alperen Şengün, for instance, who had some breathtaking moments as a passer from the low post and rebounds and scores at a high rate but also had some breakdowns on defense that were … breathtaking in a very different way. Can he defend enough to be a starting five? Can his offensive skills blossom enough that his defense won’t matter, as something of a Nikola Jokić Lite? Or will his limitations guarding in space forever consign him to the bench in fourth quarters?
The Rockets are also loaded with wing athletes. Tari Eason was a nice find with the 17th pick a year ago, as a menacing open-court finisher who makes tons of disruptive plays on defense; however, he’s also extremely right-handed and struggles to see the floor on the move, and his shooting (34.3 percent from 3 on low-ish volume) remains a question mark … all of which makes it unclear whether his game translates from helter-skelter environments to the more structured way Houston is likely to play this year.
Similarly, draft picks Amen Thompson and Cam Whitmore have much to prove in the shooting department. Thompson, in particular, is a high-wire athlete who has never shot the ball consistently but could be a plus-defender right away and has enough handle to potentially operate as the Rockets’ backup point guard. In a somewhat similar vein, Whitmore fell in the draft because of concerns over his interviews, knees and bull-in-a-china-shop offensive approach, but he was one of the best rookies at summer league. Between Thompson, Whitmore and Eason, the Rockets have three of the most athletic young forwards in the league, but there may not be room on the floor for more than one at any given time.
Houston could be in an even better position for the coming season if the Rockets’ pursuit of Brook Lopez hadn’t fallen through. Instead, Houston had to scramble and add deals for Jeff Green and Jock Landale, ones that seem intended to have potentially expiring contracts immediately on-hand for any opportunities that arise in-season. Both are short-term overpays with non-guaranteed seasons tacked onto the end, maximizing Houston’s cap flexibility.
Adding those deals was important because the max contract for Fred VanVleet and ensuing sign-and-trade for Dillon Brooks used all of Houston’s cap space; the Rockets won’t be a cap room team until at least 2025 and would have to decline VanVleet’s option to do it.
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The more realistic way forward for Houston to add talent is by using future firsts from Brooklyn in 2024 and 2026, or its own future firsts that include swap rights with Brooklyn in 2025* and 2027, to turn the Green and Landale contracts into starting-caliber talent. (Houston can trade its own firsts in 2025 and 2027 because the firsts coming from Brooklyn exempt it from the Stepien rule; however, Houston can only trade the 2024-2026 set or the 2025-27 set, not all four.)
Those young forwards might find an easier pathway to minutes if Jabari Smith Jr. can play more at center, but we’re probably a couple years away from that. The third pick in the 2022 draft was one of the breakout stars of summer league after a rough rookie season spent watching his guards dribble the air out of the ball, but he could be poised for a breakout. Much like Jaren Jackson Jr. when he first got to Memphis, Smith likely needs to fill out physically before he can handle extended minutes at the five but could be a terror at that position by his mid-20s.
In the meantime, the Rockets aren’t quite ready for a true playoff push, but they should be significantly improved from a year ago and stay in the Play-In chase for most of the season.
(*Oklahoma City also has a swap right on Houston’s 2025 pick, but it is top-10 protected, and the Rockets can swap whatever pick they’re left with for Brooklyn’s.)
Even after trading Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz were far too good to tank themselves into the Wemby Sweepstakes last season … yet not nearly good enough to make the Western Conference playoffs.
Nonetheless, some important things happened for any future shot at relevance: Lauri Markkanen had a surprise breakout littered with poster dunks and made the All-Star team, Walker Kessler proved to be a worthy successor to Gobert’s mantle as one of the league’s elite rim protectors, and the Jazz are now sitting on six first-round picks and three pick swaps from Minnesota and Cleveland.
Markkanen and Kessler are part of the future, obviously, but everyone else here is still fighting to be in that picture. Start in the backcourt, where the Jazz seem badly over-indexed on shot-thirsty guards. Talen Horton-Tucker is just 22 but is on the final year of his deal; will he ever score efficiently, or is he just a volume shot misser? Collin Sexton scored efficiently enough in his 48 games (61.6 percent true shooting) to make you believe in his sixth-man prospects, but can he stay healthy and play even remotely passable defense? Can he ever credibly play point guard?  Jordan Clarkson got a rich contract extension in a renegotiated deal that could also set the Jazz up to trade him, especially given his skill overlap with Sexton and Horton-Tucker. He’s the best of the three but also by far the oldest at 31.
The Jazz also have to make some decisions on younger players, with three first-round picks all trying to work their way into the mix alongside last year’s haul of Kessler and Ochai Agbaji, who doesn’t offer a huge ceiling but could be a solid rotation player based on what he showed last season. However, the 16th pick in the 2023 draft, Keyonte George, plays the same position and looked awesome in summer league. Meanwhile, the Jazz’s highest pick, ninth selection Taylor Hendricks, is a switchable stretch four with an obvious skill set but overlaps positionally with Markkanen and newcomer John Collins. Keep an eye on late first-rounder Brice Sensabaugh as well, who has injury and defense questions but is an aspiring Mark Aguirre clone if everything clicks.
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Will Hardy and the Utah Jazz have a difficult choice to make at point guard
Collins was the summer’s biggest bet, but he cost virtually nothing and Utah will win the trade if he can rediscover his jump shot. Collins is only 26 but saw his role shrivel in Atlanta the last three seasons, with last year’s 29.2 percent mark from 3 and meager 11.9 percent rebound rate both setting new lows. At $78 million over the next three years, he’s not cheap, but Utah’s books are hospital-room clean going forward. A bigger concern is whether he can realistically play as a floor spacer next to Kessler; Kelly Olynyk feels like a much more natural frontcourt partner for him, which could work if and when Hendricks is ready to play with Kessler.
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That last point underscores the fact that this roster remains a work in progress, and more Danny Ainge wheeling-and-dealing could be on the way. The Jazz have expiring contracts (Horton-Tucker, Olynyk) they could put in a deal to go along with the future firsts from Minnesota and Cleveland. Utah also has max cap space a year from now, though some of that likely will go toward a renegotiate-and-extend deal for Markkanen, whose screaming bargain of a contract ($17 million this year, $18 million next year) expires in 2025.
The team, as it stands, is not particularly bad and will once again challenge for the Play-In for most of the year, but given that the West has 11 teams that consider themselves playoff-caliber, it will be an uphill battle to break through. That’s especially true given the odd on-court fit of the talent this year, with no real point and a lot of shot-happy perimeter players starving Markkanen and Collins. Mike Conley will be missed.
Finally, note that Utah owes a top-10 protected pick to Oklahoma City this season, which could influence some April decisions if the Jazz are eliminated from the Play-In race. I currently have the Jazz slated to finish in a tie for the eighth-worst record, so things could get fun.
I’ve already talked about why Sacramento may have troubling matching last year’s invigorating run of success. The odds of repeating the Kings’ 2022-23 injury avoidance are unlikely, the second unit looks shaky at best and will be considerably more exposed if the starters miss actual games, and it appears this year’s West will be much less forgiving.
A fall all the way to 11th and the lottery sounds shocking, but these standings are so compressed that it’s still only a handful of games away from a top-six seed. The more realistic way to interpret this is that somebody among the 11 West teams that are truly trying this year is going to end up missing the Play-In, and that likely will be the one team of those 11 that is savaged by injuries to key players. But I do expect the Kings to be on the fringes of that race this time around, rather than the lofty No. 3 seed of a year ago.
Of course, all our assumptions are contingent on the current roster and not the one they may have later in the season, which takes us to an important conversation: What could this team look like if it decided to push some chips in further? The Kings have a relatively clean cap sheet going forward, enough expiring money to make a palatable salary match and can still trade first-round picks in 2028 and 2030. (Their 2026 pick could potentially come back online too; the Kings owe a top-14 protected pick to Atlanta this season from the Kevin Huerter trade.)
Thus, the big-picture debate: This team is clearly better than any of the previous 15 years in Sactown, but is it good enough to start taking big risks with future draft capital? Is there a realistic trade endgame that gives the Kings a top-five-caliber roster and justifies a damn-the-torpedoes trade?
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That road is a through line from the key decision of this past offseason, the one to lock in Domantas Sabonis on a renegotiate-and-extend deal worth $195 million if he hits all his incentives in the four years after this one. (Sabonis will get $1.3 million in each season if he makes All-Star team and another $1.3 million if he makes one of the three All-NBA teams. While we’re here, a fun cap nerd item: It is unlikely but theoretically possible that a lower cap number next year would also slightly lower Sabonis’ salary across the four years of the extension, since his 2024-25 pay cannot be more than 30 percent of the salary cap and is 29.4 percent of next year’s projected number.)
Locking in Sabonis — and burning through the Kings’ other cap options this summer to do it — likely had the effect of raising Sacramento’s floor and lowered its ceiling. On one hand, he’s a 27-year-old, three-time All-Star; on the other hand, the postseason laid bare some of his deficiencies as a defender and floor spacer. Maybe you take that outcome more willingly if you had the last two decades in Sacramento. With the other four starters signed through 2026, the Kings have zero tax concerns and a defined core to ride. Whether that core can be one that wins a playoff series or two remains to be seen.
The Kings also tried some other things around the margins. I’m a fan of second-round pick Colby Jones, who should crack a rotation in the near future if he can make catch-and-shoots consistently, while Sasha Vezenkov could turbocharge an already impressive offense if his defense can pass muster. Nonetheless, the depth is shaky at best, especially if Malik Monk can’t repeat his career year of last season. Backup center remains a concern, with JaVale McGee patching the role this season, and backup point guard could become one if Davion Mitchell’s shooting doesn’t come around. The cap is well set up to add depth pieces with exception money in the 2024 offseason, but there’s a season to play in the meantime.
As I mentioned last week, Oklahoma City has some strong arguments for why it might make a charge up the standings: The Thunder were a decent team last season, they are extremely young and thus likely to benefit from improvement up and down the roster, and they add Chet Holmgren to a roster that was effectively centerless in 2022-23.
That said, I remain somewhat skeptical of the Thunder’s immediate upside (as opposed to their longer-term upside, which remains immense). For one, I just don’t see the internal motivation to start pushing chips in quite yet, at least not while they’re still figuring which of these recent first-round picks are the keepers. Using cap space to swallow five non-performing contracts (Dāvis Bertāns, Rudy Gay, Victor Oladipo, TyTy Washington and Usman Garuba) was a pretty significant tell on that front.
Last season’s Thunder also had a jaw-dropping turnover differential of plus-3.8 per game, a testament both to the skill of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in creating paint shots without miscues and to a scrambling, undersized defense that pestered opponents into myriad mistakes. Holmgren will add his own impact defensively with elite rim protection that was, um, not really a thing in Oklahoma City last year, but the coverages with him are going to look a lot different than Mark Daigneault’s funhouse-mirror schemes of a year ago.
With potentially five more draft picks joining the roster next year (the Thunder will almost certainly trade up or trade out and actually use fewer on draft night, but humor me) and a slew of future choices on the way in the next half-decade (six second-round picks in 2029!), the other part of the puzzle for Oklahoma City is to fairly rapidly identify which of their draftees justify long-term development, roster spots and contract extensions.
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It’s a problem every team would love to have, but it is the one downside of the Thunder’s draft pick bounty: The limitations of the 15-man roster, and eventually of the salary cap, will hit fairly hard in the next few years if they aren’t extremely judicious about thinning the herd as they go. You can see already the Thunder have worked to extend their salary-cap timeline by committing to long-term, middle-class extensions for Lu Dort and Kenrich Williams, but it’s coming for them either way.
So, who are the keepers here? Certainly Jalen Williams seems likely to be one of them after a banner rookie year. He may very well be the Thunder’s second-best player this season and may have already surpassed Josh Giddey as on-ball Plan B when Gilgeous-Alexander is off the floor. Holmgren will get every chance to prove he’s part of the long-term plan as well, especially with the paucity of size on the rest of the roster.
For the others, it’s prove-it time. Even for Giddey, I would argue, given the potentially clunky fit of his game if the Thunder’s other talent forces him to play off the ball. That decision can wait two years if need be, but others seem more immediate. Aleksej Pokuševski will be a free agent after the season; there may be only one survivor between he and Jaylin Williams behind Holmgren.
Tre Mann already seems crowded out by the other guard talent, especially with the Thunder needing to evaluate 10th selection Cason Wallace. Is Ousmane Dieng anything? Is there room on this roster for both Dort and Aaron Wiggins? Is Isaiah Joe’s shooting deadly enough to extend him after the season?
There’s a season that will be going on in the meantime, and some interesting storylines surround it here: Can Holmgren push Wembanyama for Rookie of the Year? Can Gilgeous-Alexander get into the MVP discussion? What are the limits on Jalen Williams’ ceiling? But the context of it for the Thunder is entirely about what they could potentially be in 2024-25 and beyond, with one more year of growth and, perhaps, one giant offseason trade with some of those draft picks. In a Western Conference neighborhood likely to be much tougher than the one of a year ago, returning to the Play-In would be a solid achievement.
There are no bad predictions when it come to this year’s Pelicans. You could tell me literally anything about what might happen to this team in 2023-24 and I would believe it. A top seed in the West and an MVP run for Zion Williamson? Sure. Finishing 8-74 because every single player on the team had a season-ending injury (after an initial diagnosis of being out two to four weeks, of course) and they were forced to woo Nicolò Melli back from Europe just to fill out the roster? Not going to rule that one out, either.
So how about: “Stumbling along in fits and starts between waves of Zion brilliance, key injury absences and consistently inconsistent shooting?” That seems like a reasonable midpoint between the best-case and worst-case scenarios, right?
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That’s where I’ll point the rudder for now. Certainly, the upside of his team is scary, as shown during the first 35 games of last season. Williamson rumbled to the rim at will, and the Pels had just enough shooting and defense around him to make them dangerous. They started the year 23-12 with Williamson in the lineup and seemed a threat for the West’s top seed; then they lost 25 of their next 35 games and needed to rally in the final two weeks just to make the Play-In.
It would help if their two All-Star players could ever actually be teammates in the same game. Williamson only played 29 games last season — the third time in four pro seasons he failed to clear 30 — and Brandon Ingram participated in just 45. In one of the NBA’s most amazing stats, the two have been paired in New Orleans for four years and played just 93 games together.
Williamson is healthy and reportedly looking spry, and obviously, he is the biggest factor in where this season heads. Unfortunately, this being the Pelicans, injuries mounted even during preseason. Most seriously, Trey Murphy will miss a chunk of the early season with a torn meniscus, and his floor spacing from the forward position is a skill this roster will struggle mightily to replace.
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Again, the Pelicans are talented, but a lot of the skill sets are duplicative. Herb Jones is an awesome defender whom they just signed to a four-year extension at reasonable money, but if he’s not a shooting threat, and Williamson isn’t a threat, and Ingram isn’t really comfortable launching catch-and-shoot 3s at any volume, and nobody is all that worried about the Pels’ centers firing away, well … we’re gonna see some similarly packed-in paints loading up Williamson.
Other candidates for wing minutes are similarly wanting. Dyson Daniels is a good defender with long-term upside but utterly unthreatening from outside; I wrote about Naji Marshall as a potential answer in Murphy’s absence, but he is at best unproven as a floor spacer and will miss the start of the season due to a knee injury. Rookie first-rounder Jordan Hawkins could obviously fix some problems with his shooting if he can work his way into the rotation — a likely reason the Pels stretched a bit to grab him with the 14th pick — but the rest of his game seemed a long way from rotation-caliber in summer league. E.J. Liddell? My 2022 draft crush is back from a torn ACL, but again, 3s were never a huge feature of his game.
Of course, one factor in any Pels projection is their ability to upgrade the roster in-season. New Orleans has a clear limitation here: the team is $2.9 million over the luxury-tax threshold entering the season, and color me skeptical that Pels ownership is willing to pay any tax. They’ll carry the minimum 14 players it seems, and, in the absence of any other deals, the likely February endgame would be trading Kira Lewis Jr.’s $5.7 million salary and a second-round pick so they can limbo under the tax line.
On the other hand, New Orleans has significant future draft assets that it can put into a trade to send out expiring salary (such as Lewis or Jonas Valančiūnas) for more shooting help, including all their own future firsts and unprotected future firsts from the Lakers (either 2024 or 2025) and Bucks (2027). I don’t think bringing back Jrue Holiday would have been the right deal for this team, but the Pels are capable of making a similar type of trade if the moment presents itself.
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The ability to upgrade the roster in-season and the incredible ceiling offered by a quasi-healthy Williamson playing 60 games is enough to put New Orleans at .500 on my preseason board. In a West that’s overcrowded with similar quasi-contenders, that’s enough to make a top-four seed seem tantalizingly realistic, and yet close enough to the lottery to offer a potentially terrifying downside. The Pels are truly this year’s “Dirty Harry” team: Do you feel lucky?
In the wake of April’s embarrassing last-ditch tank to preserve a top-10 protected pick, 2023-24 feels like a huge year in Dallas, and I’m not sure how well it’s going to go. There is definitely the potential for the bottom to fall out if Luka Dončić decides he’s had enough and would rather be elsewhere, but don’t worry: The always-dependable Kyrie Irving is here to save the day.
Dallas’s depressing finish last season exposed all the holes on this roster beyond the top two names, and it’s unclear if any element of that improved in the offseason. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though: The Mavs turned the 10th pick into pick Nos. 12 and 24, while also flipping Bertāns into the slightly less onerous contract of Richaun Holmes, turning Reggie Bullock into Grant Williams via a sign-and-trade and re-signing Dwight Powell on a bargain deal. The Mavs did some discount shopping to land Seth Curry, Dante Exum (good in Europe last year!) and high-flier Derrick Jones Jr. for the bench.
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Dwight Powell, Tim Hardaway Jr. and the Dallas Mavericks’ eternal lineup dilemma
As for those picks, first rounders Dereck Lively Jr. and Olivier-Maxence Prosper certainly check lineup boxes — Lively as a rim-diving shot blocker in the Tyson Chandler mold and Prosper as a big wing with 3-and-D possibilities. If those two click and Jaden Hardy evolves as a scoring guard, there’s at least the glimmer of hope of the Mavs having genuine young talent to surround Dončić in his prime years. Late-summer buzz had the Mavs looking at starting both rookies after they impressed in open runs.
On the other hand, the talent surrounding Dončić at present is decidedly underwhelming, Irving aside. It’s hard to come up with another Mav who would start for more than a small handful of the league’s other teams. Dallas’s third-best player is … Grant Williams? I guess? The rest of the roster is dotted with one-way players who have obvious limitations, from nil-and-D guy Josh Green to the aforementioned Curry and Jones to the streaky Tim Hardaway Jr. One of the reasons they can’t quit Powell (and Maxi Kleber, for that matter) is that they have so few players who are even half-decent on both sides of the ball.
Irving, of course, presents his own problems. A hugely talented offensive player, he teams with Dončić to make the Mavs an elite attack almost regardless of which three other players share the court with them, at least on the days when Irving is a) healthy and b) not blowtorching his team’s chemistry.
Dallas got 66 All-NBA-caliber games from Dončić last season and still went 38-44; the Mavs never recovered from the own goal of losing Jalen Brunson to free agency. Irving was theoretically the cure for what ailed them, but he only played 20 games for them after the deadline, so we still don’t have a great sample size for how this looks.
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However, even in the best case where he and Dončić click for 75 games or so and the Mavs’ role players are acceptably mediocre, this doesn’t feel like a contending roster. The saving grace, however, is that Dončić is a one-man floor and an elite offense unto himself. He should keep the Mavs afloat for as long as it interests him.
(Photo of Zion Williamson, Victor Wembanyama and Luka Dončić: Stephen Lew, Scott Wachter, Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)

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John Hollinger ’s two decades of NBA experience include seven seasons as the Memphis Grizzlies’ Vice President of Basketball Operations and media stints at ESPN.com and SI.com. A pioneer in basketball analytics, he invented several advanced metrics — most notably, the PER standard. He also authored four editions of “Pro Basketball Forecast.” In 2018 he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Follow John on Twitter @johnhollinger

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