Western Conference tiers
How do we rank teams in the West heading into the NBA season?
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
Boy With a Pipe, Pablo Picasso, 1905
As I’m preparing to twist my brain around this next NBA season and establish what I think on a team level going in, there are two things to think about.
One is that conferences still really matter. Teams play 63% of their regular season games against conference opponents, with the other 37% against non-conference opponents. Further, playoff seeding and advancement is determined entirely by conference. As such, ranking the Lakers against the Bucks is rather irrelevant until the Finals. So any sort of team comparisons should really be focused at the conference level.
Second, tiers are much more conducive to nuance than pure rankings. If you believe the Suns and Lakers are relatively even going in and the Jazz are close behind them, setting those three teams in two tiers is a better reflection of your assessment than ranking them 1-2-3. This also allows the analyst to move teams between tiers based on results instead of just jumping around willy nilly.
So with that, let’s look at my pre-preseason assessment of the Western Conference’s tiers.
S Tier
L.A. Lakers
Phoenix Suns
The Lakers are the betting favorite in the West, and have the duo that won the 2020 championship together. The Suns are the reigning conference champ who performed exceedingly well in the playoffs (albeit with some lucky injury breaks along the way). The Lakers need to prove that the Russell Westbrook fit works on offense to some degree and that the defense isn’t going to crash.
The Suns need continued health from Chris Paul and at minimum no slippage from the key young players including Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton and Mikal Bridges.
A Tier
Utah Jazz
The Jazz are all alone in this tier after finishing 2020-21 with the league’s best record but crashing in the playoffs. There’s really nothing more the Jazz can prove in the regular season, similar to the Bucks last season. We need to see it in the playoffs. That said, if the Jazz again show they are a title contender based on regular season excellence — that means a strong season from Donovan Mitchell, continued great bench play and a high-level Rudy Gobert performance — I have no problem elevating them to S-tier status.
B Tier
Dallas Mavericks
Denver Nuggets
L.A. Clippers
Portland Trail Blazers
This is the meat of the intrigue in the West. As currently situated, this covers the critical 4-5-6 seeds and a play-in team. The West is brutally deep!
The Mavericks have yet to have a high-level regular season during the Luka Doncic era, but the ingredients are there. We’ll see how Coach Jason Kidd does in the kitchen. The Nuggets have the reigning MVP (why doesn’t Vegas like Nikola Jokic’s chances of repeating?) and the rising Michael Porter Jr. The guard situation is not great until Jamal Murray recovers, but Denver held on quite well after Murray went out last year.
The Clippers will be without Kawhi Leonard — anyone who thinks Kawhi is suiting up at the end of this season: have you watched Kawhi’s career to this point? — but Paul George is really good and the team seems to believe in itself; ask the Jazz about the Kawhi-less Clippers.
And finally, the Blazers: a team that has done nothing to earn a spot in this tier but has an MVP candidate in Damian Lillard and had a strikingly competent defense when healthy last season, and dropped two of its biggest defensive sieves.
C Tier
Memphis Grizzlies
Golden State Warriors
The play-in zone. Until we see Klay Thompson back on the court — which now sounds like December or January — we can’t assume the Warriors will be loads better than .500, especially since it seems Andrew Wiggins (valuable last season) will miss home games for the foreseeable future. If the Klay and Wiggins situations are resolved, Steph Curry stays healthy and the young players show some production, the Warriors could launch up to A Tier.
The Grizzlies have been solid but not spectacular the last two seasons, and figure to be in the same spot after an odd little offseason. Jonas Valanciunas really carried the offense a lot of nights! Ja Morant taking the leap and a healthy return for Jaren Jackson Jr. could bump them up to B Tier. We’ll see.
D Tier
New Orleans Pelicans
Sacramento Kings
Minnesota Timberwolves
San Antonio Spurs
As currently structured, this is the battle for the last play-in spot.
The Pelicans have the most promise here on account of having a first-team All-NBA talent in Zion Williamson with an All-Star caliber co-star in Brandon Ingram. They also have huge defensive questions and a first-time head coach. And Zion is coming off of a broken foot. I don’t think they are any worse than a D Tier team, and should definitely be a C Tier team a few weeks in (assuming Zion doesn’t miss regular season games). The upside is B Tier, maybe higher if Willie Green clicks everything into place. Zion is a legitimate MVP candidate in my book.
The Kings were ultra streaky last season and had a truly embarrassing defense. I would be way more confident in their ability to correct that problem had they simply replaced their head coach with literally anyone, excluding those not named Michael Malone who have coached the Kings since 2006.
Like some other analysts, I am getting high on the fumes of Timberwolves hope thanks to Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards, and maybe Ben Simmons. Let’s see it. I do think the team’s ceiling is C Tier (same with the Kings) — the Pelicans can get higher.
And finally, the Spurs. San Antonio might be a top-5 defensive team and a bottom-5 offensive team. Can’t wait. The Spurs seem destined to be an “also …” in all spring play-in discussions. There’s a chance they start rough and slip to F Tier. There’s a chance someone’s offense pops and they pull up to the C Tier.
F Tier
Houston Rockets
Oklahoma City Thunder
There’s a non-zero chance that one of these two teams could go full 2019-20 Grizzlies and be surprisingly competitive to start the season, and decide a play-in game wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. But neither franchise is actually setting out to win games this season right now, so this is where they belong.
Monday: Eastern Conference tiers.
Schedule
The Games 2 in the WNBA semifinals are tonight.
Sky at Sun, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN2 (CHI leads 1-0)
Mercury at Aces, 10 p.m. ET, ESPN2 (LVA leads 1-0)
Links
Fantastic Caitlin Cooper piece in 538 on three-point percentage and gravity.
NBA players who miss games due to not being in compliance with local vaccination mandates will not be paid, the league says. So continued vaccine hesitancy will cost Kyrie Irving, for example, $300,000 per game missed. More than $12 million on the season.
The Clippers say they are fully vaccinated.
I find the framing of this story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune quite morbid, but essentially the current owner of the Pelicans (and Saints) Gayle Benson has no heirs, so when she passes the teams will be sold by a current Saints/Pelicans executive with the proceeds being invested into New Orleans civic projects and programs. ($)
Owen Phillips looks at pre-season NBA awards odds.
Be excellent to each other.