NBA Season Preview 2019-20: The rare season of potential parity

After five years of the Warriors ruling the NBA, the quest for the title is as wide open as it’s been in years with many teams trying to fill that vacuum.

The NBA is not a league known for its parity. The Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics have won roughly half of the titles in NBA history and only twice have different teams won the championship in five or more consecutive seasons, and that hasn’t happened in nearly 40 years.

The last half-decade has been dominated by the Golden State Warriors to an extent that their mere three titles in five years belie. In both 2016 and 2019, a Golden State title felt inevitable until they were felled by a combination of injuries, bad luck and superhuman performances by their opposition. In each of the last four seasons, picking against the Warriors felt like an act of willful contrarianism in light of how stacked their roster was and how well they played together — like a well-orchestrated dance that took the unstoppable offensive schemes of the 2014 San Antonio Spurs and then had them run by players of even more lethal scoring ability. All empires fall and all dynasties end though, and now the rest of the league is exulting in the wreckage, each team hoping they will be the one to fill the vacuum left by Kevin Durant absconding to Brooklyn and Klay Thompson’s ACL tear.

Even when prognosticators are wrong, there is often a consensus that arises regarding which teams are most likely to win the title. This year, while there are still teams that could be considered favorites, naming any of them as such feels a bit less meaningful considering their increased number. For the last few seasons, it’s basically been the Warriors vs. the field, whereas this season, it’s at least nine teams and then the field. It’s not enough to say the league’s center of gravity has shifted; it may be more accurate to say that there is no center.

It’s not that stars have quit teaming up, but instead of forming trios and quartets, the league is now defined by duos. Part of this is simply due to the salary cap. With max and supermax contracts taking up such a huge part of a team’s finances, and now that the immediate effects of the 2016 cap spike have been felt and acclimated to, acquiring more than two stars and then surrounding them with a supporting cast that could feasibly help them win a championship is more difficult than just a few years ago.

This change is perhaps most acute for the Los Angeles Lakers, who have acquired two of the league’s best players in LeBron James and Anthony Davis — potentially a historically lethal pairing, but one that may be undercut by the team’s subpar depth. With so many teams boasting an All-NBA player or two, it may not be those individuals who determine the eventual champion as much as the players at the margins. We saw this last year as, in spite of great performances by perennial All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry throughout the postseason, it was Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and Serge Ibaka transcending expectations that enabled the Toronto Raptors to secure their first championship in team history.

This is why the Los Angeles Clippers are as close to a presumptive favorite as you will find this preseason. It’s not that Paul George and Kawhi are necessarily the best duo in the league, though they very well may be, but that they are surrounded by a bevy of competent role players who can both ease their burden and raise the team’s ceiling on the nights these superstars are already their predictably brilliant selves. Similarly, it’s why the Utah Jazz are a dark horse pick by many even though they don’t have a single player who has ever made an All-Star team (though Rudy Gobert has admittedly made two All-NBA teams). They are deep enough, with enough solid players to make their lack of overt star power a potential non-issue.

Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets’ longtime general manager, once said that if you have even a five percent chance of winning the title that you need to go all-in to capitalize on that possibility. With the Warriors’ hegemony gone, many teams now believe they have at least those five percent odds and are trying to capitalize on them before they disappear. The Rockets themselves, after being eliminated by the Warriors four of the last five seasons, made a big move by trading for Russell Westbrook, desperately praying that this will be the thing that finally allows them to make it to the Finals for the first time in a quarter century. It is as risky and bold a move as any made this offseason, but they’re far from the only team moving all their proverbial chips to the center.

The Philadelphia 76ers are refusing to squander the pairing of Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid before any potential fissures can arise. The Lakers are desperate to capitalize on having LeBron James before time catches up with him. The Milwaukee Bucks want to make the most of having reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo before he has the chance to grow disenchanted in Milwaukee. Last season, they had the best record in the league and have every reason to believe they can do the same thing again this year, but potentially with more postseason success.

Out West, the Jazz, Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers are hoping that several years of thoughtful team-building can pay off. All three teams have All-NBA level talent in Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic and Damian Lillard, respectively, and made minor moves to try to improve their depth this offseason in order to solidify their core. There’s also the defending champion Raptors, who are hoping that losing Kawhi Leonard doesn’t put too much of a damper in their quest to repeat, while Leonard’s new team that believes he and Paul George may finally end the Clippers’ lifelong title drought. In the Bay Area, the Warriors still have Stephen Curry, and that counts for a lot.

You could make a strong case for any one of these teams winning the championship without feeling like an overly optimistic fool, and at the same time, advocating too much for any single team seems inherently foolish considering how many franchises seem to have a chance to win it all.

Dynasties almost always end quicker than we expect. Victory for the incumbents appears preordained until the moment it doesn’t and then they, and the rest of the league, scramble to assert themselves. Who would have expected the Shaq and Kobe Lakers to never win another title together after they swept the Nets in the 2002 NBA Finals? Who would have thought, as the Celtics wrapped up perhaps the greatest season ever in 1986, that they would not win another title for 22 years? Who would have expected that the Heatles would win not four, not five, not six championships, but just two? Why would you have believed, as the Warriors raised the Larry O’Brien trophy after sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2018, that they would not do it again the next year?

The league may reach a sort of stasis for a while, with certain teams dominating the rest, but it never lasts long, and in this era where superstars regularly moving from team to team is the new normal, it may be that any sort of apparent solidity is more illusory than ever before. Fluidity and change are natural parts of life. Of course, that also means that expecting this presumed state of parity to last very long is as misguided as expecting a dynasty to last forever, especially in light of history. However still a river may appear, it’s flowing nevertheless.