Ranking 5 the most likely NBA champions if season resumes

1. Milwaukee Bucks

The Lakers and Clippers were the hottest teams in the NBA before the hiatus, but from start to (kind of) finish, the Milwaukee Bucks were the league’s best by a country mile. The only reason the records and raw numbers even look close is a couple of nagging injuries, including one to Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Even after dropping four of their last five games (including three straight) before the suspended season, the Bucks still hold a three-game lead over the Lakers for the best record in the league. Their league-best point differential (plus-11.2) is nearly four points better than L.A., the next-closest team.

While their offense fell to sixth thanks to those last few games, the Bucks’ NBA-best defense is still a whopping 3.3 points per 100 possessions stingier than the league’s second-best. For the majority of the season, they were a top-five offense and defense, and the Greek Freak simply couldn’t be stopped on either end.

Just to contextualize how great Antetokounmpo has been, he’s the runaway MVP favorite and a serious contender for Defensive Player. If he won both, it would make him just the third player ever to win MVP and DPOY in the same season, joining Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon.

The concerns over Giannis’ below-average perimeter shot (30.6 percent from 3 this year) and Eric Bledsoe‘s playoff yips are warranted, but when fully healthy, the Bucks have been the NBA’s best team this season, and it’s not particularly close. The Clippers and Lakers play in a better conference, but Milwaukee has been just as good against the West as those two, and no one can chalk the Bucks’ superiority to LeBron coasting or Kawhi resting this regular season.

If anything, we haven’t seen Giannis in full-on annihilation mode yet, since he’s only had to play 30.9 minutes a night as the Bucks blow out so many opponents. Kawhi and LeBron are the only players that could maybe check the Greek Freak in a seven-game series, but after 60-plus games, the Bucks were on a historic pace that makes them deserving of this No. 1 spot.