4. Which would-be contender in the West has the lowest floor this season?
Michael: I’m going with the Utah Jazz. I’ve been fading them since last season and don’t believe that Rudy Gobert can be the second-best player on a championship team. (Also, I might be salty that Dwyane Wade is now in Utah and not in Miami.)
Liam: The team with the lowest floor is likely to be the Nuggets. As much as I love the squad, the injury of Jamal Murray is likely to affect the team early on and the rest of the team has remained largely unchanged. The Jazz, Suns, and Lakers could all contend for the championship while I see the Nuggets dropping a bit this season with all the competition out West.
David: The presence of LeBron, AD, and even Westbrook, will minimize the chance the Lakers experience too big a drop relative to expectations. At the same time, Jokic’s continued ascension to the top of the league’s player rankings will do the same in Denver – with or without Jamal Murray. Even factoring in a decline in production from Chris Paul shouldn’t prove to be fatal to the Suns given the tremendous depth they exhibited last season (I.e., Cam Payne is the GOAT, and I won’t hear otherwise.)
The Jazz, on the other hand, have some issues.
Built on elite defense and the ability to hit long-range shots at a prodigious rate, any slippage on either end of the court could have a cascading effect that hamstrings the team with the third-highest winning percentage over the last three seasons. I wouldn’t bet on it, but if I had to pick or be fired – which is the choice Michael Saenz presented me – I’d say the Jazz’s house is built on the shakiest foundation.