With the NBA season starting in under 20 days, the basketball world is getting excited. After an exciting offseason (to say the least), the LA Clippers and the LA Lakers have the best two odds to win the NBA finals with the Bucks, Rockets, and 76ers rounding out the top five respectively according to actionnetwork.com. In my opinion, the Lakers and the Clippers will be very good teams this year with all of their new superstars, but they will need a year to adjust before they get in a position to win a championship. Some teams that will have to go into rebuilding mode are the Cavaliers, the Thunder, and the Wizards. Not so long ago the Cavaliers won the finals and the Thunder were the third seed in the West. The 2019 summer had a very busy free agency market.
There are rumors around the basketball world that the Warriors dynasty is over, and I loosely disagree with that. I agree that they will not be the team that they have been without Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson (just for this year), Andre Iguodala, and various other players. I believe that they will still be a contender in the playoffs with Steph Curry, Draymond Green, D'Angelo Russell, and their remaining bench players from last year continuing the run to the playoffs from the past few years.
Some MVP predictions for 2019-20 are the Houston Rockets’ James Harden, new LA Laker Anthony Davis, and reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, which are not unlike last year’s stars towards the end of the season. I am not saying that the MVP race will be the same as it was last year -- because at this time in 2018 some people had Lebron James as their MVP pick -- but all three of these stars are likely to shine this season.
This NBA season will be packed with new super duos like Lebron James and Anthony Davis for the Lakers and James Harden and Russell Westbrook for the Rockets. It will be interesting to see which teams take off like a rocket and which teams need a year or two to adjust. This should be a highly competitive and fun-to-watch season.