I would like to see JT next to a star big. JT has elevated so many bigs in his career, so i think the ceiling of star big+JT is higher than star guard. Plus JT loves playing with double bigs, so having the extra big wouldnt be as redundant as having a 3rd guard

would you rather flip Paul George next summer for a guard or a big?

for me it hinges on Neemy.. if they can somehow shame him into no longer committing the silly early fouls then PG for a bench guard, but heading into his sixth season I don’t have much hope there.. players tendencies and deficiencies usually don’t improve much after a certain point (which is also why Mitch’s FT woes worry me come playoff time)

tbh I see Brad trading PG at the deadline to a team trying to make a push for 2-3 decent role-players and hopefully some near-future draft capital as well.

I think this season is going to be the litmus test to see who has the best chemistry with Tatum as the sole #1, and the ²⁷⁄₂₈ team will likely look a lot different than the current roster.

Never heard of her but I like that write-up. Pretty on the nose.

AI slop

I think the starters are going to be Houser and Quite

I feel like I just took an acid tab

My brother in Christ who the fuck are these guys?

People are excited about the prospect of getting a 20/6/6 guy on the vet min/BAE

Any team that’s getting him is getting him at a bargain. The Cavs might be able to give Lebron the MLE, but other than that he’s going somewhere for very cheap relative to his value

We’re also in the NBA desert time right now, so there’s very little to talk about/get excited about

Transitional. This is a good regular season team that has a 2nd round ceiling in the playoffs.

However, there is a SLIM pathway to contention. Mike Conley wants a ring. So does Paul George. IF those guys have a Blake Griffin like effect and the young guys “buy in” and the matchups are favorable, and JT has an MVP quality season…this group could, maybe, win it all.

That is why they play the games. Go Celtics. Root for the outlier, be satisfied with the likely.

You’re in for a disappointment if you think we can make the Finals with this roster. Even the ECF seems extremely unlikely, especially with how good the East has gotten.

I think it can be both. I think the ceiling on this team is a little higher and if the right guys take the next step and the injury gods smile on us the team can go far. But also a repeat of last year where it’s a fun regular season team without the right depth to compete in the playoffs is probably more likely.

I’m really not sure how to project this season though because i have no idea what the playstyle is going to look like. I’m excited to find out

I think we are better than last year’s regular season team, but worse than the team that played most of Round 1 in the playoffs. I’m not expecting us to make the 2nd Round, but wouldn’t be surprised either. I would be surprised if we made the Conference Finals.

You need a legit 2nd option to contend and we don’t have that

very clearly transitional imo. I’d have deffo had us as contenders with giannis or even with JB instead of PG but as of now no, unless PP turns into Payton Brunson

Last offseason I said we’d be better than people expect but probably not contenders. I held firm to that even when the team exceeded expectations and fans started to get excited. Part of the reason I was less disappointed by the early playoff exit was that I wasn’t as hyped up as other people.

My expectation was that we would spend this offseason making upgrades and then be ready for a title push in 2026-27. There were interesting things we could have done while still resetting the repeater tax.

But trading Brown puts us in a tough spot. We needed a 3rd option, and we got an incredible one in George but lost our 2nd option in Brown, and I don’t think we have enough firepower for the later playoff rounds.

Looking at past champions:

The modern champion has a +25ppg guy, a +20ppg guy and then a couple 15-17ppg guys.

It’s really hard to win without that 2nd, and it seems to be getting harder. In fact, some of those 20-22ppg scorers were actually 25-27ppg guys sacrificing for the sake of the team (eg. Towns and Brown). You really do need a guy who can act as the release valve and take over games when defences key into your #1.

Defences are getting more sophisticated and in a modern title run you’ll eventually face a team that can take away your #1 option, and you need guys who can step up to cover for him.

We’re built more like those early 2010s rosters, that didn’t necessarily need a leading #2.

I think this season will be very similar to last season. We’ll be better than people expect, probably one of the best teams in the East/NBA. Fans will get really excited, and the team will be top 5 on both sides of the court. We’ll show a lot of symptoms of being a contender, but barring a breakout MIP-level season from somebody, we’re not currently built for a title push.

Tatum didn’t score 20 points in the 2024 finals until G3. We still went 2-0 because we had reliable 2nd and 3rd options who were able to step up in his place. I think George, White and Pritchard are really good, but I don’t think we can count on them to suddenly step up and average +22ppg.

The regular season is based on what you can do. The playoffs are often based on what you can’t do. Right now we can’t afford to lose scoring production from Tatum, and we’ll probably collapse once teams really hone in on him specifically.

I don;t really sweat it too much. I look at it like last year. There’s no ceiling on this team. But it depends on them showing up like they did last season. And then with some luck, we have a better playoffs.

There’s so much that can go right or wrong, for us AND other teams, that you can’t really predict how things will be in April next year. Just takes one super star to blow out their knee or one fringe all star to make a leap to completely throw the balance in either conference.

But like, last season we saw the season as at BEST transitional in the offseason, and that grew into “We going for Banner 19” by the time April rolled around, and then changed into “transitional” again when we got bounced abruptly. So who knows what this season is. We start out relatively similar to last year, with expectations being low. And I’m fairly sure that *knock on wood* with a healthy season for the team that we will be expecting huge things again come playoffs. But it will be what happens there which will colour everything that preceded it. If we fail in the playoffs again, people will look at it like a transition year. But if we go to the conference finals people will likely still be mad we lost too, even though we exceeded current expectations.

I see it as Banner 19. Nothing much else