This Wednesday morning (Tuesday 8 p.m. in Chicago), the 70th season of the NBA unfolds. What a first game awaits us, basketball fanatics: it’s the Cleveland Cavaliers dribbling against the Bulls at the United Center — a stadium immortalized by the high-flying acrobatics of MJ.
The NBA regular season begins on Oct. 27 and ends on April 13. That’s 169 days. Within these five and a half months, 30 teams will compete for 16 slots to qualify for the Playoffs.
We all remember the NBA Finals last June 5 to 17. The Cavs — limping without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love but subsisting on the broad shoulders of LeBron James — led the series 2-1 before disintegrating in the next three games to hand the trophy to the Golden State Warriors. Stephen Curry, who visited Manila last Sept. 5, was the league’s MVP.
That’s the past. What are the predictions for this season? One of the most awaited of surveys is the one that the league itself conducts prior to the start. It’s called the NBA.com GM Survey.
GM, obviously, stands for General Manager — and each of the 30 GMs is asked by NBA.com’s John Schuhmann a list of 49 assorted questions ranging from “Which team will win the 2016 NBA Finals?” to “Which active player will make the best head coach someday?” (answer: Chris Paul) to as tough a query as “Who is the toughest player in the NBA?”
Golden State will not repeat as champs! That’s the overiding message of the respondents. Cleveland ranked first, garnering 53.6% of the votes, followed by San Antonio (25%), with the Warriors a distant third with 17.9%. (For comparison, last year’s pick was San Antonio at 46.2% — and we know that they lost Game 7 in the first round to the Clippers after that last-second layup by Chris Paul.)
The Top Four teams, according to the GM survey, are: in the East, it’s Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami and, in the West, the four include Golden State, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and the LA Clippers.
MVP? Same as last year, the GMs picked the 31-year-old Akron, Ohio-native who stands 6-foot-8 and weighs 250 lbs. Mr. James got a 39.3% rating followed by Anthony Davis (25%) with Kevin Durant and James Harden tied in third at 10.7%. Surprisingly, the reigning MVP (codenamed “The Baby-Faced Assasin”), got only 7.1%, tied with Russell Westbrook.
I rattle off a few more significant results:
Best center: Marc Gasol, 65.5%. The Spaniard is also the top pick in the “NBA’s best international player” query, defeating his older brother Pau.
Best power forward: Anthony Davis, scoring 82.1%.
Rookie of the Year? The 6-foot-11 Jahlil Okafor, who’ll play center for the Philadelphia Sixers. He out-pointed 7-footer Karl-Anthony Towns, 44% vs. 34%.
Top coach? Garnering an almost-perfect 93.1% score and who was recently named Team USA’s coach: Gregg Popovich.
Most fun team to watch? Warriors, getting the nod of 28 out of the 30 (there’s no “perfect” score because a team can’t vote for itself).
Most athletic player? 1) Westbrook; 2) LeBron; 3) Zach Lavine, who won the slam dunk contest last year; 4) A. Davis.
Best pure shooter: Curry (who else?) at 79.3%, followed by Kyle Korver (10.3%), Klay Thompson (6.9%) and Anthony Morrow (3.4%).
Best passer: Chris Paul. (CP3 also won “the best basketball IQ” contest, besting LeBron and Steph.)
A few more compelling finds: Dwight Howard is nowhere in the list. While he was named in last year’s survey as “the best center,” this time, he didn’t extract a single vote. Andre Iguodala of the Warriors was picked “the bench player who makes the biggest impact when he enters the game” and Tony Allen of Memphis gets the nod for the “Toughest player in the NBA” plum.
Finally, the GMs pick for that Mythical Five: Curry, Harden, M. Gasol, Davis and James. They’d be the starting five to represent Planet Earth if we got involved in an intergalactic Star Wars.
