After silently judging as I scrolled through posts riddled with hot takes from 5 years ago I thought…

What are your hottest takes about how the NBA will look 5 years from now? (Go wild with your guesses, nobody will be judging you…)

My hot takes are

  1. Josh Giddy will be in the MVP race
  2. The Booklyn Nets will have either made or won the finals due to Bridges and Ben Simmons showing out
  3. LeBron will continue to refuse to retire, while still putting up 18/4/4. And will blame it on wanting to play with his wife’s uncles barbers daughters stepson 17 years from now.
  • DrownedInBeans@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    i dunno i wouldn’t bank on that. he’s one of only 2 solid bigs on the roster and the other is 38-year old al horford. the team doesn’t have guys like grant williams and smart to do all the dirty work and banging down low with dudes like embiid and giannis anymore. don’t see how they can get away with just resting porzingis and minimizing his role. he’s the highest paid player on the team, he’s kinda expected to have an impact night-in and night-out.

    also “just keep him healthy for the playoffs!” is something fans love to suggest before a season, but things never play out like that in real life. aside from the 2022 warriors pretty much every single championship team has all their rotation guys play like 80+ games (reg season + playoffs). porzingis needs to get reps in and build rapport with his teammates, and then plays pretty much every game of an intense 20+ game playoff run. if the celtics go to the finals this year then it’ll be the most demanding and impressive thing porzingis has ever done in his career.

      • DrownedInBeans@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        i love holiday and there’s not a more perfect player to fill smart’s role, but one place they definitely differ is their size/strength and ability to guard bigs. that’s probably marcus smart’s biggest defensive strength - his versatility. jrue is also a great defender but he’s much better on the perimeter and he uses his length to swallow up guards. he’s also 33 and he and porzingis have the highest salaries on the team, so if he gets hurt doing that dirty work smart did then it’ll be a huge blow to the team.