A lot of potential contenders or playoff teams are dealing with injuries. Which franchises do you think will suffer the most early in the season?
Marilin Dubinski: Boston and Indiana immediately come to mind because unlike other teams mentioned, they lost their best player AND have the farthest to fall, having won or been to the last two finals.
Now, with each missing their best players while suffering some significant losses in free agency, it’s looking like they’ll fall from contenders to lower-seeded playoff teams (the East is still that bad). We’ve already seen playoff teams like Philly and Memphis struggle with injuries, so that isn’t new. Houston is the wildcard. Fred VanVleet isn’t a superstar, but he’s by far their best floor general, and no matter how good or star-studded a team is overall, it can be a struggle without one.
Mark Barrington: The Celtics aren’t the same team without Jayson Tatum, but they’re still good. I think they’ll miss Horford more than they expect to, because he’s not just a solid player, he’s an emotional anchor and leader in the locker room.
I think the biggest question mark is the Sixers. I’ll believe that Joel Embiid can play a whole season when I see it. I have no doubts about how tough the guy is and how hard he works, but I just don’t know if his body can hold up for an entire season. And he’s about as healthy as he ever is to start the season this year. Paul George is another player who’s great in theory, but whose body isn’t holding up well at this point in his career.
The Rockets are going to be fine. They have so much talent that they’re going to be able to do really well in the regular season without VanVleet. I don’t know if they’ll hold up in the playoffs without his leadership and mental toughness, but they weren’t going to be able to beat the Thunder in a playoff series anyway, even with Fred. More playing time for the young guys will benefit their team in the long run. They are going to be good for a while.
With Eric Spoelstra, the Heat are never out of the hunt. Herro will miss the first couple of months of the season, but the Heat will be in the playoff picture come spring, and Tyler should be a key part of them advancing in the playoffs. They probably won’t be in the top four, but they don’t need to be to make a run at winning the Eastern Conference.
Devon Birdsong: The Pacers and Celtics have balanced enough team makeup and savvy enough coaches + organization stability that I think they’ll be surprisingly good in spite of their missing stars. Houston is stacked enough that they should be able to weather their injury, even if they struggle a bit out of the gate (adding Durant was already going to force some adjustments anyway). I’d cast my vote for the 76ers, as they seem to be in a state of near-constant turmoil/uncertainty and injury concerns. If enough little things go wrong in addition to everything else, I think they could be looking at a bottom-5 record. Even Memphis feels unlikely to fall that far, though the shine seems to be off the apple there for the first time in a couple of seasons. Don’t sleep on things trending the wrong direction for Milwaukee as well, as their roster looks incredibly thin. All it would take is a month or two without Giannis to sink their season, as their margin for error feels narrow at best.
Jesus Gomez: I can definitely see the Grizzlies struggling. Most of their bigs are injured and they lost a solid depth piece in Jay Huff. Jaren Jackson Jr. is a star, but he’s not a good rebounder and might feel the physical toll of playing center full-time. Santi Aldama is feisty, but he doesn’t have the strength to guard traditional big men. Maybe they switch everything to survive on defense and Morant has a resurgence on offense, but I could see Memphis having a tough time early on. The Pelicans are also a franchise that could fall off due to injury and no one would be surprised. In the East, the 76ers are a gigantic question mark and the Heat seem one major injury away from disaster, but the conference is so weak that both teams could make the postseason.
Someone in the West is bound to disappoint. How likely do you think the Spurs will be the ones to underperform offseason expectations? What would have to happen?
Dubinski: Not making the play-in at a bare minimum would certainly make this season a massive disappointment, and I think, despite how deep the West is, the general expectation is they make the playoffs, even if it’s as a lower seed through the play-in. As they showed through the first part of last season, when healthy and clicking, they were competitive every night, posting an 18-16 record before the schedule got tougher and injuries took over. I believe injuries to key players (like Wemby) would be the only thing that could derail them because they are so deep at every other position.
Barrington: It’s all about health. We still haven’t seen Wembanyama play a full season in the league, so, fairly or not, his durability is in question. I feel really good about the kind of preparation he’s done in the offseason, and how he and the team are taking care of his body. If Wembanyama plays 60 or more games, the Spurs are going to the playoffs, and I don’t mean the play-in tournament. Book it.
Birdsong: Unless the injury bug that’s bedeviled the Spurs over the last half-decade or so rears its head again, I wouldn’t predict it as being very likely. Then again, outside of San Antonio, expectations are not as high as they are around the Alamo City. Most outside media members seem to expect the Spurs to fall somewhere between the play-in and 6th seed, and that seems pretty achievable even with some injuries sprinkled in here and there. I think it would take a significant season-ending injury and/or the collapse of the revamped coaching staff to fall short of that.
Gomez: Chemistry issues could really torpedo the Spurs’ season, but they would have to be major ones. Mitch Johnson might still need to prove he’s a tactical genius, but he did a good job of keeping the locker room copacetic last season. The challenge this year comes from managing the guards and potentially having to reduce the role of one or two pre-Wemby veterans, but he should be able to do it. Other than that, injuries seem to be the only major concerns right now.
Best-case scenario: How far do you think they can go this season? Play-in? Playoffs? Winning at least one series?
Dubinski: If everything falls into place and the matchups are favorable, I believe this team can make the second round of the playoffs. While they could always break that ceiling, it’s rare that a team with very little playoff experience among its key players advances further. (Remember, even the “young and inexperienced” Thunder, who won the championship this year, were upset in the second round in 2024 despite being the top seed, and that was a label they had to shake.) As seems to be the case in every faucet lately, I believe the Spurs will continue to follow the Thunder’s trajectory and get some playoff “experience” this season before breaking out in 2027.
Barrington: At the end of last season, my opinion was that the Spurs were a rebuilding team with a long way to go, and were looking at a ceiling of play-in this season. After seeing all of the off-season additions, and I’m counting players and coaching staff, I’m encouraged enough to raise my expectations. This team has almost infinite potential. There are tons of good teams in the west, but I feel confident enough to say that the Spurs are one of them. I can see them going to the second round and possibly even making it to the conference finals. They’d need a ton of luck and development to make it that far, but I’m starting to believe. And as high as my expectations are for 2025-2026, I think that it’s just the beginning. This team has the chance to become a historically great squad over the next decade.
Birdsong: Prior to Wemby’s season ending, the Spurs were on pace to win 45+ games last season, and that was in spite of Pop’s medical situation and Fox’s busted hand. If the coaching is as good as we all hope, and injuries are minor, I don’t see any reason why this team can’t win 50+ games and narrowly avoid the play-in games. Memphis, Dallas, and Sacramento could all end up very middling due to a mixture of injury, coaching, and roster fit. The Warriors were also looking pretty vulnerable and haven’t made significant improvements. And who even knows what’s going to happen with the Clippers, whose fate seems tied to Kawhi Leonard in a number of ways. If chaos reigns, everything goes right for the Spurs, and a major injury hits at least one Western contender, I could see them making it as far as the Western Conference Finals. A loss in the 2nd round of playoffs seems more likely, though, as this team has precious little postseason experience.
Gomez: There is a universe in which the Spurs figure out their rotation, make one big trade, and become a second-round team with Conference Finals potential. It’s unlikely we live in that universe, so I’ll go with a top six record and a puncher’s chance to advance to the second round, which would mean a significant step forward for the franchise.
