This summer changed things for the Portland Trail Blazers and the entire league. Here’s an offseason edition of NBA Power Rankings to make sense of it all.
The Portland Trail Blazers shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars this offseason in what should have been one of the most jaw-dropping events of the NBA news cycle. The fact that it was hardly even news just goes to show how ridiculous this summer was for basketball fans.
Superstar duos started sprouting up everywhere, as teams picked them up as if they were fruit on a tree. This year’s draft also saw the most draft day exchanges in NBA history. These bold moves were likely inspired by a shifting mindset among NBA general managers after Masai Ujiri pulled the trigger on a bold trade sending DeMar DeRozan out for Kawhi Leonard.
That plan could have ended a million different ways, but the Raptors would go on to win their first championship in franchise history and possibly forever alter the course of basketball history. Now you’re witnessing an increased willingness among teams to make bold moves and pawn off even the most beloved of franchise players.
This summer shook things up more than anyone could have imagined, so Rip City Project is here to bring you their offseason edition of NBA Power Rankings. This will be used as a baseline heading into the season and consistently be updated throughout the year to reflect any shifts among these teams.
In truth, it’s virtually impossibly to correctly rank each NBA team numerically. This is why we have sorted all 30 teams into five separate tiers. We have also included a ranking for each team for the sake of discussion, but most teams in each tier could probably be switched pretty interchangeably.
For the win projections and playoff percentages used in the following slides, we used FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO predictions, you can check them out here.