Presenting The Archetypes For The 2017–18 NBA Season

Wrote about how every NBA season is different, but also sees repeating patterns of teams or players that conjure images from the past. An excerpt:

The Team That People Think Will Make a Big Leap This Year but it Won’t Happen ’Til Next Year

2015–16: Utah Jazz
2016–17: Minnesota Timberwolves
2017–18: Philadelphia 76ers

Remember when the Jazz ended the 2014–15 season on a 19–10 sprint after the All-Star break, powered by a league-best defense that took off when Rudy Gobert entered the starting lineup for good after the Enes Kanter trade, and then a lot of people thought the Jazz would make a big leap the next year, but they had point guard issues and injury issues and the West was too deep and so they went 40–42 and narrowly missed the playoffs so they traded for George Hill and signed Joe Johnson and got Boris Diaw and then took a leap last year?

Or remember when the Timberwolves were bad forever but had Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins and Ricky Rubio and Zach LaVine and a bunch of interesting role players and got Tom Thibodeau to be their coach and so a lot of people thought they would make a big leap last year but they had injury issues and didn’t know how to play defense and went 31–51 and missed the playoffs so they traded for Jimmy Butler and signed Jeff Teague and got Taj Gibson and now everyone agrees they’re going to take a leap this year?

This is the path I see the Process Sixers going. They have Joel Embiid and Markelle Fultz and Ben Simmons and Dario Saric and Robert Covington and Richaun Holmes and J.J. Redick and a bunch of interesting complementary pieces but there’s too much injury-related uncertainty here (especially with Embiid), and the principals are all so damn young, and while the East is not at all deep, there are enough moderately competent teams that the Sixers could miss the dance if Embiid doesn’t manage to crack, say, 50 games.

Considering he’s played 31 games and 786 minutes in three years, it’s nowhere near a guarantee he cracks 50, and so we’re taking the under in the 2017–18 Sixers and the strong over on the 2018–19 version, assuming Joel doesn’t have a season-ending surgery at some point this year.

Read the full story at DIME.