End-of-year NBA awards are a good lens through which to evaluate the league’s best performances, but the framing isn’t always quite right. Certain seasons are so exemplary that viewing them only in the context of same-year contemporaries sells them badly short. The 2020-21 Defensive Player of the Year Award serves as one such instance. While […]
If you take a gander at the past few decades of NBA champions, you’ll see a lot of familiar names. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers traded titles for most of the 1980s, while the Chicago Bulls hardly turned it off for the next decade. And from 1999 through 2010, nine out of 12 […]
Build An NBA Contender With Our Roster-Shuffling MachineMove players around and make “trades” to change FiveThirtyEight’s NBA predictions. More NBA:2020-21 NBA predictionsOur RAPTOR player ratings By Ryan Best and Jay Boice How would adding a superstar change your favorite team’s title chances? Could a specific role player be the missing piece for a certain squad? […]
Aside from a brief blip on the road against the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday, the Utah Jazz have been absolutely rolling of late. Including Monday night’s victory over the Charlotte Hornets — in which Utah buried Charlotte with a franchise-record 28 three-pointers — the Jazz have won 10 of their past 11 contests and […]
The list of NBA MVPs over the past five years is a mishmash of guys with superhero-level talents. Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter on the planet and someone who’s comfortable gunning from nearby ZIP codes. Russell Westbrook, the terrifyingly athletic stat-stuffer who seems to hurt innocent rims for no apparent reason. James Harden, the efficiency […]