So, the regular season is barely more than a week away. Opening night, Pelicans vs Raptors, is October 22nd. At this point, rosters are pretty much known for all teams with the possible exceptions of a couple of two way contracts here and there. Having seen a few pre-season games, we also know roughly which teams we may or may not be interested in watching.
Now, we all know that people don't only watch their own team's games. There are storylines people follow, players people love to watch, young prospects people are curious about, and as a result, most people usually end up rooting for their 1 team, but still following a few others, and watching many of their games. So, that's this thread: who are the five teams you're going to watch the most this upcoming season, and why?
Here's my list, and hopefully different people will have different lists and that'll be kind of interesting to see who's going to watch who and why.
1) Pelicans - Obvious reasons, I feel pretty safe in assuming that the Pelicans will be on everyone's lists on this site because of reasons that I do not need to explain. Who knows how much we'll actually win this year, but we're guaranteed to be interesting.
2) Nuggets - Nikola Jokic is an absolute wizard and the best passing centre of all time, and it's not particularly close. He's arguably the best passer in the league right now, and even if you don't have him number 1, there's no way you can rate him out of the top 5. He's got the entire package as a passer, with the speed, fluidity, vision, creativity, and accuracy. He is must watch basketball, imo. I'm kind of interested in their other guys, but really I just love watching Jokic play.
3) Clippers - I'm interested in seeing how Kawhi does in a situation that he picked. The excitement for watching them will really kick in once PG13 comes back: I can't wait to see how two guys like Kawhi and PG13 bounce off of one another. They're incredibly interesting on paper as a duo. Beyond that I've always just loved watching PatBev play, I love that aggression he brings on defense.
4) Hornets - They will be absolutely terrible and I am absolutely here for it. Not much more needs saying than that.
5) Thunder - I wanna see how many rebounds Steven Adams averages now that he isn't required to give up 4 of them a night to Westbrook. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as well is an incredibly interesting young player - watching him learn from CP3 who is an all time great PG is going to be fun. I'm also excited to see what CP3 can do at his age when he's being allowed to actually run an offense again, rather than being sideman to the most isolationist isolation scorer that's ever isolated.
So there's my 5. Who makes your list, and why?