The plan for the rest of the offseason
The plan for the rest of the offseason
Amazingly, it's already season preview season
Incredibly, there are now just 53 days until the start of the 2024-25 season, when the defending champion Boston Celtics will host my beloved New York Knicks on Ring Night before the (for some reason) Los Angeles Lakers welcome the (for pretty good reason) Minnesota Timberwolves to whatever they’re calling Staples Center these days in the late game.
I have no idea how the time passed by this quickly, but that’s the real number. I swear. So, I want to give you an update about how I’m going to handle the rest of the offseason’s worth of posts around these parts. It’ll be a little bit different than in years past — at least up until that week before the start of the season when I will do the usual predictions and whatnot.
In short, I am going to re-appropriate the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass feature that I use during the season and spin it forward, detailing Three Things I’m looking forward to/watching out for/want to know/etc. about each team in the league.
Some of the Three Things will just be curiosities, some will be hyper-specific, some will be detailed, some will be stray thoughts, some will be focused on on-court stuff, some will be big-picture questions, some will probably be nonsense that only matters to me, some will have video, some will have numbers, and some will literally just be “what exactly are the Pistons (or some other team — but probably the Pistons) doing?”
Some will be unlocked and some will be paywalled.1 But I think this will be a fun way to preview the season, and especially to take an opportunity to write about some of the teams that I haven’t really focused on during the offseason.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows:
Sept. 2-6: Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR)
Sept. 9-13: Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
Sept. 16-20: Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS)
Sept. 23-27: Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC)
Sept. 30-Oct. 4: Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
Oct. 5-11: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS)
I always think about the divisions in this order, for no real reason whatsoever other than that I grew up on the East Coast and therefore think about the East before thee West; but starting with the champs and ending with Victor Wembanyama’s team also feels appropriate for this season.
If there are specific developments along the way that deserve more focused attention and/or merit separate posts on their own, I’ll try to dig into those as well, though a five-posts-a-week schedule is going to keep me pretty busy. If there is anything in particular that you are watching out for or want to know about specific teams, feel free to give me a shout and I’ll try to touch on it in that team’s preview.
Beyond that, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your summer and start of your fall/autumn/whatever. The season — my 15th (!!!!) covering the NBA — will be here before we know it. I can’t wait.
I haven’t decided on the exact ratio yet, but there will definitely be at least one unlocked team per division.