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Tim Bontemps
The annual NBA.com survey of all 30 of the league’s front offices has tapped the Oklahoma City Thunder to defend their title.
Like in ESPN’s annual offseason survey last month, the Thunder were runaway favorites to win the title, with 80% of general managers across the NBA picking OKC to win for a second straight year — which, if the Thunder are able to do so, would mark the first time since the Golden State Warriors repeated in 2018 that a team would manage to repeat as champions.
The Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets each got a couple of votes, while the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks each received a single selection.
The annual survey — which goes out to all 30 teams and doesn’t allow teams to pick themselves or anyone from their own rosters, meaning no player or team can ever get better than 97% of the vote in a category — also had Oklahoma City and Cleveland as the heavy favorites to win their respective conferences. Besides the Thunder — who were first on 87% of ballots, and second on the remaining 10% — the Nuggets received 10% of the first-place votes and the Rockets received a single one.
They were followed, in order, by the Minnesota Timberwolves, Warriors, LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs.
In the East, Cleveland and New York both were unanimously selected to finish in the top three spots in the East, with the Cavaliers getting 63% of the votes for first place, 27% for second place and 7% for third. The Knicks, meanwhile, received 30%, 53% and 13%, respectively.
The only other team to receive any first-place votes was the Orlando Magic, who received 7%. The Magic were also picked to finish third overall, followed by the Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics.
Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, who has finished first or second in the last five MVP ballots, was the runaway pick to win this year’s top individual honor, claiming 67% of the votes, while Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama received 83% of the votes as the player GMs would pick if they had a chance to select anyone to start a franchise, making him the winner in that category for the second straight season.
Rockets forward Amen Thompson, meanwhile, received 30% of the votes in the “most likely to have a breakout season” category, which goes hand-in-hand with him being the current betting favorite to be this season’s Most Improved Player.
There was little debate over who the best player is at any position, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jokic claiming the honor at each position. The only one of the five positions to receive less than 70% of the vote for the top selection was small forward, where Doncic received 40%, followed by Jayson Tatum (20), Kevin Durant (17), LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard (7 each), with Jaylen Brown, Jimmy Butler and Jalen Williams each getting a single vote.
In the offseason superlatives section, the Hawks (53%) were the top pick for having the best offseason, followed by the Rockets (27%) and Nuggets (10%). The Rockets trading for Kevin Durant, meanwhile, was picked as the offseason move that will have the biggest impact, while the Magic were both picked as the most improved team this season (47%) and having made the most underrated move by trading for guard Desmond Bane and the Thunder (83%) were tapped as the league’s best defensive team.
Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 overall pick in June’s NBA draft, was the massive favorite to win both Rookie of the Year and to be the best rookie from this class in five years, while Miami Heat guard Kasparas Jakucionis was the pick to be the biggest steal in this year’s draft class.
In the individual superlatives section, Wembanyama (80%) was picked as the league’s best defensive player; Erik Spoelstra (52%) was picked as its best coach for the sixth straight season; Jokic (80%) was picked as the NBA’s best passer and player with the highest basketball IQ, while Antetokounmpo and Wembanyama were tied, with 30% of the vote each, for the honor of being the league’s most versatile player, and Stephen Curry was the winner, with 47% of the vote, for being the player you’d want to take a shot with the game on the line.