Let’s Begin by ruining the season for Utah Jazz fans: You’re not winning the NBA title this year. Sorry. You had a plucky off-season, but the ugly truth about the NBA is that the vast majority of teams have no chance—none—of winning the title from opening night. In the NFL, you can write off only a third of the league, tops. And it’s not unusual for a baseball team to come screaming out of the pack in August and win the World Series. This never happens in the NBA. There are rules for winning a title in the modern NBA—five, to be inexact. This season, only six teams have any hope of taking the trophy, and only one follows all the rules. And it’s not Utah.
1. YOU MUST HAVE AN MVP
To win the championship, it’s not enough to have a young hotshot or a star who might pop and have a monster year. You’ve got to have someone with MVP hardware now—either the regular-season kind or the finals kind. Only one NBA champion this century has won a title without an MVP: the 2003–04 Detroit Pistons, who knocked off a wobbling Shaq–Kobe Lakers dynasty. Today’s NBA is loaded with stars, though, so no one is sneaking through to a title on toughness and teamwork. You need a superstar. Preferably two. By that measure, four teams in the Western Conference make the cut: the Los Angeles Lakers (LeBron), the Los Angeles Clippers (Kawhi Leonard), the Golden State Warriors (Steph Curry), and the Houston Rockets (James Harden and Russell Westbrook). One team in the Eastern Conference, does, too: the Milwaukee Bucks (Giannis Antetokounmpo). An exception needs to be made for the Philadelphia 76ers because it would surprise no one if center Joel Embiid wins his first of many MVPs this season. For everyone else, better luck next year.
2. YOU MUST BE CAPABLE OF PLAYING LOCKDOWN DEFENSE
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