NBA MVP (and remembering our playoff predictions)

To give you an idea of Giannis' positional elasticity, here is his position listing on Basketball Reference:

Position: Power Forward and Point Guard and Small Forward and Shooting Guard

The good folk at Basketball Refence don't screw up often, but they have in this case: the neglected to list Giannis as a centre. With the Lopez boys taking up most of the minutes at the pivot, Giannis didn't have to play there too much (by the way, how deep are you when Giannis is your 3^rd choice centre) but he was typically brilliant when he did; his Bucks had a stellar 94.8 defensive rating when Giannis manned the middle.

No matter what way you cut it Giannis has had an incredible campaign, managing to top his MVP campaign from last season. He is without a doubt, the NBA Most Valuable Player of season 2019/20.

In my preseason predictions, I took a shot at forecasting the eventual playoff seedings as well as the playoffs themselves. Of course, we can't point and laugh at my playoff predictions (for the record, I had the Clippers winning over the Sixers), but we can look back at my guesstimates as to who would make the playoffs.

Eastern Conference

Well, I nailed the top eight! Even managed to get three teams in their correct position.

I clearly didn't expect the Heat to be as good as they were, and perhaps underestimated the Raptors ability to adapt to a Kawhi-less world. I've definitely overestimated the impact Al Horford would have on the Sixers, although I'm still bullish on their core.

Western Conference

The big miss here, is the Warriors. Though if anyone predicted the ridiculous season that happened in the Bay, they're either a very recently rich person or a bare faced liar. In a similar vane, Portland's injury troubles scuppered their season pretty early on.

The teams that replaced them in the eight are the Thunder and Grizzlies. Memphis' rise has been well documented. They're well ahead of even the most optimistic of rebuilding schedules. The Thunder have been one of the leagues surprise packets. Led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a resurgent Chris Paul (with some help Dennis Schroder), they've proven the critics wrong and in the process given GM Sam Presti enough reason to abort his presumed asset stripping operation.

I'll admit I didn't have enough faith in LeBron playing at close to full throttle for the full season. I expected the Lakers to make some serious playoff noise, but to keep their powder dry through the regular season.

Conversely, I thought Denver would go all out for the #1 seed. Nikola Jokic's sluggish start and Jamal Murray plateauing have stopped Denver – who are still an excellent team – from making that next step up. Likewise with Utah, their trade-off of more weapons for less defense hasn't worked as well as I thought it would. Mike Conley's struggles meant the team took too long to find it's rhythm, although they're not far behind where I thought they'd be as far as raw win/loss records are concerned.

Whilst not a home run, a defensible set of predictions.