Every year, John Schumann of NBA.com (now the NBA App) does a survey of all 30 general managers in the league to get their predictions for the upcoming season, and the 2022-23 edition was released on Tuesday morning, with 50 questions being answered by the league’s top decision-makers.
It’s always an interesting glimpse into how GMs view the league, and this year’s edition offers some rather unsurprising predictions for who will win the championship and who will take home the NBA’s top honors this season.
The Bucks are the favorite to win it all, pulling in 43 percent of the votes for who will win the championship, with the Warriors (25 percent) and Clippers (21 percent) splitting the votes in the West, and Boston in fourth at 11 percent. It’s worth noting that last year, the overwhelming choice of GMs was Brooklyn at 73 percent before everything fell apart for the Nets.
In the MVP race, the frontrunner on the odds sheet also takes the top spot, with Luka Doncic getting 48 percent of the vote, followed by Giannis Antetokounmpo (34 percent), Joel Embiid (14 percent), and one vote for Stephen Curry. What was maybe more fascinating is that when posed the question of who you’d start a franchise with today, only Giannis (55 percent) and Luka (45 percent) received votes.
In terms of how GMs viewed this offseason, the Cavs got high marks for their maneuvers, most notably the addition of Donovan Mitchell. 41 percent of GMs had the Cavs as having the best offseason, with the Timberwolves, Sixers, and Jazz all earning 17 percent of the vote — a particularly interesting look into what success means for GMs, as the Jazz traded their top players away but brought back a ton of first round picks. Donovan Mitchell also got 59 percent of the vote as the most impactful new addition to a team, with Rudy Gobert at 31 percent.
While the Cavs made the biggest offseason splash, they were second to the Clippers in terms of the team expected to make the biggest leap next year, as they get Kawhi Leonard and Paul George back healthy, adding to a deep and talented veteran roster.