Fun fact: The Northwest Division has only one Finals appearance in the 21st century. It belongs to the 2012 Oklahoma City Thunder. Utah, Portland, and if you count it, Seattle, all made it there in the 1990s, but once the calendar flipped, this division became the NBA‘s quintessential home for lonely superstars.
Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant and Kevin Garnett all won MVP awards in this division. Rudy Gobert racked up Defensive Player of the Year trophies, and for a stretch 10-15 years ago, almost every Rookie of the Year played in the Northwest. But none of these teams has won a championship since 1979.
Is this the year that changes? A few of these teams would certainly hope so. Denver and Minnesota are all in on winning now. Portland seems hellbent on contending with Damian Lillard no matter how long the odds. And Utah and Oklahoma City? Well … check back with them in a few years!
After years of relative obscurity in the championship picture, the Northwest Division is finally back in the thick of things. How is that going to play out over the regular season? Let’s take a look at their over/unders and find out.
All odds via Caesars Sportsbook.
*Pythagorean Wins represent the number of games a team would be expected to win based on their point-differential
|
2021-22 Wins |
48 |
|
2021-22 Pythagorean Wins |
48 |
|
2022-23 Win Total Line |
51.5 |
The pick: Over 51.5
This line started lower at most books, but even with the public money pushing it up, it’s still almost insultingly low. Jokic won 48 games last season without Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. As we’ve covered, multi-time MVPs in their prime are almost guaranteed to reach 53 wins so long as their roster is mostly healthy. While we can’t predict the future, it would be almost impossible for Denver to have worse injury luck than it did a year ago, when it established a 48-win baseline.
The Nuggets would’ve topped 50 easily were it not for an abhorrent bench. They won Jokic’s minutes by 8.4 points per 100 possessions … but lost the minutes he sat by 7.9 points per 100 possessions. That 16.3-point swing is about as big as you should ever expect to see out of a single player, and there’s reason to believe both ends of that equation will improve this season.
Though the sample is tiny, the four-man combination of Jokic, Murray, Porter and Aaron Gordon blasted opponents by 46 total points in just 117 combined minutes together after the 2021 trade…
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