Playoffs, Finals and Championship Predictions | RealGM Radio With Wes Goldberg

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Wes Goldberg (1:30)

Welcome in to RealGM Radio here on a Tuesday morning. Got a short episode for you today because we've got games later this afternoon, and so what we're going to do this week, Jared and I are going to collab on a show to recap opening day on Wednesday morning. So that's going to act as our full length show for both my show and for the Double Dribble. But I did realize that I haven't made up my official finals picks for this season. I haven't made my picks for who I think are going to be in the finals, and who I think the ultimate champion is going to be. So I want to take a couple of minutes to do that here. Let's jump in.

All right, so I did my award predictions a couple of weeks ago on Good Take with Mike Shearer. So here's my prediction on how I think the season is going to play out. I'm going to tell you how I think each conference is going to finish, one through eight, and then I'm going to tell you how I think the playoffs end up playing out, and then I'm going to give you my finals picks and my championship pick. Let's start with the Eastern Conference.

After a lot of debate, I ended up with the Knicks as the number one seed.

I had five or six teams that I think could realistically end up with the one seed in the Eastern Conference, and I'm honestly not sure how many games are going to separate these teams at the top six. I actually think only two or three games will probably separate two through seven, even in the Eastern Conference. I do think one team will end up separating itself, because we just see this every single year. One team just sort of has a hot run, kind of separates itself at some point in the season. I don't know who it's going to be, but I'm going with the Knicks because we've got a proof of concept from last year. I don't think last year was some sort of lightning in the bottle playoff run, sort of fluke. I think they figured out how they wanted to play. I think the stuff that they were doing with Carl Anthony Townsend in the playoffs as a hub on offense was real. I think that is a legit weapon for them. Defensively, I think they figured out how they needed to defend. As long as they are healthy, I think you see former champions use this proof of concept to power through following regular seasons a lot. I did some research. I looked at it.

Defending champions win about 59 games a year after they win the year where they defend the title. Now, recently, obviously, those teams haven't won the championship. They haven't gotten back to the finals, but in terms of regular season success, that has really been there for a lot of these teams. So I think the Knicks are going to win a lot of regular season games. I think if they win 59, 60, something like that, that should be enough for the one seed in the Eastern Conference. So I think one of these teams is going to separate itself.