Golden State Warriors

The Golden State Warriors are coming back after a tough season last year, which saw all 3 of their key players, S. Curry, K. S. Curry, S. Thompson and D. Green. It's unfortunate that Thompson will have to miss this season due to an off-season injury. Nevertheless, the Golden State Warriors have called up a promising centre, J. Wiseman, with the 2nd overall pick, which should help solve one of the main problems of the previous seasons: the lack of strength under the basket. Moreover, given the players he will be playing and training with, Wiseman's adaptation and development should be fast enough to make a tangible contribution to the team this season.

The Golden State Warriors' offseason work looks solid with the retention of Wiggins, the signing of Bazemore and Oubre Jr., who, while not the brightest stars on the team, are both solid supporting players with defensive skills and solid shooting from both the two-point and three-point arenas. It is also worth mentioning that this will be Wiggins' second season with the Golden State Warriors, and it is usually in the second season that the players who join the team are at their best. Basically, Wiggins is a perfect fit for this team, as he can extend the offensive attack with his long-range shooting, as well as penetrate and finish. The tandem of him and Curry should be very interesting to watch this year.

The Golden State Warriors, even with Thompson out of the line-up before the start of the season, are considered to be a strong team, projected to finish 5-6 in the strong Western Conference. The most important thing is that the team is injury-free this season, because based on the line-up and how comfortable Curry looked on the court in the pre-season, it seems that this team has a great potential to surprise and even go higher than what the bookmakers have predicted in pre-season.

Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets shook up the NBA last season with the addition of Durant and Irving in the off-season. Even without these players, the Brooklyn Nets were an Eastern Conference playoff-calibre team with a lot of players emerging. Looking at the Nets' line-up, it is safe to say that, based on what we can see from today's line-up, the team has 2 players at each position who could be starting five players on most other NBA teams:

Defenders: K. Irving, S. Dinwiddie, C. Levert, T. Johnson, L. Shamet;

Strikers: K. Durant, J. Harris, T. Prince, J. Green, R. Kurucs;

Centres: D. Jordan, J. Allen.

Although there are rumours of Harden possibly joining the team in exchange for C. Levert, S. Dinwiddie and J. Allen, there are no official details yet and we will have to wait for confirmation. Anyway, on paper this Brooklyn Nets line-up looks more than impressive, but everyone knows that names don't win championships.

Both Durant and Irving are individually among the best players in the league, and there is no question about that. However, the characters of these players are problematic and it is not clear how they will look together as the season progresses. Irving has also had problems with his teammates on the Boston Celtics, where his teammates complained about his attitude and unprofessionalism. If this Brooklyn Nets team focuses only on the game and on the common goal of winning a championship, it has a huge potential to do so even this year. Otherwise, if the Irving-Durant bubble collapses and the team is plagued by internal strife, as many experts are predicting, the Nets' fans may be disappointed.

Forecast

The current odds for the first game of the NBA season are 3.2 for the Golden State Warriors and 1.35 for the Brooklyn Nets to win. The game will be played at the Brooklyn Nets Arena, but since it will be played without spectators, the home team will not have a big advantage here. In the off-season games K. Durant returned to the court after a 1.5 year layoff and looked pretty good, but in the official games he will probably still have to get used to it and the first game might not be as good as expected. The Golden State Warriors have assembled a competitive line-up and in the first game of the season they can certainly compete for a win against a Nets team that, although it has a lot of potential, has more questions than answers at the moment.

Golden State Warriors - Brooklyn Nets, NBA 2020-12-23 game preview