Evergreen stars and emerging talent promise a blockbuster NBA season Premium

NBA 2023–24 season offers unprecedented competitive balance with multiple contenders. New TV/digital deals, CBA changes, and young stars like Wemby & Holmgren promise a new era of basketball with an in-season tournament. Fans can expect an exciting season! #NBA

In just about a week, the NBA season will get underway after a long and yet another interesting off-season.

Every indication is that 2023–24 will see multiple contenders in line with the trend of the past five years, which has seen a new champion every year: the Toronto Raptors (2018–19), Los Angeles Lakers (2019–20), Milwaukee Bucks (2020–21), Golden State Warriors (2021–22), and Denver Nuggets (2022–23).

This trend has been unlike what we saw in the early to late 2010s, where there were two givens. Superstar LeBron James was almost always in the Finals—he reached eight straight summit clashes —and the Warriors were invariably the favourites to win it all from 2015 to 2019.

But a combination of factors — an ageing James, Kevin Durant’s leaving the Warriors and later the Nets, and the emergence of new superstars in the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers, and Jayson Tatum from the Boston Celtics, among others — has introduced a level of competition that was last seen before the emergence of the “superteam” concept in the early 2010s.

The NBA today has a landscape where a gutsy team like the Miami Heat remains in contention due to excellent coaching helping a team headlined by the hard-working Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Along with the aforementioned teams, there are the Durant and Devin Booker-driven Phoenix Suns, the LeBron and Anthony Davis-helmed Los Angeles Lakers, the perennially injury-riddled but competitive Kawhi Leonard and Paul George-led Los Angeles Clippers, and upstarts in the Memphis Grizzlies, New York Knicks, Sacramento Kings, Dallas Mavericks, and Minnesota Timberwolves who think they can upset the apple cart of the favourites as well.

The burst in competitiveness at the highest level is a blessing for the NBA, which expects a significant revenue boost due to new television and digital deals that promise a larger bounty for teams’ owners and players alike.

The league has strived to maintain its competitive balance despite the skews in market sizes across teams and their geographic locales in the U.S. Measures like teams paying luxury taxes on spends exceeding a salary cap limit were put in place to assure competitive balance.