The Biggest Obstacle for Every Top NBA Contender

Even the NBA's best teams fall short of perfection. The title-winning Los Angeles Lakers are only the latest example.

They ran up a 16-5 playoff record en route to the franchise's 17th championship, registering at least one loss in every round and struggling throughout the playoffs to curb their own turnovers and avoid putting opponents on the foul line.

Even in a relatively dominant run in which L.A. never faced elimination, it had its problems—both during the year and well into the postseason. Such will be the case with every serious contender in 2020-21.

We'll limit the analysis to teams that profile as the most legitimate threats to win the whole thing. This time of year, hope abounds; if you polled diehard fanbases across the league, somewhere around half of them would believe their team has a shot to collect a ring in June 2021. We know the real number of potential champs is far lower, so we're sticking with the clearest, most likely contenders here.

Whether it's a strategic issue or a shortcoming on the roster, every top contender has an issue to overcome in its pursuit of the 2021 championship.

The Boston Celtics were the only team to rank among the top four in both offensive and defensive efficiency during the regular season, giving them a level of balance that makes trouble spots harder to find.

The playoffs were a different story, though, as Boston's offense sputtered in critical moments. In the end, the Celtics managed just the seventh-best offensive rating of the 16 teams that made the dance. They were last among conference finalists. So let's start there.

Boston's scoring issues have several explanations. Kemba Walker didn't look like himself, possibly because a lingering knee injury sapped his speed and rendered him far less effective as a pick-and-roll threat. Opponents could switch their bigs onto Walker without suffering the consequences.

Gordon Hayward's sprained ankle was also a problem, and the time he missed may have overtaxed the already small portion of Boston's roster allowed to put up shots at high volume. You could forgive Jayson Tatum and Marcus Smart for chucking up prayers in bogged-down sets; everyone else was too tired to move.

"We have to all do a better job of moving the ball and getting to where we want to go. We talked a lot about that [during Wednesday's film session]," head coach Brad Stevens told reporters during the East Finals. "There's no question that, the last two games especially, our offense has been way too stagnant at the end of the game."

If Walker was just hurt and not in decline, and if Tatum develops some more pick-and-roll verve, the Celtics should be fine. They didn't score at an elite clip during the regular season by accident.

At the same time, this team is short on open roster spots, up against the tax and unlikely to make meaningful additions to the roster. If they're going to overcome their offensive issues, the solution will probably have to come from within.

Where do we even start with the Brooklyn Nets, an obviously talented offensive team toting too many unknowns and potential trouble spots to pick just one?

Steve Nash has never coached before, which might not seem like a glaring concern with Mike D'Antoni and a highly experienced staff of assistants around. But Kyrie Irving has never been easy to manage, and it took him no time at all to offer up one of those statements you just know we'll look back on if/when this whole thing goes south and say, "We should have known then."

"I don't really see us having a head coach," Irving said on teammate Kevin Durant's podcast, The ETCs. "KD could be a head coach; I could be a head coach [some days]."

Flag that one, and bank on it not being the last time Irving broadcasts a harmony-compromising concept.

If Irving's new-age view on chain of command doesn't obstruct the Nets' path to a title, maybe pervasive health concerns will. Durant is coming off a torn Achilles at age 32, while Irving has been far from durable during his career. Lose one of them for a significant period, and Brooklyn's title dreams are done.

The Nets will get less ramp-up time than usual with the truncated offseason, and few teams need more reps to establish roles and chemistry than they do. If Brooklyn swings a trade for a third star, it could further complicate the chemistry-building process.

A long list of enviable assets—Durant, Irving, deep pockets and ambition—means the Nets belong in the contender conversation. But it'll be quite an achievement if their litany of uncertainties all resolve in a positive way.

Was the magic real, or will the Denver Nuggets' repeated comebacks from 3-1 playoff deficits create expectations the team can't live up to in 2020-21?

Denver is on the trajectory you'd expect from an emerging contender, having won a first-round series in 2019 before reaching the conference finals in 2020. Judging by that incremental progress, the Nuggets haven't skipped steps. They've got youth, a superstar in Nikola Jokic and now, critically, big-game experience.

You could forgive them for being overconfident, particularly in light of those comebacks. These guys have more reason than most to believe they can flip the switch when necessary.

That's a dangerous mindset, though. If the Nuggets' takeaway from the bubble is that it requires an inordinate amount of grit to survive in the playoffs, that's great. If, instead, they ignore the fact that they dug themselves 3-1 holes in three straight series and believe the next step in their development, a Finals berth, is predestined, that's a problem.

The Portland Trail Blazers reached the conference finals in 2019 and finished the 2019-20 regular season with a losing record. That's not a perfect one-to-one comparison, but it illustrates the fact that past success doesn't guarantee more is on the way.

Denver has to stay hungry, remain committed to defense (looking at you, Michael Porter Jr.) and work to prove its playoff run was no fluke.

A quick scan of the Golden State Warriors' 2019-20 minutes leaders makes it undeniable: This team finished its gap year woefully bereft of legitimate, established NBA players.

Three of the nine players who logged at least 1,000 minutes didn't finish the season on the roster: Glenn Robinson III, Alec Burks and D'Angelo Russell. Two—Damion Lee and Ky Bowman—have far more career playing time in the G League than the NBA. Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole were rookies. Marquese Chriss was out of the league until the Warriors invited him to camp.

That left Draymond Green as the lone outlier, and to put it charitably, he didn't play the season with his typical do-or-die intensity.

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson will be back, and Andrew Wiggins, for all his faults, is at least durable. Throw Green in there with a hopefully healthy Kevon Looney, a more established Chriss, Paschall and maybe some spot minutes from Poole, and the Warriors look respectable. They'll fill out the roster with a lottery pick and/or a trade.

Still, even viewed through the most optimistic lens, that's a wafer-thin rotation.

High-end talent is the toughest to find, and Golden State has that in its veteran core. But as presently constituted, this team doesn't have the depth it will need to make real noise.

You often hear teams described as being "one player away." For the Warriors, it's more like three or four.

Rajon Rondo showed up when the Los Angeles Lakers needed him most, ensuring that LeBron James' exit from the postseason floor didn't mean the team's court sense and playmaking left with him.

The veteran point guard will turn 35 midway through the 2020-21 season, and whether he's back on the roster for a title defense or not (Rondo has a player option for the veteran's minimum he'll surely decline), the Lakers will need someone they can count on to reprise that critical role.

Don't forget: Rondo was mostly unhelpful during the year.

James continues to defy the aging process, but with such a short layoff between the Finals and the start of a new season, Father Time might get his first real shot to take the GOAT down a peg. The need for capable facilitation will only increase if James is diminished or the Lakers are particularly careful with load management this year.

A team in Los Angeles' position typically has little trouble attracting veterans to fill needs, but who knows how free agency might shake out? As it stands, Danny Green and Alex Caruso are the only members of the backcourt rotation certain to return. Avery Bradley, Rondo, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Quinn Cook all have options or partial guarantees that make their futures uncertain. Green and Caruso are valuable players, but neither's list of strengths begins with "playmaking."

A second Rondo playoff renaissance is a bad bet, and the Lakers can't just bank on James handling the offense all on his own—not in his 18th year, and not in the wake of a grueling championship run. One way or the other, the defending champs will need to find someone to ease LeBron's burden.

The Los Angeles Clippers changed coaches after blowing a 3-1 lead to the Nuggets in the second round, moving Ty Lue to the big chair in place of Doc Rivers. We'll soon find out if Lue and a few roster tweaks can fix what ailed a Clips team that many had tabbed as a title favorite—until the whole thing imploded.

The unusual circumstances of the 2020-21 season will pose a challenge. With 72 games and more back-to-back sets than a normal schedule would include, the likelihood of Kawhi Leonard taking load management to another level seems high. Considering some players' dissatisfaction with what they perceived as Leonard's preferential treatment last year, similar gripes feel inevitable.

Chemistry is inherently tricky. It's more art than science. Can Lue concoct and then preserve it better than Rivers?

The biggest stars are always afforded extra leeway, so don't expect Leonard (and to a lesser extent Paul George) to suddenly get rookie-at-the-end-of-the-bench treatment. They've earned their stripes, and it's possible some of the Clips who bristled at a double standard—reportedly Lou Williams, Patrick Beverley and Montrezl Harrell—won't be back. That might solve the problem on its own.

That said, it's clear L.A. has to do a better job establishing some cohesion. Expect this team to have plenty of talent, whether imported or brought back on new deals. But we learned talent alone wasn't enough last year.

During the 2020 playoffs, the Miami Heat blitzed opponents by 5.6 points per 100 possessions with Goran Dragic on the court but posted a minus-3.4 net rating when he sat. That nine-point swing was massive, easily the largest of any Heat player who logged at least 400 postseason minutes.

Miami will not have that version of Goran Dragic this year, and we know that because it didn't have that version last season, either—at least until the bubble kicked off following four months of rest. Dragic's boost to the Heat's regular-season net rating was only plus-1.3.

Dragic, 34, could leave in free agency. If he returns, we should anticipate an impact more in line with what he managed during the regular season. He might be lucky to pull that off, given his age.

What's more, the Heat got anomalously hot shooting from Jae Crowder during their run to the Finals. He's also a free agent.

You might argue that improvements from Miami's younger rotation players—Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo in particular—will offset the departure and/or decline of its elder statesmen. But with the Heat keeping their powder dry for 2021 free agency, they're not likely to meaningfully improve the roster this offseason.

They'll head into 2020-21 with roughly the same personnel that took them to the Finals. With some distance from that incredible run, it now feels fair to say Miami got some unexpectedly strong performances from players who likely won't pull off the same trick twice—if they're on the roster at all.

The Heat are listed here because they're still a top contender, but that status could change if the vets who helped them progress so far last season succumb to foreseeable regression.

Sure, the Milwaukee Bucks need better point guard play than Eric Bledsoe has provided over the last two failed postseason runs. And yes, the distraction caused by Giannis Antetokounmpo's uncertain future will dog this team all year.

But the most conspicuous obstacle for the Bucks is the same as it's been since 2018-19. It's best expressed with a baseball analogy.

Think of the Bucks like a pitcher with a searing, "past you before you know it" fastball. Let's get hyperbolic and say it averages 104 miles per hour. Pure, hellacious velocity. On a lot of nights, that one pitch is enough to blow hitters and teams away. But it hasn't gotten the job done against the best opponents in the biggest games, and that's because said opponents always know what's coming.

Milwaukee is an extreme system team, stubbornly stuck to its principles. It defends the rim while surrendering threes, and its entire offense seems to consist of spacing the floor so Antetokounmpo can attack downhill, ideally in transition. These are good ideas!

But the Bucks have one pitch, and they've never developed a second.

They spend the regular season doing one thing, getting exceptionally good at it, and then assuming that one thing will work just as well in the playoffs. Twice now, they've been wrong.

Personnel dictates strategy, and Giannis' lack of shooting may limit how much Milwaukee can do. But how hard would it be to use him at center more often, or to involve him as the roll man? Can we get a little off-ball movement? Some read-and-react actions in a more rhythmic attack?

It might only take the tiniest tactical diversion to put the Bucks over the top.

Everyone has that fastball timed up. Milwaukee must develop a changeup, a slider, a 12-to-6 curve. Maybe just throw left-handed once in a while to see what happens. Something. Anything!

The Toronto Raptors are operating on two separate timelines. The first is tied to their veteran crew: Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka. The second centers on the players who will make up the core of the near future: Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Fred VanVleet and whatever star the team signs in 2021 free agency.

We don't need to name names on that one. Rhymes with "Schmiannis."

Those two sections of the team have complemented one another perfectly over the last two seasons, uniting to win a title in 2019 and put on a memorable playoff run in 2020. It turns out youthful swag and veteran smarts are a good combination.

Toronto is at a crossroads, though, and there were already signs last year that its older faction was winding down. Gasol became borderline unplayable in the postseason, and if he returns for his age-36 season, it's hard to be optimistic that trend will reverse. Lowry may be indestructible, and 2019-20 was one of Ibaka's most impressive seasons, as the big man hit 38.5 percent of his threes while shuttling between the starting lineup and a bench role.

But age comes for everyone, and Toronto's long-term plans to renew the roster only further emphasize the inescapable transition on the horizon.

The Raptors have to decide how much of the roster to bring back—VanVleet, Ibaka and Gasol are all free agents—and once they do that, they'll have to hope the younger part of the core takes a big enough step forward to compensate for the likely decline of the older one.

If everything clicks like it did this past season, Toronto will be right back in the thick of the title fight. If not...well, at least the future is bright.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Basketball Insiders.