NBA Season Opening Power Rankings for 2018-2019

I can not believe we are about to start the 2018-2019 season this week. There are a lot of changes to the NBA landscape since last year's NBA Finals and it has shaken up the league heading into the new year.

We saw Kahwi Leonard make his way out of San Antonio after that relationship went south, talking about relationships gone south, how about DeMarr DeRozen with the Toronto Raptors when they moved him for Leonard. The King, aka LeBron James, has taken his talents to Hollywood. DeMarcus Cousins moved on to ring chasing and signed with the Golden State Warriors, leaving the New Orleans Pelicans who did, in fact, offer him a contract too small in his eyes, however.

Speaking of those Pelicans, they spent the off-season getting younger around their super-star Anthony Davis. They lost the services of Cousins and Rajon Rondo but added Julius Randall and Elfrid Payton. With these moves, the Pels are hoping that they can get up and down the floor much faster and tire their opponents out with their athletism. A lot of that is going to depend upon the continual growth and development of Randall and Payton as ballplayers.

We'll be keeping an eye on not only the Pelicans but the Top 5 in the NBA on a weekly basis, you can check out the entire list here.

New Orleans comes into this season ranked as the 12th powerful team in the league. They're projected to win about 44 games on the season which would be four fewer games then the 48 they ended up with last season.

Here is your Top 5:

Golden State Warriors-Projected to win about 60 games
Boston Celtics-Projected to win about 55 games
Toronto Raptors-Projected to win about 53 games
Houston Rockets-Projected to win about 53 games
Utah Jazz-Projected to win about 48 games

It should be interesting to see how these projections play out and where everybody ends up when it's all said and done. Just to note, James and the Lakers open up the year's rankings at eight with a projected win total of about 47.

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