Welcome to the NBA’s Western Conference, which should be as wild as ever. Nearly everyone has high aspirations for 2024-25, but according to the rules, only one team can be conference champion.
The Dallas Mavericks won the West last season, but there’s a clear favorite this time around, and it isn’t the Mavs. The Oklahoma City Thunder had the conference’s top playoff seed a season ago, have the youngest roster of any contender and had arguably the best offseason of any team in the league. The Thunder are going to be a handful, and even in a West loaded with strong teams, they figure to be a cut above.
After that, it gets tricky. Seven teams in the West won between 46 and 51 games a year ago, and that standings traffic jam might only become more snarled. My preseason forecast has nine teams finishing between 42 and 51 wins, plus three others lurking on the fringes of the Play-In race. Inevitably, at least one legitimately good team won’t make the playoffs, much as the 46-win Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors were left home last season.
Contenders? We have a few. Denver is a former champion, Dallas is a 2024 finalist and Minnesota comes off a 56-win season; Phoenix, Golden State, New Orleans and the Lakers all have enough star power to think they’re one move away as well. The Thunder may rack up more wins, but expect the playoffs to be a battle.
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Picking a nine-way tie for second place after Oklahoma City would be easier, but somehow, I must split hairs between the many very good teams in the rest of this conference. Here’s what I came up with, along with their projected win-loss records:
8. Los Angeles Lakers (45-37)
There is a current of thought that, as good as LeBron James and Anthony Davis looked in the Olympics, the Lakers still have elite upside because they potentially have two top-10 players in the league. I think the opposite might be true: James and Davis guarantee a certain floor around a mid-40s win total, but it’s virtually impossible for the Lakers to get much past that without vast improvements to the rest of the roster.
James and Davis combined for 147 games played last season; Davis’ total of 76 was a career high after he hadn’t exceeded 62 in any of the five previous seasons, while James’ 71 were the most he’d played since 2017-18. Even with that, and with healthy seasons from the two most important secondary players (D’Angelo Russell played 76 games, Austin Reaves all 82), the Lakers won 47 games with a barely positive net margin and again got sand kicked in the face by the Nuggets in the playoffs.
LA is almost certain to get fewer combined games from its two stars this season, which means the rest of the roster will need to be better to compensate. And the roster is … exactly the same, basically, partly as a result of doling out second-year player options on minimum deals in the 2023 offseason to the minimally contributing trio of Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood. Taurean Prince and Spencer Dinwiddie left in free agency, and draft picks Dalton Knecht and Bronny James replaced them.
JJ Redick replaces Darvin Ham on the sideline; we’ll see what he can change strategically, but the Lakers’ roster doesn’t present a lot of options. Ham felt compelled to (over)use Prince last year because there was so little spacing on the rest of the roster; if Knecht gets up to speed quickly, he might be that life raft this year. Having Jarred Vanderbilt and Gabe Vincent healthy after injury-plagued 2023-24 seasons could at least help at the margins, as the Lakers’ second unit was a disaster last season.
LA does have the possibility of making in-season moves to upgrade the roster, using first-round picks in 2029 and 2031 and recent firsts Knecht and Jalen Hood-Schifino as bait, but the only large expiring deal belongs to an important player (Russell). Additionally, the trade deadline (Feb. 6) is nearly two-thirds of the way through the season; no matter how badly the Lakers might want to act earlier, it takes two to tango, and most front offices drag their feet until February.
Cap-wise, the Lakers got LeBron to re-sign for a bit less than his max to, critically, keep them below the collective bargaining agreement’s second-apron level and leave open the possibility of aggregating multiple contracts in a midseason blockbuster deal. That was only necessary because LA forked out $32 million for four years on Max Christie after two years of limited output, and because it filled the 15th roster spot by signing 55th pick Bronny to a roster deal (an unusually generous one, at that, with guarantees stretching into the third season) instead of a two-way contract. However, note that the cap math on the younger James having a rookie-minimum deal instead of a two-way would make more sense if the Lakers pull off a two-for-one or three-for-one trade early in the season.
Where this all leaves us is likely in a familiar spot: LeBron is still capable of brilliance, even as he nears 40, and Davis is an elite two-way big man whose 3-point shooting is the lone wart. (This, incidentally, makes it much more difficult for him to play minutes next to another center, as he’s said he prefers.) The bench might not be as bad as last year’s, but it’s still a long way from good, and the neighborhood is only getting tougher in the West.
7. Golden State Warriors (46-36)
Same chapter, different verse. Much like LeBron above, Stephen Curry finds himself still able to summon awesomeness deep into his 30s, but he’s no longer a top-five player in the league and doesn’t have the horses around him he once did.
The difference between Golden State and the Lakers is twofold. First, the Warriors are much deeper across their top 10 players, which should fortify them for the regular-season grind. Second, they’re less talented at the top of the roster, where there is no Davis to serve as the yin to Curry’s yang.
As with LA, the Warriors will keep trying. They can swap two future firsts and the most valuable chunk of a third (they owe a top-20 protected pick to Washington in 2030 but can still trade the 1-20 portion) and have plentiful expiring money to use in salary matches. Golden State can also dangle prospects such as Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Moses Moody.
Would the Warriors part with Jonathan Kuminga too? He seems the best chance on the roster a true second star next to Curry after finishing second on the team in scoring rate and PER a year ago in his age-21 season. He should get a lot more chances to fling it with Klay Thompson gone, and his ability as a one-on-one shot-creator might help limit the hilarious turnovers that have plagued the team the past two seasons. He’ll have to upgrade his shooting (32.1 percent from 3) and his feel as a passer to really make a dent in Golden State’s efficiency, but the talent is clear.
Podziemski had a strong rookie season as a late first-rounder and figures to be another long-term starter next to Curry, although that combo could prove wanting at the defensive end. Moody, if he gets chances, has real 3-and-D possibilities too.
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That’s where the Warriors’ free-agent moves come in; I seem to be much more bullish on their offseason than most. De’Anthony Melton can add defensive and transition juice at the guard position that was missing a year ago, aside from the one week of the year that Gary Payton II is healthy. Up front, Kyle Anderson will be a massive upgrade on Dario Šarić in the “heady frontcourt ballhandler” role and is one of the league’s most underrated defenders. He may, in fact, be the point guard when Curry checks out, as there is no other true 1 on the roster.
Finally, adding Buddy Hield into Thompson’s spot provides an off-ball movement shooter who is (comparatively) a bit younger, a bit cheaper, a bit more effective inside the arc and a bit better on defense.
Other questions loom around the periphery: Can Andrew Wiggins rediscover his game after a miserable 2023-24? Can Draymond Green keep his emotions in check? Can Jackson-Davis build on a solid rookie year as the team’s one true center-sized player? Will Moody get real chances this year?
Those details matter at the margin, but the 10,000-foot view is that this is a deep roster but no longer one with enough high-end talent to truly contend. I’d bet on the Warriors to crack the top 8 in the West this time after they fell to the Kings in the play-in a year ago, but it’s hard to see them winning a round once they get there.
Stephen Curry helped lead Team USA to gold in Paris. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
6. New Orleans Pelicans (47-35)
So … where is this all going, exactly? On the one hand, the Pelicans are extremely talented. Just look at the names at the top of the roster and ponder how many other teams could plausibly claim that CJ McCollum is their sixth-best player. The offseason trade for Dejounte Murray adds even more talent and makes them capable of potentially terrorizing defensive lineups at the one through four positions when paired with the likes of Herb Jones and Trey Murphy III.
If we took away every team’s center, the Pelicans might win the championship. Alas, the Pelicans this year are more doughnut than beignet, with a glaring hole in the middle after losing Jonas Valančiūnas in free agency and trading Larry Nance Jr. in the Murray deal. One option is to move a big chunk of Zion Williamson’s minutes to the center spot, especially in the middle of games when he could terrorize bench units and his own defensive shortcomings should be less of an issue.
On the other hand, starting games with one of Daniel Theis, first-round project Yves Missi or import Karlo Matković feels like an unserious move for a potential contender, especially in a conference this loaded.
The obvious endgame is a trade of some kind, which takes us to the other half of the Pelicans drama this season: Brandon Ingram. He is a good player who was perhaps unfairly maligned after returning from injury just to be thrown into the maw of a ferocious Thunder defense in the playoffs, without Williamson to boot. That said, Ingram has become almost DeMar DeRozan-esque in his ability to turn an open catch-and-shoot 3 into a contested 22-foot 2, but he doesn’t have the same midrange magic and foul-drawing acumen.
More importantly, Ingram has just one year left on his deal at $36 million, and the Pelicans seem reluctant to extend him for the full max. This is the right decision, especially on a team with clear spending restrictions (ones they might have thought harder about before extending McCollum at over $30 million a pop) and an expensive extension likely coming for Murphy.
Ideally, the Pels could exchange Ingram for an elite center, let Murray and Williamson share shot-creation duties and ride what would likely be a top-five defense to 50 wins. Were life that easy. Pulling off that trade requires a rival team with both a good center to trade and a need for Ingram’s skill set. Scanning the other 29 rosters, it’s tough to thread a deal together without involving a third team (or a fourth!), which largely explains why nothing has happened yet.
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This is also an interesting season for head coach Willie Green, by the way, and it’s somewhat connected to Ingram. The Pelicans were just 24th in 3-point frequency last season despite having several good shooters. Green’s reluctance to embrace the 3-point line and lean harder into plus-shooting lineups offers echoes of his own career, one that was mostly spent shooting 18-foot pull-up 2s. He has talked in preseason about shooting 40 3s a game (New Orleans shot 32.6 last year, 25th in the league; 40 would have ranked second), so perhaps he’s noticed the same problem. Whether this statement of strategic intent survives the first two-game losing streak in November remains to be seen.
So how do I project a team that is one of the most likely to make some kind of trade either before or during the season? I gave them a slight nudge from my projections given their greater ability to make moves in-season, perhaps even large ones. (The Pels have all of their own future picks.) But even if they trot out Theis and Matković as their center rotation, New Orleans is strong enough at the other positions to win plenty of games … as long as the Ingram-Williamson injury voodoo doll doesn’t get another needle jab.
5. Denver Nuggets (49-33)
Have the Nuggets frittered away the best years of Nikola Jokić’s prime? They have one championship and one conference finals run to show for the best player in franchise history, and it’s not totally clear how they might add to that tally. They’re capped out and pretty much out of assets to trade, and they’re counting on Jamal Murray and a bevy of late draft picks to provide enough support that a 30-year-old Jokić can drag them to the promised land one more time.
I’m a bit more worried about this team than my numbers are. Everything feels soooo dependent on Jokić remaining ridiculously awesome under a heavy minutes load and on Murray playing at a level he was nowhere near in the playoffs or the Olympics. The Nuggets have limited optionality to do much about this roster in-season, especially given their reluctance to spend, having already dealt multiple future firsts in previous salary dumps (and, to be fair, for Aaron Gordon).
Perhaps I’m too pessimistic; the core four players here remain a devastating combo, and Michael Malone has proven himself as an elite coach. Post-championship, the Nuggets actually improved from 53 wins to 57 in 2023-24 despite losing Bruce Brown to free agency and never really successfully filling his spot.
Now they’re trying to fill the departed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s spot on top of Brown’s. Promoting Christian Braun to starter feels like a reach, especially if he’s not going to massively increase his 3-point frequency. On a team that was already last in 3-point attempt rate, replacing Caldwell-Pope’s 6.4 attempts per 100 possessions with Braun’s 4.9 stings.
The bench should be among the league’s worst, especially relative to other contenders. Dario Šarić and Russell Westbrook are this year’s veteran retreads, replacing Reggie Jackson and Justin Holiday; let’s just say I don’t think Westbrook will fix the 3-point shooting problem. Šarić can’t move anymore and offers negative rim protection (he’s blocked a total of 21 shots in the last four seasons), but there is some hope of a decent fit as a backup center because of his passing skill and ability to make a 3.
The Nuggets’ strategy has been to fill in the rest of the lineup with late draft picks and hope they can develop them enough to be rotation-caliber or better. So far, the grade is incomplete at best, and losing first-round pick DaRon Holmes II for the season just minutes into his summer-league debut didn’t help.
If Julian Strawther can develop into a 3-and-D wing, that would be the best answer for what ails this team. Peyton Watson is a plus athlete and an emerging defensive monster but needs to find a home on the offensive end. Zeke Nnaji is in the first year of a four-year, $32 million extension that left the entire league bewildered; adding Šarić for the full taxpayer exception (two years with a player option!) seemed an emphatic vote of no-confidence in Nnaji’s ability to deliver on that contract.
My favorite deep cut on the roster, however, is undrafted two-way guard Trey Alexander; he’s blocked at the moment, but I’m hoping in-season attrition will free him at some point. Also, keep an eye on Vlatko Čančar, who is back after missing all of last season with a torn ACL; he was pushing for a rotation spot in 2022-23. Sadly, none of these guys I’ve mentioned are likely to be at a level where they can impact a second-round playoff game, and thus, the Nuggets may find themselves playing four-on-five in the postseason.
Anthony Edwards celebrates a 3 against the Nuggets during last year’s playoffs. (Morgan Engel / Getty Images)
3. (tie) Minnesota Timberwolves (51-31)
Picking the Wolves to win their first playoff series in 20 years before the season even started was one of my best calls last year. (Damning with faint praise, but still.) This year I’m going to slow my roll a bit, and that projection was the same whether it involved Karl-Anthony Towns or Julius Randle.
Minnesota did so well last season despite missing Towns for 20 games, but the rest of the core was crazy healthy. The other members of the top eight only missed 29 games between them, which was crucial for a squad that wasn’t exactly teeming with elite depth. Such health allowed the Wolves to roll eight deep through an entire NBA marathon; their ninth-most-used player, Jordan McLaughlin, only played 626 minutes. Needless to say, I’m skeptical that’s a repeatable feat; even the Nuggets used the back half of their roster more.
Even with the same injury luck, the Wolves are replacing Kyle Anderson’s 22 minutes a game with what’s left of Joe Ingles and whatever they can get from rookies Rob Dillingham and Terrence Shannon Jr. Other questions loom too. For instance, point guard Mike Conley turned 37 this month; I’m a Conley stan for life, but the laws of aging are what they are, and the Wolves struggle to organize when he’s off the floor. The organization is crossing its fingers that Dillingham can be an eventual successor, but his ability to run the team as a 19-year-old rookie is, shall we say, unproven.
Up front, center Rudy Gobert is 32, and while he deserved his Defensive Player of the Year award last season, his lack of juice in the conference finals and again in the Olympics makes you wonder if he’s in decline.
Offensively, Anthony Edwards is clearly ascendant heading into his fifth season and upped his assist rate last season, but let’s chill on the coronation just yet. With a career 55.8 percent true shooting mark and 35.3 percent 3-point shooting, he can soak up possessions with league-average efficiency but has yet to prove he can combine high volume with high quality the way other contenders’ leading men do.
Randle is a similar version of that at power forward, with a plus handle for his size and the ability to get to any jumper he wants, but with erratic accuracy on his launches. The big get in the Wolves-Knicks trade might be Donte DiVincenzo, who has one of the best contracts in the league and is an ace shooter to make up for some iffy spacing; he’s also an emergency point guard candidate if Dillingham proves unready.
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The Wolves can probably remain an elite defense, even if they aren’t No. 1 this time; in addition to Gobert, they have elite wing defenders in Edwards and Jaden McDaniels, and aside from the point guards, everybody is huge. The bigger issue will be on the offensive end, where they were just 16th a year ago and may have trouble even replicating that, especially with a big chunk of bench minutes going to unproven quantities.
Bigger picture, one has to wonder about whether the Wolves will be forced to cut payroll after this season in the wake of the Towns trade. Minnesota is $32 million over the tax line even after the Towns trade and can’t realistically do much about it this year, but player options for Naz Reid, Gobert and Randle mean next year is an open question.
For now, we’ll cross our fingers that this core stays intact, something more easily done minus Towns’ giant contract. Even if we assume benevolent stewardship, however, Minnesota will be hard-pressed to match last season’s success.
3. (tie) Dallas Mavericks (51-31)
Last season’s finalists have a good case to make another deep playoff run in 2024-25, but I’m not sure we necessarily see a big jump in their regular-season win total. The biggest reason to think Dallas might exceed its 50-win mark of a year ago is that P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford will be there all season; the Mavs hit another gear when they picked them up at the 2024 trade deadline.
However, those aren’t the only changes. The Mavs lost Derrick Jones Jr. to free agency and Josh Green to a trade, while importing Naji Marshall and Klay Thompson as replacements. Thompson should benefit mightily from playing with Luka Dončić and feasting on catch-and-shoot 3s, provided he can resist the urge to force tough 2s the way he did in Golden State. Marshall, meanwhile, is a jack-of-all-trades who made an underrated impact as a combo forward in New Orleans.
That said, losing Jones and Green will hurt when it comes to wing defense. The Mavs just don’t have a wing stopper anymore, with offseason addition Quentin Grimes perhaps being the closest thing to one if his knees are OK. (Olivier-Maxence Prosper, a first-rounder in 2023, would be another potential candidate, but he looked nowhere close to helping in his limited rookie minutes.) Trading Tim Hardaway Jr. for Grimes cost them two seconds, but it was a nice piece of cap management that opened the door for the Marshall and Thompson acquisitions.
I’ve buried the lede here, of course, because the Mavs will sink or swim with Dončić . He’s never played more than 72 games in a season but led the league in scoring last year and will be a factor in the MVP race if he can suit up 65 times. One thing to watch: Dončić jacked up his 3-point rate to 10.6 per game and his accuracy to 38.2 percent last season, with both figures blowing away his previous career highs. If he can keep bombing away that often and that accurately, he’s unguardable.
It helps the Mavs now pair him with two elite lob threats in Gafford and second-year pro Dereck Lively II, an inspired 2023 draft pick who should only keep improving. And the Mavs, of course, have plentiful secondary shot creation with Kyrie Irving’s bag of tricks. Like Dončić, he’s a lock to miss time (he played 59 games last season and has failed to top 60 in nine of his 13 NBA seasons, including the past five) but can take this offense to another level when he’s on the court.
The full-strength version of this season’s Mavs will tilt more toward offense than it did a year ago, but it will be good regardless. How good Dallas is in the regular season likely hinges on how many games it gets from Dončić and Irving, which is why I’ll cap the Mavs at 51, but I’d take them over Phoenix or Minnesota in a playoff series. A return to the NBA Finals would shock no one.
2. Phoenix Suns (52-30)
This might be the last good hour of an amazing party before an absolutely vicious hangover kicks in, but we’ll worry about that in the morning. For now, refill my glass, because the Suns have positioned themselves to have their best team of the Mat Ishbia Damn the Torpedoes Era.
That starts on the sidelines. Frank Vogel did a solid job last season, but the return of Mike Budenholzer might be an upgrade … especially if we’re talking about boosting regular-season win totals.
Even with the Suns’ title-or-bust mantra, improving the regular-season standing might be a pretty important goal. Historically, landing in the top three has been imperative to getting to the top of the playoff mountain, but the Suns were just sixth last season.
Budenholzer can likely accomplish one very specific thing in Phoenix to boost the odds: replacing long 2s with 3s at the offensive end. The Suns were somehow just 21st in 3-point frequency despite mostly employing good shooters, including league-leader Grayson Allen (46.1 percent), with their core trio of Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal producing a hailstorm of 2-point pull-ups.
Those shots still have a place in a modern offense, especially ones like this that won’t pressure the rim much, but at times last year, the 3-pointer avoidance felt like performance art. For each of the Suns’ three stars, fewer than a third of their shots were 3s despite being among the best shooters in the game. Needless to say, Budenholzer’s track record indicates that’s likely to change.
There are other reasons to believe in the Suns more strongly than a year ago. While each of the Booker-Durant-Beal trio has a history of missing regular-season games, you still would be inclined to take the over on last year’s 196 combined games between the three. In a related story, the Suns have more real, actual basketball players to take their place when one or more of them misses games. Last season, the Suns didn’t exactly storm the league even in lineup combos with Durant and Booker (plus-5.7 net rating) or those two plus Beal (plus-6.6); the supporting cast wasn’t good enough.
Phoenix filled two needs by adding a true point guard and another good, credible crunchtime basketball player when Tyus Jones inexplicably fell into its lap on a one-year minimum deal. The Suns also bolstered the depth with upgrades at backup point guard (Monte Morris) and backup center (Mason Plumlee) and re-signed Josh Okogie and Royce O’Neale. Sure, they overpaid for both of them, but for now, that only matters to Ishbia’s accountants. Also, keep an eye on rookie big man Oso Ighodaro, whose dribbling and passing could make him immediately useful operating from the elbows.
At the highest levels, however, the Suns likely have too many limitations. They are extremely small on the perimeter, have no stretch option at the center spot (although Jusuf Nurkić may start launching 3s this year) and, despite the star offensive talent, too often make life hard by rarely attacking the rim. Hemmed in by second-apron restrictions and having only a 2031 first-round pick to dangle as realistic trade bait, they’re likely stuck with this roster.
After the season, the second-apron teeth only bite harder, and one wonders if it will force some tough decisions. For now, however, this team is a credible conference finalist.
1. Oklahoma City Thunder (61-21)
After tying Denver with a conference-best 57 wins a year ago and adding Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein in the offseason, the Thunder have to be overwhelming favorites to earn the top record in the West. The question now is whether their stuff will work in the playoffs better than it did last postseason. Dallas exposed the Thunder’s lack of secondary shot-creators and woeful rebounding, while the shooting variance gods twisted the knife at key moments.
Oklahoma City is in a bit of an unusual situation, historically, in that the Thunder have an awesome team right now but are still sitting on a stockpile of assets and have a roster littered with developmental players. That’s a good problem to have, and it gives the Thunder incredible optionality if a trade for another elite player becomes possible. They have zero luxury-tax concerns until 2026, when Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams are likely to have max or near-max extensions kick in, and smartly included a team option on Hartenstein’s deal in 2026 to back them away from the tax apron if other roster pathways become preferable by then.
Back to the present: The Thunder aced the offseason by adding the best player they could get in free agency (Hartenstein) and the best player they could get via trade (Caruso), although one might quibble with some other low-level moves. Hartenstein should help cure the rebounding woes and adds a potent short-roller to pair with MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, while Caruso is arguably the game’s best perimeter defender. He’ll miss time with assorted nicks and dings, but he and Luguentz Dort might combine to shatter all known records for illegal screen drawing.
At a lower level, the Thunder made a shrewd move to grab Nikola Topić with the 12th pick in the draft, even if he might not play this year because of a knee injury. I was less hyped about how they used their resources on two other moves — crowding the roster with another young player by trading into the first round and reaching to grab Dillon Jones and committing so many years on an extension for Aaron Wiggins. (Side note: Goodness, did they focus on dribble-pass players this offseason. Hartenstein is an elite passer for a big, and the rest of their haul was Caruso, Topić, Jones and second-rounder Ajay Mitchell.) I’m much more bullish on Isaiah Joe’s deal, which similarly took advantage of an artificially low cap hold while they were operating as a cap room team this summer but ended with a shorter contract for a more crucial player.
There’s one final low-key piece of unusualness to monitor: The Thunder still have an open roster spot, are $11 million below the tax line and have yet to use their room exception. That could give them a leg up on in-season bench additions.
Gilgeous-Alexander is the centerpiece, but Oklahoma City has multiple young players who could take another step forward, such as Holmgren and second-year pro Cason Wallace. If we’re focusing on a key player for this season, however, it has to be Jalen Williams. He’ll have to take on a much greater shot-creation role with Josh Giddey gone, and his ability to step into that void may dictate whether the Thunder feel pressure to use their draft pick hoard in a trade to give Gilgeous-Alexander a better wingman. For all the plus moves the Thunder made over the summer, adding shot creation wasn’t one of them. If Williams can’t ramp up, a redux of the Dallas series feels very possible.
Zooming out, last season should be the start of a multi-year run at or near the top of the West. The Thunder have a great shot of leading the league in defense and having the MVP and have more assets and cap flexibility than any other contender, and Caruso is the only key player older than 26.
The Thunder still need to prove it in the playoffs, but we said that about Boston a year ago. They’ll learn from last spring’s transition from regular season to postseason and hopefully not repeat the same mistakes. (Please, I beg you, stop putting Dort in the dunker spot.) Yes, concerns remain about whether they have enough shooting and secondary shot creation, and at the highest levels, that could bite them. But any way you slice it, this is an elite defensive team that should be clear favorites in the West, and we might be saying this on repeat for the next half-decade.
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(Illustration: Meech Robinson: The Athletic; photos: Rich Storry, Christian Petersen, Cooper Neill/ Getty Images)
