“You have a sandwich effect—the second apron pressing down,” said ESPN’s Brian Windhorst on The Hoop Collective Podcast. “The teams are in the second apron: Phoenix, Minnesota, Boston trying to get out of it. I think all three of them are going to try to get out of it. You got a couple of teams headed into the second apron—I think Cleveland, one more—but the second apron is not where you want to be for long. So you’re going to constantly have teams at the top, you know, potentially squeezing out talent. “And then you have some teams that have kind of gone all-in over the last couple of years, don’t like their hand, and are going to maybe try to exit out. There’s a few that I suspect could see 13 teams trying to win in the West next year, and they go, ‘You know what?’ Actually, probably 14 teams, because I think Portland probably thinks it can win after the way they finished. I don’t know if they’ve got enough talent to compete, but [Chris] Finch the other day said it was 15. I’m not there yet.