NBA Bracketology: Projecting the full 20-team postseason field as Knicks, Thunder take steps back

The NBA comes at you fast. One moment the Knicks are riding high off their first championship in 53 years, the next they're off to a sluggish start and scrambling to recover from losing their first three games. The Thunder went into the season rightly hailed as one of the deepest teams in the NBA — then had that assumption tested in harsh fashion after sustaining injuries to three of their five starters, with Jalen Williams (ankle and fibula) and Cason Wallace (shoulder) expected to miss most, if not all, of the season, and Chet Holmgren (knee) out at least two months.

While OKC suffered the most brutal blows on the injury front, the Thunder are hardly alone there. Several big name stars have already gone down and missed multiple games, among them Anthony Edwards (knee), Kawhi Leonard (knee), Tyrese Haliburton (hamstring), Jalen Duren (hamstring), Paolo Banchero (ankle), Jaren Jackson Jr (knee) and Ja Morant (hamstring).

The net effect is that an NBA season that was already expected to be competitive and wide open — particularly in the East, where the conference is as deep as it's been in recent memory — has been thrown into flux. While the Spurs…

Original source: https://www.cbssports.com/