So long as the Golden State Warriors exist in their current iteration, it’s hard to consider just about any other team as a title contender, let alone a Los Angeles Lakers, team fresh off a 35-win season, even if they did add LeBron James. So the NBA’s general managers not offering up a single vote for them as the team most likely to win the 2019 NBA Finals shouldn’t really surprise anyone.
Let’s start with how the votes broke down in this year’s NBA GM Survery on NBA.com. Unsurprisingly, Golden State is the far-and-away favorite.