For Jared Weiss, KD and the Brooklyn Nets will have to get by Giannis’ Bucks first. Still, he places them just narrowly behind in terms of their potential to wreak havoc this season (Globalite/Creative Commons).

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Just in time for the start of the season, The Athletic’s Jared Weiss broke down the most striking storylines around the Eastern Conference with an emphasis on the Boston Celtics, whom he covers so closely. Among a slew of timely topics, Jared discusses his favorites to emerge out of the East, Jayson Tatum’s next expected leap, how good the Heat actually are and the new-and-improved Atlanta Hawks who seek to get back into the playoffs after a three-season absence.

*Due to dynamic advertising, time stamps may vary:

5:14-5:40: “I think it was Ryan Ruocco. I’ll give him credit for putting them as…they’re basically like the Death Star. And the Death Star very famously had a major vulnerability that allowed you to blow it up. And so if somebody can nestle right in there between Kyrie (Irving) and KD (Kevin Durant) and make the chemistry fall apart, this team can really, really fall apart . But they’ve got a giant frickin’ laser beam basically when it comes to KD and Kyrie.”

15:57-17:30: “And then in the playoffs, he (Jimmy Butler) flipped the switch. So I do think he’s gonna start performing like a top-10 player in the NBA or even top-five player, like he was last year, when we get to the playoffs. And Bam Adebayo will be better. He’ll hopefully be healthy for the entirety of the run, but Bam Adebayo, as great as he was last year, there’s still a lot of improvement for him to make. He still isn’t even a threat outside of 10 feet.

… And then Tyler Herro was this huge phenomenon, but the guy’s not even that good yet. Wait till he actually gets good. There’s just so much more room for improvement from these guys. … They’ve got probably the best coach in the NBA right now, and they’re always going to be dangerous.”

21:51-22:20: “The big thing for him (Jayson Tatum) this year is now that he’s the big star, everybody knows it. The amount of attention he’s gonna get, the matchups he’s gonna get, the coverages that he’s gonna get, he’s gonna be getting a lot of traps, a lot of blitzes and double-teams, he’s gotta be able to handle it. He’s gotta be able to handle that defenders, that they know that the spotlight’s on them when they’re covering him, and they’re gonna be showing up with their A-game, and they’re gonna be playing way harder on him than they were playing last year. He’s gotta be ready for that.”

31:53-32:17: “At the end of the day, it’s pretty much proven at this point that two-way wings that can shoot from deep, those are the guys, those are the teams that win the championship in the NBA, and they don’t have that in Philly. Especially in the modern era where bigs no longer dominate the game offensively, it would be a complete anomaly for (Ben) Simmons and (Joel) Embiid to pull this off.”

35:52-36:25: “If they’re starting John Collins and they’re starting one of the wings that they signed this offseason, then their defense is in critical condition because obviously Trae (Young) is a turnstile and then who do you put at the 2? … There’s not really a correct answer for their starting lineup. Their starting lineup’s always gonna have some sort of defensive compromise, pretty much.”

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Music: “Who Likes to Party” by Kevin MacLeod.