NBA GM’s comfortably pick Golden State Warriors over Cavs as title favorites

A year after NBA general managers gave the Cavaliers a slight nod, as a whole, as title favorites over the Golden State Warriors, they’ve reversed course and overwhelmingly picked the team from Oakland to win the Larry O’Brien trophy in 2017. In an anonymous survey conducted by nba.com of the league’s top decision-makers on a variety of subjects, there is universal agreement that the winner will be one of the two. From the article by John Schuhmann breaking down the results, you have this:

PREDICTIONS

Which team will win the 2017 NBA Finals?

1. Golden State – 69.0%

2. Cleveland – 31.0%

Last year: Cleveland – 53.6%

No one was brave and picked the Clippers, or the Spurs, or the Jazz, or the Celtics. I suppose that’s also pretty smart. 96.7% of the general managers picked the Cavs to make it out of the East, with only the the aforementioned Celtics getting any love to survive the Cavs or Eastern Conference. LeBron James got some love at various points of the survey, of course, and Kyrie Irving somehow received two votes as league’s best point guard. Which is strange.