The NBA season has reached its dwelling stretch, with vital storylines left to observe.
Many groups will use their remaining video games to get wholesome, as accidents stay a defining issue across the league. Others want time to gel, particularly those that made strikes on the deadline.
The obvious instance is Cleveland including Harden, which has already paid dividends. However simply how actual is his current stretch, and the place do they stand within the East?
After a sluggish begin to the season, Cleveland has gone 5-1 following the Harden commerce with a +9.0 web ranking (fifth league-wide) and the second-best offensive ranking at 124.3. Nevertheless, the turnaround truly occurred earlier than the Beard’s arrival, because the Cavs are 14-2 over the previous month with a +11 web ranking and have been good on each ends: throughout that span, they’ve a 121.1 ORTG (2nd) and 110.2 DRTG (eighth). Their offensive enchancment may be very actual, on condition that Harden is each a greater participant and extra accessible than Darius Garland, and his playstyle naturally raises the flooring for bigs like Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
Alternatively, Cleveland’s current protection has been propped up by capturing luck. Throughout their scorching streak, opponents are making simply 33.5% of their triples, which is the third lowest mark within the league. Conversely, they hit 38.9% of threes (the very best proportion) previous to this stretch, so the Cavs had been due for some capturing luck anyway. A optimistic is that Cleveland’s rim safety has been elite all season, so they may nonetheless be an excellent protection even when the opponent capturing normalizes. I’d at the moment put Cleveland below Detroit within the East’s hierarchy, however they may positively rise into that prime tier if their dominant play continues.
Tatum’s potential return
Boston’s inspiring season may get even higher if Tatum returns, as they’re already near locking in a top-4 seed within the East. Assuming he does come again, Detroit is perhaps the one crew I’d be extra assured in making the finals, and that’s accounting for him being at 75% too. Even a lesser model of Tatum is sufficient to be a very good starter/elite function participant, and having him focus simply on rebounding, capturing, and defending will probably be an enormous enhance. Boston will probably be particularly deadly if Tatum can work his approach again to guarding centres, as this may mitigate a few of Vucevic’s defensive points and let him play extra. The Celtics may all the time have one guard (White/Pritchard), one wing (Brown/Tatum), and one large (Queta/Vucevic) on the court docket, permitting Joe Mazzulla to play any model given the polar reverse skillsets of their bigs.
I picked Denver to win the title coming into the season, and nothing has swayed me since — assuming they’re wholesome, in fact. Sadly, that’s an enormous if given how banged up they’ve been. You realize it’s dangerous when Joker misses a month!
Amazingly, their presumptive beginning lineup of Murray-Braun-Johnson-Gordon-Jokic has performed simply 324 possessions collectively (lower than 6% of the crew’s complete variety of possessions on the season), and their most used lineup isn’t a lot better, logging simply 357 possessions as a unit. Nevertheless, Denver’s ludicrous +23.7 web ranking (130.2 offensive, 106.5 defensive) with Jokic, Murray, and Gordon means that they’re a juggernaut ready to be unleashed. A variety of that is because of defensive capturing luck, however on condition that the Nuggets are solely dependable in their very own finish when Gordon performs, it’s not hyperbolic to say that his well being could possibly be the largest X-factor within the title race. Whether or not or not that’s a very good guess to make is as much as you — his longest streak of video games performed the previous two seasons is final 12 months’s playoff run at 14, which led to harm — however I’ve little doubt that Denver ought to be co-favorites with OKC if he’s capable of make it by means of an extended postseason run.
San Antonio has confirmed to be legit title threats this season, however they gained’t be capable of make a long term if Wemby can’t ramp up his minutes. The Alien began the 12 months averaging over 34 minutes a recreation in October and November, which dropped all the way down to 23 in December when he returned from a calf pressure. January noticed his enjoying time improve to 27 minutes per recreation, which is now over 29 in February. The Spurs gained’t instantly improve Wemby’s minutes to the mid to excessive thirties come playoff time, so he’ll must make that adjustment within the final two months of the season. Furthermore, Wemby can solely miss 4 of the Spurs’ remaining 25 video games in an effort to qualify for finish of season awards, which could possibly be each a blessing and a curse. On one hand, that might assist his physique acclimate to heavier hundreds, however it may additionally put on him out and improve the percentages of harm. Both approach, each the Spurs and Wemby are incentivized to extend his minutes, which ought to terrify the remainder of the league.
Tanking is uncontrolled!!
The discourse surrounding tanking has gone into overdrive, and rightfully so: there are extra groups than ever purposefully dropping and numerous stars have ended their seasons due to it too.
Nevertheless, the quantity of tanking adjustments yearly, relying on the energy of the draft. The present tankathon race is uncontrolled for the reason that 2026 class has three gamers who may all go #1, however the 2027 and 2028 drafts all lack franchise gamers on the prime. Thus, we don’t need to overcorrect as a consequence of this season and find yourself creating unexpected penalties for years to come back.
With that stated, one thing has to alter since this has been an ongoing situation for many years, however there isn’t any magic bullet that’ll repair the whole lot. Adam Silver is already taking a look at potential options, however the concepts proposed will solely reduce tanking, and never eliminate it fully. That’s as a result of the NBA nonetheless needs to maintain its socialistic design in place — having the worst groups draft highest to even out the enjoying subject — whereas incentivizing each crew to compete. It’s not possible to sq. these issues when dropping provides groups one of the best path at drafting highest, so the league might want to sacrifice a few of its beliefs in the event that they need to get rid of tanking.
The very best resolution I’ve heard is the Gold Plan, the place groups earn draft rating factors for wins after they’re eradicated from playoff competition. Sadly, groups would simply begin tanking earlier in order that they will get eradicated as quickly as attainable and have extra runway to rack up draft wins, and it may result in stars getting traded to backside feeders and end in much less intriguing postseasons.
If we really need to abolish tanking, the Gold Plan may be tweaked by solely counting wins, together with those earlier than groups are out of playoff competition. In different phrases, groups that simply miss the play-in could be catapulted straight to the highest of the draft standings since they’ve essentially the most wins, they usually’ll proceed accumulating factors by successful even after lacking the playoffs.
The evident situation with this concept is that some groups may deliberately miss/lose the play-in as a result of they need higher odds of selecting excessive within the draft than getting shellacked within the playoffs by a excessive seed, and that’s the place sure incentives may come into play: maybe each crew that misses the postseason could be ineligible to make use of their mid-level, or will begin the next season working like a second apron crew irrespective of the place they stand within the tax. No matter what the punishment is, it must be so damaging that groups are all motivated to make the playoffs, even when they will’t legitimately compete for a title.
Does that sound like a very good plan? It would abolish tanking, however the precise worst groups could have the bottom lottery odds and make it tougher for them to change into related. That is exactly why it’s not possible to eliminate tanking whereas additionally holding the NBA’s present socialistic system in place: the ideas are mutually unique, and it’ll take one thing so radical that followers may begin clamouring to return to the best way issues are actually. So should you really need adjustments, be ready for the league to get flipped on its head, and don’t pull a Mark Jackson.
Watch out what you want for.
This week, please try Eric’s article on postseason runs following playoff droughts! He does a fantastic job of laying out the historic context, and also you’d be stunned what number of groups made deep runs even after breaking an extended drought.
All stats courtesy of Cleansing the Glass and NBA Stats.
