NBA Power Rankings, Part I: Embrace the Tank

Matthew Roberson | @mroberson22

The NBA is back in our lives for the next eight months and I am extremely here for it. In today's edition of my power rankings, we'll dive into the ten worst teams in the league. Think bad equals unentertaining and unworthy of your attention? Guess again. This is the last year of NBA basketball with the current lottery rules before the league switches to its supposed anti-tanking system. To me, it seems like the new regulations will just create four or five teams fighting to be in the bottom three, rather than two or three teams fighting for the worst record like we're used to. Either way, this is the year to dive face-first into the sewage and hope your team is the worst version of itself it can be. As it would turn out, there are many candidates who could wind up with the worst record in the league this year. Here they are, in all their glory!

Note: For my most loyal devotees wondering why this isn't being posted on Sports, Rhymes, and Life, that account was connected to my college email that I no longer have access to. Mid-Range Thoughts is the future, even if the mid-range jumper is dying at an alarming rate.

30. Atlanta Hawks – 2016-17 record: 43-39 (5^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -0.8 (19^th in NBA)

Additions: Marco Belinelli, Miles Plumlee, Dewayne Dedmon

Losses: Paul Millsap, Dwight Howard, Tim Hardaway Jr.

PG - Dennis Schröder

SG - Marco Belinelli

SF - Kent Bazemore

PF - Mike Muscala

C - Miles Plumlee

G - Malcolm Delaney

F - Ersan Ilyasova

C - Dewayne Dedmon

Pour one out for the 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks, a team that won 60 games with four of its five starters making the All-Star team, earning the right to be flattened by LeBron and the Cavs in the Eastern Conference Finals. That was a team defined by zippy ball movement, excellent three-point shooting, sound defense, and smart shot selection.

This year’s team will be defined by… weird jerseys? Exactly zero starters remain from the ‘14-15 iteration of the Hawks, a squad that reeled off 19 straight wins and had a 40-8 record at the end of January. The looming terribleness of the 2017-18 version speaks to the incredibly fluid nature of modern NBA rosters. You could argue that Atlanta’s front office should have tried harder to keep the band together, given the fact said band’s harmonies led to the most wins in franchise history and a cult following among NBA diehards. The reality of the situation is that a rebuild was imminent, and there was no feasible way for the most beloved ATL team of this century to retain all of its key pieces without the puzzle being dismantled every spring by LeBron.

Paying Al Horford and DeMarre Carroll a combined $171 million was something they gladly let other teams do. Getting a 2019 first-round pick from Cleveland for Kyle Korver is about as much as you can ask for. With Dennis Schröder providing a younger and cheaper option at point guard, trading Jeff Teague for a lottery pick made sense. After that mass exodus and a record narrowly above .500, the team took its temperature and (wisely) decided that it wasn’t winning a championship with Paul Millsap as its best player. He’s in Denver now counting his money, and all Atlanta has is memories. Such is the reality for rebuilding teams in the salary cap era, even if that means staring down the barrel at the potential worst record in the league.

Dennis Schröder served as the ball handler in the pick-and-roll more than almost any player in the league last season. He accounted for roughly the same amount of points per possession out of the play as Ish Smith and T.J. McConnell, two guys that teams aren’t exactly lining up to build their offenses around. Combine that with his 33.1% career mark from beyond the arc and Atlanta has a point guard ill-suited for the 2017 NBA in a league filled with point guards that are tailor made for it. Of course, Schröder is just 24 years old, and improvement is always just an offseason away. But Schröder’s second option is Kent Bazemore, a fine player who has no business being the second-best player on a real-life NBA team. Mike Muscala’s 41.8% three point percentage on 110 attempts means that the floor should be spaced nicely for Schröder to knife in and out of the lane, and it’s always fun to have a Plumlee in the mix, but the truth of the matter is that Sir Foster will be playing some melancholy tunes this winter.

Photo courtesy of Basket Caffe/Twitter

29. Chicago Bulls – 2016-17 record: 41-41 (8^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: 0.1 (14^th in NBA)

Additions: Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn, Lauri Markkanen, Justin Holiday

Losses: Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade, Rajon Rondo

PG - Kris Dunn*

SG - Zach LaVine**

SF - Justin Holiday

PF - Nikola Mirotic

C - Robin Lopez

G - Jerian Grant

G/F - Denzel Valentine

F/C - Cristiano Felicio

*out two to four weeks with a dislocated finger
**out with a knee injury to start the season

Hoo boy, where to begin? In the past seven months Bulls’ management traded the team’s best player for 70 cents on the dollar, drafted a seven-footer who’s allergic to rebounding, turned Doug McDermott and Taj Gibson into Cameron Payne and two guys who aren’t on the team anymore, waived Rajon Rondo, played chicken with Nikola Mirotic and his contract, and granted Dwyane Wade the buyout that was “inevitable” for quite some time.

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Most of the intrigue surrounding this team involves how bad they are going to be. Who starts at the small forward position? Is Zach LaVine ever going to be fully recovered from his ACL tear, and if he is, can he be the focal point of an NBA offense without a consistent ability to get to the free throw line or set up his teammates? What position will he play, and with what other players on the floor? Can he score enough to cancel out his largely non-existent defense?

As with any team that stands to endure a brutal season, there are some things, albeit depressing things, to keep the fans’ interest. Re-upping Mirotic slides him in as the starting power forward, giving the Bulls some desperately needed outside shooting. Chicago was 29^th out of 30 teams in three-point attempts last season, ahead of only their former coach’s team in Minnesota. The red and black connected on 34 percent of those heaves, placing 24^th in the league. Mirotic, LaVine, and rookie Lauri Markkanen should inject some shooting into the Windy City, but if Fred Hoiberg plays those three together they will surely be hemorrhaging points on defense.

At this point we know what Cristiano Felicio and Justin Holiday are, and while they’ll never set the league on fire, they can at least give Hoiberg some decent production as minute eaters. Bobby Portis, Jerian Grant, and Denzel Valentine are all athletic and have yet to celebrate their 25^th birthdays, which are generally good qualities in basketball players. Paul Zipser showed some flashes last year, including a 16-point night on 6-for-8 shooting in the Game 2 victory in Boston during the playoffs. I’ve always loved Robin Lopez for obvious reasons. But when losing Rajon Rondo and Dwyane Wade threatens to sink your team in the year 2017, you’ve got some serious issues that go beyond not having Jimmy Butler any more.

28. Orlando Magic – 2016-17 record: 29-53 (13^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -6.8 (29^th in NBA)

Additions: Jonathon Simmons, Arron Afflalo, Marreese Speights

Losses: C.J. Watson, Jeff Green

PG - Elfrid Payton

SG - Arron Afflalo

SF - Evan Fournier

PF - Aaron Gordon

C - Bismack Biyombo

G - Jonathon Simmons

G/F - Terrence Ross

F/C - Nikola Vucevic

*looks at Orlando’s roster*

*looks at their win totals from the last five seasons*

*pours a tall glass of bleach*

The Magic are facing the terrifying proposition that none of their trio of top-10 draft picks (Aaron Gordon, Elfrid Payton, Mario Hezonja) will ever play a postseason game in an Orlando uniform, living out the same fate as former No. 2 overall pick Victor Oladipo. In the pile of garbage that is the Eastern Conference, the Magic are the stack of wet newspapers that have sunk to the bottom. In the franchise’s 28-year history, hitting a homerun in the draft is the only way the team has ever succeeded. Granted, landing Shaquille O’Neal and then Dwight Howard would turn the fortunes of every team, and it’s not like drafting those guys required any sort of risk taking. Fast forward to the 2010s, and risk taking in the draft could be the downfall of the Magic.

Payton was selected 10^th overall in 2014 after his junior season at Louisiana-Lafayette, meaning he was not only old for NBA prospect standards, but he also honed his skills against competition that was inferior in comparison to his Power 5 peers. While there certainly wasn’t a stable of franchise-altering players taken after Payton, guys like Zach LaVine and Dario Saric (who Payton was traded for on draft night) are better candidates to jump start an Orlando offense that has posted a bottom-five offensive rating in four of the last five seasons. Payton can’t shoot – as evidenced by his 28.9% career clip from downtown – and among players who run the pick and roll with the same frequency as him, Payton lands in the same tier as dudes like Aaron Brooks and Raymond Felton in terms of scoring.

Gordon is unquestionably one of the most exciting dunkers in the league, but that doesn’t really translate to winning games. Orlando taking 50 L’s a season can’t be blamed squarely on Gordon, whose minutes and points per game have increased every year, but I think it’s fair to expect a No. 4 overall pick to have developed a little more than Gordon has. Again, a lot of this isn’t his fault. I’m sure it wasn’t Gordon’s idea to add Serge Ibaka, Bismack Biyombo, and Jeff Green to a roster chocked full of non-shooting big men. Remember that Orlando began last season with Gordon starting at the 3, alongside Ibaka and Nikola Vucevic. After trying Green in his stead, head coach Frank Vogel re-inserted Gordon into the starting five, this time playing with Ibaka and Biyombo. It wasn’t until Ibaka was shipped to Toronto in February that Gordon was finally able to play his natural power forward position. From that point on, the high flyer out of Arizona put up 16.2 points per game and shot 49.8% from the field, an improvement from the 11.2 and 42.9 numbers accumulated while sharing the starters’ minutes with Ibaka.

Orlando still has a surplus of 4s and 5s, making a Nikola Vucevic trade seem like a logical move for Orlando’s decision makers. The thing is, Orlando’s decision makers have failed to show the ability to make logical moves in quite some time, leaving new general manager John Hammond to dry erase the mess that his predecessor Rob Hennigan created. I’m not going to sit here and come up with theoretical trade packages, but playoff bound teams like San Antonio, Washington, and Portland could be cushy landing spots for Vucevic, either as their starting center or in the backup role that he assumed for 20 games in ’16-17. When one of a team’s biggest storylines is a hypothetical trade of its longest tenured player, that is typically a tell-tale sign of another season spent circling the drain.

27. Phoenix Suns – 2016-17 record: 24-58 (15^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: -5.4 (26^th in NBA)

Additions: Josh Jackson

Losses: Leandro Barbosa

PG - Eric Bledsoe

SG - Devin Booker

SF - T.J. Warren

PF - Marquese Chriss

C - Tyson Chandler

G - Brandon Knight*

F - Josh Jackson

F - Dragan Bender

*likely out for the season with a torn ACL

The Suns are running it back with virtually the same guys they had last year, which is a good thing to do with such a young team, but becomes less encouraging when you remember that Phoenix won 24 games and the Western Conference has gotten even stronger. Apart from old heads Tyson Chandler and Jared Dudley, this is a very, very green team.

Fans in Arizona have tethered their dreams of a competitive team to Devin Booker’s shooting stroke, the development of big guys Marquese Chriss and Dragan Bender, and perhaps the hope that Tyler Ulis (who averaged 12 points and seven assists in 31 minutes per game over the final third of last year’s campaign) can be the jitterbug point guard that Isaiah Thomas could and should have been for the Suns.

Josh Jackson was added in the draft, presumably to help shore up a defense that surrendered over 109 points per 100 possessions in ’16-17, besting only the hapless Lakers and the freewheeling Nuggets. The rookie Jayhawk stands 6’7” with a wingspan nearly touching 6’10”, making scouts and GMs salivate about his ability to guard multiple positions. He made just 34 threes in his only season of college ball, computing out to exactly one per game. In this pace and space era that features more long shots than a 2 A.M. text message, it’s hard to get too excited over a wing player entering the league with questions about his long-range game.

That said, guys like Kawhi Leonard and Andrew Wiggins entered the league with similar questions and have both improved their shot. I don’t know if Jackson can ever be as good as those guys. I do know that all of the Suns players mentioned in the last two paragraphs were born after Eazy-E died, meaning the organization needs to be patient and understand that 30 wins is a reasonable ceiling for this young group. Ideally, Phoenix will see improvement from its crop of mid-to-late 90s babies, watch Booker blossom into an All-Star, and still plop into the top five of the 2018 lottery. The fact that we’ve made it this far without bringing up Eric Bledsoe tells you exactly what the theme of Phoenix’s season is: youth. As always, stay tuned for the mid-February tradition of guessing which team Bledsoe might get traded to (Denver? Detroit? Philadelphia?), especially with the quasi-emergence of Ulis giving the Suns another three point guard dilemma similar to the one that it bungled during the 2014-15 season. Phoenix will not be good, and no one should expect them to be good. Booker is the only true sun on this roster, with his teammates serving as the planets orbiting around him. Earl Watson’s team would be much more intriguing had they landed Blake Griffin or Paul Millsap in free agency, but since they didn’t, let’s all kick back and watch Booker’s usage rate climb toward the Kobe zone while his team gives up 120 points every night.

Photo courtey of Ronda de Tiro/Twitter

27. Los Angeles Lakers – 2016-17 record: 26-56 (14^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: -7.2 (30^th in NBA)

Additions: Brook Lopez, Lonzo Ball, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Andrew Bogut

Losses: D’Angelo Russell, Nick Young, Timofey Mozgov

PG - Lonzo Ball

SG - Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

SF - Brandon Ingram

PF - Julius Randle

C - Brook Lopez

G - Jordan Clarkson

F - Luol Deng

F - Larry Nance Jr.

One thing I will not do in this space is discuss LaVar Ball or his son’s take on Nas and 90s hip-hop. I simply do not have the energy. This is certainly not an original or exclusive idea, but the Lakers will be one thousand times more fun than they were the last time we saw them. Do not be fooled, they will still fail to consistently win basketball games, but the atmosphere at STAPLES Center should feel like more of a second semester of senior year than a freshman orientation. That is, the inherent (we think) temporariness of this Lakers bunch should bring some much-needed levity to an organization that has failed to crack 30 wins in any of the last four years.

Everyone and their mother believes that Paul George will be donning purple and gold this summer. They believe this because Paul George said, “I wanted to play in Los Angeles” before taking a one-year internship with OKC.  While they couldn’t scoop George, the Lakers did acquire some competent NBA bodies who should move the needle back toward relevance. Brook Lopez has put up 18 a night with a shooting percentage north of 50 percent over the course of a nine-year career. Last year he famously took 356 (!) more threes than he had to that point in his entire career, swishing 34.6% of them. He stands to receive countless dimes from Ball that will lead to easy baskets, whether they’re at the rim or behind the trey line.

Head coach Luke Walton, the Justin Trudeau of the NBA, also now has the luxury of an elite on-ball defender at his disposal. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, whose addition to the team made GM Rob Pelinka say he felt like the starving, desert-dwelling Israelites must have when they received bread from heaven, is one of the stingiest defensive guards in the entire league. His presence will also allow Ball to hide defensively on nights he’s being torched, which is part of the initiation process for any first-year guard in this league. KCP is more than capable of guarding any position 1-3, taking some of the immense pressure off his lightning rod backcourt mate. Caldwell-Pope was good on 35 percent of his launches from three-point land in ’16-17, a year in which he took 5.8 per game, setting new career-highs in both categories.

The real question for this team starts and ends with how good Brandon Ingram can be. The slender small forward made just 29.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes, a style of shot he should see a lot of with Ball playing quarterback. As stated several times before, this league is trending more and more toward the three pointer with every passing second, but being a below average three-point marksman doesn’t necessarily have to be a death sentence. Playing for an atrocious team in the regular season’s final months meant that not many people were paying attention to Ingram, but he quietly ended on a tear.

After posting zero points and four rebounds in a 20-point loss to the Celtics on March 3, Ingram strung together 17 games of eyebrow-raising play. In those contests the Kinston, NC native averaged 13.9 per game and hit 48.3% of his field goals. If that feels underwhelming, especially for a No. 2 overall pick in the draft, consider that Ingram was scoring just 8.1 per game and sinking a measly 36.9% from the field prior to his late-season awakening. With Luol Deng lurking in the shadows as a human insurance plan, the Lakers face an interesting choice. If their prized prospect gets off to another uninspiring start, Lakers brass may have to swallow its collective pride and bring Ingram off the bench, letting him cook against second units while he re-gains his confidence. No matter what happens with the Ingram project, Lopez makes the offense better, Caldwell-Pope’s effort and Andrew Bogut’s elbows to the throat should improve the defense, and the very presence of the Ball family brings a star power that the team desperately needs. Another year in the cellar of the West standings is coming, but so are free agent reinforcements, something that should make Angelenos, and the NBA, start to take the Lakers seriously again.

26. New York Knicks – 2016-17 record: 31-51 (12^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -4.1 (24^th in NBA)

Additions: Enes Kanter, Doug McDermott, Frank Ntilikina, Ramon Sessions, Michael Beasley

Losses: Carmelo Anthony, Derrick Rose, Justin Holiday

PG - Ramon Sessions

SG - Courtney Lee

SF - Tim Hardaway Jr.

PF - Kristaps Porzingis

C - Enes Kanter

G - Frank Ntilikina

F - Doug McDermott

C - Willy Hernangomez

After countless hours of frustration, speculation, frustration turned to misery, and confusion, the Knicks finally distanced themselves from Carmelo Anthony for good. This is the same Carmelo who joined the Knickerbockers for the last 27 games of the 2010-11 season, helping the franchise secure its first playoff spot in seven years. In 2012-13 – the third consecutive year the Knicks qualified for the playoffs – Melo was the best player on a squad that won 54 games and a playoff series.

Zoom ahead to 2017, where Carmelo has been most notable for his unwavering dedication to the hoodie, and the ten-time All-Star is wearing different shades of orange and blue in an equally exciting city with a similarly thriving, diverse metropolis. While this move signals a hardcore lean into the tanking process, it also officially ushers in a new era in Madison Square Garden. Sure, James Dolan is still kazooing his way through the day-to-day business operations of the team, so all expectations are tempered. But I subscribe to the argument that the NBA is a better, more exciting league when the Knicks are competitive, and the only way for that to happen is to play the kids and see what you’ve got. The pivot into relevancy could take a handful of years, but whose better hands to put it in than a Latvian unicorn?

Kristaps Porzingis, freed from the shackles of the triangle offense and the shadow of Carmelo, has a clear path toward his first All-Star team this year. The second year of Porzingis was often hard to figure, as he made strides in some areas while slightly regressing in others. The internet’s favorite European large adult son saw upticks in most of his shooting numbers from year one to year two, an encouraging thing to happen in a sport where the main objective is to shoot the ball through the hoop.

He improved his field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and effective field goal percentage, but went from making 83.8% of his free throws (on 3.3 attempts per game) in 2015-16 to 78.6% on 3.8 attempts in ’16-17. His rebound percentage also dipped in his sophomore season, but that could be attributed partly to the arrival of board hound Joakim Noah. Two of New York’s four most-used lineup combinations from a year ago featured Porzingis playing alongside Noah, whose minutes should be dispersed more between Enes Kanter and Willy Hernangomez this year, perhaps rewarding Porzingis with the rebounding numbers he’ll need to stand out in the eyes of the All-Star voting public.

Like the Lakers, the Knicks will be bad but fun, and most likely an abomination on defense. I’m probably too high on Doug McDermott, but I’ve always liked his game, particularly if he can be the sixth man and hunt buckets against other teams’ understudies at the wing positions. Every basketball fan should get all tingly inside at the idea of Porzingis becoming a focal point of the basketball team in this country’s media capital. Especially now with Phil Jackson out of the picture and free to do all the peyote his heart desires, meaning Porzingis will no longer be shamed out of that “cheap way to get points” that has become a hallmark of every successful team over the past three years. Outside of Porzingod, Kanter and Ntilikina complete the last links of an all-European, under-25 trio that could potentially form the Big Three of the Knicks future if supplemented by the right pieces. If that happens, not only would a team in the melting pot of America have three exciting players from three different countries, it will mean that the Knicks’ higher ups hit on three separate transactions, which is worth celebrating in itself.

25. Sacramento Kings – 2016-17 record: 32-50 (12^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: -4.5 (25^th in NBA)

Additions: George Hill, Zach Randolph, De’Aaron Fox, Vince Carter

Losses: Darren Collison, Rudy Gay, Ty Lawson, Tyreke Evans, Ben McLemore

PG - George Hill

SG - Buddy Hield

SF - Garrett Temple

PF - Zach Randolph

C - Willie Cauley-Stein

G - De’Aaron Fox

G/F - Vince Carter

F/C - Kosta Koufos

The first full year of Sacramento’s post-Boogie existence will be played by a cast of new characters. Eight of their top 11 guys in terms of minutes played from the 2016-17 season are now employed elsewhere. Some of the headliners of this year’s ragtag outfit (George Hill, Vince Carter, Zach Randolph) have combined to play in over 3,000 NBA games, while the flashy new pogo stick (De’Aaron Fox) has played in exactly zero. What’s more, Hill has played less than 50 games in two of the last three seasons, Carter will turn 41 in January, and Randolph was recently charged with misdemeanor drug possession! Z-Bo is sticking to his story that he “didn’t do anything wrong”, so let’s hope he throws his burner phone in a river before the season tips off.

In a harrowing twist of fate, the Kings made a trio of recent draft picks that NBA Twitter seemed to agree were actually in the best interest of the team. Yes, that’s right. The same team that used three straight first round picks on big men while building around one of the best big men in the league. The same team that pondered the idea of playing 4-on-5. The same team whose last playoff win came in the same year that Hannah Montana debuted. By swiping Fox, Justin Jackson, and Harry Giles in the first round, the Kings have three princes to nurture while the Hill-Randolph-Carter trio occupies the throne in the interim.

Acquiring Fox and Hill in the same summer brings up an interesting debate usually reserved for the NFL. Do you start Fox right away and let him learn (and likely embarrass himself occasionally) on the job, or do you use him as a backup to an established veteran? The NBA’s upcoming lottery reform gives this scenario an added wrinkle. Starting George Hill in place of Fox could make for a better product, and as a result, more wins. But for a team that would essentially need every team in the Northwest Division to cease operations to have any chance of making the playoffs, are wins really what you should be chasing?

The Kings drafted Fox before signing Hill, which tells me that they were explicitly looking for a vet to take some of the load off Fox. Many people are saying that the 2018 draft holds several franchise-altering players, something you’d think the Kings might be interested in. Then again, Hill has a checkered injury history, so maybe the Kings view this season as a sort of low stakes win-win. Hill could stay healthy and prove his worth as a starting point guard over a full 82 games, much to the delight of anti-tanking Sacramento fans. Or, Hill could go down with an injury, pushing Fox into the starting five and providing a glimpse of what the rookie can do when handed the keys to the (slow-moving, outdated) car. It really is impossible to ever guess what Vivek and Vlade are doing, but at least this year we could see their thinking on draft night. Nevertheless, having human ray of sunshine Buddy Hield on the same team as beloved bully Zach Randolph should supply the Kings with a beautifully entertaining dynamic rivaling any 1980s buddy cop movie.

23. Indiana Pacers – 2016-17 record: 42-40 (7^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -0.1 (16^th in NBA)

Additions: Victor Oladipo, Darren Collison, Cory Joseph, Bojan Bogdanovic, Domantas Sabonis

Losses: Paul George, Jeff Teague, C.J. Miles, Aaron Brooks, Monta Ellis

PG - Darren Collison

SG - Victor Oladipo

SF - Glenn Robinson III

PF - Thaddeus Young

C - Myles Turner

G - Cory Joseph

F - Bojan Bogdanovic

C - Al Jefferson

Indiana stumbles into the new season filling the role of Kings East. Both teams’ best players from the year before are gone, and in their places are a collection of bright-eyed young players and traveled journeymen collecting their next paychecks. The Pacers can take solace in the fact that they may have struck gold on a late lottery pick, something they also did with franchise legends Paul George and Reggie Miller. It is entirely too early to put those kinds of labels and expectations on Myles Turner as the enters his third year in Indy, but the numbers don’t lie. Turner made the kind of mini leap from year one to year two that hints at a sustained rise.

Year	Minutes per game	FG %	3 pt. %	eFG %	FT %	RPG	BPG	PPG
2015-16	22.8	49.8	21.4	50.1	72.7	5.5	1.4	10.3
2016-17	31.4	51.1	34.8	53.4	80.9	7.3	2.1	14.5

Turner will be playing with his third point guard in three years, and its yet to be seen how he will jell with newcomer Victor Oladipo. Having just turned 21, the baby-faced center is currently an under-qualified face of the franchise. The Pacers have won between 35 and 45 games in 11 of the last 13 seasons, with the lone exceptions happening in unison with the LeBron-era Heat. The Pacers of the 90s were playoff mainstays led by one of the all-time great NBA villains. The Pacers of the 2000s, had that cup of beer landed two feet to the right, could have been serious Finals contenders. Now, the Pacers could be best described as that team that always seems to be one piece away from beating whoever they matchup with in the playoffs, whether it’s the juggernaut Miami team, the Lowry-DeRozan Raptors, or last year’s Cavs, who history will forget squeaked out its four playoff wins against Indiana by an average of roughly five points a game.

I do not expect Indiana to make the playoffs this year. But the sheer fact that they play in the Eastern Conference means they could be a Goran Dragic injury, or an underperformance in Charlotte or Detroit away from seeing LeBron again in April. Most of the possible roads to the playoffs go through Victor Oladipo. The sand in Oladipo’s hourglass is ticking away rapidly. He is on his third team in five seasons, usually a red flag for a former No. 2 overall pick. Freed from the eternal damnation of Orlando, and the Westbrook ball domination in Oklahoma, maybe returning to the land where he shined as a collegiate player will be the fresh start he needs. Small-ball lineups with Turner at center and Bojan Bogdanovic at the four spaces the floor wonderfully for Oladipo to drive. This should be a revelation for a guy who converted 60 percent of his shots at the rim and just over 35 percent of his threes for OKC last season.

Cory Joseph and Al Jefferson could bring one of the best-scoring bench mobs in the league to Bankers Life Fieldhouse, especially if Lance Stephenson can harness whatever voodoo he was using during his career year in 2013-14. Perhaps the best way to summarize my thoughts about this Pacers roster is to say that it looks profoundly mediocre with a chance to nudge its way into pleasantly surprising territory. That dreaded land between 35 and 45 wins is fruitless, and in the last year of the NBA’s current lottery system designed to prevent tanking, dipping under 35 might be the best thing that could happen to the Pacers.

Photo courtesy of Andy Gray/Twitter

22. Brooklyn Nets – 2016-17 record: 20-62 (15^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -6.1 (28^th in NBA)

Additions: D’Angelo Russell, Allen Crabbe, DeMarre Carroll, Timofey Mozgov, Tyler Zeller

Losses: Brook Lopez, Randy Foye

PG - D’Angelo Russell

SG - Jeremy Lin

SF - Allen Crabbe

PF - DeMarre Carroll

C - Timofey Mozgov

G/F - Caris LeVert

F - Trevor Booker

C - Tyler Zeller

The Nets are in as good of shape as you could expect a team to be after losing its all-time leading scorer. Yup, you read that correctly. No one in the history of the Nets organization, which launched in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans, has ever scored as many points as Brook Lopez. That fact becomes a little easier to stomach when someone points out that Lopez is second in franchise history in games played, and spent most of his career as the most polished offensive player on some truly shitty teams. Flipping the affable Lopez for noted narc D’Angelo Russell is a bad move if starting a social circle, but probably a good one if trying to construct a basketball team.

Russell becomes the latest millennial to pack up for Brooklyn in hopes of starting anew, even if the move wasn’t exactly his idea. Getting traded at a young age can do wonders for some point guards, and sabotage the careers of others. It’s up to Russell to decide what type of career he wants to forge. The talent is obviously there, as evidenced by the 15.6 points per game he put up during his last year in LA. The mercurial lefty leaves many things to be desired, though. He shot 40.5 percent from the field last year, ranking 109^th out of 113 players with similar shot volumes. Even that number is a tad misleading, as it is inflated by making 52.8 percent of his layups. Playing with Jeremy Lin could prove to be a blessing for Russell, operating off the ball might be the remedy for many of his offensive shortcomings.

The crowd who thinks Russell lacks the skills and mindset to be a “true point guard” could point to his passes per game number and yell about how he’s narrowly ahead of Marvin Williams. The crowd who’s not into advanced stats can cry about his career assists per game number sitting at a paltry 4.0, and that his 4.8 dimes per game from last year sandwiches him between scorer-not-passer Kevin Durant and undrafted scrapper Matthew Dellavedova. Whatever you think he is or is not, Russell is still unfathomably young and fell into one of the worst environments possible as a rookie. There is still plenty of time for him to live up to the hype that followed him out of Ohio State.

For all the jabs about his hair or how his biggest contribution to the NBA was a comet-like 17 game stretch in 2012, Lin is a career 35 percent three-point shooter who gets 12 points a night. Him, along with new additions DeMarre Carroll and Allen Crabbe, lay the foundation for a competent NBA team, which is miles ahead of what Brooklyn had for the last two seasons. The Nets are a team with absolutely no incentive to tank, and a stable of youngsters in Russell, Caris LaVert, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. The gentrification of Brooklyn from old, crusty, and violent to young, hip, and hairstyled has no end in sight, and the borough’s basketball team is its latest victim.

21. Dallas Mavericks – 2016-17 record: 33-49 (11^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: -2.6 (23^rd in NBA)

Additions: Dennis Smith Jr., Josh McRoberts, Jeff Withey

Losses: A.J. Hammons

PG - Dennis Smith Jr.

SG - Seth Curry*

SF - Wesley Matthews

PF - Harrison Barnes

C - Dirk Nowitzki

G - J.J. Barea

F - Josh McRoberts

C - Nerlens Noel

*out with a stress fracture to start the season

The Figthin’ Dirks have been a model of consistency since the turn of the century, missing out on the playoffs just twice since the 2000-01 season. Barring a messiah-like rise by Dennis Smith, or Dirk encountering some sort of witch doctor with a magic youth potion, Dallas will miss the playoffs this spring. Mark Cuban’s team finds itself in a precarious position, but not necessarily a doomed position. Sure, Dirk’s body has decayed into a seven-foot collection of twigs and rubber bands held together with chewing gum, but help is on the way!

Dennis Smith Jr. is my official pick to win Rookie of the Year. He looks poised to be the Mavs starting point guard on opening night, and while Rick Carlisle can try as hard as he wants to be the archetypal grump who makes young guys earn their keep before letting them loose, he may have no choice but to let Smith take the reins of an offense that finished dead last in points per game. Puerto Rican jackrabbit J.J. Barea, a notorious Carlisle favorite, is there if you need him, but Smith is roughly three inches taller and a thousand times more athletic than Barea is.

The rookie out of NC State had an eventfully brief college career. His lone year on campus included a win at Duke that was immediately followed by a maddening seven-game losing streak. The Wolfpack went 15-17, missed the tournament, and essentially got their coach fired. But Smith, the No. 9 pick in the draft, tallied over 18 points and six assists per game in conference play against defenses that were designed specifically to contain him. He showed an ability to be efficient as both a scorer and facilitator, posting a 52% effective field goal percentage and assisting on a whopping 34.2% of his team’s points, leading the ACC in that category.

Smith provides a wonderfully poetic juxtaposition to Dirk Nowitzki. Dirk is nearly 40, Smith is not yet 20. Dirk has been old and slow for several years, Smith looks like the kind of guy who could dunk in eighth grade gym class. The rest of Dallas’ roster is a bunch of dudes who would be much more exciting if it were 2014. Harrison Barnes is coming off a season in which he averaged 19.2 points per game, but you and I both know that he’s not exactly a superstar in waiting. Wesley Matthews managed to play in 73 games, a small victory in itself, but his numbers have understandably declined after his devastating Achilles injury in Portland.

Nerlens Noel is back on a one-year, $4.1 million deal after reportedly turning down a four-year, $70 million offer in favor of betting on himself in 2018 free agency. The defensive-minded center fired his old agent and signed on with Rich Paul of Klutch Sports after losing out on $66 million and long-term job stability. At Mavericks’ media day, Carlisle announced that he’s leaning toward using Noel off the bench and starting Dirk at center, adding one final twist of the knife to Noel’s offseason. The relationship between Noel, Carlisle, and the Mavericks’ front office is one of the more intriguing storylines for an otherwise blasé Dallas team. Hey look, Devin Harris is still in the league! Did you know that according to Basketball-Reference’s win shares statistic, Seth Curry was the Mavericks’ best player last year? After 12 straight playoff seasons and one of the most improbable championships in NBA history, the Mavs and their fans are in for a complete reversal of fortunes. They can hang their hats on the fact that the organization possesses one of the most enticing rookies in the league, one of its savviest head coaches, and that Dirk is consistently a delightful viewing experience. A second straight top-ten pick is a more-than-likely possibility, which represents an enormous question mark for a team whose best draft pick of the last 15 years was Josh Howard in 2003.

Stay tuned for Parts II and III