NBA Power Rankings, Part II: What are We?

Matthew Roberson | @mroberson22

In today's NBA, the worst possible place to be is the middle. Some teams find themselves here as a result of under-achieving, while some toiled away, stacking lottery picks, to finally rise from the ashes. Regardless of their path, every team in this group is asking themselves the dreaded question of, "What are we?" The answer, for many of them, is a woefully mediocre basketball team.

20. Detroit Pistons – 2016-17 record: 37-45 (10^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -2.0 (22^nd in NBA)

Additions: Avery Bradley, Luke Kennard, Langston Galloway

Losses: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Marcus Morris, Aron Baynes

PG - Reggie Jackson

SG - Avery Bradley

SF - Tobias Harris

PF - Jon Leuer

C - Andre Drummond

G - Ish Smith

G/F - Stanley Johnson

F - Anthony Tolliver

At what point in the season do you usually forget that the Detroit Piston even exist? For me it’s usually right around mid-March, unless something like an update on Andre Drummond’s shoulder hair or a funny Stan Van Gundy facial expression reels me back in. The Pistons were one of the hardest teams for me to place in these rankings. Last year they were probably the least fun team to watch in the entire NBA, and the biggest stories to come out of Detroit always had something to do with the players resenting Reggie Jackson’s style of play. If Ish Smith, Ish Smith, is the beacon of hope for a fractured team, it’s hard to get casual fans excited about your squad.

The Pistons could very well make the playoffs, maybe even as high as a sixth seed in a terribly inferior Eastern Conference. Van Gundy can typically be counted on as one of the smartest generals in the league, plus his raspy bellows from the sideline can add some comedy to bleary Detroit games that finish in the 80s. Two playoffs ago, the Pistons snuck in as the eighth seed after winning 44 games. Hitting that number of wins this year would lock up a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference hellscape, but no one would really be surprised if they floundered around 35 wins and fell to tenth in the conference again.

It’s time to figure out exactly what Andre Drummond is. In that ‘15-16 season that saw Detroit make the playoffs and Drummond play in the All-Star Game, he recorded 66 double-doubles in 81 games, finishing a couple boards shy of a 15 point, 15 rebound per game season. In the first 20 games of last season, a stretch in which Jackson was out with injury, Drummond put up 14 and 13 a night while canning 52.1% on nearly 12 shots per game. In the next 52 games with Jackson running point, his numbers were nearly identical, with a slight improvement in field goal percentage. Drummond does not have the statistical evidence to use the “I don’t jell with Jackson” excuse, meaning he has to prove that the team can win with the duo as its two main offensive components. Detroit was a better defensive unit when Drummond sat last season. Opponents’ offensive rating plummeted by 10 points in the 1,551 minutes Drummond spent on the bench. This is a troubling statistic for a seven-foot center with a 7’6” wingspan in a league obsessed with protecting the rim. The problem might only worsen with the departure of Aron Baynes, a physical brute under the rim who deterred many smaller players from trying him.

Internet hero Boban Marjanovic stands in line for a playing time increase now that Baynes is playing for Boston. This is all-kinds-of-exciting for people who enjoy fun. My man is 7’3” with hands the size of small island nations. The basketball-watching world’s significantly smaller fingers are permanently crossed in hopes of Boban finally being freed. We’ve never seen him play more than 10 minutes per game, and backing up Drummond could lead to heavy Boban minutes when Van Gundy gets fed up with Drummond’s leaky defense. We should all hope to be so lucky.

Other than that, I really don’t have much to say about Detroit. Avery Bradley is an upgrade over Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and someone who can be a deadly spot-up shooter surrounding Jackson-Drummond pick and rolls. Losing Marcus Morris creates an interesting hole at the forward positions, especially when Van Gundy inserts Tobias Harris at the four. Luke Kennard could be a nice seventh or eighth man if he ever learns to stop messing with his hair while he’s on the court. These are not the Bad Boys, and they’re certainly not the ’04 Pistons, but these Pistons could be fine. With this year’s crop of Eastern Conference teams offering less inspiration than a Ted Cruz campaign speech, fine could be enough for Detroit to return to the postseason.

Photo courtesy of GameFace Lee/Twitter

19. New Orleans Pelicans – 2016-17 record: 34-48 (10^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: -1.6 (21^st in NBA)

Additions: Rajon Rondo, Ian Clark, Tony Allen, Darius Miller

Losses: Donatas Motiejunas, Tim Frazier

PG - Jrue Holiday

SG - Tony Allen

SF - Solomon Hill*

PF - Anthony Davis

C - DeMarcus Cousins

G - Rajon Rondo**

G - Ian Clark

C - Omer Asik

*out 6-8 months after hamstring surgery

**out 4-6 weeks due to sports hernia surgery

So. Many. Questions. Is Rajon Rondo washed? Will his incessant alpha personality allow him to come off the bench? If not, will a starting lineup with Rondo in charge have enough shooting to survive? Will DeMarcus Cousins continue jacking up threes like he did (surprisingly well) last season? What is the ceiling for a team built around two big guys in today’s NBA? Can a rotation of Solomon Hill, E’Twaun Moore, Ian Clark, Tony Allen, Jordan Crawford, and Darius Miller at the shooting guard/small forward spots muster enough offense? Has Omer Asik ever, for even a minute of his life, not been sweaty? Is Alvin Gentry the right man for this job? Will the Smoothie King Arena go down in history as the greatest arena name in the history of professional sports? And, of course, most importantly, can the Pelicans make the playoffs?

No team would benefit more from the NBA eliminating conferences than the Pelicans. Being one of the eight best teams in a Western Conference armed to the teeth with Hall of Famers is a big ask. It will really boil down to New Orleans being better than Memphis, Portland, and Utah in the always-thrilling late season tradition of, “Let’s try really hard to make the playoffs as an eight seed so we can get curb stomped on national TV by the Warriors.” The Pelicans are currently constructed like a 2k fantasy draft team. It remains incredibly unclear if this mishmash of players can co-exist in the same basketball ecosystem. The Boogie and Brow pairing should, theoretically, complement one another beautifully with Davis protecting the rim on defense, and both behemoths serving as screeners in pick and roll and pick and pop actions on offense.

Literally every other aspect of this team could go a million different directions. The Pelicans were a top-ten defensive team last year, and adding professional agitator Tony Allen makes things even more terrifying. The offense is another story in an entirely different genre living in a library in another country. Despite having Cousins for the last 17 games of the regular season, New Orleans wound up 26^th out of 30 teams in offensive rating. While the “Can they make the playoffs?” conversation will be dominated by Davis-Cousins talk, Jrue Holiday is probably the hinge that could swing the team to a playoff series.

Holiday is embarking on his ninth year as an NBA player, with his fourth different head coach. He was away from the team for the initial 12 games of last season to handle the unthinkable combination of welcoming a newborn daughter while his wife dealt with a brain tumor. That, added to the in-season shakeup of the team’s roster, probably made for the most trying season of Holiday’s career. With all that in the past, and the possibility of playing off the ball with Rondo dishing passes, Holiday may have a chance to show off the skills that made him an All-Star at age 22. Few teams on the playoff bubble have a big three on par with Davis, Cousins, and Holiday. A jump in offensive efficiency is needed, which isn’t too much to ask considering their 26th-place finish last year makes it pretty hard to get worse. If the team finishes, say, between 14^th and 18^th in offensive rating, a wildly reasonable goal for a team with two monsters in its locker room, they can realistically earn the honor of being sacrificed to Golden State in the first round.

18. Philadelphia 76ers – 2016-17 record: 28-54 (14^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: -5.7 (27^th in NBA)

Additions: Markelle Fultz, J.J. Redick, Amir Johnson, James Michael McAdoo

Losses: Gerald Henderson, Sergio Rodriguez

PG - T.J. McConnell

SG – J.J. Redick

SF - Robert Covington

PF - Ben Simmons

C - Joel Embiid

G - Markelle Fultz

F - Dario Saric

C - Jahlil Okafor

Welcome to the post-Process universe. Sam Hinkie’s vision of prolonged incompetence spawning a roster of millennial social media stars has finally come to fruition. For the 981^st straight season, Joel Embiid’s health remains a question mark. His per 36-minute stats from last year still border on pornographic (28.7 PPG, 11.1 RPG, 3.5 BPG), and he flexed a 36.7 three-point percentage, but none of that is helpful if he’s chained to the training table. The Big Shirley Temple hasn’t played an NBA game since January 27, and was only just recently cleared to participate in 5-on-5 practices. Luckily, and this is exactly as weird to type as I’m sure it is to read, Embiid and the Sixers have some reinforcements.

Let’s hold back on anointing Markelle Fultz as the omnipresent savior of worlds, the physical manifestation of Hinkie’s sacrifices. He passed the eye test in the preseason before inevitably twisting an ankle to remind everyone that the Sixers can’t have nice things. He possesses a world-class hesi pull-up jimbo that is already drawing the eyes and Twitter fingers of his peers. But most rookies struggle – some of them immensely – and Fultz is playing the hardest position on the floor. The added wrinkle that could really make basketball nerds perk up is the option of playing Ben Simmons at point guard. Dude is 6’10”, lefty, 21 years old, and already a master of the fit pic. They say dress for the job you want, not the job you have, so it’s only a matter of time until the Ben Simmons EP hits Soundcloud. In today’s burgeoning era of position-less basketball, Simmons may have to balance brining the ball up on offense with guarding big men on defense. While this is a tall task, especially for someone who would be entering his junior year at LSU had he stayed in school, it’s not entirely unprecedented. Milwaukee utilized 22-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo similarly last season, and while he’s not necessarily bringing the ball up court, Denver has been using 22-year-old Nikola Jokic as a high post facilitator.

The most fun version of the NBA this year would include the Sixers in the playoffs. For me, the joy of a good Sixers season would be the regular season, as this team would get swept like bread crumbs in a series against Cleveland or Boston. We saw glimpses of the Good Sixers^TM  last season, mainly during a month-long stretch during the winter in which they went 11-5 and got all kinds of freaky. The kids have some professional chaperones this year with the additions of J.J. Redick and Amir Johnson. Redick and Johnson have combined to play over 33,000 NBA minutes and 130 playoff games, and while we will never be able to quantify the importance of veteran leadership, you have to imagine that having two guys that have been there and done that will be incredibly useful for the group of youngins that have not. This is an optimistic ranking on my part, born partly out of wanting to watch meaningful games in Philly, partly out of wanting Hinkie to be vindicated, and partly because I want guys like Robert Covington and Dario Saric to become known outside of NBA Reddit. This team went from winning all of ten (10!) games in 2015-16 to 28 last year. Making another 18-win leap is out of the question, but if Philadelphia can keep the kids on the court and Brett Brown can figure out how these pieces fit together, do not be surprised if the 76ers scrap together 40 wins and compete for their first playoff spot since the Doug Collins-Andre Iguodala years.

17. Memphis Grizzlies – 2016-17 record: 43-39 (7^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: 0.1 (14^th in NBA)

Additions: Tyreke Evans, Ben McLemore (for real)

Losses: Zach Randolph, Tony Allen, Vince Carter

PG - Mike Conley

SG - James Ennis

SF - Chandler Parsons

PF - JaMychal Green

C - Marc Gasol

G - Tyreke Evans

G - Andrew Harrison

F - Jarell Martin

The exits of both Tony Allen and Vince Carter create one of the saddest position battles imaginable at Memphis’ shooting guard spot. The candidates: Long Beach State alum James Ennis, he of the 6.1 career points per game; second-year player Andrew Harrison, who clanked his way to a 32.5 field goal percentage in his rookie year; and Wayne Selden, who has played in all of 14 NBA games in his life. Ben McLemore cannot and should not start. Ditto for Tyreke Evans, who at this point should make his living feasting against backup units.

As long as Mike Conley and Marc Gasol are around, it’s just so hard to write off the Grizz. The media and fans largely did that anyway last year, when former richest man on the planet Conley went down with a fractured vertebra. Rather than crumble in the absence of its best player, Memphis immediately won six games in a row to silence the haters, eventually grabbing the seventh seed in the West and giving the Spurs all they could handle. The Grizzlies have long been a favorite of people who clamor for the way basketball used to be played, when three-pointers were still seen as a gimmick and a forearm to the clavicle was the best way to protect the rim. Memphis finished 17^th in three-point percentage, 28^th in effective field goal percentage, and 29^th in points per game last season, areas that will need to improve if they are going to score enough to hang in the Western Conference.

Of course, their coach cares not for data. David Fizdale has come a long way since he was whistling at girls from his dorm room. Coach Fiz guided his team to the playoffs in his first year at the helm, getting the absolute most out of a roster that elicited 25 different starting lineup combinations. Conley and Gasol are good enough, granted both of them stay healthy, to ensure that the Grizzlies will not be bad. They have a high floor and a low ceiling. Grit N’ Grind is a great marketing strategy that has galvanized a city not known for basketball fervor, but the reality is that this team is stuck in the 38-45 win territory. Last year, 43 wins was enough to qualify for the playoffs with room to spare. Times have changed though, and playoff outsiders from last year like Minnesota and Denver will be grizzly hunting.

One of the few certainties about Memphis is that they will defend their collective ass off. Losing Tony Allen, his energy, his tenacity, and his trash talk is devastating. Allen essentially embodied everything to love about the Grizzlies franchise. There will undoubtedly be an adjustment period to watching the Grizzlies sans Allen and Z-Bo. But as the old saying goes, when God closes one door, he signs Chandler Parsons to a 94-million-dollar contract. I love players who can shoot, and I really love players who sign offer sheets in a busy night club, but I do not love backing up the Brinks truck for a guy who hasn’t topped 70 games since 2014. When watching Memphis this year, I’ll chalk that up to cognitive dissonance and keep it moving, hoping that every Marc Gasol post-up or through the legs pass can be the link to a simpler time.

16. Charlotte Hornets – 2016-17 record: 36-46 (11^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: 0.3 (12^th in NBA)

Additions: Dwight Howard, Malik Monk, Michael Carter-Williams

Losses: Marco Belinelli, Miles Plumlee

PG - Kemba Walker

SG - Nicolas Batum*

SF - Michael Kidd-Gilchrist

PF - Marvin Williams

C - Dwight Howard

G – Jeremy Lamb

G - Malik Monk

C - Cody Zeller

*out 6-8 weeks with an elbow injury

The men in teal had all the makings of a 45-win season and a possibility of matching up with a team outside of Cleveland or Boston in the first round. Then Nicolas Batum had a bad bullpen session and tore the UCL in his elbow, likely knocking him out of the rotation for six to eight weeks. Obviously, any time someone goes down with a UCL tear, the immediate fear is that he’ll be lost for the season. Given the fact that Batum damaged his non-shooting arm, and that he is not a baseball pitcher, the injury is apparently not as serious as many fans would be led to believe. Still, playing without a starter handicaps any team, and Batum’s importance to the team’s ultra-long defense makes his shelving even more devastating.

Jeremy Lamb should be chomping at the bit for the opportunity that he’s fallen into. Lamb finds himself in the ultimate “prove it” situation, as he will finally get the starting minutes that have eluded him through five years in the NBA. Getting to play alongside old UConn running mate Kemba Walker could ease the transition from bench guy to starting shooting guard, but the Hornets also have Malik Monk in their back pocket to serve as a motivating force for Lamb. No one wants to squander a shot at big time NBA minutes, and absolutely no one wants to see their spot given to a rookie. The early weeks of the season will be of utmost importance to Charlotte and Lamb, as teams with similar aspirations like Detroit and Philadelphia surely recognize what the Batum injury means for their own playoff chances.

Another player that will be under North Carolina’s magnifying glass is *gulp* Dwight Howard. At this point, Howard is on the path to being remembered more as a locker room cancer than a dominant center, a weird fate for a Hall of Famer to be relegated to. Howard burst onto the scene in the mid-2000s with the goofiest jokes you’ve ever heard and shoulder muscles that damn near touched his ears, averaging 18 and 13 through his first eight seasons in the league. Guess what? Over the last four years his numbers have dipped only slightly, to 15.3 and 12. His field goal percentage actually went up, and while some of that is a product of doing less for this team’s offense, a 60.9 field goal percentage across four seasons of NBA basketball is worthy of praise. Dwight is a Hall of Famer on the court with a carousel of baggage off the court. Lots of people rave about Cody Zeller, and rightfully so. Charlotte’s defense slipped by 6.4 points per 100 possessions with Zeller off the floor last year, and he’s become somewhat of a cult hero for his screen-setting ability. If there’s anyone who won’t coddle Dwight Howard just because he’s an eight-time All-Star with over 16,000 career points, you’d think it’d be Michael Jordan. MJ has always been solely about winning, and if Zeller gives his team a better chance to do so, we may see Howard take a smaller role.

Kemba Walker is the big attraction here. He’s ostensibly doing everything right, improving his points per game, three-point percentage, and effective field goal percentage in each of the last two seasons. Walker did this while also taking more shots each year, and even managed to slightly improve his assists per game to appease the “point guards should get others involved” crowd. To crash the East playoffs, the Hornets don’t need Walker to be Russell Westbrook, just build on his gains and become the best version of himself. Charlotte has been a top-ten team in defensive rating in three of Steve Clifford’s four years as head coach, and even with Batum out Clifford still has an army of long-armed athletes to wreak havoc. Like many of their Eastern Conference counterparts, this team has the elasticity to be anything from a fifth seed to a fringe playoff team to a 34-win dud. None of those scenarios would surprise anyone as much as the team owner’s denim choices do.

Photo courtesy of Mo Buckets/Twitter

15. Miami Heat – 2016-17 record: 41-41 (9^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: 1.0 (10^th in NBA)

Additions: Kelly Olynyk, Bam Adebayo, A.J. Hammons

Losses: Willie Reed, Josh McRoberts, Luke Babbitt

PG - Goran Dragic

SG - Dion Waiters

SF - Justise Winslow

PF - James Johnson

C - Hassan Whiteside

G - Tyler Johnson

G/F - Josh Richardson

F/C - Kelly Olynyk

The Heat famously started last season 11-30 before pulling the table cloth from the tanking table and miraculously winning 13 games in a row. That streak began with a win over Houston, featured two victories against Milwaukee, one against the Warriors, and ended with a loss in Philadelphia, because the NBA is beautiful. Ending the season on a 30-11 run showed the league that Miami was up to something. On paper, this team hardly resembles the Heat teams that have had success in recent years. There’s no ball-dominant superstar, no former All-Stars coming off the bench, and certainly no Big Three.

What Miami does have is a perfectly fine roster that can raise hell in the Eastern Conference. Goran Dragic maneuvering the pick and roll with Hassan Whiteside will be difficult for any team to defend. Dion Waiters, the dribbling Rorschach test, has finally found a home to embrace him after bouncing around like a foster child. I’m not sure if there’s anyone in the NBA I’m rooting harder for than Dion Waiters. He can be equal parts electric and pull-your-hair out frustrating, but Waiters will never be boring in his endless pursuit of buckets. Thanks to Whiteside lurking in the paint and a fleet of stretchy wing players, Miami was a top five defensive team last season. Getting a full season of Justise Winslow harassing opposing forwards, doubled with the inspiring rejuvenation of James “Bloodsport” Johnson could make for an even stouter defensive unit.

Pat Riley’s team has 11 legitimate NBA rotation players, plus whatever Bam Adebayo and Jordan Mickey are. They also still have Erik Spoelstra and his perfect tan roaming the sidelines. Having a top-flight coach like Spoelstra can elevate this roster to be better than the sum of its parts, and they can even wheel out Udonis Haslem from time to time to remind everyone to respect their elders. There are a million different lineups here that Spoelstra can and will play around with, mixing and matching defensive Swiss army knives with underrated shooters. Living in the same division as Atlanta and Orlando should boost Miami into the postseason, meaning we need to prepare ourselves for the impending lawsuit DJ Khaled will face for Snapchatting an entire NBA playoff game from his courtside perch.

14. Utah Jazz – 2016-17 record: 51-31 (5^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: 4.7 (5^th in NBA)

Additions: Ricky Rubio, Donovan Mitchell, Thabo Sefolosha, Jonas Jerebko, Ekpe Udoh

Losses: Gordon Hayward, Boris Diaw, Trey Lyles, Shelvin Mack, Jeff Withey

PG - Ricky Rubio

SG - Rodney Hood

SF - Joe Ingles

PF - Derrick Favors

C - Rudy Gobert

G - Alec Burks

G - Donovan Mitchell

G/F - Joe Johnson

George Hill do not read this,,,

Ricky Rubio, hello. The longtime Timberwolf has reinvented himself as some sort of folk singing, tattooed bartender with an uncanny ability to thread no-look passes. I’ve been on Team Rubio since seeing grainy footage of him as a 14-year-old playing professionally in Barcelona. Throughout his career he’s had an offensive running mate to pad his assist stats, whether it was Kevin Love or Andrew Wiggins or Karl-Anthony Towns. Rubio was probably hoping that guy in Utah would be Gordon Hayward, until Hayward spat out the most-read piece of literature in Boston history and spurned the Jazz franchise that raised him. Hayward leaving town is definitely a crushing blow for Utah, but it doesn’t have to be apocalyptic. 

Like many of its competitors west of the Mississippi, the Jazz would benefit exponentially from the NBA abolishing conferences. Fun fact: Utah won as many regular season games as the Cavaliers last year. Less fun fact: that will not happen this year. While head coach Quin Snyder still possesses one of the deepest rosters of any team, there is still a litany of questions surrounding it. Going from Hill to Rubio, a tremendous drop off in three-point shooting, means teams will go under every ball screen for Rubio and clog up the paint to prevent easy rolls for Gobert or Derrick Favors. It will be curious to see how Snyder handles the Favors-Gobert minutes, especially with Gobert coming off an injury and Favors being notoriously glass-boned himself.

In my estimation, one of Favors or Gobert should be on the court at all times. Boris Diaw is no longer around to eat those minutes as the de facto center, flipping passes around the court and driving ass-first to the hoop. Ekpe Udoh could be used as a nominal center in bench lineups, but he’s coming off a season with the Clippers in which he played 33 games and scored a total of 29 points. As of now, the other potential options at backup center are 27-year-old rookie Eric Griffin from the noted basketball factory of Campbell University, and Tony Bradley, who was born in 1998. Yikes. As mentioned before though, this is an incredibly deep team that can roll out a bunch of interesting lineups. Every team in the NBA knows what they’re getting into when they play Utah, a team that operated at the slowest pace in the league last year and strangled teams defensively. If I were to put money on it, I’d bet on Utah missing the playoffs, which means that Rodney Hood will probably win Most Improved Player and Donovan Mitchell will average 15 a game, carrying Utah to the sixth seed and exceeding all expectations.

13. Portland Trailblazers – 2016-17 record: 41-41 (8^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: 0.0 (15^th in NBA)

Additions: Caleb Swanigan, Zach Collins

Losses: Allen Crabbe

PG - Damian Lillard

SG - C.J. McCollum

SF - Moe Harkless

PF - Al-Farouq Aminu

C - Jusuf Nurkic

G/F - Evan Turner

F - Noah Vonleh

F/C - Ed Davis

If you’d like to get a feel for what living in basketball purgatory is like, I suggest you check out Portland, the fall foliage is lovely! Last year the Blazers unfathomably posted the exact same offensive and defensive ratings (107.8), spitting out a net rating of 0. Essentially, the Blazers were as average as any team could be. They scored points at the exact same rate as they allowed them. The path to escaping annual dismantling by the Western Conference elite – other than the hypothetical trade for Carmelo they didn’t have the chips for – is through defense.

That 107.8 defensive rating placed the Trailblazers at 21^st in the league, while the offensive clip ranked 11^th and was punched up by the sixth-best three-point percentage in the NBA. The thing is, Portland didn’t do anything to address their defensive woes in the offseason. Heck, they hardly did anything at all this offseason in terms of roster turnover. Rookies Zach Collins and Caleb Swanigan are large, as is Jusuf Nurkic, who will be playing his first full season in Oregon, but none are known for their defensive prowess. Terry Stotts has overseen a top-10 offense in three of the last four seasons, with last year’s 11th-place finishing narrowly missing the cut. If anything, this group of shoot first, ask questions last Blazers spearheaded by Lillard and McCollum have proven that a team can find marginal success in the NBA with an upper echelon offense and a meh defense.

The larger questions around this franchise hinge on its future, and how to go about navigating toward the top of the West and away from the middle. We have a two-year sample size of Portland without LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum. The results have indicated that this team will be excellent at three-point shooting and mediocre at everything else while trying its best to hide a glaring lack of depth at the guard positions. While the top of the Western Conference makes it rain, Portland clutches tightly to its umbrella, stuck in the 40-48 win puddle. Moda Center’s parking lot will be packed with Subarus and fixed-gear bikes (Portland has been top-10 in attendance for the past 10 seasons), and Lillard and McCollum will continue their act as Splash Brothers Northwest. Maybe the team can recapture the spirit it had last season immediately after acquiring Nurkic, when the hulking Bosnian averaged 15, 10, and 1.9 blocks in under 30 minutes per game. The Blazers went 14-6 in those 20 games, energizing the city before Nurkic succumbed to injury and Portland lost its four playoff games to the Warriors by an average of 18 points.

The five-man mob of Nurkic, Noah Vonleh, Moe Harkless, Lillard, and McCollum was very effective in its 229 minutes together. That unit could very well be the one Stotts chooses to start the season with. Of course, Al-Farouq Aminu, captain of the “What Position Does He Really Play?” team, is lurking as a guy who can be plugged into multiple game situations and trusted in crunch time. Evan Turner is here too, and we’re all better for it. All this newfangled three-point shot nonsense is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at pandering to Portland’s scene of new age hipsters. Their best player is a damn vegan rapper for Christ’s sake. For those reasons, it’s important to have a guy like Turner around, who made almost twice as many 10-16 foot jumpers as he did threes last year.

12. Los Angeles Clippers – 2016-17 record: 51-31 (5^th in West), 2016-17 net rating: 4.5 (6^th in NBA)

Additions: Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Beverley, Milos Teodosic, Lou Williams, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell

Losses: Chris Paul, J.J. Redick, Jamal Crawford, Marreese Speights, Luc Mbah a Moute, Raymond Felton

PG - Patrick Beverley

SG - Austin Rivers

SF - Danilo Gallinari

PF - Blake Griffin

C - DeAndre Jordan

G - Milos Teodosic

G - Lou Williams

F - Sam Dekker

Well, well, well, would you look at that? For the first time in the post-Stern veto Lob City era, the Clippers avoided any past-their-prime reclamation projects. Just to refresh your memory, here’s some of the players L.A. added in recent years to get over the hump. Looking at this list, it really is a mystery how this team never reached the conference finals.

2012-13: Grant Hill, Lamar Odom

2013-14: Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Danny Granger, Stephen Jackson, Antawn Jamison, Hedo Turkoglu

2014-15: Jordan Farmar, Nate Robinson

2015-16: Jeff Green, Paul Pierce, Pablo Prigioni, Josh Smith, Lance Stephenson (this one’s my favorite)

2016-17: Brandon Bass, Raymond Felton

Los Angeles’ shrewd decision-making, namely forcing Doc Rivers to do less, leaves them better-equipped than most to handle the departure of Chris Paul, the best player to ever wear a Clippers’ uniform. That is a sentence that would have melted brains ten years ago, when Rivers was about to embark on a championship season, and the idea of an exciting young player like Paul ever landing on the Clippers was laughable. There is an infinitely more hilarious timeline where Rivers stayed as president of basketball operations and coaxed ownership into taking a flier on Ray Allen, but I suspect he’ll be happier letting others cook the meal now.

Danilo Gallinari, who always has the if healthy qualifier attached to his name, is the prototypical small forward the Clips have longed for. Gallinari is tall enough to slide up and play the four with Blake Griffin at center, but also provides the necessary outside shooting to share the floor with Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. The fact that he never burned the Clippers in a playoff series like Josh Smith did, or made an All-Star team five years ago, like Granger did at the time of his acquisition, means that Doc likely wouldn’t have made this deal were he still in charge. Sure, it’s a little scary putting this much faith in a guy with Gallinari’s injury history. He played in 63 games last year and that was a stroke of great health, as he’d only reached 63 games twice before in his career. But Gallinari is still (barely) on the right side of 30 and represents the spackle for a hole that was previously being patched up by Luc Mbah a Moute and Wesley Johnson.

The Clippers should be fun! Freed from the championship expectations previous teams carried, maybe we finally see a Clippers team that appears to be enjoying itself on the court. Griffin hasn’t played without Chris Paul barking at him since he was a rookie. While that may affect his offensive production, I’d guess it could have other benefits to things like mental health and stress-relief. Plus, it’s not like L.A. is in the point guard sunken place now. Patrick Beverley finally steps into first-team point guard reps, and his backup is ready to win the hearts of stateside fans one pass at a time. Give me a steady stream of Teodosic to Blake alley oops, prescribe a heavy dose of Lou Williams, drizzle in some tasteful Steve Ballmer sideline orgasms, and tie it altogether with the undeniable comedy of Doc Rivers coaching his grown ass son. We will surely be treated to great TV, and the Clips may even get 50 wins out of it.

Photo courtesy of Ruck Zak/Twitter

11. Milwaukee Bucks – 2016-17 record: 42-40 (6^th in East), 2016-17 net rating: 0.5 (11^th in NBA)

Additions: D.J. Wilson

Losses: Michael Beasley

PG - Malcolm Brogdon

SG - Khris Middleton

SF - Giannis Antetokounmpo

PF - Jabari Parker*

C - Thon Maker

G - Matthew Dellavedova

F - Mirza Teletovic

F/C - Greg Monroe

*out until February with an ACL tear

Running it back with the same team that narrowly edged above .500 doesn’t inspire a ton of hope in Milwaukee. Jabari Parker, sidelined to begin the season while rehabbing his second ACL tear, set career highs in points per game, rebounds, assists, and three-point percentage before the devastating injury last season. With Parker likely out until the All-Star break or so, an even greater burden sits atop the shoulders of my lord and savior Giannis Antetokounmpo. While the long-awaited development of his jump shot is still in the works, Antetokounmpo excelled at finishing around the rim. The Greek Freak made over 70 percent of his shots within three feet of the hoop, according to Basketball-Reference. On shots within five feet, he was behind only LeBron James for shooting percentage among non-post players.

All of that is a fancy way of saying that Giannis is elite at getting to the rim. This may not be surprising for a 6’11” slasher with the athletic ability and physical proportions that Antetokounmpo possesses, but it was partly responsible for the statistical leaps he made last year. I still say it’s too early to give up on Giannis’ long-range jumper entirely, but it’s worth noting that 49 percent of his shot attempts came within three feet, and just 14 percent were from downtown. Clearly, his game is tailored to penetrating into the teeth of the defense. To do that most effectively, it’s best to surround the wisecracking superhero with shooters.

Parker being out means Tony Snell will see an increase in playing time. In past years, you’d be right to scoff at the idea of Snell being a ray of hope for a modern NBA team. However, Snell canned 40 percent of his threes last season seemingly out of nowhere. This included 39 percent on corner threes and 41 percent on catch-and-shoots, shots that should be readily available this season off passes from Antetokounmpo or Malcolm Brogdon. Playing those three with Khris Middleton and a big man – the Bucks’ probable starting lineup heading into the season – is a lineup that catalyzes the offense without compromising the long-limbed, switch-happy defensive style that Jason Kidd likes. Mirza Teletovic is now in his second year playing in this system, and he’s never met a three pointer he didn’t like. Milwaukee ranked 20^th in points per game last year despite being 13^th in offensive rating and seventh in effective field goal percentage, bogged down by playing at one of the slowest paces in the NBA. I hope the Bucks aren’t too stuck in their ways to make some changes to their offense. They were 24^th in three-point attempts per game, a number that they can look to improve on, so long as the right guys are taking the threes. That could be the recipe to getting this team to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2001.

As long as LeBron is in the East and the Hayward-Irving marriage is happy in Boston, the Bucks are in a tough spot. Pencil the Bucks into the same category as Philadelphia, teams in the Eastern Conference stockpiling young guys and praying to their preferred deities that LeBron can find a way to co-exist with LaVar Ball. 

Come back tomorrow for Part III