A year ago people took great amusement from the idea that a team could win 48 games and not make the NBA playoffs. None of those people were Golden State Warriors fans, of course, given that their kids were the ones who did it.
This year, that team could be the Phoenix Suns, but for a different reason. The ninth-place Suns already have a 6½-game lead on the six below them, because the six below them are heading for a place of ignominy as unprecedented as the Warriors hit a year ago.
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| Seattle might pine for Kevin Durant, but won't miss the losing of the ex-Sonics. (Getty Images) |
That would mean that the Suns at their present pace would miss the playoffs with a 48-34 record but still lead the 10th-place team by 18 games, a notion so laughable that it can't possibly happen.
Or can it?
Through hard bungling, timely injuries and just plain cruddiness, the Subterranean Six all look awful in their own special ways, and even though they play each other a lot between now and tee time (38 games, including tonight's Warriors-Thunder arch-rivalry game in Oklahoma City), it is hard to see more than one team making a serious run at the magical 30-win mark.
That's a heap o' ... well, crud, and each team has found different ways to reach their destinies.
The Warriors lost Monta Ellis to moped dreams, after having a largely lousy offseason in the market and have celebrated by refusing to play even a moment's defense. They've held three teams under 100 (the Nets, 76ers and Grizzlies), and helped seven of the past nine opponents to go over 115. Even allowing for the Stephen Jackson injury, that's an awful lot of be-my-guest basketball that simply isn't going to get better.
The Grizzlies just finished strip-mining their team last year so they are in the early stages of a rebuild they probably will have to be re-rebuild in a couple of years. They are likely to get better in time, but not so much that you'd notice right away.
The Kings have a coach on the mythical hot seat in Reggie Theus, and are in all other ways simply not very interesting. The window has clearly shut on the glory years and they are returning with some purpose to being, well, the Kings.
The Timberwolves have Al Jefferson. They might have other parts too, but they're 4-15, got routed at home by the Clippers, just fired coach Randy Wittman and are probably at least a tool box short.
The Clippers have had injuries, lost Elton Brand through some seriously bad negotiating skills, and are the Clippers, but they look slightly better constructed than the other five and could make a run at ... God help us all ... 10th.
The Thunder -- just plain karma with a steel-toed boot. Bad uniforms, bad nickname, double-bad owners, bad birthing pains and only Kevin Durant in rebuttal. At this point, 15 looks like the outer edge of their capabilities.
In other words, while you might be mesmerized by the Lakers, intrigued by the revivified Nuggets and Trail Blazers and comforted by the solid reliability of the Jazz and Spurs, you still have a conference with 40 percent of the teams being perfectly and irredeemably awful. The idea that they could all be eliminated from even the comforts of ninth place before the middle of March is downright fascinating.
But not so fascinating that you should block out any time to follow the developments. None of them have the kind of material that would suggest winning 20 of 21, as the Warriors did two years ago to sneak into the playoffs and smite Dallas. In fact, none of them really look like they have winning 11 of 21 in them barring some trade deadline heresy in which the weak team gets stronger and the strong team loses its way. These are really bad teams and they're going to stay bad -- historically bad. Bad enough that the Suns, who have their own problems, have already taken off the rear-view mirror because they know nothing is coming up behind them this year.
Again, we want to remind you that "on a pace to" is a bad concept, so we're not predicting that they'll all end up with 21 wins or fewer. Without doing the math (we started getting nauseous), it seems unlikely that such a thing could occur. Those 38 games, for example, aren't likely to be split evenly.
But 25 from the best seems perfectly reasonable, and perfectly awful. You don't really need to refer to any of them again until mid-March or so, but at some point this is going to become a fascinating battle of the unarmed facing the defenseless, with the goal line being the earth's core. At some point you'll notice, though. Trust us. Like the ads say, "Just follow your nose."
