Fox Doucette | Pace and Space

The Broken Nets Are Back in 2023

November 5, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Broken Nets…er, Brooklyn Nets…are well on their way to barfing out another Dumpster fire of a season. At 3-6, no matter what that 128-86 demolition of the Washington Wizards may try and tell you, they’re cooked. Kyrie Irving is suspended indefinitely for graduating from Idiot School summa cum laude. Ben Simmons continues to fear 3-pointers the way small children fear monsters under the bed. And while Kevin Durant is off to a fantastic start (32.0 ppg, .522 FG%, .196 WS/48), you know he’s going to get hurt again. It’s just a question of when and what body part. The …

Analysis

The 2023 Houston Rockets: Hilariously Bad

November 1, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The 2023 Houston Rockets remind me of one of those so-bad-it’s-good movies from the 1980s. Think movies like Road House and Over the Top. In other words, movies whose very premise is laughable but they’re wildly entertaining. The identity of this franchise throughout Daryl Morey’s tenure as GM was modern, 3s-and-layups basketball. But with Morey in Philadelphia and former coach Mike D’Antoni in the NBA wilderness, Houston has gone through one of the weirdest and frankly funniest regressions ever seen on a basketball court. Last year, they were the poster children for “when 3s-and-layups goes wrong.” They were fourth in …

Analysis

A Look Back at the 2015 NBA Draft Class

October 27, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

On this day, October 27, in 2015, Pace and Space first launched on our old webhost. It was opening night of the 2015 NBA season, and the rookies from that season led to this site’s first Twitter beef. That’s right, Matt Moore of CBS Sports blocked me when I said Emmanuel Mudiay couldn’t shoot a lick and would wash out of the league, contra his opinion. Mudiay is out of the league now. In 306 NBA games, he posted minus-0.2 career Win Shares and an execrable .446 eFG%, making him absolutely the worst pick in the 2015 lottery. The moral …

Analysis

Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats (2022-23 Edition!)

October 24, 2022October 25, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

(Ed. note: yeah, I know this is a day late. Illness on the weekend is no fun.) Through games of October 23, 28 teams in the NBA have played three games. Milwaukee and Dallas have each played two. And with such a small sample size, we see some strange stats. The Law of Averages hasn’t taken over yet. So let’s take a look at unlikely and unsustainable and downright absurd stats. We’ll compare them to the NBA record book while we’re at it. That’s right. It’s the Fourth Annual Small Sample Sizes Make the Best NBA Stats. The Unbeatens Boston, …

Analysis

The Washington Wizards Worst Season: 2009

October 18, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards have been consistently pretty bad since their glory days in the 1970s. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Wizards were bad even by their own low standards. Twice in the aughts, the Wiz went 19-63. Their first lost season came in 2001, the nadir so bad that it prompted Michael Jordan to give up on being an executive for a couple of years and instead try a comeback. But 2009 is a special kind of dreadful. Indeed, the record tells only a small part of the story. The rest of the story is told …

Analysis

The Utah Jazz Worst Season: 1980

October 17, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Utah Jazz, stretching back to their founding in New Orleans in 1974, have on occasion been bad. But as franchises go, since the team finally figured it out in 1984 and had their first winning season, Utah’s been incredibly successful. Indeed, the worst season the team’s put up in Salt Lake City still featured 24 wins. The worst season they posted in New Orleans was 23-59. And that was their expansion 1974-75 campaign. Let’s look at what “not really that bad” looks like. That 24-58 season in 1980 deserves a deep dive. The On-Court Record Utah started out awful. …

Analysis

The Toronto Raptors Worst Season: 1998

October 17, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Toronto Raptors suffered a season of hilarious badness in their third year in existence. And no, they didn’t draft a guy named Hilarious Badness. Although that would be a great name if Key and Peele ever do a revival of their East-West College Bowl sketch. The badness in question has everything you love in a bad season. Massive losing streaks. Net Ratings that would be the worst in the league in any year except the one you’re discussing. A great reward in the next year’s draft. Coaches who saw their careers derailed. So let’s not waste any time. While …

Analysis

The San Antonio Spurs Worst Season: 1997

October 16, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The San Antonio Spurs, all the way back to their ABA days, have been one of the sport’s most consistently excellent franchises. Before 2021, the team had never missed the playoffs in consecutive years. They fell short in 1973, 1984, 1987, 1989, and 1997. Which, in turn, means their three straight playoff misses account for 37.5 percent of all the team’s missed playoff years going all the way back to the founding of the ABA in 1967. And while you can (and I will, later) dump on Gregg Popovich for not retiring as the sport has passed him by, let’s …

Analysis

The Sacramento Kings Worst Season: 2009

October 15, 2022October 15, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Sacramento Kings have been the NBA’s nomads for 73 years. They started life as the Rochester Royals. Incredibly, the BAA/NBA managed to put two teams in that Western New York Syracuse/Rochester market and make it work throughout the 1950s. The Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957 and put together a nice run with Oscar Robertson, but they never quite got over the hump into the first rank of NBA franchises. They were outclassed first by the Lakers and Hawks and then, realigned east, by the Celtics and 76ers. Finally, after Big O left, Cincinnati sank into the abyss, fan …

Analysis

The Portland Trail Blazers Worst Season: 1972

October 13, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Portland Trail Blazers, in 2022, posted their worst season in 16 years, going just 27-55. They head into the 2023 season hoping to rebuild quickly enough to get Damian Lillard one last chance at a deep playoff and possible title run. It may not (probably will not) happen this year, but hope springs eternal. That “worst season in 16 years” means 2006, a year Portland went 21-61. That year tied for the second-worst mark in team history and represented the worst record in 33 years, going all the way back to 1973 and their third year in existence. Now …