The Annual Anti-Play-In Games Rant

If ever there were a concept in sports that bore repeating until the sun burned out its supply of hydrogen and the Earth burned up in the corona of a red giant star enveloping it in five or ten or however many billion years the solar system has left, it is this: The NBA Play-In Tournament is STUPID with a capital stupid. You could make the argument that the Eastern Conference at least hasn’t made a complete garbage fire out of it this year, as the 10th-place Atlanta Hawks stand 37-37, making all four play-in teams at least over .500. …

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The NBA Dunk Contest Is Obsolete

I am, by the standards of NBA fans, an old man. Even though I’m just 44, basketball’s demographic has always skewed more toward the Millennials, Zoomers, and whatever they’re going to call the generation that’s already started but who are going to be defined by being too young to have watched LeBron James play basketball—or if they do remember him, they’ll remember him the way kids born in the mid-’90s remember Michael Jordan, as “that old guy on the Wizards who used to be good.” Unlike baseball, where being a 44-year-old MLB fan makes you a kid by that league’s …

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The NBA’s “Omicron Asterisk” in 2022

The last three seasons of NBA basketball have been challenging to sort out if you’re the kind of person who isn’t a fan of making apples and oranges occupy the same history book. The 2019-20 season had a five-month hiatus, an eight-game abbreviated finish, and playoffs conducted entirely within a “bubble” where home court advantage instantly evaporated in a puff of COVID-scented smoke as all the games were in the same place and played to empty houses. Indeed, fans of the Phoenix Suns, who won all eight of their bubble games, stood at 34-39, and in any other season would’ve …

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Every NBA Team’s 2021 Christmas Present

Christmas and the NBA go together like hamburgers and J. Wellington Wimpy’s credit rating. As such, let’s take a look at all 30 NBA teams, from worst to first by conference, and play Santa Claus, giving every team its dearest holiday wish. No fancy intro this time out, just straight to opening presents like…well, like a kid on Christmas. Detroit Pistons: All Their Young Players Hit Their Best Possible Ceiling. The Pistons start three players—Cade Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart, and Killian Hayes—who are too young to drink the fun kind of egg nog on Christmas morning. Another starter—Saddiq Bey—is 22. And …

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Achtung Panzer! The 4-21 Detroit Pistons

The Detroit Pistons, at 4-21 through games of December 10, hold the dubious distinction of not just being the worst team in the NBA in absolute terms in 2021 (although the 5-21 Orlando Magic are nipping at their heels) but being well on their way to the worst season in franchise history. They have zero double digit wins. The teams they have beaten have been terrible. They have the second-worst Net Rating—Orlando is worst. And it’s not like Dwane Casey is an awful coach. This is just a team that has had three straight years of the most utterly putrid …

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Brooklyn Nets…Or Broken Nets?

The Brooklyn Nets are 10-5 so far through games of November 16, having been clobbered 117-99 on their home floor by the Golden State Warriors Tuesday night. Their five losses have been against Milwaukee, Charlotte, Miami, Chicago, and the aforementioned Warriors, and the closest of those losses was by 13 points. That’s your defending NBA champions and three teams regarded as contenders, along with the ultimate wildcard of a Hornets team. And while Brooklyn is still third in the East and just a game behind surprising Washington for the top record in the conference, questions surround the Nets and whether …

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2022 Charlotte Hornets: The NBA’s Most Entertaining Team

The 2021-22 Charlotte Hornets started the season 5-1, but after losing 140-110 to Sacramento, they are now 5-5. But in those ten games, the Hornets have emerged as far and away the most entertaining team in the league to watch. Mind you, I’m not talking about entertainment value if you’re, say, a Hornets fan who wants to watch your team win. Despite the hot start, these guys are legitimately awful, not as good as their .500 record, and they’re probably headed for the play-in tournament as the 9 or 10 seed. I’m talking about entertainment value if you don’t give …

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Stop Trying to Make the New Orleans Pelicans Happen, TNT and ESPN

The New Orleans Pelicans, since drafting Zion Williamson in 2019, have gone 62-90, finishing 13th in the Western Conference in 2020 and 11th in 2021. So far in 2021-22, they’re 1-7, dead last in the entire league. But every year, TNT and ESPN insist on cramming the Pelicans down our throats, giving them national media exposure and trying to make Zion into the next LeBron James. It made a measure of sense in Zion’s rookie year. Williamson came into the league with a Hall of Fame ceiling. Everyone loves watching a hotshot rookie, even on a bad team. But Zion …

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State of the Site 2021

The NBA Finals have come and gone, and we will once again return to 82-game seasons and mid-October starts in the season to come. For the first time since 2019, stats won’t have to be prorated to compare to other seasons—with 72 games for everyone in 2021 and a variety of game totals from 64 to 75 in 2020, matching everything to 82-game rate stats has been a mess. Which means good things for basketball fans; we don’t have to wait until Christmas for the season to start or end up sitting on our hands for five months while a …

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The Weird, Wacky Past of the 1970s Bucks and Suns

As the Phoenix Suns jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the 2021 NBA Finals, handily beating the Milwaukee Bucks 118-105 on Tuesday, I got to thinking if they’d ever met in the playoffs before. “But Fox,” you may object, “the Bucks haven’t been to the Finals since 1974, and the other two times they played for the title, it was against the Celtics and the Bullets. What do the Suns have to do with that?” Well, you’ll notice for one thing that those two prior Finals appearances featured the Bucks as champions of the Western Conference. You’ll also notice …

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