2014-15 NBA Power Rankings: How Every Team Stacks Up in Early December
The theme of injuries is a tired, boring but nonetheless unavoidable one in the world of sports, including the NBA. After all, if you play pro basketball—which usually entails being a big dude who runs, jumps, cuts, crashes into other big dudes and has them crash into you and so on and so forth—you're almost certainly going to twist an ankle, tear a hamstring or catch an elbow to the face at some point.
Still, it's impossible to tell the tale of this past week in the Association without invoking the inevitability of the injury bug.
The Oklahoma City Thunder got their two superstars (i.e., Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook) back. The Chicago Bulls finally played more than two consecutive games with their projected starting lineup, now that Derrick Rose and Pau Gasol are healthy (knock on wood).
On the flip side, the Houston Rockets are somehow still rolling without Dwight Howard, and the Toronto Raptors are finding capable fill-ins for DeMar DeRozan. Meanwhile, the Sacramento Kings, Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Utah Jazz, Charlotte Hornets and Minnesota Timberwolves are all slip-sliding away without at least one starter apiece.
Check last week's power rankings if you please or, better yet, click/swipe on to see how all 30 teams measure up against one another, based on who they have and what they've done to date.
30. Minnesota Timberwolves
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The Minnesota Timberwolves share more in common with the Detroit Pistons than they might like to admit. Both are Midwestern teams that basically haven't been relevant since the mid-2000s. Both still stink.
And now these Wolves, like last year's Pistons, share the dubious distinction of saving the Philadelphia 76ers from unshared infamy. This past March, Detroit rolled over and played dead long enough for Philly to score a win—and a 25-point one, at that—after suffering through a record-tying 26 straight defeats.
This time around, the Sixers would have tied the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets for the worst start to a season (0-18) if not for the charity that the Wolves offered their visitors.
Minnesota's misery is no mystery, of course. Losing Kevin Love over the summer hurt, but it's injuries to Ricky Rubio, Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Martin, the guiding lights of this forlorn franchise, that have set the squad back again.
It's no wonder, then, that the Wolves (and Sixers) were so lost at the start on Wednesday. When Corey Brewer is your only veteran with tenure in town, you're bound to wind up in the woods at some point.
29. Philadelphia 76ers
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According to our old pal Mr. Google, the odds of getting struck by lightning in one's lifetime are upward of one in 6,000. Those are still better odds than the Philadelphia 76ers winning the title this year—in the minds of some betting services, anyway.
Until Wednesday, it seemed that the Sixers would be struck by a lightning bolt from Zeus before they won their first game of the season. An 0-17 start had Philly on the precipice of joining the Nets from a half-decade ago as the only teams to finish their first 18 games without a single win.
Then, the worst game ever happened, and the Sixers emerged victorious, despite scoring just nine points in the second quarter and shooting 39 percent from the field overall.
One win doesn't mean that Philly isn't still the worst team in the NBA, perhaps even by leaps and bounds. But, for just this once, let's give the Sixers a moment outside of the cellar. As Tom Petty put it, even the losers get lucky sometimes.
Just don't expect lightning to strike twice, not with OKC up next.
28. Detroit Pistons
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I wish I could say it's been a while since the Detroit Pistons lost 10 games in a row, but it hasn't.
Their last such streak came in March 2013, when they dropped a 10-pack during Lawrence Frank's waning days. You'd have to go all the way back to March and April 2010 to find one of similar length (11 games), and just a few months before that for yet another sickening stretch, both under the auspices of John Kuester.
"We're really messed up right now, I mean we're really messed up as a team," head coach Stan Van Gundy said after Detroit's recent loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, via MLive's David Mayo. "Lot of dilemmas. Lot of guys feeling pressure or whatever. But we're really not right mentally right now. That's what we talked about. That's got to change before anything else does."
Some of that is to be expected of a franchise that's been yearning for the days when Ben Wallace's hair looked like this. Learning how to win is a tedious process that can take tons of time and even more effort.
Still, a team as talented as this Pistons squad, no matter how mismatched the roster may be, shouldn't have the second-fewest wins in the NBA at this or any point.
27. Charlotte Hornets
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The Charlotte Hornets' 10-game slide isn't any prettier (or uglier) than the one going on in Motown right now, though it's certainly more disappointing. The Hornets had high hopes for this season, after winning 43 games in 2013-14 and signing Lance Stephenson during the summer.
Losing Josh McRoberts to the Miami Heat hurt. Stephenson's struggles fitting in haven't helped, either. But it's Michael Kidd-Gilchrist's injured foot that's really hobbled the Hornets. He's been absent since just before Charlotte's current skid began, leaving the likes of Gerald Henderson and P.J. Hairston to fill the wing.
There's never a good time for a franchise to stumble into a ditch, but as ESPN.com's Michael Wallace noted, the Hornets' early-season collapse has been particularly inopportune:
"Just a month into the season, Charlotte's early struggles have doused much of the enthusiasm, hype—and, as locals would say, buzz—generated by the Hornets' $4.5 million rebranding and makeover that saw the team ditch its Bobcats nickname to return to its original identity. [Michael] Jordan, who took over as majority owner in 2010, has been at the forefront of that process and has had a hand in every decision from carpet patterns in the locker rooms to the lighting of logos in the rafters.
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It'll take more than a bit of window dressing, though, for His Airness to make this mess look good.
26. New York Knicks
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Close losses have become the calling card of this season's New York Knicks. Of their 16 defeats, 11 have come by fewer than 10 points, including Thursday's three-point shortfall against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Sooner or later, those results will start turning in New York's favor. The question is, will Carmelo Anthony and Co. be able to hold things together long enough for their hard work to start paying off in victories? Or will the pressure cooker of the Big Apple undo yet another Knicks squad?
"I’m not gonna panic, so none of my teammates are gonna panic," Anthony told the New York Daily News' Frank Isola.
Nor should he, even if the Chicken Littles in Manhattan have already begun to crow about falling skies.
25. Utah Jazz
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It seems like only yesterday that the Utah Jazz were a better-than-expected 5-7, with the sort of young, developing talent to sniff significant win-loss improvement over last year's worst-in-the-West 25-57 mark.
Nowadays, the Jazz are floundering at 5-14, courtesy of a seven-game skid. As it happens, all but one of those losses were suffered against teams that had records of .500 or better coming into Thursday's action. And the lone exception (the Oklahoma City Thunder) should find themselves back in that category soon enough, now that Durant and Westbrook are back in the fold.
Utah, on the other hand, will have to make do without Alec Burks for at least one more game on account of shoulder inflammation.
24. Los Angeles Lakers
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Without another proven star or a young one fit to develop, the Los Angeles Lakers have had to retrain their focus on incremental improvement and laying the groundwork for the on-court infrastructure to come under head coach Byron Scott.
"We may be a little down this year," Scott told the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina. "Next year will be better and next year will be back where we belong. It’s a process. We all have to bite the bullet a little bit and take it. But we do see the light at the end of the tunnel."
It certainly helps that Kobe Bryant seems to be on board with that. "I don't have patience when we're not putting the work in, if I see that we're not doing our job as professionals," Bryant told Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski. "If that's happening, I'll let my team know about it. But this is not that kind of group. We work. These guys want to get better every day. They're there early working; they're there late working."
That work has been paying off, however incrementally. The Lakers have played more competitive basketball in each of their last six games, including a loss in Washington on the second night of a back-to-back that was much closer than the 16-point margin of defeat might suggest.
To be sure, L.A.'s defense is still terrible, and its roster is bereft of talent. But with this Lakers squad, every step, however big or small, matters.
23. Boston Celtics
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The Boston Celtics have been all over the league's transaction radar of late, albeit without enough smoke to substantiate a full-blown inferno.
First came news that Greg Monroe, a free agent this summer, might be interested in joining forces with fellow Hoya (and David Falk client) Jeff Green at some point. "We’re really good friends," Monroe told WEEI's Ben Rohrbach. "Obviously, he’s originally from D.C., so he’s always home in the summer, and I spend a lot of time back at school, so we’re together a lot. We have the same agent and stuff like that, so we have a pretty good relationship."
On the flip side, Rajon Rondo was spotted breakfasting with the enemy—Lakers legend Kobe Bryant (photo seen here).
Could these morsels portend a major roster makeover to come? Maybe. Maybe not. The C's were due for a shake-up anyway. And while Rondo has yet to indicate publicly any interest of leaving Boston, and Monroe any concrete thoughts of filling in behind him, those moves wouldn't be all that surprising were they to come to fruition.
22. Orlando Magic
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It's usually a good sign when a young player brings his A-game against the best players at his position.
That's precisely what Victor Oladipo did during the Orlando Magic's recent trip to the Bay Area. The second-year guard scored a season-high 27 points on one end and helped pester Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson on the other in what turned out to be a surprisingly competitive defeat to the Golden State Warriors, who still own the NBA's best record.
That may come as cold comfort in the immediate term for a club that, at 7-14, is still searching for solutions in its third season since Dwight Howard was traded away. But Oladipo has the tools and talent to be a difference-maker in Orlando. All he needs is time—and some better teammates.
21. Indiana Pacers
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The Indiana Pacers have proved to be nothing if not a scrappy squad through their injury-plagued campaign. They gave the Blazers all they could handle in Portland before succumbing to an 88-82 defeat Thursday.
More importantly, nearly all of their reinforcements—save for Paul George, of course—have returned from injury. David West, Roy Hibbert, C.J. Watson, C.J Miles and Rodney Stuckey are all settling back into head coach Frank Vogel's rotation after missing time here and there.
"This is probably more difficult of a challenge than playing with five guys out for two weeks," Vogel told The Indianapolis Star's Autumn Allison. "Everyone is at a different level of their rhythm and conditioning, and there's different combinations out there that haven't spent a lot of time producing with each other."
With time and better luck, the Pacers will wind up on the same proverbial page. And if they do so by the time George Hill returns, they might just be able to sneak into the Eastern Conference playoffs, which would be no small feat.
20. Oklahoma City Thunder
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At long last, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook are both back in uniform for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
And by the looks of things, those two didn't miss many beats while they were nursing their injuries. Westbrook piled up 32 points, seven rebounds and eight assists in his return and followed that up with a line of 21-6-7 (albeit with seven turnovers) a few days later. Durant had an efficient 27 points on 18 shots, though he gave the ball away five times himself.
Those two figure to take better care of the rock as they re-acclimate themselves to the full speed and physicality of NBA play after weeks away. For now, though, folks in OKC can take comfort in the fact that their basketball heroes have returned to rescue them from the lingering concern of a 5-13 start.
19. Miami Heat
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The Miami Heat's season has turned into a big, painful game of injury Whack-A-Mole. Just as some guys are getting back into playing shape, others are taking their spots on the training table.
Good news: Dwyane Wade has come back strong from his hamstring woes, with consecutive 20-plus-point games since he returned. Danny Granger is also (finally) available, and Josh McRoberts made his Miami debut.
Bad news: Norris Cole is still battling an illness and a dislocated digit, and Luol Deng is now dealing with a hand injury of his own.
"We're going to just wait and see," Deng told ESPN.com's Michael Wallace. "We're going to monitor it the next couple of days. I tried to (keep playing). I came back in, and I just had trouble passing and shooting the ball, so we made the decision to sit out."
With any luck, Deng's setback won't be anything too serious. The Heat will need his services if they're to have any success on a five-game road trip that will take them to Milwaukee, Memphis, Phoenix, Denver and Utah.
18. Brooklyn Nets
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Kevin Garnett's absence Wednesday deprived basketball fans of one last round of his legendary rivalry with Tim Duncan, though it may have also afforded the Brooklyn Nets an intriguing glimpse of a formidable future—if not a potent present.
With Garnett out of the lineup, head coach Lionel Hollins turned to Mirza Teletovic to step in at power forward. The Bosnian big man delivered with a season-high 26 points and a career-best 15 boards while knocking down five threes to help the Nets upend the defending champion San Antonio Spurs in Brooklyn.
Teletovic gives Brooklyn's starting lineup yet another legitimate three-point threat to help stretch the floor for the low-post stylings of Brook Lopez and Joe Johnson. Defense is another story, but even Teletovic may suffice on that end compared to a 38-year-old Garnett.
And if not, his shooting touch should add plenty to an offense that's thus far proved long on weapons but short on cohesion.
17. Milwaukee Bucks
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In case there was any doubt that Jabari Parker has the proper temperament to be a star and a leader in the NBA, here's yet another shining example.
Parker was named the Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month after averaging 11.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.3 steals for the Milwaukee Bucks—not exactly shining stats, but enough to help his team win 10 games in one month after winning just 15 all season in 2014-15.
But rather than take comfort in his early accomplishments, Parker, the No. 2 pick in the 2014 NBA draft, brushed off the nod like dirt on his shoulder.
"You just can't get caught up," Parker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Charles F. Gardner. "You just get consumed with the team and try to play my role.
"It's all good and dandy. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or ungrateful, but it's only one month."
Points go to Parker for having his eyes on a bigger prize, and a bonus for the use of "dandy."
16. Sacramento Kings
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The Sacramento Kings' last three games have gone a long way toward showing just how far this team has come and how deserving DeMarcus Cousins is of MVP consideration.
Boogie missed Sacramento's last three outings while battling a viral infection that landed him in the hospital, and he is scheduled to sit out the next two games even after being released. Without Cousins, the Kings have seen their losing streak extend to four games and their playoff spot out West evaporate.
Still, the Kings clearly are no one-man show. In those latest three losses, they managed to hang tough with the San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors, despite yearning for their beastly center.
Boogie should have ample opportunity to bully the Kings back on track when he returns, with dates against the Jazz and Lakers coming up next week.
15. Denver Nuggets
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Say this much for Kenneth Faried: At least he's owning up to the fact that his season so far (11.2 points, 6.9 rebounds) has been subpar.
"I just haven't been playing my game," Faried told The Denver Post's Christopher Dempsey. "I know it. My teammates know it. My coaches know it. Hopefully, this month of December, I turn everything around. But for me, it's awful. You've got to be able to look at yourself, look at the man in the mirror and say that to yourself. And be able to correct yourself."
And kudos to the Manimal for admitting that the money (i.e., the $50 million extension he signed with the Denver Nuggets in October) may have frazzled him a bit.
"Next year, I start getting paid that type of money, so I can't be making the mistakes that I've been making," Faried went on. "Or not doing what I usually do, or what got me the contract. I've got to focus back in and get, not even just rebounding and scoring, just find my love for the game like I always had."
The good news is that the Nuggets are holding steady at .500 without Faried's best. Assuming he finds his game again soon, Denver might strengthen its case among the dark horses on the fringes of the West's jam-packed playoff picture.
14. New Orleans Pelicans
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Who's up for another edition of Anthony Davis Watch? It seems appropriate to check in again, after watching The Brow bombard the Golden State Warriors for 30 points (on 14-of-19 shooting), 15 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals.
He did this just two days after falling an assist and a steal shy of logging the season's first five-by-five game (i.e., five or more each of points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals in the same outing).
So where does Davis stand now in relation to his peers? How about third in points (25.2), sixth in rebounds (11.5), seventh in field-goal percentage (.568), second in steals (2.3) and first in blocks (3.1)?
Not too shabby for a 21-year-old, to say the least.
13. Phoenix Suns
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OK, so maybe the Phoenix Suns miss Isaiah Thomas after all. They got blown out by the Nuggets and nipped by the Magic in their second and third games without the diminutive scoring guard, who's been dealing with an ankle injury of late.
Then again, maybe Thomas' absence was just the kick in the pants Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe needed to get their respective games back in gear after a slow start. Those two combined for a whopping 61 points in their most recent game, against the Pacers.
If the Suns are to hang around the crowded Western Conference playoff picture until the bitter end, they'll need Dragic and Bledsoe to be their catalysts, whether or not Thomas is there to back them up.
12. Atlanta Hawks
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The emphasis on shooting and spacing is starting to pay off in a big way for the Atlanta Hawks. They've won four in a row and six of their last seven since a pair of perplexing results against the Cleveland Cavaliers (a blowout road loss) and Lakers (a narrow home defeat).
So far, the Hawks rank among the top 10 in three-point attempts (eighth) and three-point percentage (fourth), thanks to an offense that emphasizes attacking the basket (sixth in drives per game) and kicking the ball back out for open looks (first in catch-and-shoot effective field-goal percentage).
It's not rocket science—not when you have a slasher like Jeff Teague, shooters like Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap, DeMarre Carroll and Mike Scott, and a gifted pick-and-roll partner in Al Horford.
All of that adds up to the league's fourth-most efficient offense and the East's third-best record.
11. Cleveland Cavaliers
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Make that five wins a row for the Cleveland Cavaliers, courtesy of a 90-87 win over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
That result may not be impressive on the whole, considering how underwhelming the Knicks have been. Nor was Cleveland's 111-108 victory against Milwaukee anything to write home about.
But wins are wins for a Cavs squad that's still searching for its identity. And until this collection of talented players comes together as a team, Cleveland can at least count on the individual brilliance of its Big Three to keep things competitive.
Like Kyrie Irving's 37-point explosion in New York. Or Kevin Love's three straight 20-plus-point performances prior to Thursday night. Or LeBron James chipping in double-digit assists four times in his last six games.
The Cavs will win plenty of games and score even more points along the way. With more time and improved chemistry, this club should start to look more and more like the one so many expected to see. Just don't expect to see anything close to a finished product for a while.
10. Washington Wizards
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It's a testament to the Washington Wizards' strength and resolve as a team that they've fared as well as they have to date. They've won 12 of their first 17 games of the season, despite missing Bradley Beal for the first nine games, Nene for the last six and anything close to the old Paul Pierce since the opening tip.
None of those things are all that surprising, though. Beal has dealt with significant injuries since he came into the league. Nene always winds up on the shelf, and Pierce, at 37, is clearly in the twilight of his career.
Beal is healthy now, though. Nene will be soon enough. In Pierce's case, success might come with a shift in shot selection, as Grantland's Danny Chau pointed out:
"He has been a career league-average three-point shooter but is suddenly shooting 31.7 percent, his worst percentage in a decade. Last night against Kobe and the Lakers, he shot a dismal 6-of-15 from the field before leaving in the third quarter because of a nagging big toe. But if you wiped his three-point attempts from the box score, he had a brilliant night, going 6-of-10. From 16 feet and in, Pierce is shooting nearly 51 percent this season; he’s actually hitting 75 percent of all fadeaway and turnaround jumpers he’s attempting.
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9. Los Angeles Clippers
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It's amazing how much a soft schedule can serve as a panacea for a team in search of itself, isn't it?
The Los Angeles Clippers should know. They've won six in a row and eight of nine since dropping to 5-4 after a lackadaisical loss to the severely short-handed Chicago Bulls.
And wouldn't you know it: Seven of those eight victories have come against teams with losing records. The exception? A 102-85 flattening of the Houston Rockets, though they were without Dwight Howard.
And the loss? A mauling in Memphis at the hands of the Grizzlies.
That's not to say, though, that the Clips can't take anything away from their recent success. They're back to scoring a ton of points at a brisker pace; their shooters are hitting shots, and they've all been more attentive on defense of late.
"I just think we started playing better," head coach Doc Rivers said prior to L.A.'s blowout of the Wolves. "I don’t think there’s any trick to it. It’s a long season, and I think we’re getting better as the year goes on."
8. Toronto Raptors
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The Toronto Raptors' dream season suffered its first nightmarish blow this past week. All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan will be out indefinitely while he recovers from a tendon tear in his upper thigh/groin area.
DeRozan's absence will hurt the Raptors, but it hardly qualifies as a death sentence. If there's anywhere Toronto can afford an injury, it's in the backcourt. Kyle Lowry is playing like an MVP candidate. Greivis Vasquez is as good a backup guard as there is in the NBA, and Lou Williams would probably be the Sixth Man of the Year if the season ended today.
"I think I’m comfortable playing on this team overall," Vasquez told The Toronto Star's Doug Smith. "I like everybody and we play good together; playing next to Kyle and T Ross (Terrence Ross) I’ve had a lot of good nights."
No kidding. Vasquez has averaged 16 points and 5.7 assists while shooting 51.3 percent from the floor and 42.9 percent from three in the three games since DeRozan went down. If Toronto can get anything like that out of Vasquez as a starter going forward, it shouldn't have too much trouble maintaining a cozy spot near the top of the Eastern Conference.
7. Chicago Bulls
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Hallelujah! The Chicago Bulls have finally managed to field their preferred starting lineup in more than two consecutive games!
Four games, to be exact.
That may not seem like anything to get excited about, until you consider that the fivesome of Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Mike Dunleavy, Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah had been available at the same time on just three occasions during the Bulls' first 15 games.
Chicago, though, isn't whole just yet. Taj Gibson (sprained ankle) and rookie Doug McDermott (sore knee) are still on the shelf. The former has long been a crucial component of Chicago's bench. The latter should be in due course.
Even if the Bulls were to get all their guys healthy, they might not get comfortable as a collective for long. Butler, the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for November, will be a free agent at season's end and may well have secured a future in the Second City had the Bulls ponied up a bit more in their failed extension negotiations, per Sporting News' Sean Deveney:
"There have been some reports on the negotiations between Butler and the Bulls, but according to Sporting News sources, the Bulls’ offer went as high as $11 million per year for four years. Butler was asking for $14 million per year, but would have been willing to negotiate downward to the $12.5-$13 million range.
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For propriety's sake, then, the Bulls would do well to savor their current core while they can, because it might not be around for long.
6. Dallas Mavericks
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It's no mystery—within the world of basketball geekdom, anyway—that Monta Ellis "have it all." But in the nearly two years since Ellis made those remarks, he's added even more to the all that he already had, this season with the Dallas Mavericks included.
Ellis may never score as much as he did during his peak years with the Golden State Warriors, but the Magnolia State native has rarely been as efficient and effective as he has in 2014-15. His 20.7 points per game are the most he's posted since 2010-11, his last full season with the Warriors, and his player efficiency rating (19.0) matches a career high in 2007-08, per Basketball-Reference.com.
He's been particularly prolific over the past week, with two 30-point games and a buzzer-beater—the sixth of his career—to upend his other old team (the Bucks) while Dirk Nowitzki was out.
But Ellis has always had scoring skills. What he has more of now are wins: 15 in 20 games this season, on top of the 49 the Mavs racked up in 2013-14.
5. Memphis Grizzlies
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The Memphis Grizzlies deserve to be higher than this in the power rankings, but Marc Gasol's latest injury is cause enough for pause. The All-Star center left the Grizzlies' 105-96 loss in Houston with what turned out to be a bone bruise in his right knee and may miss Friday's date with the Spurs because of it.
If Gasol doesn't have to miss much (or any) time, the Grizzlies should be back at or near the top shortly. Prior to Wednesday's loss, Memphis had compiled a regular-season record of 48-15 since Gasol came back from a bum knee in January 2013—the best mark in the NBA over that span.
Prior to that, the Grizzlies stumbled to a 10-13 tally in the 23 games Gasol had to sit out.
In short, folks in Memphis had better hope that Gasol's new setback isn't anything serious. Otherwise, the Grizzlies could fade in a hurry within the impossibly competitive West.
4. Houston Rockets
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Maybe Daryl Morey was right. Maybe the losses of Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin—both dealt this past summer to clear cap space that wasn't ultimately spent on another star—weren't anything for the Houston Rockets to fret about.
"People talk about Omer like we had him all year," Morey told the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen back in July. "Obviously, Omer is a very, very good player, but we played fine in that stretch we didn't have him (going 22-12), or we wouldn't have won 54 games. Jeremy contributed more than Omer, but guards are a little easier to replace."
So far, Morey is looking like a modern-day Nostradamus. The Rockets have been absent Dwight Howard since mid-November on account of a knee strain, but instead of flailing without Asik stepping in, they've gone 5-2, with their only losses coming to L.A.'s teams.
(Insert joke about Dwight making his entire team allergic to the City of Angels here.)
Meanwhile, Patrick Beverley, the team's hound dog of a point guard, has missed Houston's last five games and 10 total this season. That hasn't stopped the Rockets, though, from losing just twice without him.
So who, pray tell, are the heroes who've filled the shoes that Asik and Lin used to use to fill? Meet Tarik Black and Isaiah Canaan. The former, a rookie, turned in a double-double against the Grizzlies. The latter, now in his second pro season, has averaged 12.6 points and hit 42.9 percent of his threes as a starter.
Together, they're making less than 8 percent of the combined salary that Asik and Lin are taking home with the Pelicans and Lakers, respectively. And that's without mentioning the bang-up job that Donatas Motiejunas has done in Terrence Jones' stead at power forward.
Point: Morey.
3. San Antonio Spurs
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Every top-tier team has its occasional hiccups—even the San Antonio Spurs, who've dominated the NBA for nearly two decades now and have shown no signs of stopping this season.
That is, until they got to Brooklyn and suffered a 95-93 overtime defeat to the Nets.
Then again, the Spurs would never get caught up in the mythology that's been erected around them, not when head coach Gregg Popovich barely took stock of his team's historic run earlier this year, before legends from the sports world called to congratulate him.
"You say to yourself, something special must have really happened," Popovich told The New York Times' Harvey Araton. "I should know this. I was there; I should have noticed."
Perhaps he'll be paying closer attention to his team's efforts when the Spurs take on the Grizzlies in a Western Conference showdown Friday.
2. Portland Trail Blazers
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Like Miley Cyrus, the Portland Trail Blazers can't stop and won't stop—winning, that is. At 15-4, the Blazers are just a game behind last season's torrid pace, despite playing the NBA's fourth-toughest schedule to date.
And, well, despite preseason suggestions that this team was ripe for regression after winning 54 games in 2013-14.
These Blazers, though, seem far more sustainable in their success than their predecessors were. They still butter their offensive bread with the same superb starting five (i.e., Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Batum, Wesley Matthews and Robin Lopez) but now have something resembling a bench, with the additions of Chris Kaman and Steve Blake, to keep the roll going when their best players need rest.
In fact, according to NBA.com, Portland has outscored its opponents by 10.7 points per 100 possessions when Kaman and Blake share the floor. Surprisingly enough, that beats out the margin (9.1 points/100) that the Blazers' starting lineup has posted thus far.
Throw in a top-10 defense—a multiyear labor of love from head coach Terry Stotts—and you have a team that deserves to be taken seriously in a crowded Western Conference.
1. Golden State Warriors
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The Golden State Warriors did something on Thursday that they'd only done once before in their franchise history, nearly 43 years ago: win an 11th consecutive game.
Back then, Jim Barnett, Nate Thurmond and Cazzie Russell were among those who led Al Attles' Warriors to a 113-106 win over the Sixers of the Billy Cunningham-Fred Carter vintage. This time around, the Splash Brothers (i.e., Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson) were two of five Dubs in double figures in a 112-85 flattening of Anthony Davis' Pelicans.
Those Warriors of old went on to win 51 games before flaming out against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson's Bucks in the first round of the playoffs. With any luck, today's Golden State squad, which also won 51 games and lost in the first round last season, will blow past both of those benchmarks on the way to a historic playoff push.
A franchise-record 16-2 start certainly doesn't hurt.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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