Which NBA Teams Are Poised for an Epic Turnaround in 2015-16?
NBA rebuilds typically take time.
Teams slowly add the right pieces and build the proper coaching staff as they crawl up the standings, creeping ever closer to winning a championship. Usually, franchises must experience some significant growing pains on that quest for glory, whether they come in the form of lottery seasons or early exits in the playoffs while key contributors gain more experience.
Overnight turnarounds are few and far between, largely the products of strange circumstances, fortune-changing offseason additions and returns to health from key players. But they do happen, rare as they may be.
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After prorating the early years of the Association's history to 82-game seasons—and doing the same for lockout-shortened campaigns—only five teams have ever improved a win total by at least 30 victories.
| Rank | Team | Win Improvement |
| 1 | 2007-08 Boston Celtics | 42 |
| 2 | 1997-98 San Antonio Spurs | 36 |
| 3 | 1989-90 San Antonio Spurs | 35 |
| 4 | 2004-05 Phoenix Suns | 33 |
| 5 | 1979-80 Boston Celtics | 32 |
Another 35 have made a 20-win jump from one season to the next, but that's still a remarkably small percentage of the total pool.
Considering there have been 1,345 combined NBA seasons compiled by the current and defunct franchises throughout league history, that means only slightly less than 3 percent have improved by 20 victories. In other words, you can expect it to happen about once per year, though the Milwaukee Bucks (26-win improvement), Atlanta Hawks (22) and Cleveland Cavaliers (20) all achieved the feat during the 2014-15 campaign.
Who will shock us during the coming season?
Searching for Clues from the Biggest Historical Turnarounds
An influx of stardom directly led to all five of the biggest turnarounds in league history, and no squad has ever made a bigger year-to-year jump than the Boston Celtics did in the mid 2000s.
During the 2006-07 campaign, the team was an absolute mess. With a putrid record of 24-58, it fell all the way to the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, finishing ahead of only the Atlanta Hawks and Indiana Pacers in offensive rating while also failing to place in the top half of the defensive-rating leaderboard.
After a remarkable offseason in which general manager Danny Ainge traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the Celtics turned things around rather nicely. They completed the biggest single-year swing in NBA history by elevating to 66 wins, eventually winning the title for the first time since Larry Bird left town.
And speaking of Larry Legend, he was actually part of the league's fifth-biggest turnaround.
Back in 1978-79, the Eastern Conference only claimed 11 teams, and the New Orleans Jazz were the lone representatives who failed to match Boston's 29-53 record. During that summer's draft, the Celtics' brain trust had selected Bird, knowing he'd spend one more year as big man on campus at Indiana State before making the jump to the NBA.
Bird would join the team for the 1979-80 campaign, winning Rookie of the Year while averaging 21.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.7 steals. Alongside Cedric Maxwell, Dave Cowens and Tiny Archibald, he helped lead the Celtics to a 61-win season, which supplanted the 1969-70 Milwaukee Bucks for what was then the biggest single-season increase.
The record only held for another decade.
The San Antonio Spurs, surprising as it may be, were pretty mediocre during much of the 1980s. Despite three playoff appearances—and corresponding first-round exits—they failed to win more games than they lost from 1983-84 until 1988-89, when they bottomed out with a miserable 21-61 record.
But that summer, they added a number of key pieces. David Robinson's draft rights had been obtained with the top pick of the 1987 NBA draft, but he chose to complete his commitment to the Navy and didn't debut until 1989-90. While he'd go on to win Rookie of the Year, posting some remarkably dominant numbers, he wasn't the only key addition. Sean Elliott was brought aboard in the draft, and the Spurs traded to get Terry Cummings from the Milwaukee Bucks.
The result? A 35-win improvement during Larry Brown's second season as the head coach.
Because the Spurs are, well, the Spurs, they weren't content.
Eight years later, they broke their own record by rebounding from a 20-win season with a 56-victory go-round. Because of the cumulative effects of a back injury and a broken foot, Robinson played in only six games during the 1996-97 campaign. Elliott also suited up just 39 times.
The misfortune paid off when Gregg Popovich became the head coach 19 games into the season, as well as when the Spurs won the draft lottery and added a certain big man from Wake Forest to their already deep coffers. Behind the newly arrived Tim Duncan and a healthy Robinson, San Antonio wouldn't stay down for long.
Just as was the case for the other four, the arrival of a star boosted the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns from a 29-53 record the previous season to 62-20, followed up by an eventual trip to the Western Conference Finals.
Steve Nash returned to the desert as a free-agent signing, and he followed up his years with the Dallas Mavericks by winning MVP with the team that originally selected him out of Santa Clara at No. 15 in the 1996 NBA draft. With him running the show, Amar'e Stoudemire made an astronomical improvement, leading to his first All-Star selection, while Shawn Marion morphed into even more of a fantasy basketball deity.
Only Stars?
Adding a new star isn't always possible or even necessary. We saw just last season that two teams—the Bucks and Hawks—could make the proverbial leap without any huge offseason additions to the roster.
Here are the next-biggest turnarounds, some of which just so happen to be more "organic" than those previously mentioned top five:
| 1970 Bucks | 29 | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (rookie) |
| 2009 Heat | 28 | Dwyane Wade (health) |
| 1989 Suns | 27 | Kevin Johnson (trade), Dan Majerle (draft) |
| 2010 Thunder | 27 | James Harden (draft) |
Dwyane Wade did stay much healthier during the 2008-09 campaign than one season prior, but he also elevated his play to an MVP level. Though James Harden was a big addition for 2009-10, the bigger factor for OKC was the internal improvement of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Even if these changes may be more organic ones, they're still notable because these aren't rosters filled with veterans suddenly figuring everything out.
After all, that's exceedingly rare. It's far more likely that a young team clicks after adding and/or reintegrating the right pieces.
Fortunately, we identify a few trends by analyzing the Four Factors (on each side of the ball) for the 40 teams in NBA history who experienced 20-win jumps. I'll be using era-adjusted versions of all eight metrics, such that a score of 100 is equal to the league average during any given season and a score above 100 is better than average.
| Offense | 100.86 | 101.23 | 102.61 | 101.7 |
| Defense | 101.56 | 102.93 | 100.41 | 104.59 |
But this is only valuable if we also peruse the scores for the bad versions that came a season prior. So, looking at the pre-improvement and post-improvement differences for each of the 40 candidates, what was the average improvement for each one?
| Offense | 3.83 | 3.99 | 3.06 | 5.54 |
| Defense | 4.48 | 1.41 | 1.11 | 6.75 |
Though there's across-the-board improvement, a couple of things stand out.
Defensive rebounding and the ability to force turnovers aren't quite as important in this context, and free throws are crucial. The latter speaks to the importance of changing schemes, since drastic changes in the number of fouls are often byproducts of mentality shifts. Beyond that, corralling the opposition's shooting percentages is vital.
Who Will It Be?
Given that the addition of a star is typically necessary in this conversation, a few potential choices immediately emerge.
Perhaps the least likely one is the Indiana Pacers, who will be adding Paul George back into the fold after his return from a broken leg was limited to a six-game stint during the 2014-15 campaign. But in order to break past the minimum threshold—a 20-win improvement—the Pacers would have to win 58 games.
As Bleacher Report's Josh Martin wrote while predicting Indiana emerges victoriously from only 39 contests (just one more than last year), "With Roy Hibbert and David West gone, Indiana could be perilously thin up front, even if George warms up to the idea of playing power forward."
Improvement is likely. An epic turnaround? Unlikely.
Sticking with the Eastern Conference, the Miami Heat are another choice now that their five-man core of Goran Dragic, Dwyane Wade, Luol Deng, Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside is set up to play together for an entire season. In similar fashion to the Pacers, they'd have to achieve 57 victories in order to meet the necessary criterion—a feat that could once more prove quite difficult as they seek out chemistry and a defensive identity.
Though reaching 65 wins could be tough, the Oklahoma City Thunder emerge as another candidate. After all, they'll have Kevin Durant back in business and joined by Serge Ibaka and Russell Westbrook, as well as an improved supporting cast. But seeing as OKC has never won more than 60 games in a season, even with the aforementioned trio at full strength, that also doesn't feel like a lock.
After giving a quick shoutout to the Milwaukee Bucks and their addition of Greg Monroe, we'll make the Thunder our de facto honorable mentions and then dive deeper.
Instead of using the obvious options, we have to look lower in each conference's standings, where candidates such as the New York Knicks, Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers reside. The Utah Jazz are another option after finishing with a 38-44 record despite playing at a 54-win pace after the All-Star break, but getting to a 58-24 record in the Western Conference is just about impossible for an improving team that isn't yet established as a true contender.
Strange as it may seem after the Knicks have spent the last few seasons in a Sisyphean cycle of mediocrity (or worse), they're actually the best bet for the epic turnaround. A 20-win improvement would leave them with a 37-45 record, which—from a purely subjective standpoint—feels well without the realm of realistic possibilities.
After all, New York sneakily meets all the criteria we've discussed.
The addition of a star player capable of single-handedly winning games? Well, Carmelo Anthony—who has been criticized to the point of somehow becoming underrated—played in only 40 games last season before succumbing to his season-ending knee maladies. And with two first-round picks added to the roster from the 2015 NBA draft—Jerian Grant and Kristaps Porzingis—there could certainly be another unexpected boost coming.
Beyond that trio, the Knicks added a number of veterans who should help them improve dramatically in the areas we've already deemed most crucial. Arron Afflalo is capable of serving as a strong defender in the right system, while Robin Lopez will function as the paint-protecting presence the Knicks haven't had since Tyson Chandler suffered his serious back injury.
| Offense | 100.8 | 108.9 | 98.43 | 87.91 |
| Defense | 97.47 | 102.94 | 99.73 | 87.76 |
If the Knicks want to truly fit the mold, they'll need to get better in holding the opponents' effective field-goal percentages down while improving in the free-throw categories. There's reason enough to think the latter will happen, if for no other reason than simple regression to the mean after unsustainably poor performances in 2014-15.
But beyond that, the offseason additions are far better than the subtractions at getting to the line and converting opportunities:
Granted, the numbers for players such as Grant, Porzingis and Sasha Vujacic are slightly misleading because they weren't compiled against NBA rosters. They still show that more than simple regression to the mean will help the Knicks improve in this vital category.
And the same should be true on defense, though it's harder to isolate the impact of one individual. Afflalo lowered the effective field-goal percentage allowed when he was on the floor for the Denver Nuggets. Lopez didn't do the same for the Portland Trail Blazers, but he absolutely should on a team that actually needs him to serve as a centerpiece.
Frankly, as valuable as numbers can be, the simple truth here is that the Knicks didn't roster players capable of playing high-quality defense in 2014-15; they do in 2015-16.
"To be quite honest, I don't really have any expectations at this time," Anthony explained at media day, per USA Today's Howard Megdal. "Especially when this group has just been put together. We haven't started practicing yet. It's not going to even start happening until tomorrow morning. And it's going to take time, getting guys playing together."
Expecting some level of success heading into the 2014-15 season was a recipe for disappointment, but the face of the franchise can reasonably allow himself to change that mentality a bit.
While last year's roster was a laundry list of fringe NBA players and NBA D-League contributors, this one is full of men who actually belong in one of the Association's rotations. That alone offers hope of massive improvement, breathing life into the idea that the Knicks could sniff a record around .500 for the first time in the Derek Fisher era. And speaking of the former floor general, New York is now in the second season of his tenure as head coach, which offers hope for more comfort on both ends of the floor.
Will the Knicks challenge the 2007-08 C's for all-time turnaround supremacy? Probably not, since that would involve winning 59 games.
But if you had to put money down on one squad boosting the membership of the 20-win-improvement club to 41, the Knicks are your safest choice.
All stats, unless otherwise indicated, come from Basketball-Reference.com.
Adam Fromal covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter:@fromal09.
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