7 Sizzling NBA Teams That Will Fall Apart

Well ladies and gentlemen, I've gone over with you the NBA teams that are underperforming the most at this point, so which teams are going to completely fall apart as the season goes along?

There are currently some teams in the top eight in their conference, or even near the top of the league that nobody expected to see doing as well as they're doing.

With every team at least 14 games into their season, which is nearly a quarter of the way through, it seems like there's no better time to take a look at what we've seen, as we've pretty much seen the range of each team's abilities. 

So let's get to it. Which teams don't have what it takes to stay afloat for the rest of the season, or which ones have some sort of problem looming on the horizon that could easily derail them?

Orlando Magic

Now, I don't think I can legally talk about teams with troubled futures without talking about the Orlando Magic, so here goes.

At this point, this team seems the least likely to fall apart, but if Orlando does decide to take the draft picks and run before the trade deadline comes then the Magic will be a substantially worse team.

However, with Orlando in a dead heat with the Hawks and the Heat in the Southwest division, it's entirely likely that the Magic will cling to Dwight for the rest of the season and see if they can possibly win a championship this year.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Technically speaking, I think the Cavs have already begun to fizzle out, but seeing as how they still have a record better than I would have expected at this point, then I still consider them as a team that has gotten off to a hot start.

Cleveland's 6-10 record isn't overly impressive, but if you were to ask 100 NBA fans before the season what the Cavs record would be 16 games in, the likely answer would be worse than they currently are.

However, reality, and their early-season cupcake schedule is catching up to them, and they're starting to crash back to earth with four straight losses to the likes of Golden State, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami.

Denver Nuggets

First let me preface this with the fact that I do think Denver is going to end up a good team this season, and should end up a top-six team in the Western Conference. However, I don't know if they are as good as they seem thus far.

Denver has some nice wins, with victories over Miami and New York over the past two weeks, but they beat Dallas, Utah and the Lakers early on when they were struggling or without some of their players.

I think this is a good team, but I'm not so sure that they're second best team in the Western Conference good.

Philadelphia 76ers

While the Philadelphia 76ers will end up making the playoffs, I just don't think that they'll make it there as a top-four seed in the East.

Philly has feasted early on in this season with wins over Indiana, Milwaukee and Atlanta, but they don't have any really good wins.

They've lost to the best teams they've played, with one loss each to the Heat, Jazz, Trail Blazers, Nuggets and Knicks while racking up three wins over the Wizards already and the rest coming to mediocre to bad teams.

Utah Jazz

It seemed to me near the beginning of the season that the Utah Jazz were a hodgepodge of players that would leave them stuck between the future and the past for this season at least, and then they started winning.

Now that they are sitting at 10-5 and are a part of that glob of teams within a game of each other from third to 10th in the Western Conference, it seems unlikely that they can stay there.

They have players playing far above their heads defensively (Al Jefferson has seemingly become a good defender, whether it's other team's poor shooting or his good defense is still up in the air) while others, like Paul Milsap, are playing above their heads on both sides of the ball.

Meanwhile, they don't seem to be able to make any shots from a distance, and they're relying on players who have historically performed much less efficiently.

Minnesota Timberwolves

It's hard to look at a record of 7-10 and call it a hot start, but when you compare it to the previous 50 years of Timberwolves basketball, it looks like both a breath of fresh air and a beacon of hope for the future.

However, everything for the Timberwolves is firing on all cylinders, and they seem to have everything going right for them at this point.

When you watch the Timberwolves play, their offense can be, at times, an exercise in futility, as they have very poor ball movement outside of Ricky Rubio flashing the ball around the court, and when it all comes down to it, they rely to heavily on Kevin Love.

They may hold it together for a bit, but I don't know if I see them hovering near .500 for the rest of the season.

Atlanta Hawks

With the Atlanta Hawks sitting at the top of their division, ahead of the Orlando Magic and the Miami Heat, it's hard not to be impressed, but then when you look closer at them, it's hard to think that they can keep it up.

Atlanta is running as a well-oiled offensive machine right now, and their opponents, for the most part, are doing what they can to stop them and falling just short.

While the Hawks seem to be incapable of shooting inefficiently recently, I don't see how they can continue to survive without Al Horford as they've been getting out-rebounded more often and have had very few opportunities for second-chance points.

Plus, their recent win streak without Horford has come over teams with losing records, their lone win over a team with more wins than losses over the past seven games came over the struggling Portland Trail Blazers, followed by a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.

This is a playoff team, but it's not the second-best team in the Western Conference.

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