6 NBA Teams Entering Make-or-Break Territory at NBA's Quarter-Season Mark
Whoa, the 2014-15 NBA regular season is 25 percent of the way there.
Not even Bon Jovi can believe it.
Quarter-season marks aren't typically celebrated. Halfway touchstones are more noteworthy because they're later in the season and therefore more telling.
In the NBA, though, "25 percent of the way there" is technically almost there.
Seven of the Western Conference's top-eight teams 20 games into 2013-14 went on to make the playoffs. Six of the East's top-eight squads would inevitably do the same. Roughly one-quarter of the way through the season, the playoff picture—in terms of participants, not seeding—was nearly set in stone.
Most of the Association's franchises have played at least 20 games in 2014-15. That means present postseason outlooks may, once again, be accurate previews of what's to come. We're looking for squads that can or were supposed to do something about this playoff scope.
These are teams approaching make-or-break territory. They aren't tankers who continue tanking, nor are they contending teams currently contending. They're the underachievers or bubble fixtures—the teams that, relative to expectations or ultimate goals, desperately need a change of direction or pace if they want 2014-15 to be more than a disappointing footnote or course-crippling letdown.
Detroit Pistons
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This isn't what the Detroit Pistons had in mind.
Stan Van Gundy was supposed to come in, sharpen his ax, polish his wand and purge the franchise of the sense of underachievement that dogged it all last season. Instead, he's observed helplessly from the sidelines as the roster gives way to its well of undeveloped and overlapping talent.
One season after registering a disappointing 29 victories, the Pistons are on pace to win no more than 12 in 2014-15. They rank 29th in offensive efficiency, 20th in defensive efficiency and their spacing, while improved, still bears resemblance to a critically clogged drain.
Securing a postseason berth isn't yet out of the question. Mathematically. The Pistons, despite their bumbling beginnings, are only 6 games back of the Eastern Conference's final playoff spot. (Because, East.) But if they cannot get their act together on both ends of the floor in the coming weeks, Van Gundy—who is also the team president—must have the gall to blow things up.
Josh Smith is owed $40.5 million through 2016-17 and may be immovable. But Greg Monroe is approaching unrestricted free agency and remains a flight risk. Brandon Jennings is also on a reasonable contract and emerging as a dangerous spot-up shooter.
Van Gundy would do well to flip any assets he can and increase the value of Detroit's draft pick while collecting other selections who can be used as building blocks of a total reboot.
And while that clearly wasn't the plan entering this season, it's about time the Pistons play the hand they've been dealt rather than hold out hope it turns into something it's not.
Charlotte Hornets
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Different team name, same old Charlotte Bobcats.
Last season's impressive march to the playoffs put the now-Charlotte Hornets back on the map. They added Lance Stephenson to a core that already included Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson, and off they went. They were fine. Better, even.
They're actually worse.
Stephenson has done nothing to remedy the Hornets' oft-criticized offense. They rank 26th in efficiency and remain a style-challenged contingent that jacks up far too many mid-range jumpers (28.8 per game). A previously staunch defense has also declined. The Hornets rank in the bottom six of points allowed per 100 possessions after finishing in the top six last season.
"Thankfully for Charlotte, they play in the Eastern Conference," SB Nation's Liam Boylan-Pett wrote of the Hornets, who are now 3.5 games back of a postseason slot. "...It seems very feasible they could make up those games as the season progresses if they can get even close to the level they played at last year. But how is that going to happen?"
That is indeed the question—to which no one has the answer.
The Hornets have molded a makeshift core that will see many of its top contributors—Al Jefferson, Marvin Williams, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Stephenson—reach free agency in the next two summers. They need to forge a more stable direction if things don't improve.
Grantland's Zach Lowe does say they're scouring the trade market, looking for deals to help rescue this season from the dumpster fire it's become. But with so many issues in need of tending, the Hornets must be equally open to the alternative: selling off their most prized assets and starting over. Again.
Denver Nuggets
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Depth is no longer a credible consolation prize for the Denver Nuggets.
Embracing success by committee worked for a while after Carmelo Anthony left. The Nuggets have yet to make it out of the first round since trading him, but they did nab three consecutive appearances without him. If not for an injury-bug infestation last season, they could have made it four.
Here's the cold, hard, ugly truth, though: They still need a star.
There is too much capable talent on the roster to establish a concrete pecking order. The Nuggets must try consolidating their assets, turning some combination of talent into a franchise centerpiece or two. They have nine players who have both made at least 10 appearances and are averaging 15-plus minutes per game. That depth has earned them a sub-.500 record and slim chance of making the playoffs.
Sifting through their wall-to-wall logjam is imperative at this stage. They're running in place right now and have been since 2011.
Standing pat only promises more of the same—a 16th-ranked offense and 23rd-place defense that are still multiple players short of fending off the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings and Oklahoma City Thunder for the Western Conference's eighth and final postseason bid.
New York Knicks
4 of 6
Transitioning away from an era of early playoff exits and demonstrative disappointment wasn't supposed to look this bad, was it?
Few expected the New York Knicks to do anything of note this season. Derek Fisher is a first-year head coach implementing a new system for an incontestably defective team. But because the Knicks have Anthony, a superstar, there was hope, however marginal, that they might contend for a playoff spot.
Two separate losing streaks lasting seven or more games have almost ensured that's not going to happen. The Knicks rank 22nd in offensive efficiency, 27th in defensive efficiency, are on pace to finish with the East's third-worst winning percentage and have a sorrier road record (1-9) than the tanking Philadelphia 76ers (2-7).
All of this would be fine for a conventionally rebuilding team. Or rather, it would be easier to digest. But the Knicks aren't planning for a traditional restoration. Cap space is their primary building block, making a playoff berth an integral part of recruiting prospective free agents. And, right now, they're doing more to drive them away.
"I'm not happy about that," Knicks president Phil Jackson said of his team's record adversely impacting the thought process of free agents this summer, per Newsday's Barbara Barker.
Thin on assets and unwilling to jeopardize impending financial plasticity, the Knicks can only hope their current model slingshots itself back into playoff contention—which they're 5.5 games out of—lest this season be a more debilitating disappointment than last year's campaign-long blunder.
Oklahoma City Thunder
5 of 6
Now that Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook have returned for the Thunder, it's go time.
Almost everything about the Thunder of past weeks is irrelevant at this point. That they rank 28th in offensive efficiency is of little concern. Westbrook and Durant, assuming health, will drag them up the offensive ladder before season's end.
It's the playoff ladder that's more concerning at the moment.
Oklahoma City finds itself four games behind the eighth-place Suns with 61 left to play. If Phoenix's current victory rate holds, the Thunder must win 48 games to finish with a better record, 67.2 percent of their remaining contests (41).
They were 34-12 (73.9 percent winning percentage) in games Westbrook and Durant played last season, so the 48-win plateau isn't impossible. Still, ESPN.com's latest playoff odds have the Thunder finishing outside the Western Conference's playoff bubble. And though those projections are based off the team's performance thus far, it's not a given Oklahoma City plays itself into the postseason.
"Immediate as Durant and Westbrook's impact will be, this is by no means a plug-and-profit proposition," Bleacher Report's Jim Cavan wrote. "Recalibrating a team's entire chemistry is seldom a simple task, no matter how catalytic the elements."
Well aware that Durant will enter free agency in 2016, the Thunder can ill-afford to miss out on one of the remaining two chances they have to win a championship before then. A title likely renders his foray into the open market a non-issue. Missing the playoffs this season sharply hamstrings their ability to make it anything other than a polestar for doubt.
Phoenix Suns
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More distance. That's the operative goal for the Suns moving forward.
While the Thunder aren't yet nipping at their heels, the Suns aren't playoff locks. This is a race that, despite what the standings suggest, will become a two-team affair.
Neither the Pelicans nor Kings were considered bona fide playoff teams. Their franchise cornerstones—Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins—are still young. They weren't squadrons that poured tens of millions of dollars into keeping a fringe playoff contender intact. That was the Suns.
Clinching a postseason berth should mean everything to this team. It validates its point guard model in addition to its oft-positionless—and ninth-ranked—offense. It gives the Suns every reason to aggressively pursue the (pricey) returns of Goran Dragic and Gerald Green, two of the team's top-five scorers who will enter unrestricted free agency this summer.
With Phoenix—and any other team that isn't winning 70-plus percent of its games—unlikely to contend for seventh place in the West, it's the No. 8 seed or bust. That's become apparent.
Putting even more distance between themselves and the inevitably surging Thunder as soon as possible will be a pivotal part of the Suns nabbing a playoff spot and avoiding a lot of awkward, (potentially) roster-razing questions over the offseason.
*Stats via Basketball-Reference and NBA.com and are accurate as of games played on Dec. 7, 2014. Salary information via ShamSports.
