Monday NBA Roundup: Divide Growing Between West's Elite and Middle Classes
With a small subset of superpowers reigning over the chaos underneath, the NBA's Western Conference is different this year.
Gone are the days of seven playoff locks and a couple of hopeless, destined-for-disappointment outfits scrapping for 47 wins and the eighth seed. This season, we've got the San Antonio Spurs, Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder thumping the competition as a half-dozen flawed squads mill around in the mess below.
The chasm between the elite and the complicatedly decent was hard to miss on Monday, as the Spurs disintegrated the Utah Jazz (one of those unlucky clubs in the teeming mass of mediocrity) by a final of 118-81 that wasn't even as close as the margin suggests.
I mean, this happened, for crying out loud:
Matt Bonner is dribbling behind his back and finishing with countermoves in the paint. If that doesn't indicate a sea change in the conference's competitive balance, I'm not sure what does.
The way the other middling clubs performed on Monday only bolstered the case.
The Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks got together to shoot a bunch of threes (57 combined), run around a little and display some generally fine but not altogether eye-popping basketball. Dallas' 104-94 win pushed its record to 14-11 while Phoenix fell to 11-15, though those marks could easily be identical if not for some rotten late-game luck costing the Suns all year.
Then the Los Angeles Clippers, a true superpower in 2014-15, needed blatant Hack-a-Drummond, a huge J.J. Redick triple and overtime to beat the similarly ho-hum Detroit Pistons by a final score of 105-103. This is the same Clippers team that put up just 80 points in a three-point loss to the Chicago Bulls last week.
Oh, and the Houston Rockets? Last year's conference finalist led by MVP runner-up James Harden?
They dropped to 12-13 after an embarrassing (but hardly unexpected) loss to the Denver Nuggets.
What happened to the West?
Part of the explanation, boringly, has to do with the sample size. We've only got a quarter of the regular season in the books, and it's entirely possible two or three of the teams currently searching for a foothold will find one. Would it be so stunning to see the Clippers, Rockets, Jazz or Memphis Grizzlies vault out of the mess in the middle? Memphis, for one, stuck it to the Washington Wizards by using a new game plan (more on that later).
Maybe it'll take the leap.
Or, maybe this is just what happens when talent consolidates at the top and there's just not enough left for everyone else. When you look at the West standings as measured by net rating, the concentration of wealth in the upper class is striking, per NBA.com:
The dividing line leaps right out. Below the Thunder, there's just nothing that resembles a contender. And it's even more incredible to note that OKC is actually closer to being a part of the middle class than the rarified one above it—which, remarkably, is led by two teams—the Spurs and Warriors—on pace for the two highest average margins of victory in league history, per Basketball-Reference.com.
This is strange, but it's also good—good for competitive excitement and unpredictable fun, good for a conference that had become so top-to-bottom dominant that it was almost boring. Yes, we've got titans up top. But the wild swings in the pit below will be wonderful to watch.
And hey, it could be worse. The No. 10 seed in the East could shoot up to No. 1 with a hot week and vice versa. Try as it might, the West's growing middle class still has nothing on the East, where everyone and no one's a contender all at once.
That Back-to-Back Set Will Bite You
The way the Toronto Raptors roared out to a 26-5 first-quarter lead against the Indiana Pacers on Monday, you'd have thought Indy was the squad playing for the second straight day. But it was Toronto that was suiting up for the second leg of a back-to-back set and, at least at first, looking totally unaware that it was supposed to be tired, sluggish and generally beatable.
It turns out the fatigue was just a little tardy.
Indiana ripped off a wicked streak to take control of the contest, and whichever arbitrary cutoff point you pick to quantify the run—22-0, 32-2, 39-4—it was clear the Raptors had no answer for a fresher Pacers team that cruised to a 106-90 win.
Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan played well, scoring 20 points apiece. But the rest of the Raptors were abysmal, shooting a combined 31.9 percent from the field and defending with, shall we say, limited effort.
Those back-to-back sets get everyone (ask the Golden State Warriors about their streak-ending night in Milwaukee), and knowing that, it would have been nice to see Lowry and DeRozan get an extended rest in the fourth quarter once the result was clearly decided. Especially with another back-to-back looming at the end of the week at Charlotte on Dec. 17 and at Miami on Dec. 18.
Mario Hezonja Is as Advertised
If you didn't know much about Orlando Magic rookie Mario Hezonja when he was drafted, you weren't alone. But if you had even one faint impression about the 6'8" Croatian wing, it was probably related to his outsized confidence and wild competitive streak.
Exhibit A comes from a Sportando article last June, via Kevin O'Connor of SB Nation: "Respect? No, I never had respect to anybody on a basketball court," Hezonja said. "I heard about, 'If they smell blood, you get eaten.' I'm not like that. I don't care. Whether it's a veteran or a young player standing in front of me I always have the same goal. I want to run over everybody."
First of all, that's fantastic. Every rookie should go off script like this.
Second, it explains why Hezonja went for the nutmeg against Thomas Robinson in garbage time of the Magic's 105-82 win over the Brooklyn Nets on Monday.
If there are seconds on the clock, Hezonja will compete. We've learned that much.
We'd like to learn a little more about such an intriguing prospect though, and only recently have we had a chance. Hezonja saw a few minutes at point guard in a Dec. 11 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, logging 21 minutes in all, his most in over a month.
And his 18-minute stint against Brooklyn yielded a breakaway dunk, a couple of impressive hustle plays (one chase-down block/foul on Wayne Ellington and another a full-court sprint for a tip-in) and eight points on 4-of-5 shooting.
The Magic have pushed a lot of the right buttons, like moving Victor Oladipo to the bench as a scoring spark plug and resurrecting Andrew Nicholson's career (he had 15 off the pine against Brooklyn). If Hezonja keeps showing effort and playing with confidence like this, he'll work his way back into rotation-fixture status. And if this point guard experiment takes off, man...watch out.
Dwyane Wade Knows a Few Things
Before the Miami Heat secured a 100-88 win over the Atlanta Hawks, Dwyane Wade laid out some veteran wisdom on how Hassan Whiteside should deal with his sporadic late-game playing time, telling Ethan Skolnick of the Miami Herald:
"For the minutes that he's in the game, he has to dominate those minutes. And the minutes he's not on the floor, he has to cheer for his teammates, and hopefully the ones out there can get the job done. It's as simple as that. If that's not happening, there becomes a divide in the locker room. When you're a team that's trying to figure it out, you got to be as close as possible. You can't have a divide because someone feels he should be on the floor. It's a team game.
"
Whiteside performed well against Atlanta, grabbing 13 rebounds and swatting three shots despite getting pretty royally dunked on by Paul Millsap.
More importantly, Wade's comments charged up everyone else.
Goran Dragic defended with an intensity he hadn't shown in weeks, losing a tooth to an Al Horford elbow in the process. Luol Deng kept the ball hopping and scored 18 points on 7-of-12 shooting. Chris Bosh scored 24 points and hit four triples. Gerald Green ran hot off the bench for 20 points.
Across the board, Miami got real effort and specific, role-filling minutes from everyone...except for Wade, who, playing for the second day in a row for the first time this season, only managed seven points on 3-of-16 shooting.
At least as Wade continues to age and games like this become more common (assuming the Heat are serious about letting him play back-to-backs now), his experience and voice will remain strong. The Heat clearly respond to him, and this is a team that can do real damage down the line if it heeds Wade's advice.
It's Best to Stick With the Facts
The Philadelphia 76ers were competitive for a half, gradually saw the talent gap between them and the opponent grow too wide to overcome and eventually lost in a blowout—this, a 115-96 defeat to the Chicago Bulls.
And though it's tempting to get excited about Tony Snell's 16-point, 11-rebound mini breakout or Joakim Noah's eight assists and 15 rebounds off the bench, we're talking about the Sixers here. So all we can really do is report those factual occurrences and move on. Saying they mean anything in the larger context of the Bulls and their season going forward is a mistake, because they play actual NBA teams, not the Sixers, most of the time.
Is that too dark? Too dismissive? Cruel, maybe?
Hey! Look here: Jimmy Butler rising up for a sweet finish on a lob!
OK, let's go.
Maybe the Grizzlies Are Onto Something
With Zach Randolph coming off the bench for the second night in a row, the Memphis Grizzlies again committed to a smaller, spacier first unit in their 112-95 walkover win against the Washington Wizards.
Good thing for head coach Dave Joerger, whose job was reportedly on the line on Monday.
Marc Gasol was the best player on the floor for either team, putting up 24 points, 12 rebounds, six assists and three blocks in 39 minutes. So you can't discount size altogether; it'll always be a part of Memphis' makeup. But an interior that was slightly less congested and some smart, basic off-ball movement by players more agile and mobile than Randolph really pepped up the Grizzlies' typically snoozy offense.
Memphis shot 56.4 percent from the field and buried an impressive 10 of its 15 three-point tries.
This kind of thing is good for the Grizzlies, who've faced persistent scrutiny about their outdated style and aging core. But we can't get too carried away proclaiming Memphis cured of its past ills because the Wizards defended basic cuts like this, per Mike Prada of SB Nation:
It's safe to assume we'll see most teams handle actions like that without resembling a Buster Keaton clip quite so closely.
Memphis remains in that complicated middle tier we referenced earlier, but at least it's showing signs of finding a way out.
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Stats accurate through games played Dec. 14.
