Portland Trail Blazers and the 10 Biggest Jekyll and Hyde Teams in the NBA
Recently, the Portland Trial Blazers seemed to have been playing basketball without an identity, and it showed more than ever in their victory over the San Antonio Spurs at the beginning of the month, followed by consecutive blowout losses to the Denver Nuggets and the Indiana Pacers.
The Trail Blazers, however, are not the only team to play this type of wishy-washy basketball, as many teams play good against one type of opponent and then mysteriously disappear against another type.
It's interesting to see the type of patterns that creep up, and the things that are overshadowed because of losses to teams that are worse off by certain clubs.
The Trail Blazers may be the most recent example of this phenomenon, but they are far from the only team, and they are not even the biggest example of it.
One team has risen above the rest to show off a type of play that is almost inexplicable and should be brought to light.
Who are they? Well, I'm not gonna tell you guys on the first slide, I'm gonna make you work for it, so click on to find out the top-10 teams playing this strange type of basketball.
10. Miami Heat
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I'm not gonna put too much heat on Miami (yea, easy pun but shut up, I'm still going for it) for their up-and-down play because it is their first year together, so I'll give them some slack here.
Miami boasts the second best record in the Eastern Conference, sitting pretty at 39-15 and are just a half game out of first place.
The biggest problem, however, is the fact that 27 of those wins came against teams that are currently .500 or worse, and are, for the most part, not teams they will have to beat in the playoffs.
Of their 12 wins against teams over .500, they have beaten Orlando, Atlanta, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Los Angeles once each, which are their wins of note.
Unfortunately, they have yet to take down Chicago or Boston, their probable opponents in the second and third round of the playoffs, should they get that far, against whom they are a combined 0-4.
Not for a second am I saying that it is time to panic, but it is time to buckle down and beat some more respectable teams.
Although, it's not who you beat in February but rather who you beat in April.
9. Atlanta Hawks
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The Hawks are having the same problem the Heat are having, only they are doing it to a much higher degree.
The most notable wins from Atlanta have come against Orlando twice and once against Miami...and that's it.
Sure, they have beaten the teams that are hovering above .500, but when the big boys come to town, they fold faster than Phil Ivey holding a two of clubs and a seven of hearts.
The Hawks are a good 34-20 this season but only have eight wins against teams above .500 and only three wins against the elite teams in the league.
They are clinging to their status as a top-four team in the east by the ends of their fingernails, and they are about to slip off into irrelevancy.
8. Dallas Mavericks
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Dallas is one of two teams that I'm going to point out that seems to have trouble with a certain division, the other one is down the line and has troubles to a much more dramatic extent than the Mavericks.
Call it bad luck, say they dislike the midwest or cold weather in cities not along the Atlantic Ocean or call it just a plain coincidence, but the Mavericks just have terrible difficulty against the Central Division in the Eastern Conference.
Dallas has had an amazing season, and are easily one of the top four teams in the NBA this season, as they have compiled a 38-16 record over the length of the season.
The strangest thing about their season so far, however, is their 3-6 record against the Central Division.
Even more ridiculous is the fact that two of those wins came against the Cleveland Cavaliers during their 26-game losing streak.
So, over the course of this season, the Mavericks are 1-6 against non-historically bad teams, with that one win coming against the lowly Detroit Pistons (who beat Dallas back in November as well).
They've lost twice to Chicago, twice to Milwaukee, once to Indiana and once to Detroit. I don't know what this all means, but it is strange nonetheless.
7. New York Knicks
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The thing that makes the New York Knicks especially Jekyll and Hyde-ish this season is their extreme streakiness.
After starting the seasons 3-2, the Knicks went on a roller coaster ride that began with a five-game losing streak, winning 12-of-13 games, losing 5-of-7, winning 4-of-5, losing six in a row, winning 3-of-4 and then losing 4-of-6.
I guess the lesson here is that if you are planning on betting on a Knicks game, check out what they did in the previous game, and there's a big possibility they will do it again.
New York has made a name for itself this season by getting into a funk, having everybody write them off as a team in "wait until Carmelo Anthony gets there" mode, followed by a streak of half a dozen wins where you see a slew of articles on some kind of variation of "Do the Knicks even need Carmelo" or "Carmelo will make the Knicks the best team in the history of everything...ever."
Only truly special teams can create these types of hyperboles, and I don't know if using the word special there was in a good way or a bad way; that's how confusing these Knicks are.
6. Denver Nuggets
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Can one really blame the Nuggets for being a Jekyll and Hyde team this season with all of the craziness swirling about the team? Probably not, but that pity doesn't keep them off this list, that's for sure.
This season, the Nuggets are a very respectable 31-25 and are trying their hardest to stay in the playoff race in the west with a handful of teams trying to take their No. 8 spot.
The strange thing is, however, that Denver has won 14 out of 29 games against teams with a winning record, and only 17 out of 27 against teams with a losing record.
You would think that a team that nearly has a winning record against the best teams in the NBA would have a substantial number of wins against teams with losing records.
What's puzzling is the fact that the two teams ahead of them, Portland and Utah, are 11-18 and 12-18 against sub-.500 teams, but they have each won 20-of-26 games against the under-.500 teams.
Denver may not be struggling against the bottom-feeders, but they aren't doing anything impressive against them either.
5. Portland Trail Blazers
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Their record throughout the course of the year doesn't give them the feel of a Jekyll-Hyde team, but their play over the past month of the season certainly does.
Portland is a team held together with glue, duct tape, and spare parts probably harvested from the cadavers of Sam Bowie and Arvydas Sabonis which are presumed to be still sitting in a freezer in the Blazers training room.
In the past month, Portland has beaten San Antonio, made Boston scrape across every point possible to beat them and narrowly lost to the Heat and Mavericks.
Also in the past month, they have lost by a hefty margin to the likes of Sacramento and Indiana, while having to go the extra mile at the end of the game to beat teams like Detriot, Cleveland and Sacramento and Indiana in separate incidences.
There is a different feel of this Blazers team when they are playing against a top team in the league, and it seems like they could beat anybody on any given night.
However, at the same time, they tend to take nights off when they are playing a bottom-tier team, and it seems that they could lose to anybody on any given night.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers
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I know what you're thinking. How can a team that has won nine games be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde team? Are they not permanently the ugly, deformed basketball team that David Stern is trying to hide in a shack behind his mansion?
Alas, there is another side to this Cavaliers team. There is a debonair, sociable, attractive and even (gasp) socially acceptable side to these Cleveland Cavaliers.
The 9-46 Cavs, who just set a record for the longest losing streak in NBA history, and who have the exact opposite record as the San Antonio Spurs, are 5-7 against the Atlantic Division.
That's right, more than half of their nine wins have come against teams populating the Eastern coast of the United States, against every other division they have only one win, save for the Northwestern Division, where they are winless.
In the Atlantic, they have beaten Boston, Philadelphia (twice), New York and New Jersey. Toronto is the only team in that division without a loss to the Cavs, and they only have one more crack at a loss this season, with a game coming in April against Cleveland.
Who knows, maybe if Cleveland played every game against Atlantic Division opponents, they would have a shot at the playoffs in the east. Probably not, but a guy can dream.
3. New Jersey Nets
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The New Jersey Nets have a good base of young players compiled on their team, but they are by no means on their way to a playoff spot this season.
They have a measly 17 wins over 56 games this season and have a long way to go before they can even dream about competing for a title.
The interesting thing, however, is the fact that they have nine wins against winning teams and only eight against losing teams.
Brook Lopez and his pals are 9-23 (they won 30 percent of these games) against teams with winning records, and 8-16 against losing teams (33 percent of those).
They've beat Atlanta twice, Portland, Chicago, Denver and Memphis twice, but they've also lost to Cleveland, Sacramento, Philadelphia (thrice) and Minnesota.
It's interesting that they have shown that they can beat some good teams in The Association, but they are unable to beat the mediocre and bad teams on a consistent basis.
2. New Orleans Hornets
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The New Orleans Hornets have been one of the hardest teams to figure out this season.
On one hand, they ran off to an 11-1 record to start off the season, on the other hand, they promptly fell back to 16-12 by mid-December after consecutive losses to Detroit and Indiana. Everyone had thought that they had fallen back to Earth.
Then they streaked their way back to 31-16 after a stretch from the end of December to the end of January in which they beat the likes of Boston, Orlando, Atlanta, San Antonio and Oklahoma City but lost to Golden State and Sacramento.
Now, they have lost seven of their last nine and have a record of 33-23. What is a guy to make of that?
What's even more disturbing is the fact that sandwiched in between games against the Lakers, in which they pushed the champs to the brink, and the Magic, in which they beat the resurgent east team, New Orleans lost to both Minnesota and New Jersey.
They have the baffling ability to look like a team that could possibly streak their way to the Western Conference Finals one night and look like they'll get swept in the first round of the playoffs the next night.
New Orleans is as unpredictable team as you will see in the NBA this season.
1. Philadelphia 76ers
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Slowly but surely, the 76ers are becoming relevant, and quickly, they are starting to hurt my brain.
Usually, you have a team pegged at the beginning of the season, and it is unlikely that they will deviate much from their expectations, unless they have an unpredictable rookie or free agent added over the summer.
If said rookie does good, the team will preform better than expected, if he doesn't, then they should do just about what you expected. That was Evan Turner at the beginning of this season.
Well, Turner has done quite poorly this year and isn't improving much as the season goes along, but the Sixers are improving by leaps and bounds as we progress into the spring.
They play with such confusing, erratic consistency that it is impossible to say what they are going to do on a given night.
Here is a taste of the craziness that goes on in Philly on a daily basis.
On January 7th, they shocked the Chicago Bulls with a six-point victory, the next night they went and got beat by the Pistons, followed by another loss to the Pacers.
On another occasion, they beat the Magic by 12 points in Orlando, but that win was sandwiched between blowout losses to the Lakers and Bulls.
They have beat San Antonio, Portland, New Orleans, Denver, Orlando, Utah and Atlanta this season, and come with a shot of beating Boston, Los Angeles and Orlando again.
Then they have lost to Washington twice, Toronto twice, Indiana twice, Detroit and Cleveland...TWICE!
If I were to tell you your life depended on you picking the outcome of a Sixers-Pistons or Sixers-Pacers game, would you not be shaking in your boots right now.
This team is too crazy for me to try to comprehend.
