Abandon All Hope
"Ship be sinkin'" - Michael Ray Richardson.
30 - Sacramento: Yes, they have more wins than the Clips and Sixers, but that doesn't accurately reflect the overwhelming sense of helplessness, hopeless and pure suck permeating their entire team. The bright spot this season, if you can call it that, is the surprisingly non-shitty play of Luther Head. That's basically it. I say fire the coach, who's doing no one on the team any favors by yo-yo'ing minutes, not settling on any sort of meaningful rotation and doing all he can to ensure Tyreke Evans regressed and Demarcus Cousins is put in situations to demonstrate all the worst aspects of his game and personality. On the verge of being a completely wasted season, 15 game in.
29 - Detroit: Can't even tank competently. This is a team that if it ran perfectly could sneak into the playoffs as an 8-seed before losing in four straight to Miami/Orlando/Boston in a series in which they'd be lucky to keep the total point differential under 3 figures. "Running perfectly" includes not having a coach who is either clueless or getting extremely mixed signals from the front office or both.
At this point, it's patently obvious that the Pistons are going absolutely nowhere with this "core" so they need to either try and sell off the "veteran pieces" for whatever it can get, or simply bury them and let the young guys learn through there mistakes. What they should NOT do is play Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun prince just enough so they are key pieces yet put up extremely underwhelming bulk numbers so as to depress their trade values well into the negative while limiting the opportunity of Monroe and Daye to progress by trotting out Jason Maxiell and Chris Wilcox, all while the coach does his best to piss off the one youngish piece (Stuckey) who might actually fetch a nice return so that he goes into a funk including taking multiple games off. So basically, exactly what they are doing. All while managing to win just enough games to minimize their chances in the Harrison Barnes sweepstakes.
28 - Philadelphia: Doug Collins has missed games due to symptoms of vertigo, and I can't think of a more perfect metaphor for the 76ers season. Previously indestructible Andre Iguodala has been in and out; Evan Turner at first confounded the depressed expectations for him by demonstrating a surprisingly mature floor game off the bench, before finding ways to disappear and/or choke games away as a starter. Elton Brand has gone from rejuvenated to thuggish. Lou Williams has either been a dynamic scorer off the bench or a poor man's Monta Ellis (09-10 edition). Somehow have managed to accumulate 2 of the 5 worst losses of the young season in more or less the same manner away to the same opponent in the Wizards. At the very least the team appears to be getting along and competing minimally hard on a nightly basis, which is far more than I can say for the first two squads.
27. Houston - Hope pinned on Yao's health. Whoops. Also, suffered a little bit of runbad (a Yao injury doesn't really count as runbad at this point) with injuries keeping Martin, Brooks and Lowry out for stretches. The injury to Brooks was particularly a killer since not only did they lose him and Yao in quick succession, but the timing of his injury meant they couldn't clear the roster spot occupied by Ish Smith to sign Erick Dampier, who probably would have helped hold down the fort for Yao. He would certainly have weighed it down...
WE CAN BUILD ON THIS
None of these teams are good, but all have some degree of hope for the future.
26. Washington - Avoid the "complete trainwreck" category basically by virtue of John Wall being legit, Javael McGee looking like he has a chance, and Gilbert Arenas looking like he might have just enough left in the tank to convince some contender needing backcourt scoring (looking at you, Orlando, or even Utah just for sheer comedy's sake) to take a huge gamble on him. They still have my man Andray Blatche playing a prominent role though:
25. New Jersey - The hope hear is Derrick Favors. Full stop. Lopez is putting up some of the emptiest big numbers in the league
24. Minnesota - I mean with Ricky Rubio, suddenly a starting lineup of Rubio/Wes Johnson/Beasley/Love/Darko doesn't seem that bad, and would certainly be a strong playoff contender in the East. That said, Darko can't be for real NOW can he?
23. Toronto - Genuinely the toughest team for me to rank, because I'd like to see them do well for personal reasons. But they also are playing with a lot of passion and heart, especially at home. Reggie Evans and Amir Johnson are complementing Bargnani's aversion to touching the ball immediately after it has contacted the rim. Calderon seems to mesh much better with the young wings in Derozan and Weems, the latter of whom has been pretty impressive of late. If Derozan can develop just that little bit of consistency, they can give teams some mathcup problems with all their good perimeter scoring options. They aren't and won't be "good" but they'll give the fans their money's worth.
22. L.A. Clippers - The injuries to Kaman and Fat Diddy Davis might turn out to be a blessing. Probably not in terms of record, but in terms of forcing Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin to become the leaders of the team while allowing Aminu and Eric Bledsoe to get reps in an environment with very little pressure. We all know Blake has been great:
but Gordon has been almost more impressive by the fact that despite shooting wretchedly from 3 (14 of 67 on the year despite being a career 38% shooter from deep for his career) he's still playing at a near all-star level and has cataloged his own impressive list of highlights on the year.
Fuck All Y'all
21. Cleveland - Everyone knows what they lost, but they seem to have embraced life as the scrappy losers who occasionally come good and simply refused to be the doormats that most expected them to be. Have had a few very impressive wins already including the Celtics and the game vs. Milwaukee where you would expect a less professional and motivated team to have rolled over and died instead of coming all the way back from 20+ down to win on a buzzer beater. Big negative (aside from lack of top end talent) is Byron Scott's apparent desire to crush JJ Hickson's career. We've seen this movie before from Scott and his refusal to give young players any rope (Bass, Brandon. Thornton, Marcus.)
I didn't sign up for this shit
Pre-season high hopes already more or less dashed in depressingly familiar ways.
20. Charlotte - FREE TYRUS THOMAS. I am not a great admirer of Ray Felton's game, but he was at least serviceable. No matter what his gaudy assist:turnover stats might be, I don't feel the same way at all about DJ Augustin, and I would venture to guess that Gerald Wallace would agree. Here's guessing that when and if he thinks about it, Larry Brown is silently cursing MJ for putting the kibosh on this past summers Boris Diaw/Jose Calderon swap which would have A) given the team some real, non-terrible set up play; B) have Freed the aforementioned Tyrus Thomas; C) have allowed them to play Derrick Brown even more. As it is all their best players are 2-3-4 tweener types and simply can't be on the floor together that much. Additionally, Stephen Jackson seems to be especially...testy this year.
19. Memphis - Good thing they locked Conley up. Oh wait. I have a sinking sensation that they are going to end up using the constraints of that contract as an excuse to sell OJ Mayo (admittedly in a pretty horrid funk of late) for .35 cents on the dollar and then justify the deal by saying "hey, it wasn't as bad as the Gasol Trade!"
18. Milwaukee - Any time Bogut misses for them is just devastating, but the subtler loss has been Carlos Delfino, who hasn't played in weeks since basically playing through getting knocked the fuck out in a game a few weeks back. This team just can't score (last in ORtg) and Delfino provides a little scoring punch without the huge defensive liability that is Corey Maggette (though given the Bucks are first in DRtg at the moment, maybe sacrificing a little bit of D for some scoring wouldn't be the worst thing.) Jennings hasn't progressed quite enough yet, and Skiles, per his wont has relied too much on stiffs like Luc Richard Mbab a Moute and Jon Brockman at the expense of getting quality time for Larry Sanders, who could well turn into a difference maker down the line.
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