This week’s biggest busts: Pelicans -6, Grizzlies -4, Wizards -4,
This week’s biggest successes: Pacers +5, Trail Blazers +5, Clippers +4
1. Golden State Warriors (31-6, 2-1 this week) (last week: #1 [2-1] +0)
The people of Georgia (the country, not the state, you ignorant mud-crawling moron) have come through in the clutch, voting Zaza Pachulia into the All-Star game after trying (and failing) last season. But wait! The voting system has changed this year specifically to avoid obvious non-stars like Zaza having to embarrass themselves competing against a team of extremely skilled hyper-athletes. So we don’t get to see the whole Warriors starting lineup in the All-Star game. However, we get to see them every time the Warriors play a regular season game, so I don’t get what the big deal is. (See Memphis Grizzlies ranking for discussion on the Warriors’ magnificent choke-job this week)
2. Houston Rockets (29-9, 3-0 this week) (last week: #3 [4-0] +1)
James Harden had a rough week, going 17-of-55 from the field, but the Rockets won their three games this week and Harden got double-digit assists in all of them, so I’m just going to sit here and pretend that I’m not a little bit sad that he’s regressing to the mean offensively. Okay, I’m done pretending and I’m just going to go out and say it: I’m sad. When Harden’s not scoring that means the Rockets aren’t dropping 130 like I want them to. He must be tired from scoring 52 at the end of last week.
3. Cleveland Cavaliers (27-8, 2-1 this week) (last week: #2 [3-1] -1)
The rest of the league should be sending hate mail to the Hawks for practically giving away Kyle Korver to the Cavaliers, thus increasing their chances of repeating as champs by a significant amount. And when I say hate mail, I mean really hateful hate mail. Not just jokey Twitter beefs. If anybody has any dirt on the Hawks top brass, now would be a good time to publicize it, because no team should be allowed to help another team in their own conference that much. Our only hope is that Kyle Korver’s body is more decrepit than previously believed and that he becomes progressively less effective as the games pile up.
4. San Antonio Spurs (30-7, 3-1 this week) (last week: #4 [3-0] +0)
Aside from an overtime loss to the Hawks, the Spurs have been demolishing people left, right, and center. Kawhi Leonard will never win MVP because there are guys in nearby Houston and Oklahoma City putting up numbers so sick that I’m currently riding to the hospital in an ambulance, but to commemorate a great season which will end up going mostly unrecognized, I wrote him a poem: “Kawhi Leonard is the Spurs’ main offensive threat/His defense has fallen off you can bet/Everyone expects the worst when Pau Gasol starts/But their defense is still off the charts/Eats at Wingstop and drives an old truck/Kawhi’s down to score like I’m DownToBuck/Build around him for years and years/He’s powered by a serum concocted from Tim Duncan’s tears”
5. Toronto Raptors (24-12, 2-2 this week) (last week: #5 [1-2] +0)
How can Kyle Lowry be the best player on the Raptors when he allows himself to put up a horrible six-point, two-assist statline in thirty minutes against the Spurs? Yeah yeah yeah, the Spurs are the best defensive team in the league, YAWN, who cares? The fact remains that Lowry got totally shut down and his team lost by 28 points. This actually tells us TWO things: Kyle Lowry is not elite point guard and the Raptors are not an elite team. Those are things you are become true after just one disappointing loss, and the louder I proclaim them, the more true they become.
6. Boston Celtics (23-14, 3-0 this week) (last week: #9 [3-1] +3)
“I hate Boston and all its inhabitants,” Jae Crowder thought angrily to himself as he stared out his apartment window. In the distance was the Boston skyline, its towering office buildings filled to the brim with detestable, mouth-breathing semihumans. Semihumans who had no problem cheering for an opposing team’s player. “If they don’t appreciate what I bring to the small forward position, there’s twenty-nine other fanbases who would.” He grabbed his phone, prepared to unleash another Twitter-broadcasted tirade on the world, but when he logged into the service he saw hundreds of new tweets directed at him, and they weren’t insulting him for his earlier outbursts, no, they were thanking him for his hustle and skill on the court. Now, when he looked out the window, the scene outside seemed friendlier somehow…
7. Los Angeles Clippers (25-14, 3-0 this week) (last week: #11 [0-5] +4)
I wonder if Chris Paul still hates DeAndre Jordan? It was made known some time ago that Paul holds Jordan in disdain for his inability to shoot free throws. Jordan’s percentage at the welfare stripe has improved marginally, so it’s possible that Paul has gotten over this particular issue. However, there’s still a lot of things left on the team for him to hate: Doc Rivers’ poor GM skills, Jamal Crawford being an overrated chucker, Austin Rivers actually playing well recently, or Alan Anderson being another useless small forward on a roster filled with useless small forwards. I bet he hates all of those things.
8. Utah Jazz (23-15, 2-2 this week) (last week: #6 [3-0] -2)
The Jazz finally got everybody back healthy, and then only beat the Timberwolves by two. And that was only because the Timberwolves fell apart in the final quarter, scoring just twelve points. If I had watched the game I would be able to tell you whether those twelve points were a result of the Jazz’ defense picking up in intensity (their opponent’s PPG is the lowest in the league for a reason) or if it was because the Wolves took turns running ISO plays for their big three. But I didn’t watch the game so I’ll say it’s a combination of both that allowed the Jazz to avoid an 0-3 week.
9. Oklahoma City Thunder (22-16, 1-3 this week) (last week: #7 [3-1] -2)
We all know who the best player on the Thunder is. It’s Russell Westbrook. But who’s the second best player on their roster? Last year the answer was Russell Westbrook, but that doesn’t work this year because one player cannot simultaneously be both the first and second best player on his team. That’s not how reality operates. So: is it Enes Kanter? Steven Adams? Maybe Victor Oladipo? Our choices are limited to those three since the rest of the roster is quite scrubby. You could make an argument for any of them and not sound like a total bozo in the process. My vote is for Adams since he knows when not to go after rebounds and how to shoot it as soon as he gets the ball from Westbrook.
10. Indiana Pacers (20-18, 4-0 this week) (last week: #15 [1-2] +5)
The Pacers’ decision to bench Monta “Have it All” Ellis in favor of the lower-usage Glenn Robinson III seems to be paying off. And not only is Ellis benched, he’s also playing just twenty minutes per game, and his field goal attempts per 36 are about half of what they were his last season in Dallas. All this information taken in aggregate seems to indicate that we are currently witnessing the demise of Monta Ellis the star and the birth of Monta Ellis the low-usage role-player. For some reason nobody cares that this is happening. I don’t even really care. It’s just the most interesting that’s been going on with the Pacers recently.
11. Atlanta Hawks (21-16, 4-0 this week) (last week: #14 [2-1] +3)
RIP 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks that won sixty games. With the recent trade of Kyle Korver and the all-but-guaranteed trade of Paul Millsap, there is little left of that team that made the ECF. There’s Thabo Sefolosha (old), Mike Scott (doesn’t play), Mike Muscala (man bun), Dennis Schroder (PG of the future), and Kent Bazemore (they wish he was SF of the future but he probably isn’t). None of those guys were very important to the Hawks of two seasons ago. All the important guys already left or are packing their bags. Whatever Dwight Howard thought he was signing up for, I bet it wasn’t this.
12. Memphis Grizzlies (23-16, 1-2 this week) (last week: #8 [2-2] -4)
On Friday night, the Grizzlies outscored the Warriors 32-13 in the final quarter and then continued to punish them in the resultant overtime period, 17-8. Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol used their girthy tubbiness to maximum effect, reasserting that the NBA will always be a league for big dudes and that the NBA is not a league for pansy jumpshooters playing in a passing-based offense. And let us not forget the contributions of one Chandler Parsons, who only played eighteen minutes as a starter before letting better players play the rest of his minutes.
13. Charlotte Hornets (20-18, 1-3 this week) (last week: #10 [2-2] -3)
The more people talk about how Frank Kaminsky is morphing in front of our eyes from “The Tank” to “The Clank” (a clever reference to his dismal 28% shooting from three-world), the less I’m able to get over the fact that his face looks like it was physically stretched out using some kind of medieval torture device. You shouldn’t get to be listed at seven feet tall if three inches of that height are from your abnormally stretched-out forehead. Maybe he stretches it out before every game by pulling his chin and scalp in separate directions, and that’s why he apparently lost his ability to shoot the ball. Maybe if somebody let me punch his face back into place he would start shooting well again.
14. Milwaukee Bucks (18-17, 2-1 this week) (last week: #13 [2-2] -1)
Giannis Antetokounmpo’s case for appearing in the All-Star game, which was already extremely strong, was bolstered significantly by his hitting a game-winning shot against the Knicks. At the buzzer. In Madison Square Garden. In front of thousands of Knick fans, some of whom probably began bandwagoning the Bucks in the immediate aftermath of the buzzer-beater. I can only think of one scenario in which Giannis would be more of a lock to make the All-Star game: if every other player in the NBA died all at once. It wouldn’t be much of a game in that scenario but you wouldn’t be able to argue against the fact that Giannis would be one of the top twelve players in the East. (Fun fact: this is the exact scenario that Steve Novak fantasizes about when he thinks about the All-Star game)
15. Chicago Bulls (19-18, 3-0 this week) (last week: #18 [2-3] +3)
Rondo got benched. Rondo did not like getting benched. Rondo had a secret meeting with Gar Forman to discuss the benching and how he did not like it. Rondo came out of the meeting feeling like nothing had been determined. Rondo did not play in any of the next three games, two of which were wins for the Bulls. This seems like it’s the juiciest drama of the season so far, but nobody on the outside of the situation has any idea what is really going on there. It wouldn’t be too hard to pay a janitor to plant recording devices all over the front office, would it? A news outlet serious about getting to the bottom of this (in other words, not downtobuck.net) should jump on this.
16. Washington Wizards (17-18, 1-2 this week) (last week: #12 [3-0] -4)
OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS are tough to get right. I am reminded of this fact every single week. But when a team loses to the Mavericks, that makes my job easy. The Wizards are that team this week, and they drop a couple of spots because of it. See? Simple. They also needed some fourth-quarter juju to pull it out against the Timberwolves, but it’s unclear how good or bad the Wolves actually are, so that game had to be thrown out when it came to computing these rankings. If I can’t tell within five seconds of looking at the score of a game whether or not it was a bad loss for the team that lost, then I just give up. I have to do something to preserve my sanity here.
17. Detroit Pistons (17-21, 2-1 this week) (last week: #20 [1-2] +3)
Serbian basketball fans everywhere (but especially in Serbia) have had their collective quality of life significantly reduced by the fact that Stan Van Gundy hates Boban Marjanovic. Either hates him or fails to see how awesome it is to see a 7’3″ dude lumber around on the court, grab rebounds over people just by standing near them, and hold the basketball like it’s a grapefruit. Since all those things are self-evidently awesome, I’m going with the “SVG hates Boban” narrative. SVG’s hate for Boban, however, was no match for Andre Drummond’s foul trouble against the Hornets, and the result was Boban tallying a 15 point, 19 rebound statline in just twenty minutes. Spencer Hawes is still nowhere to be found.
18. Portland Trail Blazers (16-22, 2-1 this week) (last week: #23 [1-2] +5)
The latest news out of Portland made me more sad than anything. In case you didn’t hear, Festus Ezeli apparently started making a habit out of giving motivational talks in the locker room after tough Blazers losses. Like, telling them to play with passion and effort and all those nebulous concepts. Remember, Ezeli hasn’t played yet this year and won’t be playing any time soon. C.J. McCollum had enough of being lectured by a guy who wasn’t even playing and who might have a slightly inflated ego due to the ring on his finger, and told him to shut up. Is that not the saddest thing ever? I can’t even make a joke about it. Think how sad and useless Ezeli must have felt when that happened. He might have even started crying. And that makes ME want to cry. But I have to finish the power rankings.
19. New York Knicks (17-20, 1-3 this week) (last week: #19 [0-4] +0)
I wander alone for hours in this wretched place. Briefly, the whirling clouds separate and I catch a glimpse of the dim off-yellow sun that provides only a meager light. The face of Kristaps Porzingis is embedded within the light-giving star. Suddenly, a new celestial body enters my awareness; it slides in front of the sun, plunging the world into a morbid screaming darkness. The only thing I can see in the darkness is an image of Giannis Antetokounmpo, either supplied to me by my own mind or somehow floating in the pitch-black landscape in front of me. When the eclipse is over and the Kristaps-sun regains its place in the sky, however, Giannis disappears with the coming of the light.
20. Denver Nuggets (14-23, 0-4 this week) (last week: #17 [2-1] -3)
Nikola Jokic hype levels, which had reached new lows for the year when he got benched, are making a strong recovery. Hype for Jock-Itch was high at the end of last season, but it might be even higher now. That’s fair enough; he’s playing like a prime Marc Gasol but it’s only his second year in the league. If that’s not hype-worthy, I don’t know what is. What I do know is that I am currently contemplating changing my channel name to “DownToJokic”. I also printed out a bunch of pictures of Nikola Jokic and used them to wallpaper my bedroom. No one will ever accuse me of not getting hyped enough about Jock-Itch.
21. Sacramento Kings (15-21, 1-2 this week) (last week: #22 [1-2] +1)
DeMarcus Cousins made some headlines this week by claiming that his jersey would eventually get retired by the Kings, the implication being (for those of you not versed in the art of parsing hidden meanings out of innocuous sentences) that he would be a King for life. Either he’s trying to prevent an imminent trade by informing the Kings front office that he wants to stay forever, or he’s painting himself as the good guy for when he does actually get traded. Or he wants to get traded but thinks the Kings will retire his jersey anyway like the Bucks might do with Ray Allen. Or he’s predicting an untimely demise at the hands of an escaped zoo animal who has been secretly genetically modified to be impervious to tranquilizers.
22. New Orleans Pelicans (14-24, 0-3 this week) (last week: #16 [3-0] -6)
Anthony Davis’ scoring has declined every month of the season. I could joke about how it will just keep going down until he averages four points per game in April, but that’s not even a funny joke. The real funny joke is the team that has been built around Anthony Davis. The only player on the roster that is unarguably “good” is Jrue Holiday. There are a lot of players getting paid like they’re “good” but Holiday is the only one who most third-party observers would agree actually is “good”. DownToBuck’s proposed solution: bake a giant king cake. It won’t help AD score any more points but it might make him feel better about having to play with a whole roster of role players who are being asked to do too much.
23. Phoenix Suns (12-25, 2-1 this week) (last week: #26 [1-3] +3)
Tyson “Two More Years” Chandler is averaging 11.6 rebounds per game, the second-highest rebounding average of his career, while only playing 27 minutes per game. Some people are probably trying to attribute this to Chandler experiencing a late career revitalization, but those people are unequivocally wrong. Chandler is only rebounding like a beast at age 34 because 1.) Alex Len is the only other rebounder on the team and 2.) the Suns’ chucktastic guard trio is bricking so many shots that obviously there are going to be plenty of rebounds for the grabbing. This is a situation where even a non-rebounder like Brook Lopez would average nine a game. Easy.
24. Orlando Magic (16-22, 1-3 this week) (last week: #21 [1-1] -3)
OFFICIAL ORLANDO MAGIC TANK WATCH: The Magic don’t seem to be tanking yet even though all signs point to them not being anywhere close to a playoff caliber team. Clearest sign that the tank has not yet begun to roll: D.J. Augustin and Jodie Meeks have started games. These were players brought in to help the team make the playoffs, but now that the playoff dream is mostly dead (please don’t prove me wrong Magic), there’s no reason to start them. Just start Payton and Hezonja, let the losses pile up, and at the end of the season you’ll know whether you have potential building blocks or not. Somewhere, Rob Hennigan is crying while thinking about the “OKC Model”.
25. Los Angeles Lakers (14-26, 2-2 this week) (last week: #25 [1-2] +0)
In honor of Brandon Ingram’s third decent game of the season, where he scored 17 points without committing a turnover or a foul, I will send him a fifty-dollar gift card to the Yankee Candle store. The gift card was actually supposed to be for my mom for Christmas but I misplaced it and had to quick get a replacement present for her (she liked the mittens I picked out). Then the gift card turned up underneath a Hot Pocket wrapper, but it was too late to give it to my mom so I thought “why not give it to the rookie who is by many measures the worst player in the NBA? He could definitely use some encouragement in form of cloyingly scented candles.” Now I just need to figure out his home address.
26. Minnesota Timberwolves (11-26, 0-4 this week) (last week: #24 [2-2] -2)
The Timberwolves’ SRS (which purports to assign an accurate, easy-to-understand numeric value by which to rank teams) is reasonably close to league-average at -1.8, but the Timberwolves are at the bottom of the Western Conference standings. I always thought that “choking” was a random occurrence. I always thought that teams struggling in specific quarters was more a function of mankind’s search for order among chaos than any actual quarter-specific woes. But the Timberwolves being so bad when they should be so average is making me re-evaluate everything I thought I knew. Next up for re-evaluation: is the value menu at McDonald’s ACTUALLY a good value when everything on it tastes like ass?
27. Dallas Mavericks (11-26, 1-2 this week) (last week: #28 [1-3] +1)
Dirk Nowitzki stares at his computer. The numbers are there in front of him, but he can’t quite believe them at first. “Negative win shares…” he mumbles, shakily stroking a finger across the “-0.002” that is rendered in stark black text on the screen. “37 percent from the field…” Suddenly, his wife appears at his shoulder, asking him what he was looking at. “Nothing, nothing,” he mutters, closing the window where his stats had been displayed. “Just checking my Twitter DM’s, you know.” He knows that everybody already realizes how bad he has played this year, but to acknowledge it, even to his own wife, is too much. He would rather pretend to be the Dirk of old than to accept the Dirk of the present. For hours afterwards, the numbers are burned into his vision: “-0.002”.
28. Philadelphia 76ers (9-25, 1-1 this week) (last week: #29 [1-2] +1)
The Sixers almost had their first three-game winning streak of the season, but they squandered a lead against the Celtics to halt their winning streak at two. Two wins in a row is still great for a team as sucktastic as the Sixers, but three would have definitely caused some brains to liquefy (mine included). Since this recent hot streak started when Sergio Rodriguez went out with an ankle injury, we can blame the Sixers’ poor record on him. Is there some kind of law or international treaty we can use to deport him back to Spain? We don’t want him to return to game action only to re-screw everything up.
29. Miami Heat (11-27, 1-3 this week) (last week: #27 [0-3] -2)
Last week I lamented the fact that the Heat were forcing Justise Winslow into a scoring role he isn’t (wasn’t) suited for. My words must have some frightening prophetic power because now Winslow is having season-ending surgery on his elbow. I didn’t mean for it to happen like that! All I wanted was for the Heat to maybe ease off on the “Winslow as offensive centerpiece” strategy a little bit. Nowhere did I insinuate that I wanted him to get injured for that to happen. If I did wish for injury upon a player, that player would be Mike Dunleavy, and the injury would be my fist knocking his face into the next dimension.
30. Brooklyn Nets (8-27, 0-3 this week) (last week: #30 [1-2] +0)
We can probably blame the Nets’ woes not on the inadequate talent of the roster, not on the inadequate abilities of the coaching staff, and not on the arena which looks like a big piece of metallic poo. No, instead we can blame it on gross New York-style pizza. New Yorkers try to pretend that it’s some kind of culinary masterpiece that should be revered by everybody, but really it’s just greasy floppy triangles with mediocre flavor. You can easily imagine how being force-fed such gustatory abominations could negatively affect team morale.