A quick note: The DeAnd'rankings - the internet's definitive ranking of NBA players named DeAndre or variations thereof - will resume the weekend of Christmas. In addition to the rankings, the site will continue to serve as a place for me to write about basketball.
If sports have taught us anything, it's that we can't all be winners. It it's taught us a second thing, it's that rich people get preferential treatment.
With that first thing in mind, during a season that will surely be a complete mess of COVID absences, rescheduled games, pouting superstars, and LeBron James continuing his quest to be the first athlete to never actually succumb to "time" as a physical deterrent, I want to talk about the bad teams.
Depending on which website you're looking at, the NBA has somewhere between 2 and 9 bad teams. From a gambling perspective, Bovada has Cleveland, New York, and Detroit as the least likely champions, with Charlotte, Sacramento, Chicago, Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and San Antonio as the others who are sitting at 150:1 or worse odds of being NBA champs. While there are differing levels of "bad" in there (Minnesota, for example, has two #1 picks, a #2, a #5, and a #6 on their roster), none of these teams has a real shot at doing much. But the real bottom dwellers are the Cavs and Knicks, with a sprinkling of last year's bad teams and the SGA + 31 future draft picks Thunder thrown in for good measure.
The big question is this: with the top-tier teams - and even the mid-tier teams - being loaded with talent and expectations, why on Earth is anyone excited to watch crappy NBA teams on a nightly basis?
I'm here to answer that question.
Here are ten reasons to be excited about watching the worst teams in the NBA.
1. First and foremost, these guys are still crazy good. Any given night can mean an explosive game that you never saw coming. You would be right to think that a December meeting between battered Golden State and boring-as-hell Charlotte last season would've been prime for ignoring. That game turned out to feature Devonte Graham going for 33/9/7 in a game where he made TEN three-pointers. The dude missed his first two attempts from deep and then hit 10 of his next 14. Or what if you slept on a Cavs/Celtics clash because it sounded terrible and you missed out on Collin Sexton scoring 41 and the Celtics clinging to a 1-point lead over the final 3:00? It was a thriller, to be sure.
The point is that sometimes you watch a crappy game and see Mitchell Robinson rack up 5 fouls in 14 minutes. Other times you watch a crappy game and see Mitchell Robinson rack up 5 blocked shots in 14 minutes. Basketball is a fickle beast, and that unpredictability is part of what makes it great.
2. Even if one team is really bad, they might be playing against a great team. This sounds stupid, but if the Knicks play against the Bucks, aren't you excited about seeing whether Giannis can go for 25/10 by halftime? Superstars look extra good against bad teams, which means you get to see scintillating displays. On January 3rd, 2020, the Knicks were bad when they played against the Suns. If you watched that game, Devin Booker went for 38, Kelly Oubre had 29, Deandre Ayton had a 15/15 game, and Aron Baynes even dropped a 20/12. And the Suns weren't even good yet!
3. There is beauty in blowouts. Sometimes a game is so bad, so incomprehensible, that it becomes legendary. For me, that game was almost a decade ago. In a game that I've been aching to write 10,000 words about, the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers 112-57 on January 11th, 2011. The box score is truly magical. Mo Williams was a -43 in 26 minutes of play. The Cavs had a -109 net rating while he was on the floor. The Lakers let Pau Gasol play 31 minutes in this game. It's just...it's art. There is nothing quite like this game. But it could happen on any given night - couldn't this happen when LeBron and Anthony Davis play a Cavs team on the 2nd night of a back-to-back when Sexton and Nance are out with flu-like symptoms? Couldn't you see this happening again?
4. There are weird situations with all kinds of players out there. Let's use Detroit as an example: while they have Killian Hayes to keep an eye on, it will at least be interesting to see the sink or swim aspect of Jerami Grant's new role. Blake is a really good point-forward when healthy, and the rest of their bigs are...confusing, but there are things there which are worth seeing. It could lead to giving up 50 points to opposing guards or it could lead to a 4-big lineup that gets 40% of offensive rebounds and wins games based solely on 2nd chance points. It would be weird, but seeing a team try something new and definitely not watching every game of theirs could still be fun.
5. Bad teams can feature redemption stories. Orlando isn't technically a bad team, but isn't Markelle Fultz's rise to decency a great story? Or what about Minnesota - Karl Anthony Towns has been through heartache worse than most of us can imagine, can't you envision him scoring 65 and breaking down in tears when he does a post-game presser about overcoming his emotional burden? That kind of thing would be incredible.
On the other end of the redemption spectrum, maybe Gordon Hayward stops looking so racist and we all take a little comfort in that?
6. The surprise of a bad team turned good. In the summer of 2019, everyone assumed the OKC Thunder would be trading Chris Paul and starting a rebuild. The Thunder ended up as the 5th seed in the west. How? Who cares! It was great. The same thing is theoretically possible in the upcoming season. Maybe the Bulls click a little bit. Maybe Jerami Grant is actually comfortable being the lead guy. Maybe Darius Garland takes a big leap after the long offseason. Maybe OKC does it again despite the fact that I can't think of anyone beyond Shai Gilgeous Alexander who actually plays on that team. The point is that a month into last season you would have assumed that a Thunder game would be completely pointless to watch, when in reality they were scrapping, clawing, and fighting their way toward a playoff berth. Someone will do the same this year.
(Wait a minute: fully unleashed SGA plus defensive master Lu Dort plus good defender and all-around good player Al Horford plus super long-armed up-and-comer Darius Bazley...is OKC gonna do this again?)
7. Rookies. We've got a lot of options here, but rookies are part of what make the NBA circle, well, a circle. A bad team gets a good player, and for a year or two that bad team stays bad while that good player gets good. Darius Garland (#5 overall) was supposed to be the exciting rookie in Cleveland last season, but when Kevin Porter, Jr. blew up and scored 15 in the 2nd half multiple times, that was worth watching. Maybe this season it's Aleksej Pokusevski in OKC. Maybe it's Saddiq Bey in Detroit. Or maybe it's a top pick who we know to keep our eyes on. The point is that these guys almost never have high expectations, so when something big happens it's extra special.
8. Gunner seasons. Bradley Beal is the most recent example, but the beauty of bad teams is that you get the occasional "why the hell not?" season. There are a lot of contract-year examples of this, but I prefer Beal last season throwing his 30 points a game in everyone's face while the Wizards refused to play defense even one time over the course of 6 months. It was a joy to watch, and I'm not saying that as a joke. That dude sliced up opponents about as well as anyone you saw throughout the year. It'll happen again this season, somewhere. Smart money is on Zach Lavine if things stay grim in Chicago.
9. Injury-based turnarounds. Speaking of Chicago: What if Otto Porter comes back to being a halfway decent NBA player? What if Blake Griffin makes the rest of the bigs in Detroit unnecessary because the point-forward gameplan works like gangbusters? What if - and I can't believe I'm saying this - Gordon Hayward is worth his contract? It's possible that he was still healing last season and comes in and...I don't know...he plays like an All-Star again. That's a real possibility! On the better teams, it could be Oladipo! Or Steph Curry! Or John Wall! Or Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving! Boy, there were a lot of injuries around the league, weren't there? JJJ, KAT - this is quite a list, but I think you get the point.
10. Because it's basketball. I don't know what else I need to say. It's basketball. In a year, and a world, where all kinds of things have been all kinds of bad, just having basketball being played by some of the 300 best players on the entire planet sounds heavenly to me.
Basketball, please.
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