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New York Times
31-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
NBA Rewind: Can Grizzlies' season be saved? And Thunder, Magic, Bulls are on the rise
The NBA had another serving of shocking news entering the weekend when the Memphis Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins. With roughly two weeks before the playoffs and the Grizzlies battling for the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference, it seemed like curious timing. Elsewhere, you've got teams chasing history, others trying to salvage their season and franchises trying to be bad to set themselves up for the future … no matter how embarrassing it is in the current. Advertisement Here's your latest NBA Rewind! We only have two more NBA Stock Reports left in this season, including this one. There's no better time to highlight the team that has been making waves and dominating all season long. It's still shooting for more history as another young and exciting squad tries to get back to where it once was. For the bad trends, a coaching change isn't the only reason a team is heading in the wrong direction, and another squad is trying to rebrand its own long rebuild: 📈 Oklahoma City Thunder (62-12): The Thunder have a real chance to win 70 games. They'd have to win out, but they're already on a nine-game win streak. The Thunder have been so dominant, and as you look at their remaining schedule, the toughest hurdle to clear on a quest to become the third team to win 70 games would be Friday at Houston, followed by two home games against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Thunder are 3-1 against Houston this season (including an extra game from the NBA Cup), and they're 1-0 against the Lakers. With the Play-In Tournament building in a week of rest for teams in the top six, there isn't the same issue of going for it and tiring yourself out as maybe we had in the past. We might see the Thunder ride a 17-game win streak and history into the playoffs. 📉 Memphis Grizzlies (44-30): It isn't just the abrupt coaching change, which we'll talk about below. We touched on this in The Bounce last week, but the Grizzlies have been one of the winning teams propping up their record against bad teams (33-9) as they struggle against good teams (11-21). Memphis has lost six of its last eight games, including the first one under interim coach Tuomas Iisalo. But the Grizzlies' bad stretch is deeper than that. The last time the Grizzlies beat a team with a winning record was their victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Feb. 2. They have lost 10 straight games against teams with winning marks. Their next two are against the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors. Advertisement 📈 Orlando Magic (36-39): The Magic aren't totally back, and they won't be totally back because Jalen Suggs and Moe Wagner are out for the season, but they look really good again. They've won seven of their last 11 games, and we're seeing a great stretch of basketball from Paolo Banchero. There are some good wins in here against Milwaukee, Cleveland, the Lakers and obliterating Sacramento by 30 on Saturday. Banchero is averaging 30.6 points on 50.2/37.0/75.3 shooting splits with 7.9 rebounds and 4.2 assists. Franz Wagner is playing well, too, even though he can't make a 3-pointer again. I don't think they'll have enough offense to pull off a first-round upset, but Cleveland definitely won't want to deal with their physicality to begin their playoff journey. 📉 Milwaukee Bucks (40-34): The Bucks won't fall into the Play-In, but the recent news of Damian Lillard's deep vein thrombosis spells big-time trouble for them. There appears to be optimism that it won't end his season and he could be back for the playoffs, but I will always err on the side of caution when it comes to expecting a player to come back early from something like this. Even if Lillard does, what kind of shape will he be in? What kind of continuity will the Bucks have? And will they be at their best to take down either the New York Knicks or the Indiana Pacers in the first round? They've lost nine of their last 13, and I'm not sure there is enough time for Milwaukee to rally and get to a level of play it might need to reach for postseason success. 📈 Chicago Bulls (33-41): The Bulls were supposed to be focusing on young players, easing into some losses and maybe watching the draft-lottery odds pile up for themselves after trading Zach LaVine at the trade deadline. It turns out the kids can play. The Bulls have been on fire. Chicago has won nine of its last 12, including that improbable half-court game-winner by Josh Giddey to bury the Lakers. When Coby White gets going, this entire team seems to be galvanized with irrational confidence. Rookie Matas Buzelis is having a great finish to his first year, and this team might not be an easy out in the first round if it make it through the Play-In. 📉 Utah Jazz (16-59): This should really be for Jazz fans because what they've had to watch for most of this season has been truly terrible. The product on the floor hasn't even really been interesting from a development standpoint, and that's the point of the rebuild. The product has been so bad that the Jazz are now trying to rebrand this as the first true season of the rebuild because the previous two seasons were 'teardown' seasons … because they were too good to be rebuilding then? I'm sorry, but the summer you traded Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert for a truckload of picks is when you started rebuilding. It's an interesting marketing ploy, but it doesn't work that way. Will Hardy was disgusted with their recent effort against Memphis. He seems fed up with everything happening. We've seen a lot of ridiculous coach firings in the NBA. During the 2015-16 season, the Cavaliers had the best record in the East in the middle of the season and fired David Blatt coming off an NBA Finals appearance. In 2013, the Denver Nuggets dismissed George Karl after he won Coach of the Year by leading a team of zero stars to 56 wins before Steph Curry burned the whole thing to the ground in the first round of the playoffs. The Toronto Raptors fired Dwane Casey just before he accepted his 2018 Coach of the Year award, and the team's social media account had to send out a congratulatory message. Advertisement I'm not sure we've ever seen a team in the hunt for a top-four seed in its conference fire a head coach with fewer than 10 games left in the regular season. That's precisely what the Grizzlies did last week. Jenkins has been extremely successful for them in the regular season, but the franchise was not convinced he was going to take it any closer to the promised land than we've previously seen, especially with the West looking increasingly more difficult with each passing season. The firing was shocking due to the timing, but the Grizzlies getting rid of Jenkins wasn't surprising. That was the feeling around the NBA when the news came out on Friday. A slow start this season probably would've resulted in his pink slip, but the Grizzlies didn't have a slow start. They were fantastic for a long time but eventually started sliding. More importantly, the Grizzlies were sliding against the good teams, and you can't inflate your record against bad teams once you get to the playoffs. Jenkins is a good coach, but he does not have a good track record in his brief postseason appearances. The Grizzlies were in four playoff series during his time, winning just one of them (a first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2022 that featured the worst playoff basketball I've ever seen). In the second round, the Grizzlies got handled and put in their place in six games by the Warriors, which isn't too bad considering the Warriors won the title that year. Jenkins will get other opportunities, but where the Grizzlies go next is interesting. They implemented a new offense that appears to be working. The previously scoring-challenged Grizzlies rank sixth in offensive rating this season. Ja Morant maybe doesn't love running it, but the results are technically there. However, the Grizzlies also fired Noah LaRoche, the assistant coach who was the main mastermind of that system. Interim coach Iisalo, the high-priced coach they brought in from Europe, presumably is the guy they'd like to make the full-time head coach in the future. If Jenkins lost the locker room or enough of the team's confidence that you felt the need to salvage what little of this season was left while giving a crash-course audition to Iisalo, then this move had to happen. This is usually the type of move that happens at the All-Star break, though. The problem is the Grizzlies weren't starting to unravel then. Will they be able to come together in the next two weeks and find new life in the postseason? I want to bring you back to April 19, 2006. The Timberwolves were 33-48, and, much to their chagrin, headed to overtime against the Grizzlies. The Wolves did not want to win that game. They were tanking. The season was lost, and the Wolves wanted to improve their lottery odds in a last-ditch effort to bring some inexpensive help to Kevin Garnett — something they'd failed to do time and time again. The Wolves didn't want to risk winning the game but were in overtime, so they decided to unleash the ultimate tanking weapon. Mark Madsen was 1-of-9 from 3-point range in his career at that point. He hadn't made one since December 2000, his rookie season. He hadn't attempted one since the 2003-04 season. The Wolves let him fire off two attempts in overtime, and the unthinkable happened. Madsen missed them both, and the Wolves still couldn't lose. They went to overtime again. The Grizzlies just couldn't beat them. Advertisement In the second five-minute overtime period, the Wolves had Madsen attempt five more 3-point attempts. He missed every single one of them because of course he did. The Wolves were outscored by 10 in that period and earned their 49th loss of the season. The tanking attempt was egregious and hilarious at the same time. In today's NBA, where 3-pointers are shot by nearly everybody, attempts by big men who don't really shoot them can be masked by the words 'development' or 'experimenting.' Fred Katz wrote about the Jazz 'experimenting' with Walker Kessler taking 3-pointers. The Jazz organization is trying to lose games by putting a bad product on the floor in the hopes that it will land them the pick that brings in Cooper Flagg. Over the last six games, Kessler has taken 27 3-pointers. He's made six. For his career, he's 11-of-55. He's obviously not an outside shooter. He's a guy who scores hyper efficiently around the rim and an elite rebounder and rim protector. During this time of the season, the NBA has an issue with the product on the floor. I haven't bought any of the criticism of the product in the first few months of the season. The games were really good. The competition was awesome. The storylines were compelling, and the product on the floor was fantastic. In the last couple weeks, it's been rough. Too many teams are not putting real squads on the floor as they try to get to the right lottery odds to get them the top pick. The Play-In Tournament has curbed that to a degree, but it's the one time of year where the NBA can't really do anything about what Philadelphia, Charlotte, Utah, Brooklyn, New Orleans and Washington are doing. I'm guessing season-ticket holders for these games don't get some portion of their money back or applied toward next season. The league has to be hoping March Madness can distract from some of it as we get to the regular season's finish line. It's fun to poke fun at the Madsens and Kesslers of the league taking all these 3-pointers, but you ultimately still have paying customers you should care about.
New York Times
17-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Where the NBA playoff (and tanking) races stand with less than a month to go
What better time to update you on all postseason races than right now? Plus an extended NBA Stock Report? Here's your latest NBA Rewind! 📈 Minnesota Timberwolves (40-29): With the Cleveland Cavaliers losing on Sunday, the Wolves are officially the hottest team in basketball. They've run off eight wins in a row and are battling the Golden State Warriors to get out of the Play-In Tournament. The thing about this particular run for the Wolves is it's happening with the defense just being fine, especially by their standards. They are lighting up teams with an offensive rating over 125 and a true shooting that has been flirting with 65 percent the entire time. Julius Randle and Jaden McDaniels are playing their best basketball of the season. It's not exactly a murderers' row of opponents during this streak, but the Wolves are hammering the teams in front of them. Advertisement 📉 Miami Heat (29-38): The Heat are in a bad place right now. They've lost seven straight games, and they're falling down the Play-In standings in the East. They're now just a game ahead of the Chicago Bulls, and they can't score. During the last two weeks, they have a 105.0 offensive rating. That's the worst offensive rating by a lot. The defense has not been bad, but they can't hit shots. The trio of Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Andrew Wiggins just isn't enough. They're very close to having a road game for the 9-10 matchup in the Play-In. 📈 Houston Rockets (43-25): The Rockets are once again one of the hottest teams in basketball! They're on a six-game winning streak and have vaulted up the West standings to the current No. 2 seed. Granted, the schedule has been pretty light for them during this streak, but you can only play the teams in front of you. And they're taking care of business. The Rockets have beaten the New Orleans Pelicans (twice), Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and Bulls during this streak. They have a chance of pushing this pretty far, though. Their next seven games are against the Philadelphia 76ers, Magic (road), Heat (road), Denver Nuggets, Atlanta Hawks, Utah Jazz (road) and Suns (road). There are a couple of tough ones in there, but the Rockets' defense is suffocating, and their offense has been excellent. 📉 Utah Jazz (15-53): I wouldn't say the Jazz are playing great basketball. Now, it's not an outright disaster, which is weird to say considering they've lost nine straight games and just lost to Minnesota by 26. For the most part, the Jazz are putting up a good fight during this stretch. Seven of those nine losses have been by single digits. They lost to Toronto twice, Washington and whatever's left of Philadelphia … so Quentin Grimes. The Jazz are trying to develop the young guys, and they're getting good minutes, but this team can't win. 📈 Golden State Warriors (39-28): The Warriors are the second-hottest team in basketball, having won seven straight games. The Jimmy Butler trade has been entirely transformative for them. For the NBA fans who don't like Butler, their response on social media has been, 'Just you wait until he becomes a team cancer!' Well … he only disrupts the harmony when a team won't pay him, and the Warriors already paid him. The Warriors are 14-1 with Butler in the lineup, and he's not even scoring lately. He has 32 total points in the last three games combined. The Warriors look like they're back. The story of the greatest players in NBA history. In 100 riveting profiles, top basketball writers justify their selections and uncover the history of the NBA in the process. The story of the greatest players in NBA history. 📉 Southwest Defense: Over the last two weeks, the three worst defensive teams in the NBA reside in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference. One of the teams is tanking because of injuries. Another team is starting to tank because of injuries. And the third team is going through one of the most unbelievable midseason Q Rating 180s we've ever seen. If you guessed the first team is the Pelicans, you're correct. They have the third-worst defense over the last two weeks, with a 124.6 defensive rating and a 1-6 record. If you guessed the second team is the San Antonio Spurs, then you nailed it. Victor Wembanyama has been out, and De'Aaron Fox's season just ended. They're giving up a league-worst 128.8 defensive rating during their last seven games, but surprisingly are 4-3. If you knew the third team was the Mavericks, then you must have read The Misery Index last week. They have the 29th-ranked defensive rating at 126.4 over the last two weeks and a 1-7 record. Just to put that in perspective, the Pelicans' 118.6 defensive rating for the season is the worst in the NBA. GO DEEPER NBA Misery Index: Suns, Mavs, 76ers fans have had it bad. But who's had it worse? We've got less than a month left in the regular season! We've never felt more alive! Until the playoffs begin and progress. Then, we'd have really never felt more alive. There's no better time to check in on the postseason races we've got going on than right now. Here's every race you should know about when it comes to seeding in the East and West, including the Play-In Tournament campaigns. Advertisement The race for the No. 1 seed in the East is all but over. Mathematically, the Boston Celtics (49-19) are still in the mix for the top spot, but they're 7.5 games behind the Cavaliers (56-11) with 15 games left for Cleveland and 14 games left for Boston. We can call that one, just like we can lock in the Celtics for the No. 2 seed. The New York Knicks (42-24) are six games behind the Celtics with 16 games left, so we can call that one too. I'm going to assume the Knicks can tread water until Jalen Brunson is back and if Karl-Anthony Towns doesn't get injured. New York has a four-game lead on Milwaukee. Also, it owns the season-series tiebreaker, so that four-game lead is really like five games. We have the Milwaukee Bucks, Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons all battling it out for the No. 4 seed in the East, and none of these teams is in danger of falling into the pit of despair — otherwise known as the East Play-In pool. Here's where the Bucks, Pacers and Pistons stand. We should probably feel pretty comfortable with the Bucks here because they have Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, but I think I'm leaning toward expecting the Pacers to move up to fourth. Their remaining schedule is easy, they have a favorable number of home games and they're the healthiest/most available of the three teams. Milwaukee is the most balanced of the three in terms of offense and defense, but the Pacers might be in the best place for success. The final two games between the Bucks and Pistons to end the season could ultimately be the deciders. We've got just four teams currently in the Play-In Tournament shuffle vying for positioning with the 7-10 spots. No offense to Toronto, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, but nobody believes you want in on this. The Raptors are the closest to Chicago, and they're 4.5 games back. We can focus on only the teams currently in the mix. So, let's break down what that looks like the rest of the season. The only team that is a potential threat to either Cleveland or Boston is the Orlando Magic. And even then, we're stretching the definition of threat because of their season-ending injuries and inability to score. They would, however, be a real pain to deal with because of how hard they play and how good they are at defense. I expect them to end up seventh in the East and hosting the Play-In matchup against Atlanta. Or maybe it'll stay how it is with Atlanta hosting. But it will be those two in that 7-8 game. Advertisement Miami and Chicago just aren't serious as a threat. Neither of them is likely to make the actual playoffs, and the Heat are so bad right now they might not even be able to host that 9-10 game against Chicago. We knew all season the Washington Wizards (15-51) and Charlotte Hornets (17-50) would be in the hunt for Cooper Flagg, and they have not disappointed. They're a few games away from being mathematically eliminated from the Play-In Tournament. These two teams are jostling with Utah and New Orleans for the top odds to land the No. 1 pick. The other tanking battle right now is happening between the Raptors (24-44), 76ers (23-44) and Nets (23-45). These teams aren't going to charge toward the Play-In Tournament and try to challenge Chicago. They're looking to lose games and fall down the standings, which means falling up It's even more dire for the Sixers to lose these games because, if they don't land a top-six selection in the draft, their pick goes to Oklahoma City for taking on Al Horford's salary in 2020. Let's go through the West races, and let me tell you: It's going to be an absolute mess. I mean that in the best way possible. If you like chaos on the court and in the standings, you East Coasters will want to stay up for some late-night hoops. The Oklahoma City Thunder (56-12) are 13 games ahead of Houston, Denver and Memphis with 14 games left to play. As long as they get to 58 wins, they're the top seed. I feel pretty confident the most dominant regular-season team in league history can find a way to go at least 2-12 the rest of the way. The race for the No. 2 seed is going to be madness. We have three teams currently with the same record, and the Los Angeles Lakers are right behind that group by one game and tied with them in the loss column. On top of that, everybody has a tough schedule the rest of the way. Let's break down where each team is. I don't even know how to guess at how this might go. I guess I'll ride with Houston because it has the potential to hold all three tiebreakers. That's going to be the big deal here, and you're only going to be able to follow that by bookmarking this page. Denver seems to be losing a bit of steam, but getting beat by the Wizards will have that kind of effect on you. Memphis just got back Jaren Jackson Jr., so it should be healthy enough to make another push. And if the Lakers can continue to stay afloat until LeBron is back, they've played some of the best basketball in the league over the last month and a half. Advertisement Denver and Memphis are both starting road trips this week, and those will likely set the tone for how much they can keep pace. Even though these teams are within shouting distance of the Lakers in the standings, they're going to have to figure out how to make the top six in the West before they can think about moving up to fifth. Avoiding the Play-In is huge, but it also means you might be getting Nikola Jokić in the first round. Let's check out 6-8 in the West. Unfortunately for the Clippers, they have a gauntlet in front of them the rest of the season, and it feels like they'll probably settle right into eighth in the West —barring injuries elsewhere. Even though Golden State looks like the best team of these three, I'd pick the Wolves to end up sixth in the West. They have only six more games against playoff teams. They do have a five-game road trip to start April. The Warriors have a six-game road trip in the middle of this run, but only two of the games will be tough. Aside from Sacramento, I can't believe we're getting a 'by default' entry into the West Play-In Tournament. You expect to get one or three of those in the East, but the West? That's absurd. Two of these teams have to make it, and lumping Sacramento in with these other three feels like lumping Orlando in with its group in the Eastern Conference. Sacramento is fine and should be safe. I can't imagine the Kings have to worry about any of these teams charging up the standings to challenge them for ninth. As for the rest, maybe Anthony Davis getting back to health, along with Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford, will bring some good life to the Mavericks and make them interesting for good reasons. Phoenix looks like it actively loathes playing together. If there were basketball karma or gods, Portland would get the 10th spot. The Trail Blazers seem to want it the most. My guess is Phoenix gets in there with the tiebreaker, but I don't how it's possible to feel confident about the Suns with anything positive. Advertisement The Jazz (15-53) and Pelicans (18-50) are officially eliminated from the Play-In mix. We knew the Jazz would likely be in this position by season's end, but maybe not this severely. The Pelicans have been a huge shock compared to how we felt about them at the end of last season. Injuries were just too much for them. As mentioned above, they're in the mix with Charlotte and Washington to end up with top-three lottery odds for the No. 1 pick. The Spurs (28-38) are being thrown in here too. With Wembanyama and Fox out for the season, it's only a matter of time before they start sliding down the standings. We'll see if Chris Paul or any of the young, good wings end up joining them, or if the Spurs go back to running Jeremy Sochan at the point. The best San Antonio can do is end up with the eighth-best lottery odds, which would give it a 6 percent chance at the top pick and 26.3 percent for a top-four selection. (Top photo of Julius Randle: Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)
