Ti’s Four-Point Play: The Worst of the NBA’s Better Conference

The Eastern Conference has been the NBA’s best. Not all of the teams have been good though. This Ti’s Four-Point play is about the bottom of the East.

The NBA is a strange place. Despite being beaten down soundly by the West last season, the Eastern Conference has grown up into the better of the two. Maybe that’s actually because of the aforementioned beatdown–all those lottery picks the East has gotten the last few seasons are starting to develop into good NBA players.

Sure, the West may still have the best team and the East may be home to the worst of the worst. Despite those two outliers, looking at each team in each conference clearly shows the East is stronger. While the 17-16 Charlotte Hornets are 10th in the East and thus slotted to miss the playoffs, the 16-19 Houston Rockets are currently seventh in the West.

But this issue of Ti’s Four-Point play isn’t about the many good teams in the Eastern Conference, or the many bad ones in the West. Mostly because there are more than four of each of those things. So instead, the bottom of the NBA’s better conference is showcased right here.

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Although they’ve certainly not been good this season, the Washington Wizards barely avoided being included in this group. Even through their ugly slump, Washington is just one game behind .500 and just two games out of the playoffs. They still have a shot.

The true bottom of the Eastern Conference is essentially out already. Maybe the top of the bottom has a glimpse of the postseason still, but another month of mediocrity will shut the door on that hope quickly.

The 15-19 New York Knicks

The Knicks aren’t really in a terrible spot this season. Sure, there are 11 other teams doing significantly better than New York is. But those teams don’t have Kristaps Porzingis!

Porzingis-mania may be completely overblown at this point, but the Latvian rookie has a bright future ahead of him in the NBA. Porzingis can score from anywhere, defend fairly well for a rookie, and rebounds and blocks shots at an advanced rate.

There are some other fun young pieces in New York too. Kyle O’Quinn, Derrick Williams, Cleanthony Early, Jerian Grant and Langston Galloway all seem like at least rotation players, and all of them are 25 or younger. Paired with Porzingis, that makes for a legitimate core to build around in NYC.

Adding another lottery pick to that mix is far from the worst thing that could happen here. They may still be losing games now, but these Knicks seem poised to form yet another powerful Eastern Conference team soon. The idea of trading Carmelo Anthony away for some more draft picks or young talent is intriguing too.

Melo does have a no-trade clause and has voiced his desire to stay in the Big Apple, but if the Knicks brass was able to convince him to go make a playoff run with Houston, Chicago or Miami they could snatch up some more potential goodies for down the line.

Either way, the New York Knicks are down for now, but not for long. Honestly they may not even be out for the rest of the season. Expect the Knicks to be in the hunt for a playoff spot in the waning months of the season. But given the wealth of good teams in front of them, don’t expect New York to actually escape the lottery this season.

The 14-21 Milwaukee Bucks

Oh, Milwaukee. The Bucks were poised to make a run this season after making their biggest free agency splash in franchise history in signing Greg Monroe, but then fell flat on their faces. The good news is that Milwaukee, like New York, has a fun young core here to work with.

Monroe, along with Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jabari Parker, Michael Carter-Williams, John Henson, Johnny O’Bryant, Rashad Vaughn and Tyler Ennis all have some sort of potential, and they’re all 25 or younger. Aside from a recent winning streak the Bucks have played like hot garbage for most of the season, but they’re hot garbage with potential.

Although he’s often been blamed for the defensive problems in Milwaukee (the Bucks are 28th in defensive rating and 22nd in points allowed per game this season), Monroe actually hasn’t been the problem. Surprisingly he’s been the best Buck in terms of defensive rating and defensive win shares.

This team looks lost far too often, and that falls on the coaching staff. Milwaukee lost a lot of veteran talent this offseason when the team traded Ersan Ilyasova, Jared Dudley and Zaza Pachulia for cap space and basically nothing more. Constantly leaving shooters open is inexcusable for any NBA team, though. Even the second-youngest one.

Some Bucks have looked less helpless. Khris Middleton has probably been Milwaukee’s best player aside from Monroe, and could potentially end up being the best Buck in the long run. Middleton was a top-10 player last season according to real plus-minus, and has played career-best ball over the last two weeks.

Things look to be trending up for the Bucks, even if it takes longer than Milwaukee had hoped. The Bucks are certainly lottery bound this season, and should end up with a top-10 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. Look for Milwaukee to use their pick to take another shot at finding a true starting point guard for the Bucks going forward, as Carter-Williams has yet to convincingly win that spot.

The 10-23 Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets are obviously bad, but they’ve been bad in a fun way. Seeing as they owe this season’s first-rounder to the Boston Celtics, the Nets can’t exactly tank to get a franchise player in the draft. So they have to try to compete. Surprisingly enough, they have been competitive this season.

Brooklyn knew the playoffs were out of reach, but they still made an attempt at winning by re-signing Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young to multi-year deals. Neither of those players are franchise guys, but they’ve been good enough to get the Nets 10 wins already this season.

Unfortunately Brooklyn lost Rondae Hollis-Jefferson for a while with an ankle injury, leaving the young talent on this team pretty thin. That coupled with the Nets not having their own first-round pick until potentially 2019 means the outlook for Brooklyn is bleak.

There are some thin silver linings here. With Joe Johnson finally moving on this summer, the Nets will have cap space in a big free agency summer. They’ll likely throw a ton of money at some young talent. Max contracts will be massive in the coming offseason, and Brooklyn can really make a team like Washington sweat about matching a $95 million offer sheet for young talent like Bradley Beal.

It seems unlikely that the Nets can actually snag a premier young player away from the other 29 teams, but they’ve got literally nothing to lose for trying, and everything to gain in succeeding. There’s no reason for Brooklyn to even consider offering a guy like Kevin Durant, but the Nets might have a shot at prying away a second tier free agent by overpaying them.

That’s clearly not ideal, but that’s the situation the Brooklyn Nets are in right now. They’ll likely find themselves back in the bottom of the East next season, unless the Nets can actually snag a nice free agent or three.

The 3-32 Philadelphia 76ers

This is where things get really ugly. None of the first three teams featured here wanted to be featured here. The Knicks, Bucks and Nets would all much rather be in the hunt for that eighth seed. Not Philadelphia. The 76ers love this, and especially love the chance of finally getting their first No. 1 overall selection in the Sam Hinkie era.

Or do they? Philadelphia’s owners (and potentially the NBA) have hedged their bets on Hinkie by bringing in Jerry Colangelo and Mike D’Antoni to get the 76ers back to winning ways. The two wins that Philly has managed since those two were brought on board may not seem like much, but that’s twice as many victories as the team managed before these two showed up.

There’s a problem here, though. This seems like the worst possible time for the 76ers to attempt to be good again. As gross as tanking is, abandoning the strategy in the middle of the season seems foolhardy. Philadelphia is obviously out of the playoffs, but a rapid improvement could propel them up from the absolute bottom of the NBA.

That’s just about the worst place for this franchise to end up. Another third or worse overall pick is not what the 76ers went through all of this for, especially if the best player available there ends up being another big man.

Was three consecutive seasons of disenfranchising a fanbase and being an eyesore on the NBA really worth a core of Jahlil Okafor, Joel Embiid, Nerlens Noel, Dario Saric, Robert Covington and one more third or fourth overall pick? Other teams have rebuilt much faster and more effectively without subjecting themselves to the kind of ugly, prolonged losing Philadelphia has endured.

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A first overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft could change all of that, but even finishing second-worst gives a team just a 20 percent chance of getting the first overall pick. The Lakers are determined to lose as much as possible, and the Nets might mistakenly give Boston that top pick. For the 76ers own sake, they might want to hold off on that winning stuff for just 47 more games.