In today’s ultra-competitive NBA, every game matters. For four teams in particular, November’s games will hold extra importance, for the sake of their season.
We’ve officially reached the overreaction point of the NBA season.
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That’s right: ask most NBA fans and they’ll be able to confidently tell you where most teams figure to place by season’s end. With already about an eighth of the season in the history book, we’ve — seemingly, at least — been able to uncover which teams are championship contenders, which ones are pretenders and which ones are flat-out chicken tenders.
Another year into the analytics era, the league is on pace for, well, its fastest-paced season since 1982-83. While it doesn’t appear that way to the eye, somehow teams are only taking 1½ more 3-pointers than a season ago and scoring at sometimes unbelievable levels.
Along the way, a few teams have already lost their footing. While mathematically, they remain in contention for even the highest seeds, it’s never quite to early to begin ratcheting up that sense of urgency, especially in the Western Conference, where a loss or two could drop you from No. 3 in the postseason race to No. 3 in the 2020 Draft Lottery.
This year’s league is especially competitive. Perhaps most telling of all: exactly half of the NBA has a winning record, the two teams that represented last season’s Western Conference Finals are on the outside looking in and the NBA’s last undefeated team was just defeated by a 19-win team from a season ago.
For that reason, entering the next calendar year in high spirits has never been more important. In avoiding the pitfalls of an uphill climb, there are four teams in particular in need of a strong November showing, be it to survive injuries or simply to regain confidence going into December. Here are four teams that would love to heat up this fall season.