The Knicks, Lakers, Nuggets and more are among the teams with lingering questions as the calendar flips to March
Not all losses are equal. Some can be shrugged off and explained away. Others are harder to hand-wave. The Knicks have had a couple of the tougher-to-explain variety recently, including a nationally streamed no-show in Cleveland earlier this week when the Cavaliers beat them by 15 and didn't break much of a sweat doing it. In an unsurprising development, the Knicks weren't exactly happy with their performance.
Josh Hart said they were "still figuring out the style we want to play, the identity we want to play." This late in the season, that kind of admission might as well be an alarm. Hart added that "time is of the essence."
He's not kidding. With the regular season funneling toward its conclusion and the playoffs looming, how concerned should the Knicks be right now? Or, for that matter, how worried should the surging Cavaliers be about the injury to James Harden's thumb? Or what about the Lakers, who have recently suffered some bad losses and are possibly in danger of dropping into the play-in?
There is no shortage of potential problems facing a whole host of teams as the postseason approaches, from shaky play to the health of key personnel. What follows is our evaluation of various issues, from the merely nagging to the truly troublesome. Each organization will be assigned a Concern Level ranging from 1-to-10, with 1 representing not much to sweat over and 10 being they might as well book those tickets to Cancun now because this can't possibly end well.
Beating some good teams would calm the nerves.
Since we started with the Knicks, we might as well continue. The good news is that they've won 12 of their last 16 games. Over that stretch, they have the best net rating in the NBA. The bad news is that the Cavs are only a half-game behind them for third in the conference, and three of those four losses were ugly enough that Hart got in his feelings about it.
A little more than a week ago, FanDuel had the Knicks installed as the favorites to win the Eastern Conference. Now -- with +450 odds -- they're fourth behind the Cavaliers, Celtics and Pistons. That kind of precipitous dip happens when you struggle against quality competition. In addition to falling to the Cavs, the Pistons beat the Knicks at Madison Square Garden by 15 in the first game after the All-Star Break. Detroit has won all three games against New York this season, and the Knicks are minus-84 in those meetings.
New York is just 17-17 against teams that are .500 or better, and the upcoming schedule looks a bit tricky. The Knicks' next game is at Milwaukee against a confounding Bucks team that has somehow won eight of 10. Then they're at home against the Thunder before heading off on a five-game road trip that starts in Denver and includes the dreaded watch-out-for-the-undefeated-nightlife back-to-back in Los Angeles against the Lakers and Clippers.
It's Harden's non-shooting hand, but we checked and he uses both to dribble.
The Cavs are a surprise addition here. After an uneven start, they've recently taken off, winning 14 of 17 -- including all but one game that James Harden played in since being traded to Cleveland. Everything was going about as well as the Cavs could have reasonably hoped -- until it wasn't.
On Wednesday, the Cavs announced that Harden injured his right thumb and has a non-displaced fracture. That's obviously not great news for Harden or Cleveland. Ballpark estimates on that kind of injury have players missing an average of 6.5 games or roughly 17 days, provided no surgery is needed. Harden is left-handed, and it appears for now that he'll try to play through it. Reports indicated that he won't need surgery and that he'll wear a wrap or splint on the thumb.
Harden was initially listed as questionable for Wednesday's game in Milwaukee, and there were reports that he planned to play before he was downgraded to out. His next opportunity to play is Friday in Detroit. Donovan Mitchell (groin) and Evan Mobley (calf) also sat out the loss to the Bucks in the second night of a back-to-back.
This Big Three can only take them so far.
The Lakers are one game behind the Wolves for fifth in the Western Conference and two up on the Suns for the sixth, but staying out of the play-in feels more uncertain by the day. The Celtics embarrassed them at home this week, then the Lakers followed up that indignity by losing to the Magic when Luka Dončić short-circuited at the end of the game.
On the whole, Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves are a top-tier trio -- but they can only do so much, and there aren't a lot of options to lighten their collective burden.
Here's a fun game (OK, JJ Redick would not think it's fun): Who's the fourth-best player on the Lakers? If it's DeAndre Ayton, they're in trouble. (Spoiler: it's not DeAndre Ayton.) Ditto Marcus Smart, who started and had zero points in a blowout loss to the Celtics at home this week. Rui Hachimura has been so uninspiring that he was demoted to a bench role in favor of Smart. After that, we're into Jake LaRavia and Jaxson Hayes territory. That overall roster is grim.
The Lakers are 11th in offensive rating but just 24th on defense, and their minus-0.3 point differential is the worst among the top eight teams in the Western Conference. If we expand further to include all 20 teams currently in position for the play-in or playoffs in both conferences, only the Blazers, Clippers and Hawks have worse point differentials. Hardly encouraging.
If Curry doesn't come back fully healthy, they're cooked (and they probably are even if he does).
The Warriors lost to the Pelicans in New Orleans this week, which would have been a blow all by itself. On that same night, Jonathan Kuminga had 27 points against the Zombie Wizards in his debut for Hawks, while his former Golden State teammates mustered a total of 26 bench points. There's a joke about Kuminga and karma in there somewhere.
The Warriors are two games behind the Suns for seventh in the West and four back of the Lakers (who, as we established, have three players who don't make Redick want to walk into the Pacific Ocean and let the tide take him out). Golden State is 12-17 on the road, 22-26 when their opponents score 100+, and 14-19 against teams .500 or better. None of that is good.
Worst of all: Steph Curry is still dealing with a knee injury. The 37-year-old hasn't played in nearly a month, and the timetable for his return remains unclear. The vibes are not great in Golden State.
If they get healthy, they're gonna be a problem. The problem is they're not healthy.
On paper, this is the deepest team that the Nuggets have ever assembled around Nikola Jokić. Unfortunately for Denver, the paper in question is an injury report, and pretty much everyone on the roster has landed on it at some point this season.
Given all the injuries, it's remarkable the Nuggets are fourth in the West. Four of the Nuggets' five original starters have been unavailable for big chunks of the season. Jokić missed 16 straight games, and the Nuggets are 5-6 since he returned. Cameron Johnson and Christian Braun are back in the lineup after missing a combined 60 games. In their absence, Peyton Watson stepped up and was having a career season before he went down with a hamstring injury. Aaron Gordon has played just 23 games this season. Like Watson, he's also dealing with a hamstring injury. Both players are out indefinitely.
