Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The Abduction of Europa; Rembrandt; 1632

It’s now very much the doldrums of the NBA offseason with the Olympics deep in the rear view. So it’s a great time for 2024-25 predictions to start percolating, and for fans to start grousing about those predictions and, in particular, the disrespect inherent in the Western side of the bracket.

There’s no way around it: the Western Conference is too deep this year. Good teams are going to miss the playoffs (as two did last season), and prognosticators are going to have to put good teams — maybe even really good teams — in the 8-9-10-11 spots.

The Grizzlies happen to be on my mind, and it seems like they are a candidate for many analysts to fill in toward the end of the playoff or play-in slots. In my mind, the Grizzlies are feast or famine. Either they put together an awesome regular season like in 2021-22 or 2022-23, or something goes very wrong and they bottom out like in 2023-24. A future as a No. 7 seed doesn’t seem to match their recent history. That led me to think about all the good to great teams in the West who have recently missed the playoffs.

So here’s a brief table showing which seed each West team was at the end of the regular season, before the play-in tournament, in each of the last five years.

A few things jump out here:

• The Nuggets are the only team in the West to make the playoffs in each of the past five seasons. The Nuggets and Clippers are the only teams to have been a top-8 seed in each of the past five seasons. In fact, they’re the only two teams who haven’t fallen out of the top 10 at least once! The Los Angeles Clippers have been the second most consistently good regular season team in the West for the past half-decade. Chew on that.

• In reverse chronological order, here is the prior year regular season finish for each of the last four No. 1 seeds: 10th (Thunder), 6th (Nuggets), 2nd (Suns), 6th (Jazz). And if you go back a year further, the 2020 No. 1 Lakers were No. 10 in 2019. With the exception of the 2022 Suns — who were 10th two years prior to their reign — and the asterisked 2023 Nuggets — who got Jamal Murray back from injury, West No. 1 seeds are pretty likely to come out of nowhere.

• The Mavericks have had one “down” season in the past five. That’s better than had been oozing around my brain. The Pelicans have had one top-8 season in the past five, and it was last year’s No. 7 finish (that turned into No. 8 after the play-in and a sweep in the playoffs. That’s worse than I had internalized. The Kings have had one great season, one middling season and three awful seasons. I was already very aware of that.

• That Thunder come-up will never not be impressive. It’s like the reverse of what happened to the Rockets when James Harden noped out!
  

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So what does this mean for the 2024-25 season?

• Probably very little

• Possibly nothing

• Almost assuredly nothing

As I think about how the 2024-25 season could play out, this exercise will have me giving a little more credit to the Mavericks — I’ve been overclocking that nightmare 2022-23 season. This has been a pretty consistently good team in the Luka era. The Suns will also get a little more holding power from me after contextualizing how decent their recent “bad” seasons post-Finals loss have been. I’m also a little more skeptical of the Pelicans than I had already been, although obviously it’s currently a different squad with Dejounte Murray and with Brandon Ingram’s future still up in the air.

Here’s how I’d cluster the teams right now (in no particular order within the tiers).

Tier 1: Thunder, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Mavericks

Tier 2: Suns, Grizzlies

Tier 3: Lakers, Kings, Warriors, Pelicans, Clippers, Rockets

Tier 4: Spurs, Jazz

Tier 5: Blazers

Like I said: this is a viper pit.

Where’s your head at with the West?

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Links

A brief note to Anthony Edwards, who is in hot water from takemeisters for disrespecting his elders’ skill level: say that stuff during the season, not in the quietest portion of the American sports calendar. At least wait until the NFL regular season gets underway!

LeBron discussing what Bronny James is allowed to call him on the court is hilarious.

Russell Westbrook squashes rumors that Christian Braun declined to give him No. 0 in Denver, saying he chose to wear No. 4. Westbrook is now, I think, the most iconic No. 0 in NBA lore. Back in 2015 as Westbrook was approaching peak coolness, I wrote about the legacy of the jersey number and Gilbert Arenas for SB Nation. I’m quite glad to associate No. 0 with Westbrook and Damian Lillard over Arenas these days.

Amid its bankruptcy proceedings, Diamond announced it will carry 13 NBA teams’ games on its regional sports networks for the 2024-25, and there’s mention of potential direct-to-consumer options. (I take that to mean that fans of those teams may be able to subscribe directly to their local Bally Sports RSN to get their team’s non-national games without a streaming or cable package. But I might be wrong. It sounds like more info could come out next week in the next bankruptcy hearing.) News had already broken that the Pelicans were going over-the-air for local games (the best solution for local fans). The Mavericks will not a part of Bally Sports programming this season, but the team hasn’t announced where local DFW and North Texas fans will be able to find the team’s games just yet.

Big Ohm Youngmisuk piece on how Ty Lue’s Olympic experience will change how he coaches the Clippers.

Stepping outside of basketball for a moment, here’s the great Lindsay Gibbs on the new National Women’s Soccer League labor deal, which abolished the draft and requires player consent to be traded. Huge victories for women’s soccer players … and it’ll be fascinating to see how it impacts competition in that league.

Two U.S. Senators — one Republican, one Democrat — are picking up the issue of the NBA’s relationship with Rwandan autocrat Paul Kagame.

Michael Pina on why he still believes in the Clippers.

Caitlin Cooper on how Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam can be a better pair on defense.

Tom Haberstroh chases down the most interesting statistical oddities, and him tracking whether Jeff Teague’s self-professed 0-12 record against LeBron in the playoffs was the most lopsided in league history revealed that Steph Curry has some wild records against certain players, too. Tom’s Substack makes following the NBA more interesting, strong recommend on a subscription.

Jared Dubin on the impact and prevalance of “high-minute games.” Very interesting look at a misunderstood topic. And another from Jared on Paul George as a complementary superstar.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got this time around. Back on Friday. Be excellent to each other.