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The Cavaliers’ recent problems – both on the court and off it – have been well documented, but the focus on Cleveland’s issues has overshadowed the fact that several of the other teams expected to contend in the East have been dealing with problems of their own.

Heading into the season, the Cavs, Celtics, Raptors, Wizards, and Bucks were widely viewed as the top five teams in the Eastern Conference. As of today though, the Bucks (24-22) find themselves holding the No. 7 seed in the East, and they’re still reeling from the front office’s decision to fire head coach Jason Kidd. While it’s possible that Kidd’s ouster will lead to a second-half run that puts Milwaukee in good position to win a playoff series or two, the team’s performance to date has been disappointing, particularly on the defensive end.

The Wizards (26-21), meanwhile, are hanging onto the No. 5 seed out East, but their results have been underwhelming too. John Wall admitted that a recent team meeting didn’t have the desire effect, and Washington has suffered some bad losses this season. The club has been defeated twice by both the Nets and Hornets, and dropped games to the Hawks and Mavericks too — three of those losses were by 23 or more points.

Boston, Toronto, and Cleveland currently hold the top three spots in the East, but the Celtics (34-14) have lost four in a row and are leaning heavily on All-Stars Kyrie Irving and Al Horford. An injury to either player could spell trouble for the C’s. As for the Cavs (27-19), they’ve lost six of seven, and Cleveland players have questioned whether this year’s team has the ability to pull its usual feat of flipping a switch for the postseason.

The Raptors (31-14) aren’t dealing with an identity crisis at the moment, but they have a history of struggling in the playoffs. Even taking into account their new, modernized style of play on offense, there’s some skepticism among league observers that the Raps are capable of finally getting over the hump and winning the East.

The Heat (27-20), Pacers (25-22), and Sixers (22-21) round out the East’s current playoff teams, with the Pistons (22-23) looking to enter that picture. It’s hard to imagine any of those clubs winning three postseason series, however.

So what do you think? Which team will represent the Eastern Conference in this year’s NBA Finals? Will the Cavaliers get it together eventually, or will this be the year that LeBron James‘ streak of Finals appearances comes to an end?

Vote below and jump into the comment section to share your two cents!

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We’re past the halfway mark of the 2017/18 NBA season, and the teams at the top of the standings in the Western Conference come as no surprise to most league observers. The Warriors (37-10) and Rockets (32-12) lead the way, followed by the Spurs (30-18) and Timberwolves (30-18), with the Thunder (26-20) rounding out the top five.

After that though, four teams are currently jockeying for the remaining three playoff spots in the West. As of today, the Trail Blazers (25-21) and Pelicans (24-21) are in control of the sixth and seventh seeds, with the Clippers (23-23) holding a narrow lead on the Nuggets (23-23) for No. 8.

Although Portland and New Orleans are in playoff position now, their rosters are somewhat imbalanced — the Blazers are led by their backcourt duo of C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard, while the Pelicans’ star-studded frontcourt of DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis has carried them. Neither team has a ton of flexibility to make upgrades at the trade deadline, so it will be interesting to see if their stars can get them into the postseason without any real roster changes.

Meanwhile, the Clippers have been up and down all season, but they’ve been trending in the right direction lately. With the February 8 deadline fast approaching, the club will have to decide whether it makes sense to continue pushing for a playoff spot, even if it means hanging onto DeAndre Jordan and Lou Williams and risking losing them for nothing in free agency this summer.

Finally, the Nuggets have been struggling recently, but even if Denver doesn’t make a trade at the deadline, the club should have reinforcements coming in February — top offseason acquisition Paul Millsap is expected to get back on the court sometime around the All-Star break after recovering from wrist surgery. The Nuggets were 9-6 in the 15 full games Millsap played at the start of the season, and hope to make a late-season run once they get him in their lineup again.

While the Jazz (19-27), Lakers (17-29), Suns (17-29), and Grizzlies (16-29) aren’t totally out of the running yet, it’s likely that eight of the nine teams discussed above will represent the West in the postseason this year. It’s just a question of which one of those nine clubs will miss out.

Which team do you expect to end up on the outside looking in? Vote in our poll below and jump into the comment section to share your two cents!

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All is not well in Charlotte. The team is handcuffed to a core that isn’t yielding much success, they can’t stay healthy to achieve any semblance of consistency and the cost to finance the underwhelming production is about to get a lot more expensive thanks to the luxury tax.

All told, Tim Bontemps of Washington Post thinks it’s time to flip Kemba Walker.

Like many other NBA teams, the Hornets are on pace to fall above the luxury tax line. That’s a palatable burden if a team is in contention for postseason success but not so much when they’re 14-23 and well out of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference.

If nothing changes in Charlotte, the Hornets could pay the luxury tax not only this year but next season as well. In fact, for 2018/19 they already have 10 players on guaranteed deals slated to make $116.4MM.

While the Hornets could theoretically make a push if all of a sudden they were blessed with good fortune in the health department but not even that would change the fact that many of their key rotational pieces are in or passed their prime.

Trading Walker, the team’s lone, true, ascendant star may seem counterintuitive but, as Bontemps writes, it would alleviate part of the team’s financial problems while also giving them a jump-start at a rebuild.

A hypothetical swap with the Knicks could potentially yield something along the lines of Frank Ntilikina, Joakim Noah and New York’s 2018 first-round pick. That’s a plausible package that could simultaneously bring two building blocks and save the team money.

In another scenario, Bontemps offers up the notion of packaging Walker with a costly veteran like Marvin Williams to help clear the books while still netting a building block or two.

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As the odds at offshore betting site Bovada.lv show, the Warriors remain the overwhelming favorites to win the 2018 NBA Finals. In order to win $100 betting on the Dubs over the field for this season’s championship, you’d have to risk $180. Still, over the first two and a half months of the 2017/18 season, a handful of potential threats to Golden State have emerged.

The first of those threats is no surprise, but the Cavaliers looked re-energized on Tuesday night with Isaiah Thomas in their lineup for the first time. The Cavs will likely still have some problems on defense against the Warriors, and there are a couple rotation spots that could use an upgrade. But if Thomas stays healthy and keeps producing like he did in his Cleveland debut (17 points in 19 minutes), the club’s offense is well-rounded and well-equipped to keep up with Golden State.

Speaking of explosive offenses, the Rockets looked like the team best positioned to compete with the Warriors over the first two months of the season. Even with Chris Paul sidelined, the team was one of the league’s best — with both Paul and James Harden active, the Rockets have been even more unstoppable. Houston has struggled in recent weeks, with Paul, Harden, and Clint Capela all battling injuries, but the club should cruise to a top seed in the West, and if the roster is healthy in the spring, it has as much firepower as just about any team in the NBA.

Of course, it’s not the Cavs or Rockets that currently holds the league’s second-best record behind Golden State — it’s the 30-10 Celtics, who have thrived even without a healthy Gordon Hayward. While Boston has certainly missed its top summer acquisition, Hayward’s absence has allowed young players like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to assume larger roles, which may pay off for the team in the long run. The franchise also hasn’t fully closed the door on the possibility of getting Hayward back in the playoffs. That may be a long shot, but it would make the Eastern playoffs a whole lot more interesting.

Elsewhere, the Spurs thrived without Kawhi Leonard to start the season and will be a very tough out in the postseason. The Raptors have overhauled their offense approach and have seen it pay dividends in the first half. And the Timberwolves and Thunder have hit their stride recently after undergoing major roster changes in the offseason.

When we asked back in September which team is the biggest threat to the Warriors, the Cavs received the most votes, followed by Oklahoma City, Boston, San Antonio, and Houston, respectively. I suspect that order may look a little different this time around.

What do you think? Which of the NBA’s 29 non-Warriors teams represents the biggest threat to Golden State’s chances of back-to-back titles?

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With Chris Paul healthy and James Harden playing some of the best basketball of his career, the Rockets‘ backcourt is making its case to be considered the NBA’s best, writes Brian Mahoney of The Associated Press.

Harden and Paul have combined for 14 All-Star nods between them, and the duo has helped lead the Rockets to a West-best 16-4 record so far this season. Harden, who has taken his game to another level, as Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer outlines, is currently leading the league with 31.7 PPG and 9.8 APG. Paul, who hasn’t yet played enough games to qualify for the NBA’s leaderboard, is also averaging a double-double – 10.8 PPG and 10.8 APG – and has only turned the ball over seven times in six games.

Although Houston’s new starting backcourt has looked unstoppable as of late, it’s not the NBA’s only pairing of All-Star guards. Any conversation about the league’s best backcourts would have to include the Warriors‘ combination of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, and the Trail Blazers‘ duo of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum.

Over in the Eastern Conference, one could argue that Wizards stars John Wall and Bradley Beal, along with the Raptors pairing of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, should also receive consideration.

Today, we’re asking you to make the call. Which backcourt duo is currently the NBA’s best? This isn’t about which one you’d rather have for the next 10 years, but which one you’d prefer now, for the rest of the 2017/18 season.

Vote below in our poll and jump into the comment section to explain your pick!

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We’re only about 20% of the way through the NBA’s regular season schedule for 2017/18, but the league’s standings are already starting to look like what we expected. In the West, the Warriors and Rockets lead the way, followed by the Spurs and Timberwolves. In the East, the Celtics, Raptors, Cavaliers, and Wizards all show up near the top of the standings, with one surprise interloper in the Pistons.

Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, a handful of teams that we expected to vie for 2018’s first overall pick have sunk to the bottom of the league’s standings. As our 2017/18 Reverse Standings show, here are the NBA’s worst seven teams to open the season:

1. Dallas Mavericks (3-14): Last season represented the first time this century that the Mavericks finished the season below .500. In 2016/17, Dallas lost 15 of its first 18 games before righting the ship somewhat and finishing with 33 wins. It remains to be seen whether the club can perform a similar turnaround this year.
2. Atlanta Hawks (3-13): Projected by oddsmakers for 25.5 wins this season, the Hawks are currently on pace for just 15 victories. Injuries have played a part in their early-season struggles, but there simply aren’t many above-average players on the roster.
3. Chicago Bulls (3-11): Like Atlanta, Chicago doesn’t have a ton of talent on its roster and was expected to finish at or near the bottom of the Eastern Conference heading into the season. Players like Nikola Mirotic, Cameron Payne, and Zach LaVine have been sidelined with injuries so far, so their respective returns could buoy the Bulls, but of those players, only LaVine figures to have a real impact.
4. Sacramento Kings (4-12): By signing veterans like George Hill, Zach Randolph, and Vince Carter to complement their young core, the Kings didn’t look ready to bottom out this season. So far though, those vets have struggled, and many of their young players aren’t ready for major roles.
5. Los Angeles Clippers (5-10): The most surprising inclusion in this list, the Clippers began the season 4-0, but are currently in the midst of an eight-game skid. The team’s schedule has been tough during that stretch, so I’d expect some course correction soon, but the Clips don’t look like a playoff team in the first year of the post-Chris Paul era.
6. Brooklyn Nets (6-10): The Nets have played hard this season and should remain fairly competitive on most nights, but with Jeremy Lin out for the season and D’Angelo Russell battling health issues as well, the club will face an uphill battle in its quest to get to 30 or 35 wins.
7. Phoenix Suns (7-11): Phoenix looked like the worst team in the league through three games, but a coaching change and an Eric Bledsoe trade have the club looking revitalized. The rebuilding Suns still aren’t a playoff contender, and they’ll go through their share of growing pains over the course of the season. However, they appear capable of staying out of the NBA cellar.

What do you think? Which one of these clubs will finish the 2017/18 season with the NBA’s worst record? Or is there another team outside of this group of seven that will slip down the standings and “surpass” all of these clubs? Vote below and jump into our comment section to share your thoughts!

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Heading into the 2017/18 NBA season, the general consensus among experts and fans alike was that we were heading for a fourth straight NBA Finals matchup between the Warriors and Cavaliers. The Celtics were viewed as a threat to the Cavs in the East, but Gordon Hayward‘s opening-night injury initially put a damper on the optimism in Boston.

One month later, however, the enthusiasm surrounding the Celtics is stronger than ever. After starting off the season 0-2, Boston has reeled off 14 straight wins, including a 92-88 victory over the defending-champion Warriors on Thursday.

The Celtics’ impressive play has convinced Chris Mannix of The Vertical that the C’s should be considered the new frontrunners in the Eastern Conference. Making his case for Boston, Mannix argues that the defensive rating posted by the 8-7 Cavs is a legitimate cause for concern — he also questions the Wizards‘ bench, and suggests that the Bucks aren’t yet ready to take the next step toward a championship.

The Warriors themselves are believers in the Celtics’ potential too. Before Thursday’s game, head coach Steve Kerr said the C’s look like “a team that is going to be at the top of the East for a long time to come.” After the game, Stephen Curry told reporters that he wouldn’t be surprised to be back in Boston in June for the NBA Finals.

In the view of oddsmakers, the Cavs remain the heavy favorites to come out of the East, but the Celtics appear ready to make things interesting.

What do you think? Are we still headed for another Warriors/Cavs rematch, or is this the year that another team pushes its way into the championship conversation in one conference or the other? Vote below in our poll and jump into the comment section to weigh in!

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