Not all losing records are created equal as we can see by comparing the relative lack of success of some of the league's bottom feeders this season. On one hand, you have teams like Houston. The Rockets might be 8-13, but they've scored nearly as many points as they've allowed, have played 12 of their first 21 games on the road and have played most of the season without stars
Yao Ming and
Aaron Brooks. They're unlikely to stay in the bottom of the standings for long; in fact, Thursday's
Playoff Odds project them to squeeze past Phoenix for the No. 8 seed in the West.
On the other hand, you have teams like Washington. The Wizards' 6-15 record doesn't superficially seem much different from the Rockets; Washington, in fact, is a half-game closer to its conference's eighth-place team than the Rockets are.
In the wake of Wednesday's dismal 25-point beatdown by equally lowly Sacramento, it's hard to envision the Wizards putting up enough of a fight to keep close for long. They are tied with Cleveland for the league's worst scoring margin at -8.5 points per game, despite facing a less-than-daunting early schedule.
Which takes us to Thursday's topic: The Forlorn Four of the Eastern Conference and their odds of making something of this season. Much as we did two days ago in the West, we're going to take a look at the bottom feeders in the East.
The difference in the East is that it could take as few as 36 wins to get into the postseason, meaning that a lot of teams with horrible records still see themselves as contending. While I suspect Milwaukee will eventually right its ship and give the East eight .500-%%# teams for the postseason, it's worth nothing that the 8-13 Bucks hold the eighth position in the conference, and that no team is more than 2½ games out.
Thus, hope remains -- even for the four teams who rank 25th, 27th, 28th and 30th in the
Power Rankings. As noted in ESPN's Celtics-Nuggets broadcast Wednesday night, Denver coach George Karl once started a season 2-19 and still made the playoffs. It's rare, but it happens. Thursday's Playoff Odds say there's less than a one-in-10 chance of the Nets, Wizards, Pistons or Cavs making the payoffs, but as we said Tuesday, that means there IS a chance.
Here's how it might happen for the Forlorn Four:
New Jersey (6-16, 5.9 percent chance of making playoffs)
The Nets have the East's worst record, but in a lot of ways they're in the best position of this quartet to make a run. For starters, they have a clearly underachieving star in
Brook Lopez who could propel them forward simply by playing at his career norms the rest of the way.
Second, they have obvious means of improving their roster -- acknowledging the existence of
Troy Murphy, for instance, or trading him for somebody they're willing to use in an actual game. Also, small forward remains an open sore, but it's inconceivable to me that
Travis Outlaw and
Terrence Williams can continue to perform this badly. If they somehow do, just replacing them with somebody mediocre will offer a jolt of improvement.
New Jersey would only need to play .500 ball the rest of the way to hit the 36-win mark, which is where we project the eighth spot in the East to fall right now (again, I suspect it will be a little higher once Milwaukee gets its act together). I doubt the Nets can pull that off, but they're better positioned than anyone else to surprise us.
Detroit (7-16, 2.8 percent)
Detroit has been more run-of-the-mill bad than close-your-eyes-awful this season, and while the Pistons' lethargic pace and general lack of exciting players continue to make them the league's most unwatchable team, there remains a chance we'll have to snore through a first-round playoff series with them.
As with New Jersey, Detroit just needs to play .500 ball the rest of the way to have a fairly solid chance, and the Pistons have three more home games than road games remaining. Also, as with New Jersey, Detroit seemingly has some obvious avenues to improvement simply by playing its good players and sitting its ineffective ones.
Austin Daye remains a starter despite performing terribly, while
Charlie Villanueva is second on the team in PER but paying only 25 minutes a game.
Additionally, if they aren't willing to play
Richard Hamilton and
Ben Gordon at the same time, they need to trade one of them. Right now the Pistons could stop needlessly restricting the minutes of both -- they average just 53 minutes a game between them, meaning they share the floor for about five minutes a night.
Washington (6-15, 0.3 percent)
One of the more humorous developments in Wednesday night's schedule was that the Wizards played the Kings -- and fans of both teams went in thinking, "Man, if we lose to these guys ... "
As it turned out, the Wizards plummeted to 28th in the Power Rankings after the embarrassing beatdown in Cowtown, offering yet another sign of the pathetic defense that's become their hallmark. Washington is 29th in Defensive Efficiency, and again we find ourselves questioning the commitment and professionalism of their young players.
It's hard to see how they'll improve, beyond just playing a lot harder and a lot better. There are no external solutions to offer -- Washington already by and large plays its best players, and the Wizards' most glaring roster deficiency -- frontcourt depth -- isn't one that's easily solved in-season.
The one area where the Wizards can fixate some hope is rookie
John Wall. He's missed some games in the early part of the season but has shown electric enough athleticism to stamp himself as one of the game's rising stars. Every coach I've talked to has raved about his unequalled combination of size and speed at the point, and if he can turn the corner quickly it's possibly his team will too.
Cleveland (7-15, 0.0 percent)
The Cavs are worse than their record and have been for some time. While that win in the home opener against Boston was impressive (and now stands as the league's greatest outlier result this season, since the Celtics sit atop the Power Rankings while the Cavs are dead last), and the Cavs were able to grind out close wins against six losing teams, they've also been blown out with startling regularity. Six times in their first 22 games, they bit the dust by 19 points or more.
And now, the bad news. Cleveland's first 22 games came against one of the league's easiest schedules, with an average winning percentage of .465 when not playing the Cavs. Now it gets harder, and the Cavs are in over their heads. Six of the next seven opponents have winning records; the one that doesn't is Houston, which isn't exactly chopped liver either.
All this goes to explain why the Cavs, despite sitting just 1½ games out of the No. 8 spot in the East, project to have virtually no chance of making the postseason according to Playoff Odds. (As I mentioned Tuesday with Sacramento, the odds are not absolute zero, but they made it in fewer than three of the 5,000 simulations we ran.)
As with the others, the Cavs don't need to run up a huge win-loss record to make up ground, but the Playoff Odds are dubious they can stay anywhere close to .500, projecting just 14 more victories this season.
Cleveland can exceed that total by trading one of its productive guards for a less-awful small forward, and they've already made the other overdue move -- starting
Antawn Jamison ahead of the struggling
J.J. Hickson -- needed to optimize the lineup. Nonetheless, they have no players in the top 75 in PER and they're 24th in Defensive Efficiency and, if anything, they're more likely to shed players in trades than add them.
