The F5's Midseason Guide To Pretending You Know Ball

Plus a chart on illegal streaming and who is the best player without a nickname

In the NBA, the days are long and the months are short. As a fan, it can be hard to take a step back and look at the bigger picture when you’re in the thick of it. A three-game losing streak can feel like the sky is falling. While a prime time win over a top-seeded rival can make you feel invincible.

We’re not far from the midway point in the regular season so I thought it would be a good time to take a moment and reflect on how we got where we are. This is also a good chance for a catch up if you haven’t been paying much attention this season.

If you’ve been following the league closely this season then feel free to map your own narratives on to the charts below. But if you need conversation fodder to pretend like you know what’s been going on, then read on for my take on where all 30 teams stand.

The chart above shows each team’s daily Net Rating rank. The teams are ordered by their Net Rating as of today. I’ve added some smooth lines here to make things easier to interpret but don’t take them too literally. Instead, use them as rough visual guides to see who’s up and who’s down.

OKC has been dominant since the season began. They have the league’s best defense and their star player is the consensus betting favorite to win MVP. And they haven’t even reached their final form. Chet Holmgren, arguably the team’s second best player, has been injured since mid-November.

If you’re an NFL fan that’s disgusted by your hometown Browns, Patriots or Giants, try watching your hometown Cavaliers, Celtics, or Knicks, respectively. All three teams are capital “G” good and have as good a chance as anyone at winning it all.

Memphis and Houston are overflowing with useful role players. Both teams are positioned to make a consolidation trade for a star player to put them over the top. Until that star arrives, both teams will continue to rely on their defenses to win them games.

Injuries to Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving have forced Dallas’ role players to step up. Last night against the Lakers, it was Quentin Grimes’ turn. Grimes poured in 23 points off the bench to go along with nine rebounds and six assists.

In Denver, the reigning MVP is on some imperial shit and has dragged his squad kicking and screaming into the title conversation. I don’t know how, but I firmly believe karma, the basketball gods, or both will reward Denver for leading the league in halfcourt heaves.

Sacramento has been the recipient of the new coach bump — which is somewhat expected given that their Net Rating at the time of Mike Brown’s firing suggested they were better than their record.

Orlando has magically maintained competitiveness despite having a core player disembodied every other week. Paolo Banchero is supposed to return from injury soon, which means we’ll have fewer promotions with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope as Orlando’s marquee player.

The Clippers have stayed afloat in the cutthroat West even with Kawhi Leonard sitting out with injuries until this week. Somehow Norman Powell is not the prohibitive favorite to win Most Improved Player of the Year (it’s Cade) even though he’s averaging a career high 24 points a game in his tenth season in the league.

The Warriors suck now.

Milwaukee and Miami can blame their mediocre seasons on injuries and star disgruntlement. Minnesota can’t. The Timberwolves have a combined four games missed among their top eight rotation players. All four of those games are from Mike Conley. Their other seven rotation players (Edwards, Gobert, Randle, McDaniels, DiVincenzo, Reid, and Alexander-Walker) have played in every game.

San Antonio and Detroit are serious about winning this season when both teams would probably be better off being serious about losing. A high lottery pick in this year’s draft would go a long way in pursuit of each team’s ultimate goal of winning a championship.

The Pacers are slowly starting to look like last year’s Pacers, especially on offense.

The Suns and Lakers entered the season with high hopes but are trending downward as of late. Both teams are old, expensive, and pot committed this season. Expect some irrational moves from both sides leading up to the trade deadline.

The Hawks should trade Garrison Matthews to the Celtics for Baylor Scheierman.

The Bulls have successfully built up Zach LaVine’s and Nikola Vucevic’s trade value. Now, can they cash in?

The 76ers have begun to dig their way out of the season from hell. And because they play in the East, they are just four games back from the fifth-seeded Bucks.

The Nets, Hornets, and Jazz are tanking despite their coach’s best efforts.

The Raptors, Blazers, and Wizards are tanking, in part, because of their coach’s best efforts.

The Pelicans are paying for the sins of the 2009 New Orleans Saints when they intentionally injured Brett Favre in the NFC Championship Game and denying me, a Vikings fan, a chance to see my favorite team win a SuperBowl.

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Shadow Ratings

I’m writing from Sydney, Australia where I use International League Pass to watch the NBA. It’s great. I pay $15 per month and I get access to every single game including ones on national TV.

When I was living in New York I couldn’t bring myself to pay for League Pass because the domestic product stinks. Knicks and Nets games were blacked out because they were the local teams. National TV games weren’t available either. If I wasn’t watching basketball at a bar, I sailed the high seas.

No one knows much about the true viewership numbers that illegal streaming sites generate. NBA Optimists will argue that illegal streams are one of the reasons ratings are down. Meanwhile, Ratings Truthers will tell you that the viewership from illegal streams are a drop in the bucket and don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But here’s something to chew on:

Google Search traffic for StreamEast — perhaps the most popular illegal streaming site — has recently eclipsed search traffic in the U.S. for Google’s own product, YouTube TV.

Now, StreamEast shows more than just NBA games so it would be inappropriate to use this as definitive proof that the NBA is more popular than the ratings would suggest. But I do think it gives some credence to the idea that these illegal streaming sites are a lot more popular than their critics would suggest.

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Man With No (Nick)Name

I’m in a slack group with a bunch of NBA nerds and someone recently posed the question: Who is the best player that doesn’t have a nickname on Basketball-Reference?

They submitted Franz Wagner as their choice, but I was curious what other players don’t have a nickname. So here’s every active player that’s without a nickname on Basketball-Reference.

Some of these guys are relative newcomers to the NBA. So it’s possible some of them do have a nickname, but just haven’t been updated on Basketball-Reference yet.

Nonetheless, why does Cam Payne have a nickname, but Cam Thomas doesn’t? How has no one come up with nicknames for the Martin twins, if for no other reason than to tell them apart? Doesn’t CJ McCollum deserve a nickname better than CJ?