Five NBA Things I May or May Not Like: Tanking, Western Conference Bloodbath, Mikal Minutes, Beasley Ball, and Denver Defense

This is a direct ripoff of Zach Lowe’s Ten Things column, but, here’s the catch, it’s almost certainly worse. But hey, at least I’m trying. These are five NBA things I may or may not have liked.

Tanking

Nothing says March NBA basketball like “DNP-Rest” or “DNP-He Could Maybe Help us Win.” Yes, it is officially tanking season, and while some teams did their homework early (a big round of applause for the Wizards, Hornets, and Jazz), close to 20% of the league has downed a friend’s Adderall and is trying to speed rush a 10,000-word paper in a night.

Is this a good look? Absolutely not. Does the NBA care? Well, they’re using the player participation policy to fine the Utah Jazz $100,000 and investigating the Oklahoma City Thunder(?!?) and Philadelphia 76ers for resting starters. In the age of intelligent front offices, tanking is just a part of life. When you reward losing and refuse to punish it, the smart people are going to take advantage of it.

The league office knows a $100,000 fine is not a big enough threat to stop tanking, but it’s the only weapon at their disposal. In fact, the fines are almost a worse look than the tanking itself. Everyone knows what’s going on, and these limp-dick fines only highlight how powerless the league is to stop it. The massive carrot of the draft is there, but there isn’t an equally big stick to scare organizations off of brazenly tanking.

Many will look to augment the draft lottery (again), but that has failed to stop tanking for the past 40 years. If the league is serious about curtailing tanking, bad teams need to be punished where it hurts. The NBA has a massive pie of national television revenue, instead of distributing it evenly, why not hand out slices based on overall record? Of course, the owners would never do this, but I guarantee it would curtail the most shameless tank jobs.

Western Conference Seeding

While one-half of the league is giving out wins like flyers to a horrible club, the other half is diving straight into the meat grinder for playoff seeding. The top of the Eastern Conference is set in stone, as are the Thunder in the West, but everything else is up for grabs, and nothing will be more fun to watch than the battle for the two seed in the Western Conference. The Rockets, Nuggets, and Grizzlies are all tied at 43-25 for the two seed, the Lakers are tied in the loss column at 41-25, and the Warriors, winners of 14 of their past 16 games, are storming towards the party at 39-28. Even the Timberwolves at 40-29, and on an eight-game win streak, look game for a scrap.

The stretch run of the NBA season is going to be awesome, with every loss looming large. The Nuggets going 0-2 against the Wizards could end up being the difference between securing the two seed or dropping into the play-in. With this many teams in the thick of it, every night will feature teams in a must-win scenario. The playoffs haven’t technically started, but for the Western Conference’s upper-middle class, it’s already here.

Mo Minutes, No Problems

In the era of load management, Mikal Bridges has stood as a bastion for putting on your hard hat and showing up to work every day. Over a seven-year career, Bridges has never missed a game, and over the past four seasons, he has averaged 35.7 minutes per game. The man is a grinder. He’s gritty, he’s an iron man, he’s built different, but so is Tom Thibodeau.

Thibodeau’s reputation for grinding players into dust is well-earned. The Knicks currently have the league’s two most-played players in Bridges and Josh Hart, he rode Luol Deng and Joakim Noah into the ground, and he routinely plays his starters big minutes over 82 games. If Tom Thibodeau is your coach, you’re going to play a ton, unless you’re one of the eight guys he refuses to play.

So, what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? You get back page drama. Bridges, the NBA’s ultimate minutes sponge, reportedly went to Thibodeau to inquire about easing his increasingly burdensome load. And true to form, Thibodeau told reporters that it never happened, he made it up, not this time, wrong again, this one, was invented by a writer. What transpired next was pure cinema.

Down Jalen Brunson due to an ankle injury, the Knicks have had to lean even harder on Bridges as a creator. The very next game, the Knicks limped into overtime against the Portland Trail Blazers. By the end of the game, Bridges had played 40:40 minutes and scored 30 of the Knicks’ 111 points, but it’s what he did down two, with 3.4 seconds left in overtime, that was the real story.

With the game in the balance, Thibodeau tasked Bridges with inbounding the ball, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart were set up on the wings, and Karl-Anthony Towns and Miles “Duece” McBride were on the blocks. The play was incredibly simple but highly effective. Towns screened for McBride on the block to get him free for an open strongside corner three, while Anunoby and Hart ran a crossing pattern to switch wings, and, in the process, got Donovan Clingan, a center, to switch onto Hart.

As the play unfolded, Bridges could have easily found McBride for a corner three, and the defense knew it with two defenders crashing toward the corner. However, that was just a decoy. Bridges instead inbounded the ball to Hart and immediately sprinted inbounds so Hart could hand the ball back to Bridges while simultaneously setting a screen on a twirling defender. The Knicks now had exactly what they wanted. Bridges had a full head of steam with three seconds left and was one-on-one with a center on the perimeter. Clingan did his best, but Bridges easily got to the top of the key, rose up, and buried a lightly contested three to earn a Mike Breen double “bang” as the clock hit zero.

I don’t know if Thibs feels vindicated, but it was an amazing series of events. Bridges and Thibodeau had a meeting to clear the air, and the Knicks continue to soldier on without their talisman point guard. Maybe all the minutes will catch up with Bridges, but who cares when you have moments like that.

Malik Beasley

The Detroit Pistons have had an incredible turnaround. A season after winning 14 games, they’re 37-31 and are a virtual lock to make the playoffs for the first time since 2018-19. While Cade Cunningham and J.B. Bickerstaff have received the lion’s share of praise, Malik Beasley deserves his flowers. He’s averaging 16.3 points per game and shooting 42.1% from three on 9.2 attempts per game.

Since January 20th, the Pistons are 16-10, and Beasley’s red-hot shooting has been a driving force. He’s converting 45.8% of his threes on 9.2 attempts per game over that span. There have been 11 qualified seasons, including Beasley this season, where a player has converted over 40% of their threes on more than nine attempts per game. The list includes seven Stephen Curry seasons, and one apiece from Damian Lillard, Klay Thompson, and Anthony Edwards this season. With Edwards only at 40.5% from three, he could easily slide off this list, leaving Beasley in the company of the greatest contemporary shooters.

Malik Beasley is a specialist having a special season at his specialization. This is almost certainly a career year, but for $6 million, the Pistons have made out like bandits. Successful rebuilds are about acquiring young talent and surrounding it with the right veterans. Beasley won’t get the credit he deserves, but he has quietly had one of the great 3-point shooting seasons in history.

Denver’s Defense

The Denver Nuggets are in a dogfight for the two seed in the Western Conference. From here on out, every game is a must-win. Fortunately, they have the best player in the world Nikola Jokic, and the league’s second-ranked offense. Unfortunately, their defense has been a tire fire on top of a dumpster fire for the past two months. Since January 15th, the Nuggets have a defensive rating of 119.3, and over their past eight games that figure has ballooned to 123.6.

The fact that the Nuggets have gone 16-10 since mid-January is a testament to their offense, but they cannot survive the Western Conference seeding wasteland getting torched like a Tesla dealership on defense. While they have seen opponents hit 38.5% of their threes over the past 26 games, that’s not all down to bad luck. The Nuggets look gassed and simply aren’t bringing enough energy on the defensive end.

With how great the Nuggets offense is, they don’t need to be a defensive juggernaut to go on a run. However, they can’t afford to coast on defense down the stretch, the West is just too good. The Nuggets are going to have to balance seeding with energy, but right now, they need to improve on the defensive end or else they will slide down the standings.

For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.