Five NBA Things I May or May Not Like: Jenkins, Tank Wars, NCAA Chalk, Rockets, and Suns

After a week off due to travel and illness, I am back and as bad as ever. With news that Zach Lowe will host a podcast with The Ringer, perhaps I won’t have to keep up the charade for much longer. Until then, here are five NBA things I may or may not like from the past week.

The Bye-Bye Bears

Even in a weakened state, I still managed to make a video reaction to the Grizzlies' firing of Taylor Jenkins with nine games left in the season. That’s just how shocking it was. Teams that will make the playoffs and own top-five net ratings simply don’t fire their coach right as the playoffs approach. However, with some time to reflect, I actually think this was the right decision.

The Grizzlies wanted to move on from Jenkins. They fired his entire coaching staff over the offseason and brought in two highly paid and regarded assistants to run the offense. The fact that they gave him this season to save his job was the proverbial toss of a bone. For half a season, it looked like he would make good on their halfhearted faith, but then the Grizzlies fell apart. The warm glow of their 35-16 start has been washed away by the freezing waves of their 9-14 record since.

Sure, 99.99% of franchises in NBA history would have waited for their team to get bludgeoned in the playoffs before firing a lameduck coach, but just because that’s what everyone would have done doesn’t make it smart. It’s better to see if you can catch lightning in a bottle with a new voice than let the old voice drag you to your death. While I believe Jenkins is a good coach, the fact remains that there are far more qualified and capable candidates to man an NBA sideline than there are available jobs.

I’m not saying that the Grizzlies are suddenly going to be better for this decision, but I’d rather put the dog down now than watch it die right in front of me. Honestly, the worst thing that could have happened is if the Grizzlies made any sort of a run in the playoffs with Jenkins, and then you may be stuck with the coach you never really wanted in the first place. Depending on how this plays out, the Grizzlies might have opened the door for late season firings among playoff teams that just don’t feel right.

Tank Wars

Fans hate tanking, but I absolutely love tank wars. Nothing is more captivating than when two teams hell bent on losing square off. Someone has to win; that’s how this sport works, and you can get some truly great theater of the absurd. On Sunday night, the Pelicans and Hornets and the Sixers and Raptors faced off in the battle of who wants to win least, but who wants a better draft pick more.

The Pelicans drudged to a 98-94 victory as they played a team of veteran role players and G-League adjacent NBAers. Meanwhile, the depleted Sixers gave their three best healthy players the night off to all but guarantee their roster of castoffs and ten-days would lose to the Raptors. None of this is pretty basketball, but the stakes could never be higher. If the Sixers fail to stay in the top six in the draft lottery, their pick goes to Oklahoma City. These meaningless games are devastatingly important to these teams. It’s hilarious, and it’s why I love it when two teams wedded to anti-competitive schenanigans are forced to compete.

NCAA Chalk Walk

Usually, I abstain from mentioning the existence of college basketball. The reason for that is simple. College basketball is a low-quality eyesore of a product. The ball generally sucks. The people who swear it’s better either don’t know anything about basketball or have bad politics. I stand on these assertions, ten toes down. However, I am delighted that four number-one seeds made it to the Final Four. I generally hate Cinderella runs. I want good teams to do well. It’s not that I don’t want there to be upsets, but I’d prefer it if four one-seeds made it the distance more often because they’re better basketball teams and play better ball.

Of course, a lack of upsets has made some people upset. They think the NCAA tournament is toast without them. And, even though this is an anomaly, people are now blaming the transfer portal and NIL as the reason why college hoops is so top-heavy. This is even though an 11-seed made the Final Four last season, and pundits, just this season, cited NIL and the transfer portal as to why college football seemingly had so much parity.

Here’s the thing: I’m not going to say it’s impossible that NIL and the transfer portal will make college basketball more top-heavy (like it was back in the day, back when people generally watched the sport more), but you shitsure cannot use one NCAA tournament as proof. Dumb people annoy me. And this is a dumb person take, not because it couldn’t be correct, but because there is far too little evidence to make such assertions.

Rocketship go Vroom

The Houston Rockets are on some kind of roll. Since their loss to the Pacers on March 4th, the Rockets have gone 12-1 and taken a two-game lead for the second seed in the Western Conference. Their spectacular run of form came off a trying five weeks between January 30th and March 4th that saw them go 6-11. Unsurprisingly, the Rockets’ excellent stretch has coincided with an incredibly soft schedule, with their only loss coming against the Denver Nuggets, but hey, you can only play the teams in front of you.

Over the past 13 games, the Rockets have rolled the opposition with a net rating of +7.0, but their 148-109 demolition of the Phoenix Suns is doing a bit of the heavy lifting. Regardless, the Rockets are one of the hottest teams in the league because they took care of business against bad teams, and they now enter a daunting stretch run with a serious advantage in the standings.

The Rockets’ final seven games are against the Lakers twice, Jazz, Thunder, Warriors, Clippers, and a regular season finale against the Nuggets that could decide the two seed. Outside of the Jazz, there are no gimmies for the Rockets. However, if they beat the Jazz and go .500 against the rest, they’ll end the season with 53 wins. Should they do that, it’ll take the Nuggets going 6-1 with a victory over the Rockets on the final day to gain the head-to-head tiebreaker to take the two-seed.

How teams perform against playoff teams generally gets the most attention, but not messing around with the bottom of the league is how you make the playoffs. The difference between the Rockets and the Nuggets in the standings is down to the Nuggets going 0-2 against the Wizards. The Rockets are in pole position to land the two-seed in the West, and it’s all because the Rocket ship went vroom at the right time.

The Suns

Depending on where you stand, this Suns season is either abjectly awful or utterly hilarious. I tend to lean toward the side of hilarity because of Matt Ishbia’s “26 out of 29 teams” press conference, but you’re allowed to feel bad for Kevin Durant and Devin Booker being subjected to extreme levels of mid. Regardless, their 148-109 beatdown at the hands of the Rockets, which saw Durant go down with an ankle injury that will sideline him for at least the next three games, is basically the nail in their season’s coffin.

The Suns are a game and a half behind the Kings for the 11-seed, and their final seven games see them face the Bucks, Celtics, Knicks, Warriors, Thunder, Spurs, and they close out the regular season against the Kings. There’s a chance that the final game will be a de facto play-in game, but the Kings have eight games to play with, and two of them are against the Wizards and Hornets. I wouldn’t put it past the Suns to claw their way into the ten-seed, but even if they did, this season, compared to expectations, has been the most disappointing in the league.

Honestly, of all the disappointing teams this year, the Suns are the only ones that didn’t suffer through any real injury crisis. Durant, before rolling his ankle, had played in 62 games, and Booker has played 69. Bradley Beal has only featured in 48 games, but his role was largely minimized from the jump. The Suns were a poorly constructed team that crumbled under the weight of expectations and ineptitude. It would be a tragic story if they weren’t owned by a douchebag, but since they are, I find it incredibly funny.

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