Good news: The bad basketball in today's NBA is no longer historically bad
Turns out that the alarming sight of FOUR NBA teams getting outscored by more than 10 points per game was only a midseason crisis
The Monday Musings paid homage to the looming NBA single-season record of 19 teams with winning records that is about to be etched into the record books if Miami (one), Philadelphia (two), Golden State (two) and Houston (four) can all scratch out a few more victories before the end of the regular season.
It likewise appears on this Newsletter Tuesday that, with just under two weeks left to go in the 2023-24 regular season, we can safely say that the worst teams in the NBA are not as dreadfully bad as they looked earlier in the campaign.
Who says we lack a glass-half-full nature?
You only have to rewind to early January to find us openly fretting about how utterly non-competitive San Antonio, Charlotte and Washington were while Detroit — thanks to that record-setting losing streak that lasted 28 games — was hogging all the oxygen we will devote to the league’s bottom-feeders.
Some historically bad basketball
That January piece pointed out how there had never been more than one team in any season to be outscored by an average of 10+ points per game. At the time, remarkably, there were four teams getting outscored by double-digits on a nightly basis … hence the headline about Historically Bad Basketball.
Thankfully, as the end of the regular season beckons, some semblance of normalcy has been restored. Entering Tuesday's play, only one team leaguewide sported a nightly average scoring margin in negative double digits: Charlotte (18-57) at -10.6. The 18-57 Spurs (-7.0), 14-61 Wizards (-9.7) and 13-62 Pistons (-8.8) have all "improved" sufficiently defensively — San Antonio more legitimately so with a certain Victor Wembanyama as its anchor in the middle — to make their nightly average scoring margins more respectable and, more importantly, dodge any flirtations with the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers' 9-73 record routinely associated by NBA historians with 82-game futility.
Maybe the most amazing angle on this topic: Portland just lost to Miami by 60 points last week — Heat 142, Trail Blazers 82 was the final if you don’t believe me and want to look it up — for the Blazers' second loss this season by 60 points or more. Yet somehow 19-56 Portland, even after two of the ugliest hammerings imaginable, has kept its average scoring margin for the season under -10 (-8.8).
Trivia question that we'll answer below in Numbers Game: Can you name the only team this season to beat the Blazers by a wider margin than Miami just did?
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Numbers Game
🏀 1878
Dallas is said to be the largest city in the country that will be in the "path of totality" for Monday's Great North American Eclipse. It is being billed as the first full solar eclipse here in nearly 150 years ... dating to 1878. Should I cover it like a game?
🏀 2317
The next time Dallas is scheduled to find itself in an eclipse's path of totality after April 8? Not until 2317, experts say. Not sure this Substack will still be publishing at that stage.
🏀 40
Reminder: The last of 40 two-game baseball series on this season's schedule (you can read more about them here) falls on April 12 and 14 when tanking Toronto (currently in the midst of a 13-game losing streak) gets an extended stay in Miami to close out the regular season.
🏀 41
It can be argued, however, that there are actually 41 of those two-game sets on the schedule ... or maybe 40 1/2. Last week delivered quite a scheduling quirk for those of us (like me) who are irrationally fascinated by this stuff: Boston spent four days in Atlanta to play the Hawks on a Monday and a Thursday — with the Celtics unexpectedly losing both games — but the Hawks played a third game (beating Portland) in between its two dates with Boston. So it was only a baseball series for the road team.
🏀 44
When Dejounte Murray scored 44 points against the Celtics in the second of those Atlanta wins over Boston, he became just the 13th player listed in the Basketball Reference database to attempt 44 or more shots in one game.
🏀 47
Then New York's Jalen Brunson earned a spot on that list the very next night in San Antonio by attempting 47 shots from the field in his 61-point game against the Spurs.
🏀 57
Wilt Chamberlain, according to Basketball Reference, took at least 44 shots from the field in 57 regular-season games in his career. Kobe Bryant and Rick Barry did so six times each; Elgin Baylor and Joe Fulks four times each.
🏀 4
Phoenix's Devin Booker (52) and Brunson (61) just posted 50-or-more-point games in a four-day span ... after the NBA went almost two months without one between Stephen Curry's 60-point performance for Golden State against Atlanta on Feb. 3 and Brunson's outburst.
🏀 17
There have now been 17 games this season in which an NBA player has scored at least 50 points.
🏀 9
Those 17 games were amassed by nine different players: Booker (three), Philadelphia's Joel Embiid (three), Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo (two), Dallas' Luka Dončić (two), Philadelphia's Tyrese Maxey (two), Brunson (two), Chicago's Zach LaVine, Minnesota's Karl-Anthony Towns and Curry.
🏀 24-5
In the month of March, Houston's Ime Udoka is 24-5 as an NBA head coach: 11-3 in Boston in 2021-22 and 13-2 with the Rockets this season.
🏀 62
Trivia Answer: The Thunder blasted visiting Portland by 62 points on Jan. 11. Sixty-freaking-two. (The box score from Thunder 139, Trail Blazers 77 if, again, you don’t believe me.)
🏀 97.1
One last reminder before we go: I'm on the radio Saturdays from noon to 1 PM CT on 97.1 (FM) The Freak in Dallas with an hour of live NBA talk presented by Panini Trading Cards and Collectibles. Join us online by clicking the link embedded in this sentence or via the iHeart radio app to listen to The Saturday Stein Line on this or any Saturday ... or catch the podcasted version of the show once it drops via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or #whereveryougetyourpodcasts. And we repeat: Click the microphone icon on the 97.1 (FM) The Freak feed on the iHeart Radio app to leave a 30-second message or a question for me to answer on an upcoming show.