The NBA's Leastern Conference might be headed for a new low

The bottom third of the West ain't looking too clever, either

We warned you in the ALL-NBA Podcast video essay enclosed below that ran on Opening Night and which I wrote and narrated in conjunction with the production brilliance of my buddy Tanner Rottman:

Brace for many, many Leastern Conference references this season.

Yet I might have undersold it. Have you looked at the standings at all recently? (Does anyone, incidentally, still get a newspaper at home to look at the standings the old-fashioned way?)

Anyway ...

The Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards were all off to 1-11 starts entering Saturday's play.

We repeat: One and eleven.

Leave it to my research ace pal and Team Amazon colleague Keerthika Uthayakumar to confirm that this is the first time since 1997-98 that three teams have started so poorly through 12 games. (Four teams, in fact, stumbled that badly out of the gate in the '97-98 season: 1-11 for the Clippers, Raptors and Warriors and 0-12 for the Nuggets.)

Chapeau to my longtime former ESPN teammate John Hollinger, who recently referred to the three clubs at the foot of today Eastern Conference ladder as a trislumvirate. Ouch. Harsh but fair, though.

The Philadelphia 76ers' 9-73 mark in 1972-73 remains the NBA's standard of futility in an 82-game season. The trio of teams we just mentioned were all on a 7-75 pace when we hit send on this piece Saturday evening.

Surely at least one of those stragglers is going to finish with less than nine wins. Right?

As a wise, wise man named Yogi Berra once said: It gets late early out there.

None of this is meant to diminish Detroit's inspiring 11-2 start. It's just a reminder that the Least is there for the taking — maybe like never before — for the teams that can stay healthy. The last two conference champions were pulverized by catastrophic injury to Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton in last spring's playoffs to open the door. Wins to fatten up the record are just waiting to be stacked up against the dregs of the Least.

On the other side of the conference divide, mind you, it's also Crisis Time already. The 3-10 Mavericks fired GM Nico Harrison on Tuesday. The 2-10 Pelicans fired coach Willie Green on Saturday. The 4-10 Grizzlies have only one win (over spiraling Dallas) in their last nine games and seem thoroughly unable to get the once-electric Ja Morant re-engaged. The 4-9 Clippers outlasted the Mavericks on Friday night in a double-overtime Crisis Bowl, but Kawhi Leonard (ankle) is sidelined once again while rampaging Oklahoma City (12-1) holds LA's first-round draft pick in June. Last but not least: The 3-10 Kings are said to be contemplating a roster teardown yet can't be sure that a promising trade market awaits any of the former All-Stars (Domantas Sabonis, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan) they could elect to make available.

While there has been no shortage of good basketball in the season's opening month, it's impossible to ignore the bad basketball that has been everywhere, too. Especially given the ramifications for all of those Western Conference teams mentioned that, unlike the aforementioned trislumvirate in the East, did not start the season with a plan to, uh, prioritize draft position.

#thisleague

PS — Longtime Tennessee-based reader Steven Friedlander is the one who asked via e-mail if we could dive into the dregs of the Leastern Conference. Hope this delivered!

PPS — I know, I know. This is another Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza dropping on a (gulp) Saturday. Dare I say Tuesday's abrupt firing of Harrison just 11 games into his fifth season as Mavericks GM is all the explanation you need to account for the delay. Hopefully getting this completely free file — whenever it lands during the week — works for you. I've learned in my old age, after nearly eight years of newslettering that began at The New York Times in January 2018, that NBA news (with my luck) tends to break on many Tuesdays. Yup: #thisleague.

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One more time …

For my recent piece on what's next in Dallas in the wake of Nico Harrison's dismissal:

And to share the graphic from DLLS Sports that was inspired by the Intel-filled piece (embedded in this sentence) which dropped last Sunday to set the stage for Harrison's dismissal:

And please allow me to share a YouTube link to my most recent around-the-league podcast visit with talkSPORT in England and host Brian T. Smith:

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(Substack) Note of the Week