The National’s resident basketball fans Jonathan Raymond and Kevin Jeffers count down the days until the NBA’s October 26 tip-off by discussing the league’s hottest talking points.
Today, they look at some lower-tier teams that are starting to build to something bigger.
• Jeffers: Minnesota and Philadelphia: two completely disparate rebuilds but two that are finally showing dividends.
The Sixers are absolutely going to stink this year, but Joel Embiid is doing basketball things on a basketball court and looking nice and Olajuwon-like doing so.
.@JoelEmbiid Highlights vs Detroit ⤵️
15 PTS / 5 REB / 20 MIN pic.twitter.com/XMPoSiDD2O
For a team with so many young players and high draft picks, they've been awfully boring to watch. Embiid changes that, and he's maybe the most fun guy to follow off of the court, too. The depressing Shirley Temple reports are finally behind us, so let's watch The Process take shape.
Embiid aside, how in the world haven't Philly traded Nerlens Noel or Jahlil Okafor yet? With Ben Simmons likely out for the year, there's no hope of seeing what all these guys can do together on a court, so it makes basketball and humanitarian sense to let one of their three first-round centres go for someone who can shoot from beyond six feet out.
How does Philly unclog this front court?
• Raymond: They have Richaun Holmes too! He was pretty decent last year!
Anyway I’ve come, over the past few years, to kind of adopt a knee-jerk scepticism about big men. Low-post dominance isn’t as, well, such a dominant skill as it used to be. But man it’s hard not to fall in love with Joel Embiid. He could be something truly different. The anti-Jahlil Okafor, in a way.
Softer touch on his shot than you’d expect, runs the floor well. And, yes, a monster inside. It’s going to be so much fun to watch him.
But meanwhile, yeah, the Sixers need to fix that frontcourt. If Embiid has range (and hey you never know! look!) he can probably actually function with Nerlens Noel. It's still kind of an unnecessary pairing, as Embiid looks like he can patrol the rim just fine on his own, but at least it might be workable for stretches.
Okafor, who is neither a good interior defender nor a floor-stretcher, is the one with the skill set that’s hard to shoehorn into an effective modern NBA system. He needs to play with a stretch-four kind of player who can cover for him defensively on the interior, like Anthony Davis or something. His future might just be as an offence-boosting sixth man.
But the Sixers don’t need to be in any rush, really. Maybe Okafor and Embiid will click next to each other in some weird way. And there are other fun parts to sort out here. Dario Saric, already a seasoned professional entering his rookie year, shot 40 per cent from three last year in Europe. Timothe Luwawu was one of my favourite blank canvases in the draft. Sergio Rodriguez flamed out in the NBA ages ago but has been one of the best players in Europe for half a decade: he could give them a real point guard.
Look, I wouldn’t go out on a limb and say they’ll be better than people think — they’re going to stink. But there will be nights when they give a hint of the real NBA team they’ll be in the near future, and those will be fun nights.
• Jeffers: Okafor isn't completely useless as an NBA player. He's a higher-ceiling Al Jefferson, which is something a lot of teams would love. He was an awful fit for Philly (wouldn't D'Angelo Russell look great there right about now?), so now they have to eat their losses and find the guy a good home. Probably the same for Noel, too. Embiid and Saric are the future.
Moving on to the team whose future success is much clearer — how good are the Timberwolves going to be this year?
I think they’re definitely one of the eight best rosters in the West, and they won the coaching lottery by wooing Tom Thibodeau there. But will that equate to the play-offs this year? The Thunder made the play-offs in the second year of Durant-Westbrook. Is the same going to happen for Towns-Wiggins?
• Raymond: There's a lot to dream on with the Wolves, I don't see why this year can't be the year it takes at least some concrete shape.
Thibodeau immediately turned around the Bulls (from 41-41 under Vinny Del Negro in 2010 to 62-20 under Thibs in 2011). He’s a defensive specialist and there are a number of talented offensive guys whom he could either work on or whose deficiencies he can find a way to mask — Wiggins, Nik Pekovic, Zach LaVine.
The T’Wolves were fourth-worst in the NBA in defensive rating last season (107.3 points allowed per 100 possessions) and if he can just get them to improve that a little, suddenly you’re talking about a team with a net-rating more like that of a 39-42ish win club. If you think 42-40 or 43-39 or thereabouts can get you a play-off pot in the West, then you should think the Wolves can get into the play-offs.
There are still roadblocks, though. I love Kris Dunn, and I think he’s the long-term point guard to grow alongside Towns and Wiggins, but Ricky Rubio is a very solid defender that I think Thibodeau will lean on at first. Rubio is still an awful shooter, and that will, as it long has, limit Minnesota’s offensive dynamism.
Pekovic only played 12 games last year, and 31 the year before. Are you getting anything out of him? Gorgui Dieng is a fine player, but he hasn’t progressed all that much. Shabazz Muhammad (only 23!) seems kind of in the same boat. Can Nemanja Bjelica be utilised better? Is the backup centre salad of Jordan Hill and Cole Aldrich going to be any useful?
Basically, there’s more team-building still to be done here. But I don’t think it’s out of the question that you can peg this team in that 42-44 win range on Thibodeau’s influence and Towns’ improvement almost alone.
What do you think, are they getting into the play-offs? And if they did, would it go better or worse than Golden State stomping out the life of Anthony Davis’ Pelicans as an eight-seed a couple years ago?
• Jeffers: I know I'd prefer to see a Warriors-Wolves series than I would Warriors-Mavs or something staid like that. So, I guess I'm rooting for it.
Apart from the Wolves and Sixers, what other reclamation projects are you excited about. (And yes, here’s your chance to talk about the Suns.)
• Raymond: I like the Suns. The Suns have fun players.
They’ve got low-key Twitter favourite Devin Booker, they’ve got not one, but two marvellously boom-bust projects in Dragan Bender and Marquese Chriss. Beyond that they still have a handful of young guys with interesting skills and upside to tap — Alex Len, Archie Goodwin, Tyler Ulis.
And then you still have the young-ish, good-ish backcourt thing going with Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight. They have a genuine, complementary veteran mix in Leandro Barbosa, Tyson Chandler, Jared Dudley and TJ Warren.
I realise I’ve pretty much just named everyone on their roster, but there’s a lot I like about the Suns! There’s at least a 75 per cent chance that none of the eight or nine things they need to go right happen and they win 25 games, but I’ll watch all the same.
You got any off-the-radar team you fancy?
• Jeffers: I'm really big on the Warriors this year.
jraymond@thenational.ae | kjeffers@thenational.ae
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