The Two Western Conference Sleepers

We are getting ever-closer to the NBA playoffs, the two months that matter most. Phoenix and Memphis have been the main story of the West so far, two teams whose tactics involve punching the other team in the head over and over on offense, then cutting them down on defense. The Suns showed no mercy to the Lakers in their 140 point routing of the Lakers, stumping them into submission with 48 points in the first quarter. Now Los Angeles are like Anakin Skywalker trying to crawl out of the lava, arm lopped, completely legless, screaming ‘playoff mode activated’. 

Phoenix have locked down the number one seed, and will enjoy home court advantage in the playoffs, up to and including the finals. Meanwhile, Memphis and Golden State have been playing swapsies with the 2 seed in the past week, but soon enough both teams will have a look at the standings to figure out which first round playoff opponent suits them best. The Timberwolves look pretty locked in for the 7th seed, 5 games ahead of the 8th-placed Clippers, and with all due respect to Minnesota, they are definitely the preferred matchup when compared with the two teams that might end up with the 6th seed. 

The real winner of these matchups are the Suns, who will face any of the Clippers, Lakers or Pelicans. The most that might come out those series would be a couple of plucky Clippers wins, but otherwise Phoenix get to sit back and watch all their Western Conference Rivals beat each other to a pulp. 

The Denver Nikola Jokic + 4 other dudes

Nikola ‘Big Honey’ Jokic has followed up his MVP season with yet another absurd statistical season. You’ve probably seen how Jokic was the first player since Wilt to record a 45-point triple-double when shooting 70%, or how many records he’s set that are followed by the sentence ‘the first to record this stat since they began being tracked’. Everything Jokic does is incredible, but the impact he has on his team is the most astounding. The stats suggest that if Jokic was added to the long and depressing Denver injured list, the Nuggers would be a lottery team.

Denver’s entire gameplan is focused on Jokic, and rightly so. Jokic can do literally everything on the court. His passing is the most obviously astounding part of Jokic’s game and he is far and away the most gifted passer in the league, if not of all time. At least twice this year, Jokic has threaded passes through such fine gaps that they have brushed through another player’s hair on the way. Credit to Jokic’s teammates, they hit the shots Jokic feeds them, even if they weren’t aware they were even open.  

Every possession the opposing defense has to deal with the same headache – ‘what is Jokic going to force us to do?’ NBA teams aren’t stupid, they know know what he’s capable of but they still can’t stop it. If you double Jokic, he’ll find the open man, if you try to sag off to cut off passing lanes, he’ll just make the shot himself, if you try and get in his face he’ll start playing mad – ask Markieff Morris how that ends up. Teams have one job when they play Denver: stop Jokic, stop the bleeding and Jokic just laughs in their face on his way to another triple double. He’s a master manipulator, who tricks teams into making even half a mistake, which he immediately capitalises on. 

Jokic is more than a singular offensive presence, he’s worth more than 1 player to Denver. He’s the team’s best isolation scorer, best passer, best post-scorer, best 3 point shooter, best defender, best clutch scorer, best everything. He’s the sun in the middle of the Nuggets solar system and everyone else are pluto-dwarfs in his orbit, and the stats bear that out. 

I won’t hear a word that Jokic is a bad defender either, because that’s simply untrue nowadays. He’s a menace on that end as well because he can read the other teams offense better than they can, he’s just not the same singular talent as he is of offense.

One of the ways to measure a player’s impact is their on/off stat, which compares how the team performs when a player is on and off the court. Jokic’s on/off stat is currently 19.2 points: Denver average 12.2 more points and allow an average of 7 less points when he’s on the court. To put it in a more basic form, take 20 points away from Denver whenever Jokic isn’t playing. Denver needs this production out of Jokic every game, especially since their average winning margin is 2.6 points. 

What’s even more illustrative of Jokic’s impact is his expected win rate. Per cleaningtheglass.com, for which I am not paying, Jokic is responsible for an expected 44 wins during the 82 game season. At the time of writing, Denver has 42 wins on the season and have 12 games remaining and will most likely win at least 6 of those. However many wins they end up with above 44, they can claim as team wins, everything else comes down to Big Honey. Jokic has carried this team almost entirely on his own back, all the way to the playoffs. 

Those stats don’t mean that Denver absolutely couldn’t win a game without Jokic, but it would be fucking difficult. Jokic is so good that it doesn’t matter who his teammates are. 

I don’t want to defame the rest of the roster, because Denver does have some great players, but right now Aaron Gordon is their second best player, and we have 6 years worth of evidence from his time in Orlando that Aaron Gordon cannot be the basis of a successful team. While there’s rumours of a Jamal Murray return before the end of the season, that will be a version of Murray recovering from an ACL tear, not bubble playoffs Murray, but if he can contribute 15 points a game in the playoffs, look out for Denver.

I’ve always loved Denver’s other guys; Torrey Craig, Malik Beasley, Monte Morris and PJ Dozier, who will always hold a special place in my heart. Bones Hyland is quickly falling into that category. As well as possessing the best name in the NBA, Bones is a nice bench scoring option for Denver and has developed a great chemistry with Jokic. He was outstanding in Denver’s recent win against Philly. Bones scored 21 points in and led the team in the 4th while Jokic rested and James Harden pissed the bed again. 

Jokic isn’t content to call this year a success just because he’s put together another MVP-calibre season. He also plays even better in the playoffs. He can continue to carry this team because he’s so good he can win a playoff series on his own. Whichever team is sitting at number 3 in the last week of the season might decide they’re suddenly motivated to jump a rank to avoid having to struggle against Jokic. 

The Nuggets remaining schedule includes 2 games against Phoenix and 1 against Boston. If they can take a game from both teams they’ll have to be taken as serious threats in the playoffs. 

Jokic is a positional nightmare for the Warriors, who lack any kind of size that could bother him. Draymond will need to be guarding Jokic even when he’s on the bench to try and nullify his impact. Memphis stands a better chance with Jaren Jackson Jr leading their defense, but Jokic will be doing things that Jaren has never seen before. If they play each other,  I would predict he passes the ball between Jackson’s legs at least 3 times in one game. 

Warning: Playoff Luka is Coming

One and a half games above Denver is the Dallas Luka Doncic + 4 other dudes. Dallas has been putting along for a while now without drawing too much attention to themselves, the longest streak they’ve put together this season is 6 successive games on their way to a 43-26 record so far. 

Dallas have flipped the script on their last two seasons, when they’ve been a historically great offense and a meh defense. That success has been the result of Luka Doncic being responsible for every point on offense and taking a breather on defense. This year, the Mavs have the 6th best defense, the 17th best offense and Luka, after years of being a complete sieve, is actually playing defense now, he’s even a touch above league average. 

Jason Kidd seems to have calmed down on his kooky ways this season – there’s been no reports of him forcing Maxi Kleber to only speak English or anything like the tales that emerged from his time as coach of the Nets and Bucks. It also seems that Luka doesn’t outright hate him. I have to admit, I miss watching Luka stare daggers into Rick Carlisle. 

When Kidd was an assistant coach at the Lakers, their defense saw a similar improvement, which at first looked like a convenient correlation with the introduction of Anthony Davis, but Kidd’s done it again in Dallas. This is more or less the same team Dallas trotted out last season, with the exception of the Porzingis trade.  

This is the best version of the Mavericks that Luka’s had around him. There’s been gradual improvements from guys like Maxi Kleber, Josh Green, Dwight Powell and Dorian Finney-Smith. Their bench is full of players who are reliable, who know the offense and don’t bleed points on defense. By far their most improved player has been Jalen Brunson, who is about to become the hottest unrestricted free agent on the market after stepping up whenever Doncic was out, regularly dropping 30 points in Luka’s absence, and giving the Mavs a genuine second playmaker behind the great Slovenian hope.

For the first time in his career, Doncic looks fit and in shape. He’s always been able to play as many minutes as he’s needed to, but he used to arrive at the 4th quarter red-faced, huffing and puffing. Luka didn’t have to change anything about his game, he just needed to be able to do it for 40 minutes a night. He plays the role of conductor on the court, dictating the tempo of the game. With the ball in his hands, Luka can stroll around above the arc before taking a stepback three, or barrel into the paint, drop a shoulder into his defender and shoot out of the space it creates. On the way he throws enough feints, hesitations and wayward looks that only he knows which option he’s about to take. His 360 degree peripheral vision can catch a defender ball watching and find the pass to an open man. Luka led 20 point comebacks against the Nets and Warriors in the last month, and did not look worried for one second. 

Outside of Luka, Dallas formally gave up on Kristaps Porzingis ever being his running-mate, in exchange for what appeared to be the decaying husks of Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis, who were at that time taking up salary in Washington. In a swap of a bad contract for two bad contracts, Dallas figured they may as well try out Bertans, another 3 point shooting Latvian big man in Porzingis’ place, and why not throw Dinwiddie in there for good measure? 

Like the Wizards, Dinwiddie started off the season hot, before completely cratering and falling out of favour with everyone else on the team. Was that falling-out due to Dinwiddie being a huge crypto bro? We can’t say for sure, but yes. Since adding Dinwiddie, Dallas have won 10 of their last twelve, and Dinwiddie has hit game-winning 3’s in their last 2 games. 

Dinwiddie is a great recipient of last second shots, when Doncic has probed the defense and been unable to find himself a shot – just throw it out to Spencer and he’ll do a job with the two seconds of the shot clock left for him. Throw him and Brunson out there for a few minutes while Doncic gets a rest and they can keep the team above water. For the five minutes in a playoff game that Luka will spend on the bench, their job will be to prevent nuclear collapse.

The biggest threat come playoff time is that Luka goes to another level. When the spotlight shines brighter and the defense shrinks the floor, Luka somehow finds it even easier to score.

After two goes at getting past the Clippers, Luka has watched Porzingis get injured and everyone else on the team fail to scratch together two points. With their improvements on defense and across the roster, Dallas looks a chance of improving on that record.

The Mavs have played both of the Grizzlies and Warriors 4 times this season, winning their respective season series 3-1. In fact, the Mavs are the only one two teams to beat Memphis 3 times this season, the other being the Portland Trailblazers, as proof that sometimes stats don’t always provide the whole picture. As well as completely toweling up the Warriors in their last two games, Luka seems to be unable to miss 3 point shots in the Chase Centre and he shoots 10% on 3’s against the Warriors. If Golden State has to play a 7 game series against the Mavs, you can rest assured that I will be cursing Doncic’s name.  

My dream would be if Dallas and Denver could end up the 4th and 5th seed and Higgs boson collide into each other. We’re yet to see Jokic and Doncic play each other in the playoffs, but every time they’ve clashed in the regular season it’s always been a battle of two titans.  That all depends on how Utah feels about dropping out of the 4th seed.

The Utah of it All

Yes, I know that Utah has the same record as Dallas and could still end up in the 7th seed themselves, but I still don’t care until they prove it in the playoffs. Show me just one game where Rudy Gobert doesn’t get absolutely murdered by every guard on the floor.