NBA Stock Market Update: The Comeback

We’re bringing back a feature from the old Armchair and you should be excited about it. Or not. Or grab a sandwich. I don’t know. I’m not your mother.

In the old WordPress days of Armchair Society (still know as Armchair Sports Society back then) a young writer, yet unchanged by cynicism of the Internet, started a wonderful weekly NBA column. There was passion and luster in his eyes (as opposed to disdain) as he thought, “hey, I can write once a week.” What a fool. Now older, wiser-er and arguably not much smarter, the column is back. Rejoice world.

Here’s how this works. Every week, after watching a lot of NBA Basketball, and we’re talking “more than would safely be recommended by a healthcare professional,” I will sit down to assess the current state of the NBA. Some trends, players, teams or coaches will be on the rise, others will be in a free-fall-like plummet to rock bottom. Finally, some will just be what they are, like the Spurs or the fact that Rick Carlisle is secretly a dark wizard. It’s basically like stocks — is what I say and “it’s entirely nothing even remotely similar to the actual stock market” is something who knows the way the stock market works would say. But I’m going with it. Fight me.

Buy: Anthony Davis

I think we’re pretty much out of ways to talk about incredible feats that Anthony Davis accomplished in the opening week. I mean we covered it in our opening thoughts. Then we begged the Pelicans to liberate him from the Bastille of despair, hopelessness and failed expectations that is the New Orleans basketball franchise. Then we discussed how he’s one of the players spearheading the anti-revolution movement, small-ball be damned. That’s a lot of Anthony Davis.

The truth is, all of that is earned. Through the opening stretch he is putting up numbers that make your eyes roll back inside your head and look at your brain to make sure it’s function to understand how to perceive numbers is in tact. His usage is through the roof and his ability to transcend any one way to play has been liberating, if not to the NOLA offense, at least to himself. Unfortunately, he is dragging with his him a decrepit corpse of what used to be a basketball team. Which brings us to…

Sell: New Orleans Pelicans

Every year starts out with a hope that maybe, just possibly, quite unlikely but still optimistically the New Orleans Pelicans will finally figure out that they have a generational talent on their team that they should build around. What can I say, NBA fans are masochists. Throughout this year, no one is really helping Anthony Davis, who as much as we want to believe, can’t do everything by himself.

After firing Monty Williams last year (ill advised) the Pelicans are not only struggling to find a system that works, but they’re struggling to field five players who can all be unmistakably considered as NBA player, Davis notwithstanding. Their $50-mil off-season acquisition — Solomon Hill — is averaging 3.3 points per game while shooting .125% from three, which was one of his most marketable skills. Buddy Hield or Jimmer Fredette 2.0 is making himself look like Jimmer Fredette 0.5 having made exactly a cool zero three point shots in three games. This team desperately needs Jrue Holiday to come back, but I don’t think that’s even close to a sufficient enough solution.

Hold: San Antonio Spurs

50 Wins. That is the one consistent and unwavering guarantee I make every season in reference to the San Antonio Spurs. I don’t care that Tim Duncan is gone (I’m crying again, great). I don’t care that Manu is on his last half a leg and Tony Parker hasn’t exactly been himself for a full stretch of a season since about 3 years ago. Gregg Popovich knows how to run his team. Every year, Spurs manage to fill gaps and find the right combination of players to get consistent performance. This year it meant slipping radioactive spiders into Kawhi Leonard’s hotel room.

The Spurs are 4–0. Leonard is playing MVP level basketball on both ends of the court and Spurs are getting production from a guy who years ago paid their D-League team just for a chance to try out (I say that’s probably one of the best $150 investments anyone can ever make). 50 Wins. Because every year, the tales of Spurs demise are greatly overblown.

Buy: New Look Rockets

Defense is for losers. Defense is for pansies. Screw it, let the other team play defense as you cover them with buckets scorching like the sun itself. After a brief stumble against the Lakers, the Rockets have won 2 straight with 8th offensive rating in the League and James Harden averaging 10.7 assists per game. I guess the coach really don’t be trippin’ after all.

Say what you say about Mike D’Antoni and his revolutionary style of crazy that completely abandons one entire aspect of a sport, but it might just work, and the Rockets also don’t look that bad. Sure, the personnel on the other side of the court is not what you’d want it to be, but they’re not terrible. Ex-Grizzlies defensive assistant coach is keeping them at 13th for points allowed and 19th in defensive rating. While those numbers aren’t particularly glamorous, they also aren’t in the gutter. The Houston Rockets are working on things.

Buy: The New Look Grizzlies

The Grizzlies are always supposed to be kind of bad, much like the Spurs. Unlike the Spurs however, it isn’t due to a variety of retirements and players being so far past their prime they might as well be on the moon. The real cause for Grizzlies’ concern always comes from their inherent style of play that resembles a mix of basketball and a Hell in a Cage match where only one person is allowed to leave alive by rules. The Grizzlies didn’t as much limp into the Playoffs last year as they crawled, both legs detached with vision and hearing impaired from a loud explosion. They rostered twice the number of allowed players and their team plane may as well have been the MASH helicopter. After a somewhat underwhelming season and replacement of their head coach the cracks were supposed to widen.

Once again, it seems that tales of the Grizzlies demise have been much exaggerated. Despite your feelings on Mike Conley being the highest paid player ever, he has been an elite producer in both steals and three point percentage and a pivotal linchpin in the new offense. The strange, new look Grizzlies are shooting significantly more and relying on ball movement. They’ve relegated Zach Rendolph and his 5 inches of vertical to the bench reserving the option to use him as a battering ram and instead are running an ultra-mobile offense now. They’re fourth in offensive rating in the NBA right now, 11th in three-pointers attempted and are shooting them at a .438 clip. Vince Carter may never age and Marc Gasol is doing this now…

That being said, they still managed to revert back to their brand of basketball in OT vs. the Wizards when it mattered. They didn’t as much suffocate Washington’s offense as threw a noose around its neck, dragged behind a galloping horse for 5 kilometers, encased it in cement and then buried it in the deep end.

Hold: The Golden State Warriors

Look, the Warriors are going to be fine. Sure, there are some very alarming stats right now.

But that’s just part of the growing process. They’re still 2–1 following an old fashioned thrashing by the Spurs in a game where Kawhi fully turned into the Phoenix. Yes, their games against NOLA and the laborious and dragged out win against Phoenix don’t inspire confidence, but they’re going to be fine. They still have four of the top 20 players on their team.

We tend to speak in platitudes when it comes to a lot of analysis, then take those platitudes drive them so deep into the ground and through the Earth’s core that they come out on the other side scaring kangaroos (3–1 lead anyone?). Why? Because it’s fun to write Apocalyptic NBA scenarios in which the Warriors spell doom for everyone in their path and somehow manage to win 83 games in a 82 game season. The best writers manage to find balance between dipping into the lowest common denominator pool (“hey Russ, how do you feel about KD again?”) and taking a step back and offering thoughtful overview of what is actually happening (anything Zach Lowe has ever written, thought, imagined or dreamed). So while we rode the Warriors narrative into this season on the former, it’s time we dip into the latter.

Integrating a top usage guy into an offense that managed to formulate itself was always going to be hard. They’re still not shooting particularly well (looking at you Klay) with Curry the only one above .400% through the first three games. They’re also giving up way too many rebounds and points in the paint and finding out the hard way the true value of having Andrew Bogut as your starting centre, but those are all adjustable things, and guess what, they still have 79 games to adjust. Also, they now have this new guy named Kevin Durant who not only fits into their offense quite well also reserves the right to remember that he’s one of top 5 players in the NBA and do what he did to the Suns on Sunday to the tune of 37 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals.

Buy: Russell Westbrook — the Messenger of the Interplanetary Apocalypse

Yes, those stats came against pretty mediocre teams and it took OT to take down Phoenix. Yes, the first true test comes this Wednesday against the Clippers. And yes the Thunder will still need a lot of production and many things to go right before they’re able to speak confidently about playoffs. BUT! This team is buying into the idea of the Russell Westbrook reward tour and is rallying behind him as he marches upon the plains of 28 other NBA cities leaving nothing but scorched earth and disrespected rims in his wake. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch.