The 2017–18 NBA season is going to be loaded with terrible teams

We’re in for the most tanktastic season in modern NBA history. An excerpt:

The 2016–17 season also marked the third straight year that one fewer team than the year before finished at or below the 30-win mark. The 2011–12, 2012–13, and 2013–14 seasons all featured eight such teams, but the total dropped to seven in 2014–15 and six in 2015–16 before finally dropping down to five a year ago.

The Sixers were tanking their faces off for a lot of that time, but they’re out of that game now. Nevertheless, there are plenty of teams ready to take up that mantle. There seem to be a lot more generally hopeless teams this heading into the 2017–18 season than a year ago.

There are at least eight teams that can’t realistically be counting on making the playoffs: all but the staunchest and blindest of blindly loyal fans of the Nets, the presumably Carmelo Anthony-less New York Knicks, the still-stagnant Orlando Magic, the Paul Millsap-less Atlanta Hawks, the Jimmy Butler-less Chicago Bulls, the still bad even with Lonzo Ball Lakers, the young gun Suns, and the Kiddie Kings (plus Z-Bo, Vince, and George Hill) would admit their teams have little to no hope of breaking through. That group, plus the Paul George-less Indiana Pacers, all currently have their win-total over/under set at 34.5 or less, which means Las Vegas expects them all to be pretty damn bad, too.

Getting to nine sub-30-win teams this season would be quite the dubious feat. It would actually tie the 2017–18 season with the 1996–97 and 2009–10 seasons for the most such teams since the merger. It would, however, still fall short of 96–97 and 1982–83 by percentage of total teams in the league.

Read the full story at The Step Back.