There are a lot of unhappy NBA teams right now. We’ve seen players like Ja Morant question their coaching staffs. We’ve seen coaches like Doug Christie question their players. There are would-be contenders playing terribly like the Clippers. We’ve already seen our first GM firing in Nico Harrison and our first coach firing in Willie Green, formerly of the Pelicans.
When things like this happen, the instinct is very often to suggest that the team in question should blow it up: trade everyone, get a bunch of draft picks, maybe change coaches or front offices and start over. It’s often a better idea in theory than in practice. Teams have tickets to sell. They want people to watch their games and buy their jerseys. This is a business. It’s Twitter’s first step and usually a team’s last.
But inevitably, some teams really have no better option, and this year, there seem to be a fair number of teams in that boat. So we’re going to rank them. All 30 of them, from the teams least in need of a blow up to the teams that should already be stacking dynamite.
Tier IX: No-explosives zone
30. Oklahoma City Thunder
29. Denver Nuggets
28. Cleveland Cavaliers
27. San Antonio Spurs
26. Houston Rockets
25. New York Knicks
24. Detroit Pistons
The teams in this group are perfectly happy with what they have and will not entertain the idea of blowing anything up. They more or less speak for themselves. Here we have the top two seeds in the Eastern Conference as of this writing, the top three seeds in the West, along with the No. 5 seeds in both.
Tier VIII: Hoping to scavenge someone else’s rubble
23. Minnesota Timberwolves
22. Golden State Warriors
21. Los Angeles Lakers
At some point in the next year or two, all three of these teams will probably make a substantive trade. They just won’t be blow-it-up trades. They’ll be win-now moves. All three of them are presently competitive Western Conference teams that are, in all likelihood, at least one upgrade away from genuinely competing for a championship. The Lakers are missing at least one defender. The Warriors…
..
