Welcome back to the Internet’s most accurate power rankings, where in this biweekly installment we will sort the NBA Cup’s eight-team field of quarterfinalists into so perfect an order it cannot be questioned.
Gone from this list are the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics. In their place are the surging New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks, the upstart Atlanta Hawks and the injury-ravaged Orlando Magic — maybe the only teams capable of keeping Cleveland and Boston from meeting in the Eastern Conference finals.
If the East contingent does not inspire our hopes that the NBA Cup’s single-elimination stage can salvage a confusing start to the tournament, get a load of the West, where the conference’s four best teams may have advanced to the quarterfinals (though the Memphis Grizzlies will not get to make their statement).
Just how much deeper is the West than the East? Let these power rankings be our guide.
The Magic may have been the East’s best NBA Cup bet if they had either Franz Wagner or Paolo Banchero. They are outscoring opponents by 9.6 points per 100 meaningful possessions when Wagner is on the floor without Banchero, and they are outscoring opponents by 5.6 points per 100 meaningful possessions when Banchero is on without Wagner, per Cleaning the Glass.
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And Orlando might have challenged the West’s winner if it were fully healthy. The Magic are rich with the type of talent teams accumulate when they are in and around the draft lottery year after year, and they have the two players they need to lead them. Both Wagner and Banchero have flashed All-NBA ability in stints at the helm of a rising contender. It is about harnessing it now.
But both tore right obliques, and Orlando has performed like an 18-win team without the pair. The team we see in this tournament will (hopefully) not be the one Orlando unleashes in April.
The Hawks are still the Hawks, capable of playing as poorly as they play well. They still have Trae Young and all the strengths and weaknesses that come with employing him at the top of the roster. And they are still fighting to avoid their annual entry into the play-in tournament.
Only now Atlanta’s inconsistency is an encouraging sign. They are relying heavily on Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels and Zaccharie Risacher, all under 24 years old. Growing pains are part of their development, but there are few teams — barely any — that would not swap wings with the Hawks, and Dominique Wilkins was around the last time anyone might have claimed that.
It was good enough to get them here as winners of a group that included both the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers. This single-elimination tournament will be good practice for a return to the playoffs, for there is hope in Atlanta again for the first time in the longest time.
Remember when we dove deep into 3-point specialists and encouraged Milwaukee to play A.J. Green more often? Doc Rivers listened, and Green is rewarding him (48.2% on 8.7 3PA per 36 minutes). The Bucks are 11-5 when Green plays 15-plus minutes and 1-6 when he plays fewer.
Green’s increased role has coincided with Milwaukee’s 10-3 turnaround from a 2-8 start. The Bucks have climbed above .500 and into position for a guaranteed playoff berth. Their net rating is north of zero (0.9), and Khris Middleton made his season debut just in time for this tourney.
All signs point to a team that is prepared to make an NBA Cup statement. Except remember when we dove deep into schedule strength and discovered Milwaukee had not played anybody. The Bucks are 2-8 against teams with winning records and 4-7 on the road, the combination of which makes them championship pretenders. A run in this tournament might change our minds.
Tom Thibodeau reminds us at every turn that his Knicks cannot compete for a championship if their defense does not improve, even as they have won 10 of 13 games. In that span their 123.1 points per 100 possessions lead the league, but their defensive rating remains below average.
The porous defense is a feature, not a bug, since the Knicks employ Karl-Anthony Towns as their starting center, and they do not have an elite rim-protecting reserve to mask his shortfall. Towns has been an offensive juggernaut, and New York has followed suit, but in the back of our minds we have to wonder if the Knicks can get stops when they need to. And they will need to.
Can you win the NBA Cup with a subpar defense? And if you cannot, what must New York’s front office think of its chances in the playoffs? This tournament could be the impetus for another call to Portland, where the lottery-bound Blazers’ frontcourt is overcrowded with capable bigs.
The Rockets would have hoped that Jalen Green, their highly drafted wing, might have begun to realize his All-Star potential by now. Maybe then they could have rewarded him with a maximum contract. Instead they signed him to a three-year, $106 million extension, and his production early this season — an inefficient 19.5 points per game — has confirmed the team’s reluctance.
Meanwhile Houston has established itself as a fringe contender this season, owners of the NBA’s second-rated defense. And the Rockets are 11.9 points per 100 possessions better when Green is off the floor. If only they had a more dependable scorer to aid their middling offense.
It is not surprising that Green is the subject of trade rumors, as Houston searches for its next superstar. And it may seem silly to use the NBA Cup quarterfinals as a test case for whether or not to pull the trigger on a deal. But if the Rockets discover Green is a detriment to their success in this tournament, why should they think anything would change when it comes to playoff time?
There has been much discussion about Steve Kerr’s 12-man rotation. The approach has never yielded championship results. It was surprisingly effective to start the season, as everyone was fresh for his minutes, which is not such a bad idea when your best players are in their mid-30s, but there have been some signs of slippage in recent weeks for all the reasons we had figured.
“It’s hard as hell, no two ways around it,” Curry said of his coach’s tactic. “The only thing I’ll say is it is hard for anybody to try and get a rhythm and know what you’re going to be asked to do.”
It will be fascinating to see if Kerr pares his rotation for the NBA Cup quarterfinals, as if he is preparing for the playoffs, because even the Warriors concede that they will not go so deep in the postseason. (Their rotation dwindled to 10 in their most recent NBA Cup game against the Denver Nuggets.) And if Kerr finds success with a winnowed rotation, will the front office seize that as their opportunity to trade multiple assets for a single, better one (i.e., Zach LaVine)?
If you are wondering whether heliocentrism can produce an NBA champion, consider this: Nobody has ever won a championship with a usage rate higher than 34.7%. Only Michael Jordan has won rings with a usage rate higher than 32.5% — the standard at which Giannis Antetokounmpo captured his Larry O’Brien trophy in 2021. And why am I telling you this?
Well, Luka Dončić’s usage rate, which led the league in three of the past four seasons, when he used an average of 36.7% of his team’s possessions, has dipped this season to 32.8%. Since Nov. 16, when Dallas began its current streak of 11 wins in 12 games, his usage rate is down to 29.5%, and he did not even play in five of those games. Is he releasing his grip on the offense?
And does he tighten it when the stakes are raised in the NBA Cup quarterfinals? Does he revert to the ball-dominant brand he played in the NBA Finals, when (again) he used 36.7% of the Mavericks’ possessions, and they lost in five games? This tournament will provide an early window into whether Jason Kidd wants to play any differently when they return to the playoffs.
Since the 2016-17 season, when for the first time teams attempted an average of 25 3s a game, no team has posted a defensive rating lower than 100. Except OKC is allowing fewer than 100 points per 100 possessions whenever either Chet Holmgren or Isaiah Hartenstein is on the floor.
The Thunder have navigated games without either of their rim protectors, outscoring opponents by eight points per 100 possessions in their absence — on the backs of a rabid small-ball outfit. Imagine how terrifying their defense will be when Mark Daigneault can stagger his big men for a full 48 minutes and occasionally field both at once. They might be the best defense of this era.
They will have to settle solely for Hartenstein throughout the remainder of the NBA Cup, as Holmgren recuperates from a pelvic fracture. And if they can navigate this Western Conference field in a single-elimination tournament now, what hope do those teams have of eliminating them from a seven-game series if both of Oklahoma City’s bigs are anchoring its defense come April?
