6 teams and players I was wrong about

...so far

Here at Basketball Poetry, we believe in accountability. I say a whole lot of things about basketball, and some turn out to be wrong! (Not many, please don’t unsubscribe.)

This week, while the league pauses to catch its breath during the NBA Cup, felt like a good time to take stock of the players and teams who have spent the early part of the season making me look foolish, one way or another.

Michael Porter Jr.

Everyone expected MPJ to get up around 25 points per game (he’s nearly at 26 right now). But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone (certainly not me) who thought he could do it on the best true shooting he’s had in five years while acting as an honest-to-god floor raiser for a Nets team designed to lose games.

A full 25% of MPJ’s buckets have been unassisted, by far the highest rate of his career, but it rarely feels like he’s forcing it. The Nets’ offense doesn’t have a lot of punch, so it’s perfectly acceptable for him to rummage around in his midrange bag from time to time:

MPJ has been an efficient high-volume scorer while being, if not a good defender, at least at the level he’s always been. He’s doubled his previous career-high in assist rate (16.6% from 8.4% last season). And he and Noah Clowney lead the Nets in on/off point differential. When those two play together, they outscore opponents by a surprisingly robust +3.9 points per 100 possessions; whenever either one of those two players sits, they go from “pretty good” to “apocalyptically bad”.

Porter has been so good, in fact, that the team will need to figure out some way to cut his playing time to avoid last year’s fate of starting too strong for an effective tank. Players making as much as Porter ($79 million in the next two years) are very difficult to trade to apron-strapped contenders, and there are still concerns about his maturity (see: any podcast appearance this summer), defense, and health.

But there’s a chance Porter makes the All-Star team this year. Scoring, shooting, and size are always a helpful combination. I can’t imagine the Nets would ask for much in return, given that Porter has become antithetical to their short-term goals (although I do think teams underestimate how helpful it is for development to have a tentpole scorer to lean on, a soon-to-be-healthy Cam Thomas will be ready to step into that role when and if it becomes available). We’ll see if this shiny apple is tempting enough for someone to take a swing.

Los Angeles Clippers and Tyus Jones

I’m lumping the Clippers and Tyus Jones together here. They share nothing in real life besides a bowl of cold disappointment, but these are also the two entities I’m most ashamed of overhyping because I saw it coming.

I started the title of my summer preview of LA with “The Clippers learned nothing.” If I’d stopped there, I’d be looking pretty darn smart! In a league obsessed with pace, athleticism, and youthfulness, the Clippers went all-in the other direction. But the fingers kept moving, and I finished the title with “I’m into their summer anyway.”

I’ve sure hated their autumn.

Minus the Leonard/Balmer/Aspiration stuff, the article basically projects exactly what happened to the team. They got old, and the wheels fell off with a quickness. I figured some of their role players would age into irrelevance; I didn’t realize it was gonna happen to almost all of them simultaneously.

Meanwhile, I literally made a meme about people falling for the narrative of Tyus Jones, Impact-Maker, and then I did it anyway:

I’m embarrassed.

Jones has been woeful shooting from beyond the arc, something he’s excelled at for years, and his defensive deficiencies are even more glaring when juxtaposed with the wild animal Jalen Suggs and tenacious Anthony Black.

Overall, the Clippers are several games behind the Trail Blazers and Mavericks for the last play-in spot, and Jones has been surpassed in the rotation by the ascending Black. It’s early enough both Jones and LA could turn their season around, but it’s late enough that I’m confident they won’t.