Less Is More: Breaking Down Second-Tier NBA Contenders
With the NBA season cresting its first third, the time for fun and games has (mostly) passed. While exciting surprises like the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies are still punching above their weight, the league has begun to shake itself into the contendership strata that will take us the rest of the season. Teams that started the year white hot have settled back down to earth, while some that had sluggish starts have crept back into the standings.
As it stands, there are three teams that clearly stand out as ‘true’ contenders: the top-seeded Brooklyn Nets in the Eastern Conference, and the top-two Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors in the West. With Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson still yet to see the court for the Nets and Warriors, respectively, it feels safe to lock these teams in as the cream of the league’s crop. The group after that is far more amorphous, and less dependent on record. Some teams have uninspiring records, but clear paths to improve, like the Sixers. The Bucks and Lakers have earned a seat at the table by virtue of having won a title with their core group, even as Los Angeles continues to flounder around .500. Cleveland and Memphis have records that suggest they should be in this company, but their lack of experience makes it hard to put much faith in them beyond a first-round appearance.
Today we’ll be taking a look at four teams that have some claim to belonging in this second tier of contendership: the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat in the East, and the Utah Jazz and Denver Nuggets in the West. They are not the beginning and end of the conversation, but stand out in terms of a team that could be dangerous to face with a fully healthy roster in a seven-game playoff series. Most, but not all, have gone deep in the playoffs within the last two years; most also have a path to be better than what they’ve shown this season (which is, by and large, quite a bit). Who makes it out of the bloodbath? Let’s dig in.
Stats accurate as of December 20th.
Chicago Bulls
Record: 18–10 (2nd in Eastern Conference; 2 games back of Nets)
Net rating: +2.7 (8th)
Offensive/Defensive rating: 11th/7th
Major injuries: Patrick Williams (presumed out for regular season)
I was low on the Bulls coming into the season, failing to see how their disparate offensive weapons would fit together nor how their roster would yield an above-average defensive unit; I was wrong on both counts. At age 32, DeMar DeRozan is taking on the highest usage rate of his career, while also putting up numbers — both traditional and advanced — that rank near the top of any season he’s played with either Toronto or San Antonio. Despite the new addition, Zach LaVine is just as productive as ever, creating a genuinely potent 1–2 punch that rivals that of the league’s great dynamic duos. The bigger surprise has been their defence, which remains top 10 in the league despite starting three net-negative defensive players in DeRozan, LaVine, and Nikola Vucevic, thanks to new hires Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball in the starting lineup. They’ve also gotten more help than they might have expected for Derrick Jones Jr. and hometown rookie Ayo Dosunmu.
In many ways the Bulls play like a team out of time. They attempt the second-highest proportion of two-point shots in the NBA, but don’t convert them at an elite clip. They’re top five in 3-point percentage, despite shooting fewer than any team other than the Spurs. They’re only average at getting to the free throw line, but shoot them at elite levels once they get there. In short, nothing about them jumps off the page, but the results speak for themselves; there’s nothing to suggest flukiness in their results either, like a lot of wins against basement dwellers or an unsustainable record in close games. Combine that with the throwback aesthetics of DeRozan’s triple-threat midrange game and Vucevic’s high-post hub play, and you have a potent recipe for your uncle’s favourite team.
If there’s a big loser in all the winning, it has to be Vucevic, who has gone ice cold from the field, averaging more shots (15.4 per game) than points (15.3) for the season. It’s still very possible that the Bulls live to regret acquiring Vooch for Wendell Carter Jr. and a pick that became Franz Wagner, but it hasn’t hampered Chicago in any meaningful way just yet. With the Bulls well on track to hit 50 wins for the first time since 2014–15, when they were the only team in the East to take games off of the Cavs in the playoffs. Making it to round two and causing trouble for a team like Brooklyn or Milwaukee would be a strong, if not totally exciting, end to a year that is already outperforming expectations.
Denver Nuggets
Record: 15–14 (6th in Western Conference; 0.5 games back of LA Clippers)
Net rating: +0.3 (15th)
Offensive/Defensive rating: 14th/17th
Major injuries: Michael Porter Jr. (presumed out for regular season); Jamal Murray (no timetable to return; likely to return for playoffs)
By the numbers, the Nuggets don’t belong in this camp. But when discussing this crop of contenders — which included teams like Atlanta, Philly, Memphis, and Dallas — no name came up more frequently as a team you wouldn’t want to face when healthy. And excluding a surprise return from Kawhi Leonard, the Nuggets stand to gain the most of any mid-tier team just by getting healthy. While MPJ is in the “would be very surprising if he returned at any point this season” along with Kawhi, there’s a good chance Jamal Murray would be available in a playoff series.
Of course, the last time Nikola Jokic and Murray were both healthy in the playoffs was Denver’s Western Conference Finals run in 2020, where they came back from 3–1 down against both the Jazz and Clippers before falling to the eventual champion Lakers. While there are substantial differences between the two rosters, it’s certainly not inconceivable that the Nuggets could replicate some degree of their success in the bubble. While they are middling on both sides of the ball for now, Murray’s return will of course be a major boon to their offence, and the Nuggets were just the 16th-rated regular season defence in 2019–20. Statistically speaking, the two teams share plenty of DNA. The biggest outlier is offensive rebounding, where the Nugs dropped from 2nd in 2019–20 to 28th in 2021–22, spurred at least partly by the departure of interior players like Paul Millsap and JaVale McGee.
The even bigger wild card is Porter. While his timetable is even more elusive than Murray’s with few comparables for the lumbar spine surgery he underwent at the start of December, it’s conceivable, if highly unlikely, that he could appear in the playoffs. Murray’s sidelining helped to spur Porter towards the 20–25 PPG scorer he was for the second half of last season, and being able to leverage all three of their primary offensive weapons in tandem would elevate the Nuggets’ offence to a level that we haven’t seen from them yet. With a strong supporting cast in place, particularly with the addition of Jeff Green, this is a team that could have real upset potential in a first-round matchup.
Miami Heat
Record: 18–13 (5th in Eastern Conference; 0.5 games back of Bucks)
Net rating: +3.1 (6th)
Offensive/Defensive rating: 7th/9th
Major injuries: Bam Adebayo (out 2–4 weeks)
The Heat made their intentions clear on Opening Night, obliterating their recently-crowned rivals, the Bucks, by 40 points. They quickly jumped out to a 6–1 record, with all their wins coming by 13 points or more. Over time, however, injuries and COVID protocols began to interfere. Miami’s league-best stifling defence fell off slightly, and so did the winning, with the team posting a 5–5 record in the month of December. It’s probably not a coincidence that the Heat haven’t been able to play their preferred starting lineup — Kyle Lowry, Duncan Robinson, Jimmy Butler, PJ Tucker, and Bam Adebayo — since November 27th. But the Heat weren’t world-beaters even with that lineup, compiling a 9–5 record.
On the court, Miami has more or less lived up to expectations. Their veteran lineup plays at the slowest pace in the NBA, with an egalitarian system that ranks near the top of the league in assist rate. Despite having multiple non-shooters in their core lineup and dealing with an underperforming Robinson, they’re still near the top of the league in 3-point percentage. But this is a team that hangs their hat on defence, and it’s there that they’ve consistently delivered. While Miami allows a league-high proportion of 3-point shots, they are also tops at limiting attempts within 10 feet of the basket, and allow opponents to shoot just 34.4% on shots beyond 15 feet. Playing largely without Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo for the last three weeks has no doubt dropped them below where they belong, and the Heat have the chance to be one of the most stifling playoff defences we’ve seen in recent memory.
More than any other fringe contender, Miami has the space to argue that they belong in the top tier of contenders. They were in that league at the start of the year, and no team has been affected as significantly by COVID-related absences, much as they were in their disappointing 2020–21 campaign that ended in a first-round sweep. This is still a squad that went to the Finals with a largely similar core just two seasons ago, and just added two champions to their lineup in Lowry and Tucker. While they can’t necessarily claim the same championship pedigree that the Bucks or Lakers can, there’s no question this team has a deep playoff run in them and will force any opponent to earn their victory.
Utah Jazz
Record: 20–9 (3rd in Western Conference; 3.5 games back of Warriors)
Net rating: +10.6 (1st)
Offensive/Defensive rating: 1st/6th
Major injuries: None
How, you ask, can the team with the best net rating in the NBA not be a top-tier contender? One of only three teams, alongside the Warriors and Suns, to rank in the top six in both offensive and defensive rating? A team that has lost by double digits just once, and has a 1–4 record in games decided by three points or fewer? Well, you be the Utah Jazz, that’s how.
Indeed, by many metrics the Jazz are a truly elite squad. They score the most points in the league, probably because they have the best field goal percentage in the league. They shoot the most threes and hit a blistering 37% of them, the only team besides the Warriors to be top 10 in both rate and efficiency. Their defence, which many dismissed as ‘solved’ after their second round collapse against the Clippers, continues to stymie teams in the regular season; if their current mark holds, it will be the sixth time in seven seasons that they are a top-seven defensive team. Rumours spread in the offseason that Utah would move a core piece in order to cut costs. It never happened, and they replaced outgoing role players Georges Niang and Derrick Favors with Rudy Gay and Hassan Whiteside, who have produced admirably. They’ve had good fortune too, avoiding the COVID bug that has decimated half the teams in the league, including the Nets, Bulls, and Warriors.
So why doubt the Jazz? Call it a gut feeling, call it an ‘it factor’, call it ‘fraudulence’ if you are a Twitter denizen. It seems trite, but there are only so many chances you can give to a team before you start asking for some kind of proof. And as good as the Jazz have been in the regular season, especially over the last two seasons, they simply need to show more now. Back in 2019, after the Jazz had suffered back-to-back playoff losses to the Houston Rockets, I defended them. Sure, Rudy Gobert had been all but played off the floor at times against Houston, who ran him ragged on the perimeter and forced him into uncomfortable switches with some of the league’s elite perimeter threats. But those Rockets were made to neutralise interior big men like Gobert with their five-out offensive lineup; very few teams in the league could muster that kind of personnel. Then came their devastating 3–1 choke against the Nuggets. Then their frankly embarrassing loss to an undermanned Clippers team, with Gobert putting up a team-worst -24 in Game 6 while being torched by the likes of Reggie Jackson and Terance Mann.
For the second consecutive year, Utah will be a statistically elite team. There’s a good chance they’ll have the league’s top net rating, just as they did last year. There’s a good chance they’ll win over 70% of their games, and continue to trot out a devastating long range offence, just like last year. But this time I won’t be falling for it. It’s entirely possible that Utah is not just a contender, but the best team in basketball — but I’ll believe it when I see it.
