Though the calendar has flipped to the new year, we’ve barely left port with the 2020-21 NBA season.
With seven games being the most any team has completed, we are still very much in an information-gathering part of the campaign and it’s difficult to accurately make judgments and group teams properly.
But, as usual, we’ll try with the latest edition of the NBA Tier List.
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Early frontrunners
At 5-1 and the boasting the best defence in the NBA by far with a defensive rating of 99.7, the Philadelphia 76ers are the cream of the Eastern Conference crop right now and there’s not much room for debate.
In the West, things are a little more muddled, but the two Los Angeles teams have jumped out to strong early starts with the somewhat surprising Phoenix Suns not lagging far behind.
The Suns made their intentions clear that they wanted to make a big push after their bubble success by acquiring Chris Paul and so far he’s helped transform them into one of the best teams in the NBA and looks to be the exact kind of veteran leader they need to turn Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton from just talented players into bona fide stars.
Top-tier contenders
There was temptation to put teams like the Atlanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz into the top tier as they’ve gotten out to fantastic starts, but we’d just like to see more from each of them before we’re comfortable crowning them as the league’s elite.
Additionally, in the case of the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks, the expectation is that they too can be among the very best in the league, but just don’t sport the records at the moment to support that claim.
Essentially, all of the teams at this level are good and some of them could very well end up in the top tier when we know more about each of them as the season progresses.
Are you really what your record says you are?
The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic are both 4-2, the New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors are 3-3, and the Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks are both 2-4.
Will these clubs really continue to trend in the direction that they appear to be going in?
The Mavericks look like they might possibly have a Luka Doncic injury situation on their hands, but it’s hard to tell, so they might be in trouble. Plus, on Sunday, Stephen Curry exploded for a career-high 62 in a big win over the Portland Trail Blazers to provide hope that perhaps his brilliance will be able to carry the Dubs despite the fact they own the second-worst net rating in the NBA right now.
Simply put, we have to see more from these nine clubs.
You could be good, but right now you aren’t
The records for all of these teams will tell you that none of these clubs are particularly good at the moment, but looking at their rosters, there’s a glimmer of hope that this is just an early-season blip for each of them and that they can and will turn it around.
Take the Toronto Raptors, for example. While they’re a different team from the the one that finished with the second-best record in the NBA last season, they still aren’t all that different and just need some players — like Pascal Siakam — to return to the standard of play they were at in 2019-20 to get back on track.
Or how about the Washington Wizards? The talent in that backcourt is undeniable with Bradley Beal once again looking like a scoring machine and Russell Westbrook once more averaging a triple-double, but the team needs to play better defence if it’s going to cash in on it’s star power.
The season isn’t even 10 games deep so there’s plenty of time for each of these clubs to turn things around, no matter how grim things are looking right now.
The bottom
What was looking like it might be a promising season for the Memphis Grizzlies feels like it’s been lost before it even really got started.
The team already tipped off without rising star forward Jaren Jackson Jr. — out with a knee injury — and now has lost 2020 Rookie of the Year Ja Morant for about 3-5 weeks with an ankle sprain.
These are the Grizzlies’ two best players and without them for an extended period of time, their campaign may already be dead in the water.
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