NBA season is about a month away. Well, the preseason is anyway. In 30 short days, we will have NBA basketball to fill our minds and these pages with highlights and storylines and ridiculousness. OK, maybe the ridiculousness is always in the NBA.
Pretty soon, we will all drop down our $150-plus for NBA League Pass so we can be covered in basketball from October until June at all times of the day (you cannot watch every 7 p.m. game live, you have to catch the re-airs at 11 p.m. and then 9 a.m. the next morning!).
With League Pass, half the battle is figuring out which games to watch and properly planning your night to maximize the basketball entertainment. You have to figure out which teams to avoid.
The team you should most avoid, according to Adi Joseph and Sean Highkin of USA TODAY: Phoenix Suns.
Dragic, Gortat and Bledsoe all would be role players on good teams. Here, they will be asked to be the stars. The Suns may have the worst-constructed roster in basketball, and watching Dragic and Bledsoe take shots that no one else is more qualified to take won't be pretty.
Beware of ugly basketball indeed. This is a team that is certainly in the "Riggin' for Wiggins" contest. The Suns finished with the worst record in the Western Conference and did little to inspire confidence they would do anything else this year. Sure, the Suns acquired Eric Bledsoe, but he is unproven as a first scoring option and no one is quite sure if that is the best role for him.
Other than that, the two leading returning scorers are Goran Dragic (14.7 PPG) and Marcin Gortat (11.1 PPG). Luis Scola and Michael Beasley are gone and many people believe Phoenix's first round pick, Alex Len, has bust written all over him. It is not fair to give him that label yet, but it seems hard to find any way for anyone on this roster to succeed much.
The odds are long the Suns will do much better than the worst record in the West once again.
But least watchable team in the NBA? That question deserves some examining.
Eric Bledsoe should be good for a few highlights per game. And, having watched him for years in Orlando, Marcin Gortat is always entertaining. There will not be a lot of scoring, but at least there is a reason to watch.
My pick for least watchable team is the Philadelphia 76ers. This team, after all, is still below the payroll floor and has to spend money just to avoid that penalty!
On the roster now are holdovers from Doug Collins' mid-range jump-shooting monstrosity which slogged down in the Playoffs. The top returning scorer is Thaddeus Young. Evan Turner still plays for them. And their top first round pick, Nerlens Noel, is out with a torn ACL until at least December.
Like the Suns, the Sixers simply will not score points. And tehre is not a whole lot to work with on the roster. At least with Phoenix, there is the question of how Eric Bledsoe will develop and some pieces that could contribute in the long run. Philadelphia appears to be building from scratch — and the team has the payroll to support that belief.
No matter which team is least watchable . . . I doubt we will be talking about or watching them much in a month's time.
