It is the afternoon of Wednesday, November 11, just two full weeks into the new NBA season. Teams have generally played seven to nine games at this point.
Naturally, any team with a 1-6 or 1-7 record has lost at least three games in a row. Yet, what’s utterly fascinating about the young season, just two weeks in, is that a lot of teams near the .500 mark have found a way to fail in one of those two weeks and succeed the next.
It’s true: A lot of NBA teams have binged on both success and failure in these first two weeks, veering from one end of the spectrum to the other. This magnifies how volatile the month of November can be, as teams tinker with their rotations and the underdogs haven’t been worn down — physically or mentally — by the long slog to come in December and January.
*
It’s a bit jarring, or at least something which makes you go “HMMMM.”
The Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers, New Orleans Pelicans, Los Angeles Lakers, and Sacramento Kings all have no more than one win right now. They have obviously lost at least three games in a row at some point in these first two weeks. The drama of this story does not directly concern them.
What’s noteworthy about the first fortnight of NBA regular-season competition is the number of three-game losing streaks it has produced among teams with records at or near the break-even point.
The 3-5 Memphis Grizzlies; the 4-3 Houston Rockets; and even the 5-3 Oklahoma City Thunder have all lost three games in a row. Jekyll-and-Hyde basketball has made its way to the Western Conference in early November.
Naturally, one would expect the East to be more volatile than the West, so in that sense, this next collection of facts won’t blow you away. However, it remains rather remarkable simply for its scope:
Believe it or not (it is true, but we’ll give you time to wrap your mind around it), of the 12 Eastern Conference teams with at least three losses, only two — the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat — have not lost at least three games in a row, not even 10 games into the season.
The Toronto Raptors started 5-0, but they’re now 5-3 after losing to the New York Knicks on Tuesday night. (The loss also means that only three teams are unbeaten at home. Two weeks have eliminated a clean sheet, to use a soccer term, for 27 of the league’s 30 arenas. All but three have been conquered in a very short period of time.)
The very same Knicks who are moving up the ladder did drop three straight games around a week ago. The Milwaukee Bucks started 0-3 but have made their way to a 4-4 record. The Indiana Pacers have done the exact same thing.
The 3-3 Boston Celtics won a game, lost three in a row, and have won their next two games. The Washington Wizards, after getting seal-clubbed by the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night, are sitting on an active three-game downturn.
The Charlotte Hornets started 0-3 before rebounding to move to 3-4. The Orlando Magic started 0-3 before scrambling to attain a 3-5 record.
All in all, 10 Eastern Conference teams have already managed to fit a three-game losing streak into the young season. Six Western Conference teams have quickly tasted the same experience. That’s 16 total teams, a majority of the league. Excluding the five bottom-feeders in Brooklyn, Philly, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, 11 teams within two games of .500 (above or below) have lost three straight.
That’s surprising, even for the most seasoned NBA observer.
*
The point to underscore here is not that teams are inconsistent in November — they will be. That’s part of life in the NBA. This sport becomes a different beast in January and then in the middle of March as well. Different pressures, different levels of familiarity with said pressures, different roster compositions before and after the trade deadline — they enter into the workings of an NBA season in ways November doesn’t replicate.
The point is not the inconsistency, then. It will always exist at this time of year. The main takeaway from the opening two weeks of the new NBA season is that the inconsistency is not emerging so much on a night-to-night basis as it is emerging in streaks.
The composition of the schedules has something to do with this, but not everything. It’s easy to say that teams are enduring one bad night, or that they’re enjoying one great night, but that’s not the case. Teams are going through bad six- or seven-day periods, followed by highly successful six-day periods (or vice-versa).
It’s a yo-yo dynamic found in 11 different league teams (more than one -third, and nearly 40 percent) after only two weeks.
It’s certainly something to keep in mind for the long journey ahead of us.
