The Grip - TUES 10.16.18

An Optimist’s Guide to the 2018 Season: Southeastern Division

October 16, 2018

An NBA-obsessed newsletter for the info-craved basketball mind.

10.16.18

  Written while listening to Pete Rock’s Square One

Good news! You can stop pretending you care about baseball

The NBA season is back, which means the league’s PR machine is going to start bathing us in semi-organic rivalries. Here’s some info on each of the two games tonight.

When: 8 p.m. ESTHow: TNTNotable: Markelle Fultz will start.Read: S.I. on Kyrie Irving | ESPN on The Process’s next step 

When: 10:30 p.m. ESTHow: TNTNotable: Russell Westbrook will not play.Read: The Undefeated on Draymond and Boogie | S.I. on Paul George

An Optimist's Guide to the 2018 Season

Twelve of thirty NBA teams finished under .500 last season. But hey, with a new year comes new hope. Our guide will encourage such optimism while also reminding you of the bad parts. Let’s dive into the Eastern Conference’s Southeastern Division. 

What’s bad:

since hitting on Kemba Walker at No. 9 in the 2011 draft.

2012: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (No. 2)2013: Cody Zeller (No. 4)2014: Noah Vonleh (No. 9), Shabazz Napier (No. 24)2015: Frank Kaminsky (No. 9)2016: Malachi Richardson (No. 22)2017: Malik Monk (No. 11)2018: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (No. 11) 

Two things: 

No. 1: Those guys mostly suck.

No. 2: In the 2015 draft, Danny Ainge desperately wanted Justise Winslow, who was picked by Miami at No. 10. Ainge called Michael Jordan and offered two of his Nets picks, but Jordan was in love with Frank Kaminsky -- a prime candidate for someone Jordan would have hated as a player. So, instead, the Hornets now have a goofy white guy instead of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.

What’s depressing: 

It can’t be too long before Adam Silver wakes up and realizes there is an NBA team in Charlotte and not in Seattle. And when he does, boy, is Charlotte going to be READY to convert it's Uptown NBA arena into a pleasant-looking bank HQ. Out front, there will be a plaque. It will read: “The Charlotte Hornets/Bobcats used to play here, which was/were (an) NBA team(s)?”

What’s good: 

OK. Let’s see. HMM. OK. Well….. HMMM. Uhhhhhh. Well Michael Jor.. no, nevermind. Muggsy Bog...no, that won’t do it either. DWIGHT HOWARD’S GONE!! And

, just like

did a year earlier.  

What’s awesome: 

We fired up the old YouTube machine and

about the Hornets coming to town.

(Besides

, being a millennial who likes sports is also too bad because we weren’t alive or cognizant for the firesale expansion of every professional American sports league. It’s like Oprah was out there raining down NBA teams on America in the ‘80s and early ‘90s; did Charlotte, Minneapolis, Toronto, Miami, Vancouver (Memphis) and Orlando really

need

NBA teams?)

What’s bad: 

The Atlanta Hawks. The whole damn thing. The empty arena. The idea to take Trae Young and his major bust potential over Luka Doncic. The fact that

.

Atlanta

Season 3 hasn’t even started production. And that this article --

-- exists. Who is Tyler Dorsey?

What’s depressing: 

In respect to Tyler Dorsey, the entire Hawks roster is a mismatch of people with names spit out of a 2K19 NBA My Player machine: Daniel Hamilton. Alex Poythress. Kevin Huerter. Jaylen Adams. Hopefully none of these names show up on

.

What’s good: 

If you’re in Atlanta and find yourself, for some reason, at one of these games, be prepared

. They’re selling chips for $1, soft pretzels for $2, french fries, hot dogs and nachos for $3, pizza and BOTTOMLESS popcorn for $4, and beer for $5.

What’s hard to categorize: 

Vince Carter is on this team, and

. He and Dirk are the last ones playing from the 1998 NBA Draft. Dirk’s played for one team. Carter is on his eighth and still has never played in the NBA Finals. Think this year’s the year?

What’s bad: 

Any chance to add some spice to this lethargic roster came and went when Pat Riley was unable to pry Jimmy Butler from the cold, sweaty hands of Tom Thibodeau. That deal got close a few different times and reportedly ended when Pat Riley called Thibodeau a motherfucker,

.

What’s depressing: 

Dwyane Wade, who chose Cleveland over Miami to start last year, is playing one final season with the Heat, and that’s the most exciting thing about the 2018-19 season for a team that returned almost exactly the same roster from 2017-18.

If you can sell that to a fanbase that walked out of Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals, then we have an economically inviable NBA newsletter we think you’d be interested in.   

What’s good: 

This surprisingly

of Hassan Whiteside, whose career arc is a parabola even the most hardened Algebra 2 teacher could get excited about. Here are some highlights:

  • During his playing days in China, one of his Chinese teammates taught Whiteside how to say ‘I’m your daddy,’ but told him the phrase meant ‘How are you?’ So the big man spent the season telling every Chinese person he met that he was their daddy.

  • His first professional stop was in Lebanon, but two games into the season his team got in a massive fight with the opponents and the entire season was cancelled.

  • He likes to talk to animals and has a koi pond in his front yard. He calls his koi ‘OGs,’ but also has individual names for all 40 of them.

  • He’s the one who convinced DJ Khaled to get a Snapchat account.

  • He refers to his gardener only as the Man of Ultimate Wisdom.

Read the whole thing here.

What’s promising: 

Josh Richardson -- not Dion Waiters, Justise Winslow, Whiteside, or Wade -- is the most exciting player on this team. There’s a reason Pat Riley was hesitant to include him in the Jimmy Butler sweepstakes.

Richardson is a long, 6-foot-6 defender who shot nearly 40 percent from deep last year. David Santiago put his value in good terms here: “Among the 139 NBA players who played in at least 40 games and defended at least nine shots per game last season, Richardson finished with the seventh-best opponent field-goal percentage at 41.6 percent. He also tallied a team-high 2.6 deflections per game, and recorded a team-high 121 steals while also blocking 75 shots (second-most on the team). He was the only player in the NBA to finish with at least that many steals and blocks.”

What’s bad: 

, D.J. Augustin was the Orlando Magic’s best player in 2017-18.

What’s depressing: 

There was once a time when this franchise was known for star power: Shaq, Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis. Tim Duncan

. The Magic haven’t had a winning season since 2011. Shelvin Mack led the team in assists last year. They paid Jeff Green $15 million two seasons ago. They

plans by accident. Victor Oladipo is a star, and the Magic have nothing to show for him. They’re talking themselves into Nikola Vucevic for the seventh straight year. The most interesting storyline going into the season is that someone made a song

, though we’re not entirely sure it has anything to do with Mo Bamba.

What’s good: 

Hey, Magic fans,

.

And as long as this team still has Aaron Gordon, who they signed this offseason through 2022, there will always be a reason to watch on an NBA reddit stream when your team isn’t playing and this team happens to be the only other one on.  

What’s old but true: 

What’s bad: 

It’s October, which means it’s time for the Washington media to try and keep a straight face while the team promises things that are wildly improbable or flatout stupid, or wildly improbable AND flat out stupid. The rundown:

Austin Rivers, who, yes, is on the Wizards, on the rest of the conference: “Indiana is just as good as both (the Celtics and 76ers). And I think we’re in the same situation.”John Wall, on the same topic: “I put us right there.”Dwight Howard, out of context: "It kinda sucks flying 15 hours curled up in the fetal position.”OK, that wasn’t that stupid. But he’s still out with a recurring pain in his ass.

What’s depressing: 

The Wizards are still looking for their first 50-win

. Besides the Brooklyn Nets, every team that was in the NBA in 1979 has had at least five such seasons since then.

What’s good: 

The 73 fans of this bloviating machine can at least be excited for something notable to happen every night. Will Dwight Howard retire in the middle of a game? Will John Wall and Bradley Beal finally just fist fight? Will Kelly Oubre show up to one game with a Supreme tattoo on his forehead? Will Jeff Green score 50 on back-to-back nights, but average six points per game for the season? Does Wall know Otto Porter is

more than he is this year? When he finds out, will it be mid-huddle? If so, what will he do about it? Freeze him out? Who asks for a trade first?

The 2018-19 Washington Wizards are a prop-betting man’s dream. They have a larger spectrum of variance than any other team.

What’s either endearing or bad, depending on how you look at it: 

Bradley Beal said

by eating in accordance with his girlfriend’s cravings during and after the birth of their first child.

  Quick Hits

 Concrete Reads

  • 37 crazy predictions for the upcoming NBA season [ESPN]

  • Retirement wasn’t easy for former Piston Ben Wallace [The Undefeated]

  • The NBA isn’t big in New Orleans. Problem is, Anthony Davis is huge everywhere else. [WaPo]

  • The heavily favored Warriors are scaring bettors away [ESPN]

  • Coach K shows what college basketball's elite thinks about hoops corruption trial [Yahoo!]