Who's been the most disappointing team in the league this season?
This is not an objective question, "disappointing" having many different starting points (though it's hard to imagine real disappointment in Philly or Brooklyn, two teams hip-deep into rebuilding). Every team not in the playoffs or in the playoff chase is obviously not happy. Even teams that are currently in can believe they should be in a better position.
But the question isn't unfair. Expectations are a real thing, and how a team deals with them is an important part of assessing whether the players, coaches or management in place on a given team has been up to the challenge.
You can take the talk radio approach and say everyone should be fired and/or traded. That's not the suggestion here. One season's disappointment can fuel a resurgence the following year.
Witness how the Raptors have rebounded from getting swept in the first round last year, or how OKC has returned to form after injuries to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook kept the Thunder out of the 2015 playoffs.
There are a few teams who have underachieved this year.
Many people thought the Milwaukee Bucks were ready to take the next step -- including us at NBA TV, who did a Real Training Camp with them in Wisconsin before the start of the season. Milwaukee had come on strong the second half of last season and gave the Bulls a real fight in the first round of the playoffs. The Bucks were long and a defensive menace of a team, with Giannis Antetokounmpo leading the way. They added one of the top free agents on the market last summer in center Greg Monroe.
But the Bucks haven't sustained their momentum. They've fallen off a cliff defensively, dropping from second in Defensive Rating last season (99.3 points per 100 possessions) to 19th this season (105.6). The offense has improved some with Monroe and the return of a healthy Jabari Parker, along with Antetokounmpo taking over for the injured Michael Carter-Williams at the point. But Milwaukee is not going to make the playoffs in an improved (but hardly formidable) Eastern Conference.
At least the Bucks have time on their side: Antetokounmpo, Parker, Khris Middleton, Carter-Williams, rookie guard Rashad Vaughn and reserve big Johnny O'Bryant are all under 25. Maybe we were all just a year or two early in announcing the Bucks' arrival.
Houston is also a prime candidate. The Rockets laid the blame for their poor start at coach Kevin McHale's feet, but Houston has been the same .500-ish group after firing McHale on Nov. 18 that it was before. Coaching isn't the problem. McHale and interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff know what they're doing, and this is basically the same team that made the run to the Western Conference finals last year.
But even though James Harden has established career bests in points, rebounds and assists this season, the Rockets have regressed. Harden Vines have again become all the rage, showing his inattention to defense. Power forward has been a mess all season, with Terrence Jones injured and ineffective in 2015-16 and Houston willing to move Donatas Motiejunas to Detroit in a since-rescinded trade. Josh Smith walked away in the summer to the Clippers, but his return in a January trade hasn't re-awakened his stellar play from last season.
Michael Beasley, fresh off a stint in China, has already become one of the team's best and most important players.
The Rockets have slipped some this season at their bread and butter, 3-pointers. They were 14th in 3-point percentage in 2014-15 (34.8 percent), but rank 22nd (34.4 percent) this season. That's not a catastrophic fall there. Where Houston has gone over a cliff this season is defense.
Last year, the Rockets were sixth in the league in Defensive Rating, allowing 100.5 points per 100 possessions. They were tops in the NBA in defending 3-pointers last season, allowing just 32.2 percent. Their opponent's Effective Field Goal Percentage, which factors in the impact of threes on overall shooting, ranked 24th in the league (.486).
All those numbers are worse this year. Much worse.
Today, Houston is 22nd in both Defensive Rating (106.1 points per 100) and defending 3-pointers, with their opponents' percentage up to 36.3 percent. Their opponents' Effective Field Goal percentage is up to 52.8 -- almost a 180 from last year -- as Houston has gone to eighth worst in that department this season.
It's all left the Rockets in a dogfight with Utah and Dallas for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference.
"We have some really good games, and then we just let up a few," Harden said Tuesday.
"That's kind of been our model all year," he continued. "We just haven't found any consistency, and that's the struggle we've been having. It's the same team. We didn't have a really good start, and it kind of carried throughout the entire year. And a lot of injuries and things like that kind of nagged around. Like I said, it's been tough. These last 10 or so games, we've been better. Just trying to figure it out and get as many wins as we can."
Yet the Washington Wizards is in even worse shape than the Rockets. The Wizards are 2.5 games behind eighth-place Detroit in the East with nine games to play, making them an increasingly long shot playoff team (even though they have the tiebreaker over the Pistons).
This was not supposed to happen. Washington was looking to build on last season, make another extended playoff run, and wait for Kevin Durant to sign on the dotted line. The Wizards gambled, bringing in a bunch of veterans on short deals to preserve cap room for Durant and to eventually extend Bradley Beal. But the gamble, so far, has backfired.
Washington has had its share of injuries, but the failures this season to become a pace-and-space offense -- which directly led to a collapse of a defense that had been one of the league's best the last few years -- are much more to blame.
The Wizards have had a half-dozen inexplicable losses for a team looking to build on a second straight semifinals appearance. Among them: a sweep by the Nuggets this season, a loss to the Bucks just before the All-Star break and home losses to the Lakers, Knicks and Timberwolves, the last in double overtime on Friday after Washington blew a seven-point lead with 2:23 to play. (The Wizards were not helped by an unusual number of missed calls down the stretch.)
"We have too many hangovers," Wizards coach Randy Wittman said Friday. "We win four in a row, you lose five in a row. Then we come right back and win five in a row. Now, what's this (loss) going to be? We play Atlanta back-to-back; they're a good team. They played hard, and they were better than us that night. We were better than them the night before. Now, you've got to end that.
"You've got to win six out of seven, then you've got to make it seven out of eight. And we've had a tough time all year when you've got a (winning) string going, and you lose a tough game, or you lose, and it just carries over. And it carried over (Friday)."
After seeing Paul Pierce and Otto Porter maul the Raptors in the first round last year, and almost pull off an upset of the Hawks in the semifinals with Wall missing three games (broken hand), the Wizards believed they needed to go small and shoot 3-pointers this season.
They benched Nene, who had teamed with Marcin Gortat the previous two years to make Washington almost impregnable in the paint, in favor of Jared Dudley, who was just coming off of back surgery. (It's hardly all Dudley's fault, but even when healthy, he's a very undersized four.)
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