The NBA season has worked its way to Christmas Day and the New Year is right around the corner. It’s been a year full of surprises with some good and some bad. Let’s reflect and see which teams or players have been the biggest disappointments this season:
1. Charlotte Hornets
This is an easy, easy call from a team perspective. The Hornets play in a weak Eastern Conference to start with and they are failing to take advantage. Secondly, they were a playoff team a season ago that acquired Lance Stephenson from the Indiana Pacers and was supposed to be better than it was last season. Instead, the Hornets have regressed in a big way.
They improved their roster but have somehow gone backward. That’s a shocking development considering the team’s ability to overachieve and surprise everyone last season. At this point, the Hornets are a measly 9-19 and they need answers quickly. One answer might be to move Stephenson, who has disrupted the team chemistry, but doesn’t anyone even want to trade for him at this point? We’ll have to wait and see as the Hornets were supposed to be a team on the rise but they’ve been one of the league’s biggest underachievers.
2. Brooklyn Nets
Nobody was expecting the Nets to be a championship contender this season but more than 12-15 was expected. After all, this is a veteran team that won a round in the playoffs last season without big man Brook Lopez in the lineup. With him and a perceived upgrade at coach with Lionel Hollins, the expectation was that they’d at least be a solid 45-win team. However, they’re already waiving the white flag. They’ve thrown up Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Lopez on the trade block – not that anyone wants to take on their under massive contracts – but that just goes to show that the team is planning to break it down. While it makes sense in the long term, it’s undeniable that the Nets are one of this season’s biggest disappointments.
3. Phoenix Suns
The Suns have a story similar to what the Hornets offer. The Suns didn’t make the playoffs last season (whereas Charlotte did), but they won 48 games and were supposed to be better this season. They added more playmaking in the back court with Isaih Thomas and were supposed to be more able to run the quick-hitting and effective offense that powered them to such a breakthrough in 2014 under first-year head coach Jeff Hornacek. However, the 2014-15 season hasn’t been as kind.
The Suns are still scoring, but their defense has become a pronounced liability, giving up 103.1 points per game. This team is not handling a number of winnable home games, losing to the likes of Milwaukee and Miami and Detroit, among several others. These given-away games are going to catch up with the Suns later on. Oklahoma City is on the verge of passing the Suns in the Western Conference standings. The Suns sit at just 16-14 on Christmas Day, which is disappointing because many expected them to climb the ladder in the West but they haven’t.
4. New York Knicks
One New York team has gone from good to mediocre while the other one has gone from bad to worse. There was so much optimism this offseason when the New York Knicks managed to hold on to superstar Carmelo Anthony even though so many other teams were courting him. And then the team also brought in pedigree, tabbing Phil Jackson and all of his rings to run the front office. The arrow was supposed to be pointed up.
However, this Knicks team has now lost 16 of their last 17 games and simply has no clue what they’re doing on the basketball court. It’s shocking to look at the standings and see that the Philadelphia 76ers, a team that’s tanking and has hardly any NBA-level talent, is only one game behind the Knicks in the standings.
Knicks fans were expecting a rebuild but they had figured their team had already bottomed out. Apparently not.
