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At some level, horrible players can’t disappoint us. It’s all about expectations, right? The first step to being disappointed is setting the achievement bar somewhere higher than the ground.
So when we talk about the NBA season’s most disappointing players, keep in mind they’ve already done something that had us anticipating some level of success. We react differently when they fall short of our preconceived target; even a performance that might otherwise be characterized as “good” by mere mortals can earn the “disappointing” label. That’s particularly true if, say, a player not only sustained his success in an unbroken string of excellence for two decades but had done so at an exalted, MVP-caliber level well into his late 30s.
This takes us to LeBron James, the soon-to-be 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers superstar who is, by his lofty standards, taking a rare excursion on the struggle bus. While the big news recently is that the Lakers have lost six of eight, including Wednesday’s humiliating 134-93 defeat in Miami, the bigger-picture story comes when you get into the “why”: James doesn’t seem capable of carrying a team by himself anymore … or even in tandem with another superstar.
Coming into the season, we knew this Lakers roster had some massive shortcomings. The lack of a third high-level starter, let alone a fourth and fifth one, and the sea of negative minutes coming from the bench augured that James and Anthony Davis would have to carry a massive burden to get Los Angeles to the playoffs, let alone beyond the first round. After All-NBA-caliber seasons from each a year ago, that didn’t seem like a big ask.
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The part about the rest of the roster, however, has held up: James and Davis are the only Lakers regulars with a PER above 15 or a BPM above 0. But that was the case the past two years, and L.A. not only made the playoffs in each season but also advanced to the 2022 Western Conference finals.
This time around, L.A.’s 12-10 record entering Friday has been built mostly on a soft-ish schedule and good fortune in close games. It masks some horrific underlying numbers — the league’s 23rd-best net rating and 27th-ranked defense — as well as the scary fact that the team has basically been completely healthy. James and Davis have missed one game between them; Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, D’Angelo Russell and rookie Dalton Knecht have only missed nine.
The difference is that we aren’t getting our usual LeBron. If the West coaches picked an All-Star squad right now, I don’t think he’d make the team. And as he closes in on his 40th birthday in a few weeks, we may have to acknowledge James is no longer superhuman, even as he still does things nobody else has done at this age.
James’ 20.6 PER is absurd for age 40, but “for age 40” is doing a lot of work here. It’s a steep decline from last season (23.7) and his lowest since his rookie year. Other metrics are similarly bearing on his impact thus far, from his horrific on-off numbers to the more nerdy advanced numbers that have always ranked him as a top-10 player now having him nowhere close.
At a more basic level, James is doing a lot of things either less often or less well. His points per game average (22.3) is his lowest since his rookie year, and it’s not like he’s offset the decline in buckets by scoring more efficiently. Much has been made about his declining 3-point percentage, but he’s also down to 55.9 percent on 2s with a career-low free-throw rate. For the first time in his career, James is averaging fewer than one dunk per game; he’s also trending toward a career-worst in total turnovers and turnover rate.
His steal rate is another career low and half what it was a year ago; the eye test says James’ brain can’t impact games defensively the way he often did the past two years. Now, in addition to the team-wide transition defense struggles, it’s easier to pick out sequences where he’s stuck in mud on the weak side.
So if we’re coming up with our biggest disappointments from the first quarter of the season, James has to be at the top. He’s the headliner, but here is the rest of my All-Disappointment Team. (Stats current as of Thursday afternoon.):
Mikal Bridges, Knicks
Our Fred Katz and James Edwards have devoted a lot of energy to figuring out what’s wrong with Mikal Bridges, so I won’t rehash everything. Optimists will note the past two games (50 combined points!) have been slightly encouraging.
But still … yikes. The Knicks gave up five first-round picks for a guy who is shooting 33.1 percent from 3 and looks deeply uncomfortable taking them from above the break, has been their worst perimeter defender on many nights and plays like the goal of the game is to never get fouled.
The decline in Bridges’ free-throw rate is particularly jaw-dropping. Just over a year ago, he drew 18 foul shots in a 42-point eruption against the Orlando Magic. Fast forward 12 months, and Bridges has 14 free-throw attempts all season. One of them was on a defensive-three-seconds technical. And it seems to have only become worse lately. Even in his two-game burst of scoring, Bridges only drew one free-throw attempt. He has drawn two shooting fouls in his past 10 games — and remember, he’s playing 40 minutes a night.
Of players with at least 500 minutes played, only Oklahoma City Thunder role player Cason Wallace has a lower free-throw rate than Bridges. In a related story, Bridges’ efficiency numbers aren’t great either, with the paucity of freebies dragging his true shooting percentage down to 55.3 and his PER to 12.6.
Mikal Bridges dives for a loose ball against the Mavericks in Dallas. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
Nearly everything in Philly (except Jared McCain)
It seems wild to think that after the offseason the Sixers had, the guy they took with the 16th pick in the draft could turn out to be the Rookie of the Year, and yet the team would be an abject disaster.
Welp … here we are. Philly is off to a 5-15 start, and only the mess that is the Eastern Conference is keeping it remotely attached to the playoff race.
Superstar center Joel Embiid has played four games, hasn’t looked anywhere close to his old self when he played and is out again with knee soreness with a hazy timeline for his return. It’s not clear if he’s ever going to come back as the same guy, the one who dominated at the offensive end with a mix of jumpers and overpowering drives. And if he does, can he do it for more than a week or two at a time before having to shut it down again?
While it starts and ends with Embiid, let’s not lose sight of the other disappointments. There were hints of this last season, when the Sixers went 16-27 in the non-Embiid games. But that team didn’t have max free agent Paul George, and it would take a torrid hot streak to get these Sixers to 16-27.
Two secondary free-agent targets, Caleb Martin and Kelly Oubre, look like replacement-level players so far, with Martin already falling out of the starting lineup. Eric Gordon, a 35-year-old free-agent pickup, aspires to improve enough to be replacement level. Coach Nick Nurse has had no answers, and maybe the roster just doesn’t have any.
Even All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey has struggled to replicate last season’s breakout that earned him the Most Improved Player award and an All-Star berth. He’s at just 30.5 percent from 3 and 48.8 percent inside the arc.
Philly’s three max players have played less than a full game together. But the more telling stat may be the Maxey-George minutes, which was supposed to be the floor if the Sixers can’t count on Embiid. There have only been 93 minutes of it so far across five games, but the Sixers’ plus-5.0 net rating in that time may be the one glimmer of hope.
GO DEEPER
Rookie Jared McCain, taking inspiration from Stephen Curry, is thriving for the Sixers
Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner, Pacers
Remember how much fun Indiana was six months ago? Um … what happened?
The Pacers are 9-14, the blazing fast attack that tore through the league last year ranks just 18th in offense, and if the playoffs started today, last year’s conference finalist (and NBA Cup finalist!) would barely be clinging to the final Play-In spot.
Haliburton has been the more obvious disappointment, seemingly still struggling with the physical ailments that chipped away at his performance in the second half of last season. (First-half Hali was a thing of wonder, and it sucks more people didn’t see it.)
He’s dipped to 33.3 percent from the 3-point line after being deadly anywhere inside half court a year ago and is shooting 2s so rarely that they stop the game for a small ceremony when he takes one. His 7.8 2-point attempts per 100 possessions are in line with snipers like Keegan Murray (whom we’ll discuss below), Buddy Hield and Cameron Johnson, not an NBA All-Star.
Haliburton is taking the spotlight, but can we talk about Turner? He’s somehow managed to thread the needle of not really going inside the arc much but still committing a ton of turnovers. Turner has 19 bad-pass turnovers in 21 games, according to Basketball-Reference, after he committed 22 all of last season. One suspects this might be a symptom of increased high-low attempts to last year’s late-season pickup Pascal Siakam, but there’s more. Turner also is losing the ball in other ways far more frequently and committing more offensive fouls.
All of this might be understandable if Turner was trying to mash on the block, but his 2-point attempts are markedly down from a year ago, as are his attempts at the rim, and his 15.1-foot average shot distance is a career high.
Sum it up, and Haliburton-Turner units have massively diminished in effectiveness. The same duo that had a plus-8.8 net rating in their minutes together in 2023-24 is now sporting a minus-6.0 this season, and Haliburton-Turner have played more as a duo than all but eight pairs in the league.
The surging Hawks have won five straight. Ca-Caw! But the amazing part is that they’ve done it even as Trae Young continues to post some of the worst shooting numbers of his career. In Wednesday’s impressive road win at Milwaukee, for instance, Young was just 6 of 19 from the floor and missed all nine of his 3-point attempts.
Hampered by a sore Achilles for most of the season, Young has seen his shooting percentages dip everywhere — his 2-point and 3-point percentages (46.4 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively) are career lows, and his free-throw rate is his lowest since his rookie year. The only shot type that hasn’t declined is dunks — he’s still holding level at zero. More seriously, he’s also pushing to lead the league in turnovers and is at a career-worst on a per-possession basis.
Young has offset that with some positives; he’s leading the league in assists, and while the comparison bar couldn’t be lower, his defense has definitely improved from two years ago. That said, the Hawks depend on him to be their offensive engine and are only 19th on that end as he labors.
In Atlanta, everything revolves around Trae Young. (Brett Davis / Imagn Images)
I get that nobody is watching the Wizards, but if you happen to stumble across one of their games, it doesn’t take long to hit you: What the heck are some of these shots Kyle Kuzma is taking?
Even by his thirsty standard of recent years, this has been some breathtaking stuff. Perhaps the surrounding talent is somewhat to blame; somebody has to shoot on this team, and the shot chart shows Kuzma is 14 of 37 in floater range. In other words, a lot of forays to the rim haven’t quite reached their destination.
Even open jumpers have been a struggle, however, and the result has been incredibly ineffective. Kuzma has a 9.9 PER and 47.6 percent true shooting, and it hasn’t just been because of cold 3-point shooting; he’s at 48.8 percent even inside the arc. An already tanktastic Wizards offense plummets to a 97.0 offensive rating in his minutes.
Kuzma has missed a few games, so his sample isn’t quite as large as some others on this list, but the notion that Washington could get value for the remaining three years and $64 million on his deal seems increasingly improbable.
Sacramento is 24th in 3-point frequency and 25th in percentage, and that wasn’t supposed to happen because the Kings had two knockdown shooters on the wing to stop defenses from crowding De’Aaron Fox, Domantas Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan.
Instead, Keegan Murray and Kevin Huerter are clanging bricks to the tune of identical 28.7 percent marks from the 3-point line and starving for other opportunities while the Kings’ big three dominates the ball. Huerter’s usage rate would be his lowest since his rookie year; Murray’s would be a career low after he jumped to 15.2 points per game in his second season in 2023-24.
It hasn’t been fatal for the Kings, who are eighth in offense thanks to their three stars, but it’s still money left on the table that’s likely to matter in a cutthroat West playoff race. The Kings were No. 1 in offense in their Beam Dream season in 2022-23, and to get to a top-six win total in the conference, they likely need to push near the top of the league again.
Top 15 picks of draft
McCain (mentioned above) is making an impact, but of the first half of the first round of the 2024 draft, only two (behemoth bigs Donovan Clingan and Zach Edey) have rated significantly better than replacement level in their minutes; both have been injured, and Edey was pulled from the Memphis Grizzlies starting lineup. Yay? Nobody else in the top 15 has a PER above 12.
Yes, there are levels to this, from the Cody Williams insta-inferno to the Ron Holland 3-point experience (9 of 50!) to the, er, “developing” chemistry between Bub Carrington and Alex Sarr (an offensive rating of 96.0 with a minus-20.3 net rating as a combo) to the more encouraging flash-sprinkled efforts from guys like Stephon Castle and Zaccharie Risacher. As a group, though, this has been jaw-droppingly underwhelming.
GO DEEPER
Zaccharie Risacher might not be a typical No. 1 pick, but he’s a good fit with Hawks
While there’s always risk in panning a draft class too early, it’s an understatement to say things aren’t going real well for the top 15. Castle and Sarr are the only players who routinely get to finish games. Two of them (Rob Dillingham and Kel’El Ware) can’t even get on the court, while third pick Reed Sheppard is baaaaarely hanging on (don’t cry; we’ll always have summer league).
Did Oklahoma City and Sacramento win the draft by taking injured guys? Can we just pause the Rookie of the Year award and give out two trophies next year? I have questions.
The general presumption was that, after a bumpy rookie year, the third pick in the 2023 draft would be a lot better in Year 2.
I wish I could tell you things look different, but they really don’t. A 30.2 percent 3-point percentage? Wild finishes leading to a 45.7 percent mark inside the arc? Marching up the leaderboard in turnovers per 100 possessions? Yep, we’ve seen this movie before.
The 20-year-old Scoot Henderson still has time on his side, but the Blazers moved him to the bench this season despite being in a rebuild. It hasn’t been much of a decision to keep him there. For a guard drafted for his athleticism, there just haven’t been many positive signs — he has three and-1s all season and has made negligible impact on defense. Can he clean up some of the myriad offensive mistakes and get his career pointed in the right direction, or is this just who he is?
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(Top photo of LeBron James and Paul George: Harry How / Getty Images)
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