Paul Flannery wrote about why the NBA trade deadline was so quiet in his latest Sunday Shootaround, and one piece of the theory has stuck with me: certain teams were hesitant to make blockbuster moves because their odds of actually knocking off the historic Warriors or the near-historic Spurs in the playoffs would remain nil. The Warriors, and to a lesser degree the Spurs, act as nuclear deterrents. Why bother trying to build a better conventional missile system if you know a foe has an atom bomb? If you can't build something equivalent, save your effort.
NBA success is game of managing expectations
Not every team can win the title. How those other teams define success and failure ultimately makes a huge difference to their present and future.
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This definitely applies to some teams, but the elite are a minority in the NBA. No team in the East outside of Cleveland is truly playing for a championship, not even the really good Raptors or the star-laden Heat. In the West, not even the Clippers, a real strong No. 4 seed who remains the last team to beat the Warriors in a playoff series, have legitimate hopes or aims of claiming the 2016 title. The Thunder sit on the fringe of this conversation. They have (fairly) considered themselves among the elite since the 2012 finals run, yet they haven't been back.
In that respect, three or maybe four teams will consider the season a failure if the season doesn’t end in champagne goggles and confetti. Everyone else has -- or, more accurately, should have -- more realistic goals. Title-or-bust aims almost always lead to heartbreak. Reasonable, attainable goals are much more likely to result in good feelings, stability and growth. Unless those too are unattainable.
I think back to Ryan McDonough's first Suns team in 2013-14. He built that team to lose. New coach Jeff Hornacek would develop the kids on the roster and see what he had in Eric Bledsoe. Backcourt mate Goran Dragic would be some flavor of veteran presence, a solid floor general and a point guard who could draw attention from Bledsoe without suffocating his potential. P.J. Tucker would keep everyone accountable and provide a model of grit. Rookie Alex Len would cut his teeth. The reunited Morris twins would test the powers of fraternity. But the team would lose enough to land another high draft pick in 2014, a pick to go along with a future top pick from the Lakers to help rebuild the franchise around Bledsoe, Len and perhaps the Morrii.
That plan was good in theory, but then Dragic had the best season of his career, Bledsoe was phenomenal when healthy, the Morrii clicked and Tucker unleashed a jumper that made him one of the better 3-and-D options in the league. Miles Plumlee had a breakout year. Channing Frye and Gerald Green were surprisingly good. The Suns won 48 games, just barely missed the playoffs and completely detonated McDonough's plan.
Expectations changed. The reasonable, attainable goals Phoenix had going into 2013-14 -- be as respectable as a bottom-five team possibly can be -- were ruined. That surprise success changed the future definition of success. Plucky defeatism was no longer an option. McDonough made moves to facilitate those new expectations, and they blew up in his face. Hornacek lost his job over the whiplash, and McDonough is on thinner ice than any of us thought possible just two short years ago. But hey, the Suns are finally the bottom-five team they wanted to be!
There was nothing McDonough could do to stop expectations from getting out of control. You win 48 games with a mostly young roster, you’re going to graduate to a higher level. The game plan has to change. It’s true that Hornacek and McDonough would have been better off to win 20 games in ‘13-14 and 35 in ‘14-15 vs. what actually happened (48 to 39).
This is why I fear for those teams that set very low expectations, either through their public messaging or actions. Portland, for example, was widely expected to be bad this season. After losing LaMarcus Aldridge, Robin Lopez and Wesley Matthews to free agency and Nicolas Batum to trade, the fall-off seemed obvious. So, as the Blazers burst past the expected win totals and find themselves deep into a playoff chase, the expectations change.
Fans (including the folks who sign the checks) were prepared for a year or more of humility. They were prepared for defeat. They now taste success again and surprising success is the sweetest kind. If the Blazers crack up under pressure down the stretch, or regress violently next season, no one in Portland will remember that the arc didn’t expect them to be great for a few years. The definition of success will have changed.
Because expectations are largely set externally -- by Vegas, by analysts, by wisdom conventional and otherwise -- there's little teams can actually do to prevent shifting definitions of success. How do you stop Damian Lillard from going supernova for a week? You don't, and you wouldn't want to either. The key will be how Portland approaches the offseason, whether Neil Olshey sticks to the script and focuses on younger players who fit the Lillard-C.J. McCollum career arc, or whether the taste of unexpected victory leads to a play for a more high-profile target.
Another key will be plain old chance. Life is chaotic and random. Things happened for inexplicable reasons. Even if you set appropriate goals and make all the right decisions to meet them, stuff happens. In this league, GMs need to be able to adapt and frame their own decisions in the right context.
It’s hard, maybe impossible in many circumstances. McDonough couldn’t exactly come out and announce in April 2014 that, despite the 48 wins, the Suns had intended to be very bad. It’s all more complicated than it looks.
Lots of teams have set realistic goals. The Pistons and Hornets want to make the playoffs. The Celtics and Heat want to be in the top half of the playoff bracket. The Mavericks want to be a playoff team. The Sixers want to be the worst team in the league. These are all attainable, reasonable goals. But stuff happens. Chances are one of the Pistons or Hornets will just miss a postseason berth. The C's and Heat are in a dogfight for home court in the first round. Dallas is in a tough fight to stay in the bracket. The Lakers are making a run for worst team status.
For all the teams with reasonable expectations, there are those who bit off more than they can chew. The Kings thought they were a playoff team. Not quite. The Knicks apparently thought they could be good, which is so ridiculous it might actually be a long con. The Suns have missed extraordinarily badly on their reset expectations. The Rockets are falling far short of their title contention dreams, and the Pelicans have regressed mightily, albeit with a built-in injury excuse.
Sure, only three or four teams are in title-or-bust mode right now. But plenty of teams -- the sane ones that made reasonable assessments of their rosters -- can claim success at season’s end, whenever that might be. While we understandably focus on the race of the title, it’s worth remembering that there’s a whole world of victory and loss for those who aim just a bit lower.
