The Ball Briefing: What Does Hitting The Panic Button Mean In The NBA?
Some NBA teams are struggling and fans are asking whether it's time to panic.
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When And How Should NBA Teams “Panic?”
A frequent question posed at about this point in everyNBAseason is whether it is time for teams to “panic.” Maybe your generational superstar is upset about a blown chance at the end of a game, maybe you’re well outside of a playoff format in which 2/3rds of the teams now qualify for the postseason, or maybe everyone just seems like they’re having a really bad time. Originally, I was going to figure out whether it was time for some teams this year to panic but our distinguished editorial staff pointed out that we don’t even have a clear sense of what it means for a team to panic.
Almost by definition panicking means you are acting irrationally, so in basic terms a team should never actually panic. I can think of some truly terribly-run teams that might do better if they acted completely irrationally just by sheer random chance, but I don’t want to spend too much time making fun of the Sacramento Kings.
In reality then we are really seeking to identify when a team should materially change their plans because their original plan isn’t going to work. Panicking isn’t likely to solve anything, but adopting a new plan might. To be clear, this isn’t meant as advice for NBA GM’s. They know all this (or at least, they ought to know this). This is intended to be a guide for how a fanbase looks at a team and what they should be hoping their team does to put them back on the right course.
In order to truly answer this question, you need to know what a team’s realistic goal is. For a team like the 2020-2021 Miami Heat, a championship seems like a reasonable goal after making the Finals last year. For a team like the 2020-2021 Chicago Bulls, a championship would be an extremely unrealistic goal. Merely making the playoffs would be their most successful season in years, and a reasonable goal for a team with a cadre of young players taken in the high lottery.
Hypothetically, if the Heat looked at the standings on February 9th, 2021 and realized they are two games behind the Knicks and sitting in the 12th spot more than 1/3rd of the way through the season, they might realistically want to assess whether there is a good reason to change their plans. Uh oh... I just checked the standings and that is not a hypothetical. If you want to send condolences to @gabe_ibrahim on Twitter, I’m sure he would appreciate it.
The harder part of the question is the implied solutions. If you have decided it is time to change the plan how do you go about doing it? Presumably if your team is not doing as well as expected, the players on the team that you might want to trade to improve the team likely have lost value as assets. Additionally, if the team is doing much worse than expected you would likely be far less willing to part with draft picks that have now increased in value in proportion to how poor your record is. Just because you want to radically change things up doesn’t mean you possess the tools to do it.
There’s also the constant reality that even though the team is doing poorly so far, that poor performance may not continue. Players might return from injury, they might improve their play or develop new skills, or your coach might find a new way to deploy the talent already on roster to better utilize who is available.
This is probably a good time to point out that if you don’t trust your coach to do that they should likely be fired and that shouldn’t even be classified as panicking. The older I get the less I want to advocate for anyone to lose their job, but NBA head coaching is a highly competitive profession and teams are often too willing to let mediocrity continue rather than rolling the dice with new coaches who have never gotten a shot. If you can’t trust that your coach is a clear net positive there is no reason to keep them around, or continually rehire them.
So is it ever time to panic? Not really, unless your team is run by Vlade Divac. It might be time to reassess your plan and your goals. If you have a player that is too old for the timeline of your best players, it is time to explore trading that player for someone who is. If some other team over-values a young player you know is likely not a future star you should look to trade that player for draft picks or for current reinforcement. Maybe it’s time to try out the young guys on the bench who have flashed some promise but haven’t been given a long leash. In the long run, if the team had a realistic chance of doing well, they will very likely improve back to something like their average performance. Panicking and making aggressive moves might end up being counterproductive. You don’t want to be the team that makes a panic trade at the deadline for Ramon Sessions.
Fast Breaks (by Gabe)
My absolute favorite thing about basketball is when a player makes a play so ridiculously cool and exciting that my only reaction is loud, crazed cackling. With about 10 seconds left in overtime of the #1 vs #2 showdown, UConn’s Paige Bueckers made me cackle for like four minutes against South Carolina.
Paige had a legendary performance. She put up 31 of UConn’s 62 points, including the last 13 points for the Huskies. She cemented her status as the next great player for Geno Auriemma in Storrs, Connecticut with this game, and hopefully it will be the first of many superstar moments for Bueckers.
Tom Brady is definitely the best quarterback in NFL history. Or not, I don’t care. I respect his talent and his success, but fuck his MAGA, defrauding the government, mouth-kissing his kids ass. I only bring him up to say that Brady cannot under be considered the greatest “athlete” of all-time. You’re trying to tell me that this sack of flab is a better ATHLETE than Lebron James or Serena Williams?
As Alex mentioned above, a team isn’t panicking if they realize that their coach is not good and move on from them. Well, Wizards Reddit is trying to speed along the process with clearly-struggling Scott Brooks by putting him in compromising positions with photoshop. Here are a few of my favorites:
Lobbin’ Links
Did MLB Use Juiced Balls in 2020? by Stephanie Apstein
2021 WNBA Free Agency: Unresolved Situations by Gabe Ibrahim
Bam Adebayo is the fiercest, best NBA player you don't know by Zach Lowe (from February 2020).
‘Scoring is what’s pretty’: Why elite NBA defenders still struggle to get paid by David Aldridge for the Athletic ($)
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