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Why you should be watching the five worst teams in the NBA
Anthony Davis is a superstar worth seeking out New Orleans Pelicans games to watch. Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

Why you should be watching the five worst teams in the NBA

We’re not even a month into the regular season and already it’s clear that there are a handful of teams who will not be contending this year. Despite that fact, the season remains 82 games, which means you’ll still be seeing all 30 teams in action for the foreseeable future. While league pass affords the opportunity for everyone to skip the teams they don’t want to watch, some nights you are going to be provided with very limited options. In those scenarios, if you find yourself watching any of the five teams below, here are a few reasons to tune in:

Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets are this year’s Suicide Squad. They’ve brought Jeremy Lin back into the New York spotlight, except he’s not at the world’s most famous arena but playing out of the Barclays Center. They’ve got Brook Lopez, who is still a great player on the offensive end and is even starting to shoot threes this year. There’s rookie point guard Isaiah Whitehead, the Brooklyn native who has been thrusted into the starting lineup due to injuries. There’s Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who is still struggling to develop a consistent jump shot but a bundle of energy who is always affecting something on the floor. Go down the list, there’s Luis Scola, Bojan Bogdanovic, Randy Foye (?), Justin Hamilton (??), and on and on. Under new head coach Kenny Atkinson, the Nets are shooting way more threes and running the floor, a far cry from their put-us-to-sleep approach when Deron Williams and Joe Johnson formed a formidable-on-paper backcourt. The Nets are really fun and pesky if you give them a chance, I promise. They just also might lose by 40 points on the road on any given night. You have to accept that as part of this relationship.

Philadelphia 76ers

Joel Embiid is worth the price of admission alone. It seems like every game he’s surprising us with a low post move or showing off his ability to go coast to coast, or flashing a shot fake that reminds us of Hakeem Olajuwon. In short, the man who calls himself ‘The Process’ has been worth the two year wait. If you want another reason to watch the Sixers: it’s to root for head coach Brett Brown, whose coaching record will never recover for his part in joining Sam Hinkie on his decade-long rebuilding plan. Brown won just 47 games in his first three seasons in Philadelphia, and as of this writing, is 1-9 on the season, bringing his career coaching record to 48-208. Brown might need to return to the Spurs organization and coach for a decade after Gregg Popovich retires to get his record back to .500, but when you root for the Sixers, root for their head coach to get his record back to respectability. He deserves it.

New Orleans Pelicans

Anthony Davis just might be the next superstar to spend the first half-decade of his career mired in a terrible situation. The Pelicans have been unable to surround their franchise player with the proper core group, and through draft picks, free agency signings, and trades, they’ve yet to find a second star to pair alongside Davis. For the second straight season, New Orleans has gotten off to a horrific start that threatens to submerge them from the Western Conference playoff picture before we even get to December. That’s a depressing thought for the Pelicans fan base, but after dealing with injuries last season that limited him to a career-low 61 games in a season where some pundits picked Davis to be a potential MVP candidate, AD is back to reclaim his status as the best young big man in the game. Through 11 games this season, he’s averaging 30.5 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game. Can the Pelicans, who made the playoffs as the eighth seed two years ago, even get back to the postseason in the next few years in the hyper-competitive West? I wouldn’t bet on it. But Davis is still a must watch every time he is on the floor, even if he won’t be on a bigger stage anytime soon.

Phoenix Suns

What exactly are the Phoenix Suns? They have a young core,  but not necessarily a fully-assembled roster to forge ahead with contending. They’re not in a full rebuild, so they’re going to win some games. But add it all up, and it’s not enough to be a top eight team in the West. There’s the two expensive guards in Brandon Knight and Eric Bledsoe. They invested heavily in Tyson Chandler last year. All of that is great, but the two players worth watching are Devin Booker and T.J. Warren. Booker, the 20-year-old guard out of Kentucky, is averaging 20.2 points on the season, and quickly rising up the list of best young guards in the NBA. Warren, 23 and from North Carolina State, is averaging 20.0 points per game himself. The Suns are probably going to spend another full season figuring things out. At the very least you can tune in and evaluate for yourself just who is worth keeping on this roster moving forward.

Miami Heat

The Heat have gone from the Big Three of LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh to LeBron returning to Cleveland, Wade leaving for Chicago and Bosh on the sidelines and likely retired even though he has not held out hope for a return. So instead, we’ve got Hassan Whiteside, who is putting up ridiculous numbers to justify his huge contract this offseason, which gives us one reason to watch, and we also have Dion Waiters, who is shooting 36.0 percent from the field this season (somehow, the lowest total of his career) but playing a career high 31.6 minutes per game and often times the team’s primary perimeter threat down the stretch. If crunch-time Dion Waiters doesn’t get you excited, do you even like basketball?

More must-reads:

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