2 days Ago
The 2024-25 NBA regular season is still less than a month old, but it's never too early for teams to worry about slow starts. Sure, coaches and players might not admit they're panicking per se . But when a team starts losing, it's hard not to feel a sense of the season slipping away.
Take this quote from New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson a few weeks ago: "It's a high level of urgency but not in a panic kind of way. It's more of a focused, coming-together-as-a-team kind of way. .
..I don't think it's a cause for panic.
We just need to lock in." Williamson was careful to make it clear he and his teammates were not overly concerned -- but it certainly sounded like the pressure was creeping in. (Not that it seemed to have much effect as New Orleans won a single game before embarking on another long losing streak after Williamson gave that quote.
) So which NBA teams should be experiencing that sense of (let's just be honest here) ...
panic? Let's go through all 11 of the teams who had at least a 35% chance to make the playoffs before the season -- based on the average of their preseason BPI forecast and their implied probabilities from ESPN BET -- and whose playoff odds have dipped since then, classifying them by just how worried they should be now. Jump to a panic level: High! | On Edge | Starting to Worry | Remaining Calm Note: All odds in this story are as of Monday morning, Nov. 18.
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