NBA Panic Meter: How much should Warriors, Suns, Hawks, Raptors and Grizzlies worry?

In the long slog of an 82-game NBA season, when is it time to panic? Well, now is as good a time as any.

The old saw in league circles is that the first week or two is for working out the kinks, but you find out what you have between Halloween and Christmas. After that, if you don’t like some things about your squad, it’s time to hit the phones.

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So it’s a bit jarring if, hypothetically, you come out of the offseason hoping to have a title contender and instead find yourself in 11th place in your conference. More jarring, in theory, if one of your key players is suspended “indefinitely” after being ejected for the third time in his last nine games, each of which came after a dangerous physical play against an opponent. That is one situation that might cause you to reach for the panic button.

Of course, other teams are already far beyond the point of panic. The Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs have not won a game in over a month, with the exception of the one game where the Wizards played the Pistons and somebody had to win. The league’s holy trinity of sadness has gone a combined 0-44 against the NBA’s other 27 teams since then. OH AND FORTY-FOUR, people! The Jan. 10 meeting between San Antonio and Detroit could theoretically match a 30-game losing streak against a 34-game losing streak.

While their awfulness is shocking, especially in a season with no big tanking prize awaiting on draft night, these three teams had low expectations to start. Detroit and San Antonio had the league’s two worst records last season, and Washington is in Year 1 of a down-to-the-studs teardown. Maybe we didn’t think they’d be this bad, but nobody thought they’d be good.

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However, other teams began the season with higher hopes, and in the opening weeks, it seemed like they might deliver on them. Of late … not so much. Let’s look at some teams that were hoping to contend for important things this season and instead find themselves on the outer fringes of the playoff race. We’ll identify where on the 1-10 scale their panic meter should be set:

Record since Halloween (as of Dec. 14): 7-12
Panic meter: 8

This one feels existential. The Warriors are old and expensive, which would be totally fine if they were also good. The problem is that, right now, they’re 10-13 and sitting in 11th place in the Western Conference. While their underlying stats suggest they’re better than their record, even those don’t paint a pretty picture: When you have the league’s most expensive roster and are looking at an eight-figure luxury tax bill, “We profile as more of a one-and-done playoff team than a Play-In loser,” isn’t exactly reassuring.

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The Warriors are good at two things: shooting and offensive rebounding, and somewhere between mediocre and bad at everything else. Even “shooting” is really more about one player than a team-wide strength. While they happen to employ the greatest shooter of all time, backup center Dario Šarić is the only other Warrior who shoots 3s both frequently and accurately. Even with Stephen Curry, they often resort to lineups short on spacing.

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Their glorious recent history also presents a dilemma. Starting wings Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins have been awful, with Thompson showing the generalized decline you might expect from a 33-year-old who has had multiple serious lower extremity injuries, and Wiggins inexplicably forgetting how to play basketball at the age of 28. With a PER of 7.3 amid 47.8 percent true shooting, he’s in the worst-rotation-player-in-the-league discussion. (Not so fun Wiggins sidebar: If Canada could pick any 12 players for the Paris Olympics right now, would he even make the cut?)

Normally a team would just replace those two, but the Warriors won a championship two seasons ago with this pair. That makes it harder to push them aside, and not just for sentimental reasons; there is still the kernel of thought that maybe they can regain their mojo and get the Warriors back to an elite level. The Warriors have two young players at those positions, Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski, who have pretty emphatically outperformed Thompson and Wiggins, but they’re still coming off the bench.

As a result, Thompson and Wiggins are second and third on the team in minutes despite being, by most measures, the Warriors’ two worst rotation players. Perhaps even worse, they are third and fourth on the team in usage rate — the Warriors keep running stuff for them, because they don’t really have other players (aside from Curry) who can soak up shot-creation duties.

Nonetheless, a great many issues seem to be colliding at the same time. Curry is still an All-Star but not the supernatural force of a few years ago; Draymond Green can’t go more than two games without getting ejected or suspended; Gary Payton II can’t stay healthy; and Chris Paul is better than Jordan Poole but no longer the Point God.

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The path forward from here seems mildly terrifying: Let Thompson walk as a free agent (or trade his expiring contract by February), waive Paul after the season, keep Wiggins on the pine until he regains a pulse, take trade calls on Green and Kevon Looney, escape the luxury tax shackles of the new CBA and start over with Curry and the kids. The only alternative is to keep shooting out assets and money in a desperate attempt to keep the Splash Brothers Era going for another year, but that strategy is almost certainly throwing good money after bad.

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Record since Halloween: 9-11
Panic meter: 7

The Raptors have been one of the league’s best-run teams ever since Masai Ujiri came from Denver a decade ago. Nonetheless, the current roster overwhelms with the pervading sense of, “What exactly are we doing here?”

The Raptors traded a top-six protected pick for Jakob Poeltl at the 2023 trade deadline, so they’re not tanking, but they also lost free-agent guard Fred VanVleet for nothing last summer and have two other key players about to hit free agency in forwards OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam. (Anunoby has a player option next season that he seems almost certain to decline.) What’s the endgame here? Is there any potential resolution that even makes coherent sense?

I was moderately bullish on the Raptors this season, between the fact that Scottie Barnes seemed primed for a breakout and that the long-armed defense, with a full year of a real center in Poeltl, could be one of the league’s better units. Alas, I was only half right. The Raptors are only 17th in defense thus far, and it’s not like they’re getting slammed by shooting luck. Break it down, and they’re just kind of mid at everything, even with an elite stopper in Anunoby, a plus rim protector in Poeltl and two other huge perimeter players.

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It’s easy to dump on the bench, especially with Gary Trent Jr. forgetting how to play basketball this season (8.3 PER, 48.3 true shooting percentage), first-rounder Gradey Dick bombing in his limited minutes thus far (forget the NBA level; he has a 7.0 PER in the G League … yikes) and offseason pickup Jalen McDaniels quickly excusing himself from the rotation.

But focusing on the subs buries the lead. Check out this gem from Canadian numbersmith Keerthika Uthayakumar: Entering Wednesday’s win over Atlanta, the Raptors starters had played the second-most minutes of any five-man lineup in the league and had a minus-4.7 net rating. Yikes. Any decent team wins those “best five” minutes handily. Forget the bench: Five against five, Toronto’s best players just aren’t good enough.

How do the Raptors get better? Their best bet is to re-sign Anunoby and bring back him, Barnes and Poeltl, which would leave Siakam the odd man out but would give the Raptors max-ish cap room to rebuild the roster around them with somebody — anybody — who isn’t an “intriguing” 6-foot-9 combo forward who shot 29 percent from 3 last season.

Unfortunately, the other pain points are likely baked in at this point. They waited too long and/or asked for too much when they should have moved VanVleet and Siakam (not to mention Trent) a year ago. They’re probably handing San Antonio a late lottery pick in 2024. And their long-term ceiling probably still isn’t all that high, unless Barnes goes thermonuclear.

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Atlanta Hawks

Record since Halloween: 7-12
Panic meter: 6

Time to cue up Dennis Green: The Hawks are who we thought they were. Any maybe not even that.

The league’s most average team over the last two years and change (cumulative record 93-94) has work to do just to get back to .500. Amid a five-game losing streak, Atlanta currently sits outside the money at 11th in the East. Does it even count as a Play-in Tournament if the Hawks aren’t involved?

The Hawks are on their third coach of the Trae Young era, but Quin Snyder hasn’t made them any more successful defensively than his predecessors; Atlanta currently stands 28th in defensive efficiency. The endless John Collins trade question is now the John Collins trade exception question, with a $23 million traded player exception that could potentially have some use at the trade deadline or in June, but a looming luxury tax situation that may make it harder to use in practice. Atlanta’s ownership has absolutely zero interest in paying tax and likely will have to move a player somewhere between now and the start of next season.

You can talk yourself into a future here if you squint hard enough: Nearly all the key players are in their 20s, some of them are still on the upswing (notably forward Jalen Johnson), and the Hawks are likely to have an extra first-rounder from Sacramento in 2024. But that Kings pick was the result of gifting them Kevin Huerter due to the aforementioned distaste for the luxury tax, and the Hawks still owe two future unprotected picks to the Spurs from a previous panic trade for Dejounte Murray. Those obligations kneecap their ability to make any kind of splash move that would change the situation going forward.

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In retrospect, making the 2021 Eastern Conference finals was the worst thing that could have happened to the Hawks; it made them believe they were ready to contend when they weren’t and precipitated several short-sighted moves as a result. The end product isn’t terrible, and it’s at least entertaining given the roster’s offensive tilt. But Atlanta went all-in on average, and that’s what the franchise is looking at for the foreseeable future.

Record since Halloween: 6-13
Panic meter: 5

Between the suspension to Ja Morant and assorted other injuries, Memphis has a lot more excuses to trot out than most struggling teams. On the other hand, the Grizzlies’ struggles also have been much more severe. Memphis is 29th in offense, just barely holding off the Spurs for dead last, and its record has been against a soft early schedule. The Grizzlies somehow lost to the Wizards, Blazers and Jazz.

Help is on the way: Morant should return from his suspension in the next week, and Marcus Smart may be back around the same time. But the Grizzlies have already dug themselves a big hole in the standings and will have trouble regaining contact with the West playoff hopefuls.

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Additionally, the looming question is: How good is this core right now? Serious injuries to centers Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke have dented the frontcourt; even next year, how good will they be post-injury? Trading Tyus Jones and two firsts for Smart has been a dud move so far, with Smart being a shadow of the player he was in Boston and having two years left on his deal. Memphis had avoided other veteran signings the past two years to bet on its young players, but recent draft picks Ziaire Williams, David Roddy and Jake LaRavia have given them nothing, while plus weapons such as De’Anthony Melton, Dillon Brooks and Kyle Anderson went out the door.

All this is trending toward a “gap year” in Memphis, with the Grizzlies picking up a high lottery pick and coming back with Adams and Morant for another try next season. Even with Morant, a playoff run on a team with no centers and one shooter (shoutout to Desmond Bane, quietly playing his keister off in a hopeless offense) seems unlikely.

But then what? The Grizzlies face luxury tax issues next season when Bane’s extension hits and still haven’t found a small forward. Luke Kennard is out with a knee injury and might be a cap casualty; declining his team option for next season is the simplest way for Memphis to sidestep the tax and keep its midlevel exception in play. Memphis still has future picks it can put in play, but finding a deal to fix the shooting and forward issues will be challenging.

The biggest question, by far, is Morant. The best version of him is an All-NBA player who might be good enough to lift even this flawed roster into the Play-In, but the events of the last year have been troubling enough to question whether that reality happens. We’ll start getting answers soon.

Record since Halloween: 11-9
Panic meter: 4

Reminder: The Suns owe Bradley Beal $160 million in the three seasons after this one. That’s not a problem if he can be the third part of an unguardable offensive triangle that includes Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, but it’s more of an issue if he’s going to be sporadically available and not all that good when he plays.

The Suns debuted their “big three” Wednesday night and promptly lost at home to Brooklyn. The game offered a reminder that the Nets now employ two of the key players from the Durant trade and control four of the next six Phoenix first-round draft picks.

Beal is 30 and was already trending toward being both less available and less good in his last two seasons in Washington. He’s played only five games this season and has not played them particularly well, although we’ll give a mulligan for the nagging back issue that limited him in the season’s first two months.

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Still, the big picture here is disturbing: The Suns didn’t spend this kind of money and draft capital to be in 10th in the West, but after 24 games, that’s where they are. The ages of the key players mean the Suns will almost certainly go over a cliff before the last of their unprotected picks conveys; the only question is how many times they can make deep playoff runs before then. “Zero” is an unacceptable answer.

Because of the Beal and Durant trades and their onerous luxury tax situation, the Suns really have no assets left to make any other significant trades to change this roster. Maybe they can work the edges for a back-end rotation guy, but basically, this is what they’ve got.

The good news is that some of the big-picture stuff looks better than the Suns’ win-loss record. Phoenix is still crushing opponents in the Durant-Booker minutes (plus-12.8 points per 100 possessions); those two also have missed a combined 13 games, but the peak version of Phoenix remains scary. The Suns also nailed their offseason minimum-contract signings, so while they don’t have a real fifth starter, the bench has been respectable.

With the big three only having one game together and a friendly schedule coming, the Suns probably have fewer worries than the other teams on this list. Nonetheless, nagging questions persist: How do you lose twice at home to San Antonio? Can this roster ever be good enough defensively? And how realistic is it to make a deep playoff run from a disadvantageous seed?

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(Top photo of Devin Booker and Stephen Curry: Kate Frese / NBAE via Getty Images)