Hawks have to lead the pack. Despite intentionally strip-mining the roster they are still ahead of 5 teams including the Magic, Suns, and Kings to go along with Brooklyn and Chicago in Net Differential. The Hawks have a system and front office in place just waiting to plug in talent.
The two teams ahead of the Hawks in Point Differential on that list didn't set out to tank this season. The Grizzlies especially intended on extending a playoff run. They may bounce back but the key components of their core are already on the wrong side of 30 and they may have missed their opportunity to move them for maximum value to kick off a rebuild in earnest. Until if and when they manage to do so they'll have ~80 mil tied up to Conley, Gasol and Parsons alone for the next 2 years at minimum.
The Mavs have been hedging between letting Dirk go out in dignity by chasing high dollar vets and trying to reclaim the promise of past draft busts. They'll have to commit to a true rebuild and even then what is the confidence in Carlisle coaching and developing a young team? He doesn't have a track record of taking on rebuilding situations and building them up. Even the Detroit team he took over as a first time head coach may have not been a playoff team beforehand but the average age of their rotation players was 30.
The Kings don't have a stable organization. They traded the Magoofs for Ranadive who seems to be the type of owner to impulsively buy a Lamborghini and proceed to slap on flame decals and swap out the engine for one with more horsepower because he thinks he knows more than the original engineers did. Ten seconds later you're watching a fireball on the PCH.
The Magic are grossly incompetent and the Suns are incompetent with a cheap owner. The latter will have to look diligently at a proper coaching hire if they ever intend on making good use of their talent.
Oh dear...not Luke’s dad...it’s too early.
