Mid-Season Look: Thundercats

The last of our mid-season-ish division looks focuses on Thundercats, who sport three teams over 0.500 and challenges last week’s Silverhawks for “best division in SlamNation." [2016 Previews: Playoff Teams | Non-Playoff Teams]

Team Spade (9-3)
There’s no question that Team Spade been one of the best squads during Randall’s tenure as owner, and it’s possible that this is the best iteration yet. Spade started off the season a blistering 5-1 before going “only” 4-2 recently. Health has been a big issue for Spade since its inception and this year has actually been not too bad — with one notable exception. Al Horford, Paul Millsap, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Love, Kyle Korver, and Eric Gordon have all logged 30+ GP.

Jrue Holiday recently posted back-to-back double digit assist games and it looks like Brandon Jennings is back on the court too, albeit in limited minutes. The big health exception mentioned earlier was the loss of Eric Bledsoe for the season but honestly, Ish Smith has been averaging 19.8 PTS, 7.5 AST, 1.8 STL, 48.5 FG% since his trade to Philadelphia and he looks like he’ll continue those stat lines all season long.

This is just a balanced balanced team, with no terrible categories and a lovely second in 3PT and FT%, third in STL, and fifth in PTS.  The Kobe Bryant farewell tour is well on its way and the future Hall of Famer has put up 7-8-5-5 points in his last four games, which as to be a career low. None of that will stop Randall for challenging for the best of Russell Conference though, and it looks like they’ll cruise to a top slot in the post-season.

Chunky Monkeys (7-4-1)
You know who was supposed to be ruling the roost in Russell Conference, nevermind just Thundercats division? The Chunky Monkeys that’s who! After trading for LeBron James and Kyle Lowry, GM Evan pushed all his future chips into a championship push and saw his newly assembled super team come out of the gates 5-0-1. Great work right?! But then during the next six weeks they played four winning teams and two losing squads and came out of it 2-4, with those wins coming only against the two losers. That’s not the sign of a contender.

So what’s wrong? The Monkeys are tops in AST and FT%, second in PTS and STL, fourth in 3PT, while being below average in BLK and second-to-last in TOs (as expected). They’re not going to win FG% very often with James Harden, Lowry, and Jeff Teague chucking up semi-bricks, and even Marc Gasol has been an uncharacteristic 44.3 FG%. There’s only so much LeBron James and his 50.0 FG% can do… The real problem is the same one as before though: the front line can’t really REB or BLK. It’s basically just Gasol and LeBron out there and both are averaging only about 7.0+ REB a game. And nobody really BLK much on this team. We feel like there needs to be a deal here for a true center, even at the cost of losing some wiggle room in the other categories. Maybe deal all those excess categories for a big man?

For a team with preseason championship aspirations, it’s time to go all-in even more and try to plug the holes so the back half of the regular season can become a true tune up for a title run.

Funk Coalition (6-6)
Is this how a multi-cat punt strategy is supposed to work? GM Jon spent a long time assembling a team of fantasy outcasts and so far this season it’s kind of working. Big emphasis on the “kind of.” Funk is, by design, last in FT%, 3PT, and third-to-last in PTS. That means they better rock all the other categories. Which they sort of do. But not enough. Although they’re first in REB, second in FG%, fourth in STL, and fifth in AST and BLK, they’re also fifth-worse in TOs, essentially punting there too. So if they can’t win with their REB / FG% / AST / STL / BLK combo, they’re toast. Still, going 0.500 is a feat for this team and they won’t be the worst team in SlamNation this year.

Number one overall draft pick Karl-Anthony Towns has been better than advertised, with 15.5 PTS, 9.5 REB, 1.7 BLK, on 52.3 FG% on the year. He’s should be a franchise player of the next decade. Along with Andre Drummond’s monster season, and DeAndre Jordan alongside, the three big men basically grab every REB in sight and protect the rim pretty well. And the weirdo backcourt has finally been healthy and productive all season. Ricky Rubio lead the league in STL, Michael Carter-Williams is right behind him recently (plus approaching his 76ers era type all-around numbers again), and Rajon Rondo is having a huge bounce back year in Sacramento while leading the league in AST by a landslide.

There’s a closing stretch of six straight games against teams with winning records coming up so we’ll see if Funk Coalition is up to the task of getting into the playoffs or if they’ll be exposed and re-enter the Toilet Bowl once again.

NJ All-Stars (2-9-1)
For some reason, we thought that losing LeBron James wouldn’t necessarily tank NJ All-Stars and get them an automatic bid to the Toilet Bowl. Well, we were wrong. Like 0-7-1 to start the season wrong. Eddie’s new look team is awful, and it’s not only losing The King, but also what this team doesn’t do well, which is just about everything. There’s no real strengths here and All-Stars are also second-to-last in FG%, third-to-last in REB, and last in BLK.

But first with the good news. Paul George is back and playing at an MVP level, with 23.9 PTS, 7.4 REB, 4.0 AST, 2.9 3PT, 2.0 3PT, albeit on a back breaking 41.2 FG%. Reggie Jackson is also having a career year, but also on a poor 43.9 FG%. Tobias Harris has been solid so far, Nikola Mirotic started off the season on fire before fading badly and um, Nikola Jokic looks interesting?

Part of the problem, short term aside, is that Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker don’t necessarily look like fantasy franchise players. Wiggins scores a lot but doesn’t really put up much in the way of other stats, averaging not even close to a STL, BLK, or 3PT per game. Parker doesn’t look like Carmelo-anything, and is only putting up 12.1 PTS, 4.8 REB, 0.9 STL in the past month, and that’s his best stats recently. Notice neither of these guys add 3PT to a team’s bottom line? That’s problematic. George and Jackson will need more help to sniff a deep Toilet Bowl run, and it’ll be interesting to see what GM Eddie does in the wake of the giant LBJ trade. NJ All-Stars championship in 2018?!