Nylon Calculus: 15 early season predictions for the NBA Western Conference

Dallas Mavericks finish outside the top 10 on defense

Last season, the Mavericks were the league’s 12-best offense and its 8th-best defense, a substantive improvement in Jason Kidd’s first season as head coach.

Their defensive efficiency felt unsustainable and likely to regress. It’s difficult to put a ceiling on their offense, while already potent, with Luka Doncic in uniform. Only a handful of players have proven the ability to handle usage at the ultra level that Doncic has throughout his career (and he has reached a new level so far this season).

If I were trying to predict how successful these Mavericks will be in their remaining 50-plus games, I would try to predict how successful their defense will be.

So far, their best offensive lineups have hurt their defensive efficiency, with only Doncic and Tim Hardaway Jr. compensating for their respective declines on the offensive end. Josh Green has been the best defensive player on the team by the numbers and deserves consideration for a starting role. Minutes with Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell have been proficient defensively as well, while profiled wing-stoppers Reggie Bullock and Dorian Finney-Smith have regressed.

This iteration of the Maverick feels like it’s too dependent on superb offensive creation to mask its defensive weaknesses against the conference’s best teams. I believe in Luka Doncic, the vision the Mavericks have, and the path that they’re on. But I don’t believe this defense will be good enough for them to reach the Western Conference Finals again.

Houston Rockets are not the league’s worst defense

The Rockets are in the midst of the team’s biggest rebuild ever, very few signals from this team’s on-court play provide direction on where the franchise will even be next year, let alone a few years from now.

One small area of improvement that these Rockets can focus on: finishing better than last in the league on defense. A year ago, the Rockets allowed an incredible 1.18 points per possession over 82 games — the worst defensive efficiency on record since the NBA began collating and publishing play-by-play data in the 2003-04 season.

Through 24 games, the Rockets have improved slightly to 1.17 points per possession, 0.2 and 0.4 points better than Detroit and San Antonio, respectively (more on the Spurs in a minute).

This year’s Rockets team has been and will continue to be bad on defense, but they won’t finish dead last again.

Memphis Grizzlies finish in the bottom third of the league in defensive shot profile

The Grizzlies lost two of their core pieces — Kyle Anderson and De’Anthony Melton — in free agency last summer — a change that would, at the very least, test the resolve of most groups. But the culture is so durable in Memphis that the Grizzlies haven’t missed a beat in the early part of the season.

On paper, they’re the same team — 1.15 points per possession on offense and 1.12 points per possession on defense — with a slight regression on both sides of the ball. Injury troubles are still a constant; Jaren Jackson Jr. and Ja Morant have both missed games.

If Memphis wants to be included in the inner circle of title contenders, they’ll need to improve their defensive shot profile. Through 24 games, the Grizzlies have afforded opponents the 22nd-best set of attempts in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. Opponents take nearly 73 percent of their shots at the rim or from beyond the 3-point line.

There’s a stark difference between the shot diet afforded by Grizzlies’ defense and those of the NBA’s best teams; such as Milwaukee, 62 percent of afforded attempts at the rim and from outside combined; Boston, 60 percent; and Golden State, 61 percent. If Memphis can shift some of these looks to 2-point shots away from the rim, that could alter the trajectory of their success.

Memphis already excels at other difficult areas of execution defensively, having limited opponent second-chance and free-throw opportunities. I believe there’s a path forward for the Grizzlies to make this leap, but it might take more growing pains before they achieve it.

New Orleans Pelicans finish with the league’s second-best offense

Offensive improvement. That’s the story of this Pelicans team, one that looks to be on a crash course for meaningful playoff basketball.

Last season, the Pelicans were an underwhelming 20th-best on offense, scoring just 1.1 points per possession. After the All-Star break, with the addition of CJ McCollum, their offense catapulted to 1.16 points per possession, a number that can be fluky when the level of competition deteriorates as playoff standings are cemented.

It appears that Pelicans’ offensive success was not fluky at all, and now they’ve added a healthy Zion Williamson to the mix as well. In 18 games this season, Zion has made the leap from efficient scorer to all-round offensive playmaker. (Even more impressive, including this season, he’s barely played more than one regular season’s worth of games in his career.)

Zion has been credited with an assist on 21 percent of his team’s field goals so far this season, one of the best marks of any player at his position, per Cleaning the Glass. In 231 possessions with Zion in the starting lineup, the Pelicans are scoring 1.2 points per possession.

The offensive chemistry of this group is real, and the numbers would suggest they’re a threat to win a conference championship. I don’t believe their defense, currently third-best overall, will sustain throughout a full season — New Orleans is allowing one of the highest opponent 3-point rates league-wide and have the lowest opponent field-goal percentage on such shots. But their offense efficiency shows they’ve firmly made the leap into playoff contention.

San Antonio Spurs finishes with the worst record in the league

There’s little to detail with these Spurs. Their eyes are fixated on the prize of a potential number one overall pick and the chance to draft one of basketball’s most sought-after prospects ever.

Fun fact: the Spurs’ opponents have a 58.6 percent effective field-goal percentage through 24 games. Through 64 games last season, Steph Curry’s effective field-goal percentage was 55.5 percent.

Let’s see if the Spurs are ultimately successful in their quest.