Starting Five v2.2
- danny52615
- Nov 18
- 9 min read
Daniel Waddleton
Nov 18, 2025
My first Starting Five of the 2025-26 season reacted to some of the positive trends from the first week of the season. I specifically said we’d keep it all positive and let the negatives breathe for a bit.
Welp, we’re now exactly a month into the season, and I’m no longer going to ignore some of these concerning signs. I’ve identified five troubling trends from teams that have clearly not met expectations early on. I ranked them based on concern level, and how likely each one is to fix itself as the season goes on.
Los Angeles Clippers Age - Noisy
I’ll admit it hasn’t looked great. The Clippers look old and slow, lacking any real sense of urgency on either end. Their offense looks lethargic, ranking last in pace, and their defense -- the team’s calling card last season -- currently sits 25th in the league. A massive reason: they’re giving up 152.3 points per 100 transition possessions, easily the worst mark in the NBA.
Maybe I was simply too high on this team in the preseason and I’m stubborn to move off it, but I still think this is more noise than anything else for now. The lack of pace and athletic pop is concerning, sure, but older teams win in this league all the time.
I expect the defense to stabilize for a multitude of reasons, starting with them just getting back in transition and putting in more effort to prevent those easy runouts. Forget offensive rebounds and loose balls. Get set and make teams score in the halfcourt.
I also hope they settle into better lineup combinations, leaning more into defense like they did last season. Re-integrating Kris Dunn into the starting lineup will be a start.
Honestly, my bigger concern is the offense, and more specifically, what they lost when they moved on from Norman Powell. They still have their advantage-creating two-man game with James Harden and Ivica Zubac, but without Powell, they no longer have that quick-trigger catch-and-shoot threat who can also attack a closeout and keep the second side alive. Beal was supposed to fill that role, but he never brought the same decisiveness, and now he’s out for the season.
The gravity of the Harden-Zu actions or Kawhi operating from the mid-post just isn’t being optimized the same way, and that will be Ty Lue’s biggest puzzle to solve.
At the end of the day, this team isn’t going to pack it in and be sellers come February because OKC owns their first-round pick. They have been hit with the injury bug early and that will be their excuse for now, but they have to figure this out soon, and I think they will.
. . .
Desmond Bane's Shooting - Yellow Light
You could argue the Magic overpaid for Bane’s services this summer, but most didn’t seem to mind. His career 42% three-point shooting was supposed to be a massive help for the league’s worst shooting team a year ago, hopefully raising their offense to a level of competency where they could be real threats in a weakened Eastern Conference.
Well so far the returns... haven’t been great.
Bane is averaging his fewest points since his rookie year (16.5), and is sitting at career lows in both three-point percentage (31.3%) and TS% (53.9%).
I don’t believe Bane is suddenly a sub-30% shooter, which is why this is only a yellow light. In our society, it’s normalized to just speed through yellow lights, and if you don’t someone behind you will probably honk. I wouldn’t blame you if you honked at me right now, but I’m slowing down and letting this light turn red real quick.
This exact thing happened to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope last season. After shooting a combined 41.8% from three in two years in Denver, he dropped to 34.2% after signing with Orlando. Caldwell-Pope is a very good shooter, but without elite advantage creation on Orlando’s roster, the quality of his looks nosedived compared to his Nuggets stint.
He went from 202 unguarded catch-and-shoot attempts to 174 guarded in 2022-23 and 188 unguarded and 124 guarded in 2023-24, to his first Orlando season: 143 unguarded, 163 guarded.
Now Bane is seeing a similar struggle with the quality of his shots.
The reason I ultimately think this will be okay is because Bane is much more of an on-ball creator than KCP and can impact the game offensively in ways beyond spot-ups. It’s also still early, and I think his shooting has plenty of time to normalize as Orlando gets more creative in how they get him his looks.
We talked in the preseason about how Orlando is still chasing that top-16 offense they haven’t had in over a decade. This season is their best chance -- this is the most offensively talented roster they’ve had since the 2012 group -- yet they still sit just 20th. It won’t just take Bane improving his shooting to climb higher, but that would be a start, and I wouldn't panic yet that the improvement isn't coming.
. . .
Timberwolves Role Players – Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
When you look at where this roster was two years ago, the Wolves got thin quick.
The starting five is elite (+15.2 per 100 possessions) with undeniable talent. Anthony Edwards is a superstar, and Rudy Gobert remains a one-man defense (-19.8 DRTG on/off). Julius Randle to his credit, has been a legit and reliable secondary star (24.5/7.3/6.1 on 63.6% TS). Jaden McDaniels is breaking out offensively while still guarding the best player every night, and Donte DiVincenzo is as solid as they come.
Beyond that, things get dicey.
Naz Reid is a former Sixth Man of the Year and proven postseason contributor, but he’s off to a slow start and while a bounce back is more then likely, he’s always been more on the trick-or-treat side of things throughout his career.
After him, it gets even dicier.
Mike Conley is now 38 years old and it looks like it's finally over. He’s getting hunted defensively, his drives per game and rim finishing numbers are at career lows, and I find it hard to believe he can still be that consistent, steady ball-handler this team has relied on in a playoff series against the physicality of a Houston or OKC.
Then there are the bench wings, who are big question marks.
Terrence Shannon Jr. after flashing last season has barely made an impact. Jaylen Clark brings legit defense and is hitting 36% from three, but on one attempt per game. In the postseason, teams will make him prove he can maintain that level on real volume, and I’m not convinced he can. Without any other clear offensive value, he becomes a liability on that end if the shot isn’t there.
And we have our buddy Rob Dillingham who, despite undeniable talent, looks far away from running an NBA second unit.
With the team sitting at 9-5 right now it's not time to panic. However, there’s real reason to be concerned about this team’s postseason viability when they might only confidently go six deep, in a conference that feels like it’s never been deeper.
. . .
Indiana Pacers Season Outlook - Red Flag
The reigning Eastern Conference champs knew this year wouldn’t have the same magic as 2024-25 after losing key cogs Tyrese Haliburton to injury and Myles Turner in free agency. Although even with expectations lowered Vegas set their win total at 38.5, a 1-13 start is shocking for a team that’s routinely punched above its weight under Rick Carlisle.
That egalitarian pace-and-space attack that powered last year’s Finals run now ranks dead last in offensive efficiency, barely cracking 100 points per 100 possessions. The sneaky elite defense that became their secret sauce in the second half of last season has cratered to 26th in the league.
There are plenty of reasons for the drop-off beyond just Haliburton and Turner. Bennedict Mathurin, Andrew Nembhard, Obi Toppin, and T.J. McConnell have all missed significant time due to injury. Ben Sheppard, someone they have needed to produce, has been stuck in a nasty shooting slump. All of this has put way too much on Pascal Siakam’s plate which in turn has dipped his efficiency, and he hasn’t been able to provide the same defensive impact he did a year ago. We're looking at a true year from hell scenario.
There’s is however, a silver lining: Indiana owns its 2026 first-round pick, and it’s suddenly looking like a valuable one. Despite preseason optimism, this team wasn’t getting back to the Finals without Haliburton running that organized-chaos offense anyway. Landing a top-five pick in a loaded draft adds another blue-chip talent to this already strong young core could set them up to return in 2026-27 as one of the East’s primary threats the moment Haliburton is healthy.
Just look at Philly last year: total disaster, top-three pick, came away with VJ Edgecombe. He’s averaging 15.5 a night already and looks like a future All-Star. Fast-forward to this season: the Sixers already have one-third of last year’s win total by mid-November.
This season’s done, no way around it. Still, the long-term outlook in Indiana is far from bleak.
. . .
Nico Harrison’s Mavericks - Sound the Alarm
The situation was no longer tenable -- the Mavs were basically playing road games in their own arena -- and owner Patrick Dumont decided he had to move on from Nico Harrison. What Harrison left behind is a talented roster that doesn’t really make any sense together once they get on the court.
This roster was engineered to orbit around Luka Dončić as the driving force. Without him, it’s like having a gourmet recipe and premium ingredients… but no oven. You’ve got everything prepped, but no way to actually cook the dish and turn it into a real meal.
Luka’s ability to both carry an absurd offensive load, while simultaneously driving elite offense is what tied this thing together. Because he was such a singular advantage creator, you could surround him with lesser offensive players who scaled defensive heavy and still build a competent two-way team. Guys like PJ Washington and Derrick Jones Jr thrived in that Dallas finals run because their jobs were simplified next to Luka.
The center tandem of Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II were the perfect screen-and-roll vertical threats for a Luka offense while anchoring the defense with rebounding and rim protection.
And there was the now injured Kyrie Irving, who was the perfect secondary star for Luka. He didn’t need the ball a ton and was an elite catch and shoot threat, while also being able to scale up and run offense in spurts. His defense was quietly good in Dallas because he didn’t have to carry a massive offensive burden. He thrived in a "chaser role" where his primary assignment was to lock-and-trail shooters, he also took point-of-attack reps, and just overall he was very engaged.
Now fast-forward to this version of the roster. You replace Luka with Anthony Davis, who ironically would’ve been great with Luka, but is much harder to optimize without him on this roster. Davis is at his best offensively as a five, where the floor is spaced and he can play his face-up game in the mid-post or play as an elite roll-man in screening actions. On this roster, he ends up hanging around the perimeter too much, takes too many long twos, and he’s not crashing the offensive glass with the same energy because he isn't down their enough.
The Mavericks offense is all the way down to second to last in offensive efficiency now. The Luka-for-AD swap isn’t the only reason this offense has cratered, but everything else stems from it.
Their halfcourt scoring is downright atrocious at 0.89 points per possession. They rank dead last in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.40), which is not surprising when you hand the keys to an 18-year-old rookie and surround him with a below-average offensive supporting cast. We talked before about how Luka’s advantage creation allowed the role players to scale defensively instead of offensively. Those same role players are still here… but now Flagg is carrying the biggest offensive burden. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to the roster.
The floor spacing is rough. They’re 29th in three-point percentage, knocking down just 31%, and it’s also tanking their rim frequency and rim finishing.
And they aren’t even leaning into the things they should theoretically be good at. Despite playing massive lineups full of forwards and bigs, they rank 27th in offensive rebounding, pulling down just 27% of their misses. Part of that is there being no emphasis of it, part of it is effort, and part of it is that they simply don’t create enough advantage plays to generate clean second-chance opportunities.
At the end of the day, the only real path forward I see is to trade Anthony Davis for as much as you can get. It’s not that he isn’t great because we know he is, but this roster can’t get the most out of him. From there, if Kyrie can get healthy, I think he can still be a long-term fit. Bring him back in 2026–27 and build this thing properly around Flagg, the same way you once built around Luka just a couple years ago.
For this season though, it's over in Dallas.
Comments