NBA: The 5 biggest underachievers during the 2018-19 season

Taking a closer look at the five biggest underachievers as the post-All-Star playoff push gets underway

As the post-All-Star break playoff push begins, there’s less than two months remaining in the 2018-19 NBA regular season. While there have been some real players and teams that have exceeded expectations this year, there have also been players and teams on the other end of the spectrum.

Let’s take a look at the biggest underachievers nearing the final 20 games of the NBA regular season.

Boston Celtics

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This was supposed to be the year of the Celtics. Last year, the Celtics almost made it to the NBA Finals without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. This year they returned with a healthy Irving and Hayward, plus up-and-comers Terry Rozier and Jayson Tatum, but to our surprise this season has not lived up to their pre-season expectations.

The Celtics are currently 5th in the East despite all the talent on their roster.

Philadelphia 76ers

The 76ers like the Celtics were expected to sit atop the Eastern Conference because of their young talent, like Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. They even went out and added Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, but so far the 76ers have still left much to be desired after their in-season bold moves. Will be interesting to see if this team can flip the switch come playoff time.

Gordon Hayward, Boston Celtics

We all expected Gordon Hayward to return-to-form or at least close-to-form after suffering a season-ending injury last year. Before the injury, he averaged 19-21 points a game for the Utah Jazz over the last three years. This season, after the injury, he is averaging just 11.1 points a game while only starting in 17 games. Something just feels off with Hayward and the Celtics.

Houston Rockets

Now I know this is not the same Rockets team that took the Golden State Warriors to Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals last year, with Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute no longer with the team, but Houston has had such an up-and-down season.

Chris Paul did miss over 20 games this season because of an injury to make things worse, but regardless of Paul’s injury the 34-25 Rockets are not a very good team and is trending down with a 5-5 record over the last 10 games.

Lonzo Ball, Los Angeles Lakers

Some people will say Markelle Fultz is a bigger underachiever than Lonzo Ball so far, which would make a good argument. I chose to go with Ball since Magic Johnson one of the greatest basketball players of all time wanted to hand over the keys to the franchise to him.

Magic and many others believed Ball would be the next great Lakers player in the ranks of Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’neal, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jerry West. So far, Ball, has not played anywhere close to being considered an All-Star reserve. This year Ball is averaging 9.9 points and 5.4 assists a game which is below his points and assists average of last year.