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If you trust the process or fear the beard (note: not deer), you'll probably be pleased with your team's grade at the quarter mark of the 2017-18 NBA season. On the flip side, that won't be true for any desert-dwelling fans or frequenters of Beale Street.

Not everyone can exceed expectations, after all.

And that's the key for these red-pen marks. We're not just listing the best teams in the league and giving them the top grades, though the best performers do typically tend to score well. Initial expectations matter, since the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors entered the league with drastically different standards. One was supposed to plunge toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, while the other was widely expected to submit one of the better seasons in league history.

After weighing those initial hopes, factoring in far more than just win-loss records and using the grading scale employed by my own alma mater (along with some A-plus marks for good measure), the NBA as a whole has a 2.86 GPA at this stage of the year.

But which teams have emerged as the star students?