The Atlanta Hawks will host the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night. Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Hawks
The Atlanta Hawks were back at State Farm Arena for the season opener against the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night.
Atlanta won the game 120-116 behind 30 points from Trae Young, 28 points from backup center Onyeka Okongwu, and 15 points from former New Orleans Pelican forward Dyson Daniels. The Hawks had their highest scoring quarter (37 points) when it counted the most: during the fourth quarter.
Atlanta got off to a strong start, pulling ahead by nine points early in the first quarter before the Nets tied the game at 15 at the 4:51 mark. Okongwu led the way during the first half with 14 points and five rebounds. Okongwu scored several of his points on huge put-back dunks that brought the crowd to its feet.
Though he had nine points during the first half, Young began the game 2-6 from the field. Nets forward Ben Simmons, who often had his best games against the Hawks early in his career as a Philadelphia 76er, nearly had a triple-double at halftime with 6 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists. The Nets managed to go into halftime with a 55-51 lead.
East Atlanta’s own Gucci Mane performed at halftime. Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
Atlanta will host the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night. The Hornets opened the season with a 110-105 victory over the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night.
News and Notes:
Gucci Mane performed at halftime.
Hawks rookie and the league’s overall number one pick in this summer’s draft Zaccharie Risacher scored the first basket of his career on a three-pointer late in the first quarter.
Wednesday was the first regular season game as a Nets assistant coach for Juwon Howard, the former head men’s basketball coach at the Univeristy of Michigan.
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Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Donnell began his career covering sports and news in Atlanta nearly two decades ago. Since then he has written for Atlanta Business Chronicle, The Southern Cross…
More by Donnell Suggs
I always like to start my NBA previews at the bottom and work my way up. And when it comes to bottoming out, nobody does it better than the lottery teams in the Eastern Conference. Last season, four East squads lost at least 57 games, and overall, the conference had seven of the league’s 11 worst records.
The Detroit Pistons’28-game losing streak took top honors, but Charlotte actually had the league’s worst scoring margin; the Hornets, Washington Wizards and Pistons combined to win fewer games than five NBA teams.
So, yeah, it was bad — and I’m not sure it will get much better in 2024-25. With a loaded draft led by Duke forward Cooper Flagg, several teams have ample motivation to tank for a high lottery pick. A couple spent their offseason leaning into that strategy, notably the Brooklyn Nets, while the Chicago Bulls pivoted less overtly in the same direction. (Connoisseurs of performance-art-level tanking efforts, circle your calendars for April 11: Washington and Chicago face off in the second-to-last game of the season.)
Here’s an interesting side dish: With so many laggards and 10 teams required to advance to the postseason, it’s possible we’ll see a historically bad record qualify for the Play-In. Even if not, the potential is definitely there for five 55-loss teams in this conference, despite the fact that they frequently play one another.
With that said, let’s take a closer look at my bottom seven teams in the East — their projected records, what they’re doing and where they might be headed. (We’ll discuss the rest of the league later this week.)
15. Washington Wizards (14-68)
I really couldn’t believe my eyes when my first run through projections spat out its results. Washington went 15-67 a year ago, and I sort of figured the Wizards would struggle to improve much upon that this season, but going through the math on my projections was jarring. This roster is bad.
The Wizards traded their best player from a year ago based on my BORD$ formula (Deni Avdjia, in a defensible swap for two firsts and two seconds) and lost starting point guard Tyus Jones to free agency. The best players on the team are Kyle Kuzma and Jordan Poole, I guess, and there’s a decent chance Kuzma is gone by February. And Malcolm Brogdon. And Corey Kispert. And maybe newly signed free agent Jonas Valančiūnas, too.
At least we know Poole won’t be going anywhere, not with the $96 million he’s owed over the next three years. (The contract could escalate even higher, but his incentives for reaching the playoffs or making All-Defense seem safe for the foreseeable future.) Poole will get a chance to rehab his value by playing on the ball this season, hopefully not to the detriment of the other four people hoping to touch it.
Obviously, this is all part of a down-to-the-studs rebuild, a welcome shift in mentality after years of chasing any shiny object that might net the Wizards the eighth seed and an immediate self-congratulatory parade. However, Washington’s failures to move on from Bradley Beal until it was too late have resulted in a more painful reset. This year is likely to be the necessary nadir before Washington can start the long trudge back up the standings.
The Wizards drafted three first-round picks this year, but all three are teenagers — and fairly raw ones. Realistically, they’ll take their lumps while they figure things out. Center Alex Sarr, selected with the second pick, is a potential defensive monster due to his quick feet, fast hands and 7-foot frame, while offensively he shows enough dexterity and ballhandling on the perimeter to provide some hope that there’s a unicorn in there somewhere.
That said, the 2024 version of Sarr is going to be a clear minus on offense, offering little threat in the post but also not far along enough as a shooter to scare anyone. The low-key swing skill here is his hands — he struggled to snare contested rebounds and catch in traffic last year. He may also play extensively power forward next to Valančiūnas while the Wizards wait for his body to fill out.
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The other youngsters are a similar mix of promise and finger-crossing. Late-lottery pick Bub Carrington — acquired thanks to the Avdija trade — needs to work on his body and defense, but he had a solid summer league and might be the closest thing this team has to a legit sixth man. Late first-rounder Kyshawn George, meanwhile, is a 3-and-D hopeful who likely has a lot of Capital City Go-Go in his immediate future. Carrying over from a year ago, Bilal Coulibaly teased with potential at times but needs to be a more consistent shooter and decision-maker. The Avdija trade likely gives him a chance to start.
Watching the rookies learn while the Wizards get pummeled every night is the best thing that can be said for the Wizards-viewing experience this year. Poole vying with Cam Thomas for the league lead in field goal attempts per minute will offer a certain kind of entertainment, and Valančiūnas shot fake drinking games will be as merry as ever. Otherwise, this year is about player development, asset accumulation and scraping their way to a win total that keeps them out of history books.
Brooklyn’s Ben Simmons looks up court as he pushes the ball against Boston in February. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
14. Brooklyn Nets (21-61)
In the wake of their post Kevin Durant–Kyrie Irving implosion, the Nets are going to be really bad this season. But they also have a direction, one that wasn’t possible before, after regaining access to their own draft picks via the Mikal Bridges trade. That deal made tanking plausible — actually, mandatory — as the Nets can now freely pursue one of the league’s worst three records to maximize their lottery odds. Based on the roster, they have this part under control.
The Nets have just enough veteran talent on hand to lose respectably and avoid being historically terrible, but few of them will remain in the borough beyond the trade deadline. Point guard Dennis Schröder and forwards Bojan Bogdanović and Dorian Finney-Smith are likely spending the first half of the season auditioning for their next employers; Cam Johnson is 28 and signed for two years beyond this one, but he might consider a month-to-month lease as well. And hey, Ben Simmons is here for one last September of back-in-the-gym Instagrams. He’s either a $40-million expiring contract to put into a potential trade or a February buyout.
Re-signed center Nic Claxton is likely the one long-term keeper on the roster, although other young players will audition to be part of the future. Thomas, meanwhile, is likely to lead the team (if not the league) in field goal attempts but will need to generate higher-quality looks — and occasionally even let a teammate shoot — if he wants to be part of the long-term plan.
Deeper down, keep an eye on second-year pro Noah Clowney, who in summer league looked like he may pay long-term dividends after he was drafted as a raw teenager in 2023. Reclamation projects such as Ziaire Williams and Killian Hayes also will get their chances, as will fringe-rotation finds Trendon Watford and Jalen Wilson.
If you’re looking two years ahead and beyond, the Nets will jettison nearly all this roster flotsam except Claxton, Clowney and possibly Johnson. They have three late first-round picks in 2025 in addition to their own, four extra firsts in future seasons and max cap space coming on line next summer. The Nets also are sitting on a $23-million trade exception from the Bridges deal, although it’s likely to go unused until after the season given that they’re already pushing the tax line. (Incentives for Johnson could theoretically put them over in the absence of other moves.)
All of this will make for an ugly 2024-25, but Brooklyn basketball should get dramatically better from there.
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It’s desperately needed medicine, but that won’t make it easier to swallow. The Hornets are done chasing 39 wins as cheaply as possible and fully embarking on a new, post-Michael Jordan era. Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin bought the team from Jordan in 2023 but held off on replacing the Friends of Mike in the front office and changing coaches until this past summer. Jeff Peterson — a veteran of successful rebuilds in Atlanta and Brooklyn — now has the conch in the front office, while Charles Lee replaces Steve Clifford on the sideline.
Now all they have to do is change the players. I kid, but this is not a great situation. Charlotte won 21 games a year ago, and even that was a bit of a miracle: The Hornets were 28th in offense, 29th in defense and last in net margin. Even in the Charmin-soft lower reaches of the East, making the Play-In with this roster seems unlikely.
The Bugs have one All-Star talent in LaMelo Ball, who has appeared in just 58 games over the past two seasons thanks to a series of ankle sprains and has often seemed indifferent (especially on defense) when he’s on the court. Beyond him, there are some solid players but zero star power, unless perhaps promising forward Brandon Miller (13.0 PER as a rookie) erupts in his second season.
Charlotte does seem to understand its situation, at least, which is more than can be said of some previous iterations of this franchise. This offseason, the Hornets used their cap room not on Gordon Hayward-esque splurges, but to take in salary and talent that other teams unloaded: two seconds from the Denver Nuggets to take Reggie Jackson, a second from the San Antonio Spurs to absorb the unwanted contract guarantee of old friend Devonte’ Graham and three more to take in the necessary outgoing players from New York to complete the Karl-Anthony Towns trade.
Conversely, the only acquisition of note was a reasonable two seconds going outbound to bring in 23-year-old, signed-through-2027 wing Josh Green. Bringing back Miles Bridges likely leaves many holding their noses due to his off-court history, but it leaves Charlotte with a full-strength starting five that won’t be embarrassed. Baby steps.
Those moves aren’t going to shake the foundations of the East, but they’re the first step in a rebuild, one that also must include upping the off-court investment from what’s been one the league’s most frugal franchises.
The biggest variable for the coming year is whether fly-swatting center Mark Williams can come back from a 2023-24 campaign lost to back surgery. Charlotte passed on a top-notch rim-protection prospect in Donovan Clingan on draft night to take a more speculative plunge on French forward Tidjane Salaun, and one wonders how much Williams factored into that. (For what it’s worth: I had Salaun 16th on my board, but I’ve also been told three other teams were ready to take him in the top 10 if Charlotte didn’t.)
Lower on the food chain, Charlotte will likely take teams’ temperatures on solid rotation players such as Grant Williams and Cody Martin to determine their trade market. Also, keep an eye on guards Tre Mann and Vasilije Micić trying to establish their careers after failing to take flight in Oklahoma City. Mann, in particular, might actually be something after playing 28 solid games in Charlotte after the trade; he’s a restricted free agent after the season. Micić is 30 and could be trade bait if he steps forward in his second season on this side of the ocean.
Looking at the chessboard, Charlotte is pretty asset-dry for a team in this position, owning only two protected firsts in 2027 from Miami and Dallas in addition to its own. (The Hornets technically owe their 2025 first to San Antonio, but it’s top-14 protected and will revert to second-rounders in 2026 and 2027 if, as expected, Charlotte misses the playoffs.)
The cap situation is relatively clean, but meaningful room looks unlikely the next two summers unless they trade Ball. Lee and Peterson will start the long effort of putting their imprint on this team, but even with favorable lottery luck, results might take a while.
12. Chicago Bulls (27-55)
The Bulls finally are doing what they should have when they changed management four years ago: launching a rebuild and lining up with a significantly younger roster for 2024-25.
The bad news is that they’ll likely be worse this year and face a slow slog back uphill, especially with few trade assets coming back in the rebuild and a future first still owed to San Antonio from the initial DeMar DeRozan deal. Nonetheless, this was the only move left on the chessboard after the Bulls’ 2021 asset-spending spree yielded three years of averageness and a roster that was only getting older and more expensive.
Chicago’s overarching plan this summer was the correct strategy, but the execution still felt bumpy. Not extracting a draft pick from Oklahoma City in the Alex Caruso-Josh Giddey trade seemed like a missed opportunity, as the Thunder have a million future picks and weren’t operating from a position of great leverage. The Bulls also dropped five years and $90 million on The Idea of Patrick Williams, something that felt more like a sunk cost fallacy on a player selected fourth in the 2020 draft than an honest valuation of where he is right now as a basketball player.
That money ended up mattering quite a bit later in the offseason. Among many what-ifs in Chicago is that if the Bulls hadn’t resigned Williams or if their ownership had been willing to pay into the tax, they could have taken in Harrison Barnes and an unprotected 2031 first-round pick swap from the Kings in the DeRozan trade. Instead, that asset went to San Antonio. The Bulls ended up with Chris Duarte, two second-round picks and cash. Yay?
The good news, again, is that there is a direction, and there is some real talent underlying it. Giddey was useless playing off the ball in Oklahoma City, but he’s a capable point forward with a smooth floater game and should get to showcase that skill set far more often with the Bulls.
First-round pick Matas Buzelis can be a high-impact two-way talent if he can up his shooting percentages and add a bit of lower-body strength, and combo guard Coby White has quietly become a very effective offensive player. Two other recent picks, athletic backup forwards Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips, hardly saw daylight last season, but each should get more opportunity.
Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević are still Bulls, for now, and their contracts may keep them here a while longer. LaVine, at least, can be a major contributor for however long he’s around; he’s just not quite worth what he’s paid. The three years and $138 million remaining on his deal were widely reported to be a barrier to his departure dating back to the middle of last season.
Meanwhile, the baffling three-year, $60 million extension handed to Vučević in the 2023 offseason already looks indefensible. The Bulls backed him up by signing string bean Jalen Smith for three years and $27 million; at least he’s young, but this won’t fix the defensive hole in the middle. If you’re looking for another true five on this roster, two-way Adama Sanogo is the entire list.
Finally, Lonzo Ball coming back would be a big help, but there’s a big difference between surviving offseason pickup games and being a productive player against NBA starters. It’s an amazing story if he returns and contributes, but we’ll temper our optimism until we see him impacting games that matter.
The badness of the East will likely keep the Bulls in the Play-In race for much of the year, but don’t get too excited: The Bulls owe a top-10 protected pick to San Antonio from the DeRozan trade. That makes it strongly in their interests to land no better than the league’s sixth-worst record and guarantee they keep the pick regardless of how the lottery turns out. In a related story, I’m picking them to finish with the NBA’s sixth-worst record.
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11. Detroit Pistons (28-54)
The good news is that this season should be less embarrassing than last year, or the year before that, or the year before that…
The Pistons haven’t won more than 23 games in a season since before the COVID-19 pandemic. They also haven’t won a playoff game since 2008, with just one winning season in that span.
In the fifth year of its rebuild from the Andre Drummond “era,” Detroit not only failed to win 30 games for the ninth time since 2008, but also didn’t even get halfway there, setting an NBA record with 28 consecutive losses and hitting midseason at 4-37. Only a heroic 10-29 charge to the finish line saved it from the worst record in NBA history.
The Pistons cleaned house after the season, after the one-year sideline reign of Monty Williams proved disastrous and the four years of the Troy Weaver administration saw zero progress in accumulating either talent or draft capital. Former New Orleans and Brooklyn exec Trajan Langdon took over the front office, while no-nonsense J.B. Bickerstaff is the new head coach.
It will take more than an organizational facelift, however, to get this team on the right path. Years of poor decisions have left Detroit with little star-caliber talent despite annual lottery picks. The closest thing is guard Cade Cunningham, a skilled but not overly athletic player who bore a massive offensive load with near-zero floor spacing a year ago and ground out a 54.6 true shooting percentage on 30 percent usage.
More shooting should make his life easier, but he isn’t Luka Dončić, and the Pistons need to stop using him like he is. He’s their best player, because somebody has to be, but the offseason decision to give him a max extension was more based on hope than results.
In terms of shooting, Detroit added Simone Fontecchio at last year’s trade deadline and Tim Hardaway Jr., Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley in the offseason. Those are legit, meaningful upgrades. It would also help tremendously if 2022 lottery pick Jaden Ivey can turn the corner both as a shooter and a playmaker, as he represents the best possibility of unburdening some of Cunningham’s massive playmaking load.
The frontcourt should be in better shape with Harris playing the four; while his contact was probably an overpay (two years, $52 million), he solidifies the lineup at its weakest spot and will be tradable money a year from now. He also should push Isaiah Stewart back to his natural center spot after last season’s failed power forward experiment. Beef Stew, the promising Jalen Duren and waiver pickup Paul Reed make for an effective trio, although Stewart may also be trade bait.
In the longer term, the best chance for the Pistons to make genuine progress lies in the development of their two most recent lottery picks. Forward Ausar Thompson is a plus athlete who plays hard, but his shooting is, shall we say, a bit subpar: Last season he achieved the near-impossible feat of having more airballs from 3 (23) than makes (18).
Detroit’s 2024 lottery pick, Ron Holland, is an explosive wing athlete. He was my top-ranked prospect before the draft. However, he will need work on his decision-making and shooting; he’s not anywhere near Thompson’s level of masonry, but how many guys like this can the Pistons play at one time?
On that note, Detroit’s biggest acquisition this summer might not be a player. Shooting coach Fred Vinson — who authored multiple miracles in New Orleans — came over with Langdon from the Pelicans and will have his hands full trying fixes on Thompson, Holland, Ivey and the rest of the gang.
Scottie Barnes argues a call against the Bulls early last season in Chicago. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
The Raptors have rather quickly gone from one of the most admired organizations in the league to Team Shrug Emoji. Can they get their mojo back?
They embarked on rebuilding a year too late and ended up converting Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby into a grab bag of somewhat useful players and a couple of late first-round picks, with one still to come in 2026 from Indiana. The most valuable pick transacted was the one they sent out to acquire Jakob Poeltl from San Antonio. Yeah, not great.
Toronto passed on an opportunity to operate as a cap room team and instead picked up a $23 million option on Bruce Brown and extended a 33-year-old Kelly Olynyk for midlevel exception money. One can see a pathway where that might pay dividends, as the Raptors have enough expiring money and picks for a blockbuster trade if a big name becomes available. The Raptors also likely overreached on a $162.5 million extension for Immanuel Quickley in restricted free agency; he’s a valuable player, but it wasn’t clear against whom they were bidding.
That said, Toronto should be fine in first quarters, because 80 percent of the starting lineup is rock solid. Scottie Barnes made the All-Star team in his third season and is now the face of the franchise, Quickley is a solid two-way player whose lack of pure point guard skill is offset by Barnes’ heavy on-ball usage, and RJ Barrett was fantastic in the second half of last season and again for Canada in the Olympics, though he’s beginning the year injured. (While we’re here: The “BBQ” nickname for the Raptors’ three-best players might be the best thing they have going.)
Up front, Poeltl was an overpay asset-wise and a danger to innocent bystanders from the free-throw line, but he is a solid defensive center with some sneaky utility from the elbows on offense.
After that, it gets iffy fast. Brown seemed a possible fifth starter on paper until he had arthroscopic knee surgery before the season started; he’ll be trying to regain the impact he had in Denver after a rough 2023-24 for the Pacers and Raptors.
Gradey Dick is a theoretical movement shooter who struggled in his rookie season but might have to start because the other options aren’t even theoretically good. First-round pick JaKobe Walter is a possible 3-and-D guy but out with a shoulder injury and probably at least a year away from helping.
Up front, Olynyk was unplayable in the Olympics. Chris Boucher’s deal is finally expiring, but he’s still around and likely will need to play as the fourth big. Deeper on the bench, if Walter isn’t in the rotation, that probably means either lukewarm meh from Ochai Agbaji and/or cameos from all-glove, no-bat ball-pressure specialist Davion Mitchell. I should note that I’m a card-carrying fan of second-round pick Jonathan Mogbo, but his limited shooting makes him a better fit on rosters with more spacing than this one.
Where does all this leave us? With a roster that’s interesting but not particularly good. The Raptors won’t be overtly terrible in a year when it’s probably beneficial to be terrible, and yet they face an uphill battle to get into the playoffs. Toronto has a good chance of failing upward into the Play-In Tournament, surely adding a sprinkle of excitement to the Canadian spring during their likely one-game postseason. One wonders if that also will be the bar for second-year coach Darko Rajaković, a well-liked figure in the league but one whose first season at the helm was a bumpy ride.
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It’s not really a Play-In Tournament unless the Hawks are involved.
In a league where everyone is either contending or tanking, the Hawks are looking at a fourth straight season of life in the middle class. In an East with a clear top eight and a dismal bottom six, projecting Atlanta to land ninth feels like one of the safest bets on the board.
The Hawks had a productive offseason though, finally executing the overdue Dejounte Murray trade to break up a pairing with Trae Young that wasn’t working. In the process, they shored up a woeful defense and restocked a barren draft cupboard. Atlanta still won’t have its own pick in the 2025 draft, so nix those Sag for Flagg scenarios, but the Hawks will have the Lakers’ choice and likely Sacramento’s (top-12 protected) too, plus an extra 2027 first.
The Hawks also nabbed an honest-to-goodness wing defender in Dyson Daniels in that trade; while his shooting comes and goes, this stopper role is one the Hawks have unsuccessfully attempted to fill for years now. The 21-year-old Daniels also can take reps at backup point guard if second-year pro Kobe Bufkin proves unready. Either way, the guy finishing games at shooting guard is likely to be Bogdan Bogdanović, who was robbed of the sixth man award a year ago and figures to remain elite in this role for as long as his knees can hold up.
The good news is the Hawks won the draft lottery. The bad news is they won it in 2024, a year with no clear top pick. In some ways, Atlanta seemed to opt for fit over ceiling by selecting French forward Zaccharie Risacher. (How much should we worry that none of the scouts interviewed for this thought the top pick in the draft would be the best player?) However, Risacher is a tall, mobile forward who can defend down on the positional spectrum and has a good basketball IQ; if his shooting holds up, he might be the player Atlanta thought it was getting when it drafted (and then extended) De’Andre Hunter.
Atlanta’s other big offseason decision is extending the best player nobody talks about, forward Jalen Johnson. He blew up as a starter in his third season with 16.0 points and 8.7 rebounds, and at age 22, he should have plentiful opportunity to expand his game with Murray gone. Bookending him with Risacher could make for a pretty imposing forward combo two or three years down the road.
That hints at another development in Atlanta — this team has become much younger. Daniels and Johnson are 22, Bufkin is 21, Risacher is 19 and Onyeka Okongwu is 23. All of them can guard, which is crucial when building around Young (himself not exactly a grizzled vet at 26). That’s the best hope for fixing last year’s 27th-ranked defense; the Hawks have never finished better than 21st in defensive efficiency in the Young era.
A succession issue at center also looms, where Clint Capela is 30 and on the last year of his deal, and Okongwu hasn’t been good enough to take over as a full-time starter. However, the Hawks are finally in a position where they can use most or all of the $23 million trade exception from the Murray trade on a replacement next summer without going into the tax, even after they pay Johnson. Moving Capela at the trade deadline also is an option, especially if they’re mired in the middle class as expected.
Overall, the Hawks might not win any more games than they did a year ago, but the arrow now points in a much healthier direction. They’re out of luxury tax hell, got 85 cents on the dollar back on the Murray trade and have the makings of a young core to carry them forward. Genuine progress in the standings, however, seems more likely a year from now.
(Top photos of LaMelo Ball and Kyle Kuzma: Patrick Smith, Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
Are you ready for some NBA postseason? We got a little taster on the season’s final weekend, with a few teams playing high-stakes games that resembled playoff environments. That was particularly true in the jumbled Western Conference standings, where the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings were locked in a series of huge games that determined spots six through 10 in the West hierarchy.
And now, we exhale. There are no games Monday, but we get two big play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday before the final play-in for each conference on Friday; that sets the bracket for the main event to start this weekend with four games on both Saturday and Sunday. The first round runs two weeks, with potential seventh games on the weekend of April 27 and 28, and the bracket shrinks from there until Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 6.
I will have a more filled-out playoff preview later in the week, where we can get into predictions for the later rounds and more detail based on the play-in results. For now, however, let’s take the 10,000-foot view on what the play-ins and first round look like.
Here is the least you need to know. (All TV times ET.)
In a rematch of a game played in the same arena on Sunday afternoon, the Pelicans may come into this one with greater motivation than their flat effort in Game 82. That said, this feels like a bad matchup for them – they lost three of the four meetings with L.A. in the regular season and were trounced in all three defeats, including an embarrassing 133-89 loss in Las Vegas in the in-season tournament semifinals.
The Pels have Brandon Ingram back after he missed 12 games with a left knee contusion; Sunday was his first game since March 21. The Lakers, on the other hand, have to cross their fingers for Anthony Davis after the big man left Sunday’s game with hip and back spasms.
Fun fact: The Lakers outscore opponents by 3.2 points per 100 possessions with Davis and LeBron James on the court this year … the exact same margin by which the Pels prevailed with Ingram and Zion Williamson on the floor together. Despite the scores of the first four meetings, I suspect this one will be close. I also think that somehow, some way, the Pelicans’ superior depth comes to bear and, with the help of the home crowd, they end up squeaking this one out.
Pick: Pelicans
West: No. 9 Sacramento Kings vs. No. 10 Golden State Warriors, Tuesday, 10 p.m., TNT
A repeat of the seven-game 2023 first-round series that saw the Warriors prevail behind Steph Curry’s 50-point eruption in Game 7, this time the Greater Suisun Bay derby is a single-elimination affair. The Kings’ depth is threadbare after injuries to Kevin Huerter and Malik Monk, while after a rough start, the Warriors closed the year on a 26-12 heater and have been solid when Curry and Draymond Green take the floor together all season (+4.8 points per 100 possessions).
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It would be cathartic for the Kings to knock out the Warriors after what happened last year and light that glorious beam, and Green’s antics are a wild card in a one-game situation. That said, only a fool bets against Curry in a situation like this, especially with the Kings’ injuries. The Warriors aren’t what they were, but they have at least one more battle in them.
Last year, the Heat went from being the 7 seed entering the play-in to making the NBA Finals. Can the Sixers be the team to pull off that feat this year? Philly slumped in the standings due to Joel Embiid’s extended absence, but the reigning MVP (for a few more days, anyway) is back in the lineup and the Sixers went 29-7 in games he and Tyrese Maxey played in.
The teams split the season series 2-2, but Embiid only played in the last one, a 109-105 Sixers win on April 4 when Maxey scored 37 and Embiid added 29. Don’t forget these teams also played a second-round series in 2022 with most of the same key players; the Heat mostly neutralized Embiid behind Bam Adebayo’s defense and ended up winning in six games.
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Nonetheless, I think having Embiid and a home-court edge, and with Nick Nurse on the sideline this time, Philly has the advantage on a Miami team that hasn’t looked like itself all year and will be missing Duncan Robinson and Josh Richardson.
Two injury-riddled teams limp into this one for the right to a one-game shot at the Sixers-Heat loser on Friday. Atlanta won’t have Jalen Johnson, Saddiq Bey or Onyeka Okongwu and just returned Trae Young from finger surgery on his left hand, while the Bulls are without Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams.
Atlanta also thinned its rotation further with the bizarre move to not convert two-way wing Vít Krejčí to a roster contract, something the Hawks could have done unilaterally. He played at least 15 minutes in 19 of the final 20 regular season games and started 11 of them, but will be ineligible for the postseason.
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The Bulls won the season series 2-1, with Atlanta oddly winning the one game Young missed. Chicago also has all-defense lock Alex Caruso to sic on one of Young or Dejounte Murray. The Bulls just don’t have a whole lot else, especially if DeMar DeRozan can’t get cooking against the Hawks’ lone remaining reliable wing defender (De’Andre Hunter), so I’m betting on Atlanta’s top-level offensive talent winning the day.
Pick: Hawks
Friday: Chicago or Atlanta at Miami or Philadelphia, ESPN, Time TBD
Ironically, Chicago and Atlanta were the teams Miami faced in the play-in a year ago; there’s a decent chance the Heat will again play one of them on Friday for the East’s final playoff spot. Remember, before the Heat’s magical run to the Finals, they lost a play-in to Atlanta when the Hawks smashed them on the offensive glass, then barely held off Chicago after trailing well into the fourth quarter.
However, the Hawks are a lesser version of the team that took out Miami a year ago, let alone the one that went to the 2021 conference finals; Miami won three of four against them this year. I picked Miami to host this game, but regardless of whether it is Miami or Philadelphia hosting, and whether it is Atlanta or Chicago visiting, the Heat should have a huge advantage and advance as the eight seed.
Pick: Heat
Friday: Sacramento or Golden State at Lakers or New Orleans, TNT, Time TBD
I have the Warriors playing the Lakers here based on the picks above, and in that case I would lean toward picking Los Angeles despite the fact that the Warriors beat the Lakers three times. The games were close and the Lakers were missing Davis in the last one. The Lakers playing at home in a game of this magnitude should give them a slight edge. Also, I don’t feel great about projecting the Warriors to win twice on the road to knock the Lakers out of a playoff spot; it feels closer to a 50-50 proposition if we get Lakers-Warriors, but Los Angeles’ overall pathway to the postseason is more favorable since it gets two shots at it.
If it’s New Orleans, I like the Pels in either matchup. They won two of the three regular season matchups against Golden State, including a late-season contest in San Francisco that almost felt like a playoff game, and there’s a good reason to think they’d win again. The Pels have multiple active, harassing wing defenders to throw at Curry, and the Warriors are an old team that would be flying across the country on a short turnaround to play at New Orleans.
The Pels would be slight favorites against the Warriors, but they’d be massive ones against the Kings. Sacramento was smacked five times by the Pelicans, including defeats by 36 and 33 points, and seemingly have no matchup at all for Williamson. It was the first time a team lost a season series 5-0 since 1995-96 (we got a fifth matchup rather than the usual four due to the in-season tournament).
On the flip side, the Kings’ rooting interests in the first game on Tuesday could not be more obvious: The Pels own them, but Sacramento beat Los Angeles in all four meetings. Domantas Sabonis has never lost to Davis as a pro in 10 career meetings, although some of those games were with him as a bit player for the Thunder and Davis in New Orleans.
Keep an eye on this if the Lakers can’t win in New Orleans on Tuesday; these are troubling matchups for them, especially Sacramento. But I think in a one-game situation at home, James can dial up enough energy for them to survive.
No. 1 Boston Celtics vs. Philadelphia/Miami/Atlanta/Chicago (starts Sunday)
The Celtics aren’t getting enough respect as a title favorite after a 64-win season that included one of the highest scoring margins in NBA history at +11.4 per game. Recent playoff wobbles are likely the reason it’s been so hard to find Boston believers, so this spring offers a chance for the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown era Celtics to put those demons to rest.
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Boston would be a heavy favorite here regardless of the opponent, but obviously the Celtics would prefer the Atlanta-Chicago winner advance rather than the Miami postseason torture for a fourth time in five seasons, or alternatively having Embiid pound their bigs for two weeks and wear down their frontcourt for future rounds. The thin and historically frail Kristaps Porziņģis and the 37-year-old Al Horford might not enjoy this assignment.
No. 2 New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia or Miami (starts Saturday)
Regardless of opponent, this feels like the most compelling first-round series. The Knicks and Heat have had many bloody wars through the years, most recently last season’s second-round series that Miami won in six games. Meanwhile, a Knicks-Sixers Acela series (faster than the Turnpike!) would match Embiid against a rising force in the Knicks.
New York won’t have Julius Randle, but the Knicks have a new go-to guy in star guard Jalen Brunson, a perimeter defensive ace in OG Anunoby and plentiful shooting on the perimeter. New York would probably rather face Miami and use Anunoby on Jimmy Butler, but the Knicks won three of four against Philadelphia and two of three against the Heat. Either way, they should be good with Brunson attacking.
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Where Knicks fans might not be as comfortable is with coach Tom Thibodeau’s playoff history, especially if he’s drawn into another matchup against Miami’s Erik Spoelstra. But this feels like a different Knicks team, an enjoyable bunch that defends and shares the ball and has absolutely obliterated opponents in the 23 games Anunoby has played since being acquired from Toronto.
Could we have an upset bracket here? The Bucks lost their final regular-season game and as a result got the one matchup they probably didn’t want, facing an Indiana team that beat them four of five times in the regular season, including at the in-season tournament semifinals in Las Vegas.
All five meetings were before Jan. 3, but the Bucks only went 17-19 in their final 36 games and will enter this series with health questions after Giannis Antetokounmpo missed their final three games with a calf strain. Khris Middleton is seemingly permanently questionable, and several Bucks veterans have tailed off dramatically over the past two to three seasons. The comparative recent playoff histories of coaches Rick Carlisle and Doc Rivers also wouldn’t seem to favor the Bucks.
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If Indiana is going to pull this off, it needs the early-season version of Tyrese Haliburton and not the one who labored through much of February and March with the after-effects of a hamstring injury. Trade deadline pickup Pascal Siakam didn’t play in any of the five games against Milwaukee, but he raises Indiana’s ceiling and gives it another potential Giannis defender.
Now, can the Pacers’ 24th-ranked defense get any stops? Facing a Damian Lillard pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo screening isn’t for the faint of heart.
Cleveland’s odd adventure on Sunday saw the Cavs seem to intentionally punt away a very winnable game at home against lowly Charlotte, all to avoid the potential for drawing Embiid in the first round (Cleveland would have been the second seed if New York’s overtime game against Chicago had gone to the Bulls.)
The Cavs could have been seeded third, drawn Indiana in the first round and landed on the opposite side of the bracket from mighty Boston. Instead, they’ll face the Magic and, should they advance, Boston.
Cleveland split the season series with the Magic (as it did with the Sixers and Pacers), so it’s not as if the Cavs had some special advantage over Orlando other than playoff experience. While it’s true the young Magic squad hasn’t been here before (only four players have ever played in the postseason, and only two – Joe Ingles and Gary Harris – have won a series), Orlando was awesome with defensive hydra Jonathan Isaac on the floor, outscoring opponents by 10.8 points per 100 possessions and allowing just 102.1 points per 100 possessions. He won’t start, but he’ll be a huge factor against the Cavs’ huge frontcourt.
Cleveland also has to answer its own health questions after late-season knee troubles slowed down Donovan Mitchell. The Cavs played their best basketball during Evan Mobley’s injury absence, spacing the floor with more 3-point shooters and bombing away, but guys such as Sam Merrill and Dean Wade who made those units go might not see much run in these playoffs. Don’t sleep on this one: Points will likely be scarce, and it could become a ’90s-style rock fight.
Western Conference First Round
No. 1 Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Lakers/New Orleans/Sacramento/Golden State (starts Sunday)
Does playoff experience matter? We’re about to find out for the top-seeded Thunder, who rode an MVP-caliber season from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and breakout campaigns from rookie Chet Holmgren and sophomore Jalen Williams to the top seed in the West. Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort played one postseason round as wingmen for Chris Paul in the 2020 bubble, but otherwise Gordon Hayward is the only key Thunder player who has tasted the playoffs in any way.
That would contrast rather sharply if they draw, say, James or Curry as a first-round opponent. As good as the Thunder were this year, this bracket presents some potentially problematic opponents. The Lakers beat them three times, Sacramento beat them twice, and two of their wins over Golden State went to overtime.
Thunder fans will root for the Lakers to either win on Tuesday or lose on Friday, based on the season series and the presence of James and Davis as a first-round foe. Regardless, this 1-8 series seems likely to test them.
No. 2 Denver Nuggets vs. Lakers/New Orleans (starts Saturday)
Could we get a rematch of the Western Conference finals? Denver swept the Lakers en route to the 2022 championship and won all three meetings against them this year. Los Angeles has lost eight in a row to the Nuggets, who seemingly delight in tormenting the Lakers with Jamal Murray–Nikola Jokić pick-and-rolls, and have the size and defensive answers to handle the James-Davis combo defensively.
So if it is ratings you seek, then Denver-L.A. it is, at least for five games or so. But if instead of “who’s your daddy?” chants you prefer a long, compelling series, might I guide you toward a possible Nuggets-Pelicans pairing? The two teams split their regular-season series, and the Pelicans’ superior depth has the potential to smash Denver’s iffy second unit during stretches when subs are on the floor. Nobody feels good about trying to knock off Jokić, who will likely win his third MVP award in four seasons, but the Pels might feel better about their chances than most.
This is a rematch of Sunday’s game where the Suns moved up to sixth, and moved Minnesota down to third, by thrashing the Wolves in Minnesota behind a 44-point first-quarter eruption. It was one of the few times this year it felt easy to believe in the Suns’ vision of three high-scoring shooters – Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal – with role players and defenders surrounding them.
Just as in every other sport, Minnesota’s basketball playoff history is littered with disappointment … to the extent that the Wolves have participated at all. They haven’t won a playoff series since 2004 and have only made the postseason three times since.
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This year that all seemed set to change, with Rudy Gobert a likely Defensive Player of the Year winner and Anthony Edwards an electrifying star. However, a dream season has been marred of late by an ownership squabble and a knee injury to Karl-Anthony Towns. Towns came back on Friday after an 18-game absence due to a torn meniscus but was still shaking off the rust against Phoenix, finishing with 10 points and five turnovers in 29 wobbly minutes.
This is also a horrible matchup for the Wolves, who went 56-23 against the rest of the league but lost all three meetings against the Suns by double figures. Can they figure out how to hide Towns on defense against the likes of Durant, and mash the smaller, lighter Suns on offense?
If you watch one first-round series, make it this one. This pairing is a rematch of the best series of the 2021 playoffs, a seven-gamer that saw several momentum shifts and tactical innovations, and among the best of the 2020 bubble.
The superstar pairing of Luka Dončić and Kawhi Leonard is instant must-see TV, and the secondary stars (Kyrie Irving, Paul George, James Harden) are equally compelling. Leonard is a two-time champion, but otherwise the key players on both teams are still battling playoff demons of varying sizes. Finally, the winner has solid odds as a sleeper to come out of the West bracket.
The Clippers won two of the three meetings, but all of them were played before Christmas. Since then Dallas acquired P.J. Washington and, more notably, Daniel Gafford, who has been a monstrous pick-and-roll partner feasting off lobs from Doncic. Dallas went 24-7 from mid-February until resting its key players the final weekend.
The Clips, meanwhile, integrated Harden after a choppy start, morphed Russell Westbrook into a sixth man supreme and were good enough to go 32-9 over a full half-season stretch this year.
As ever, the state of the Clippers depends heavily on whether Kawhi Leonard will actually play in the games. He had enjoyed one of his healthiest seasons, playing 68 games, until missing the final seven with knee soreness.
This, of course, harkens back to last season when Leonard amazed in Game 1, scoring 38 in a Clippers’ road win, before missing the last three games with a knee issue as the Clips meekly exited in five. Even if Leonard comes back, can he make it through an entire series this time?
Yesterday, I largely focused on setting the table for the updated NBA Pre-Postseason Players Tiers before revealing Tier 3 (players between the 24th and 42nd spot) and Tier 4 (Nos. 43-80).
Today, I’m going to get a little more into some of the more interesting and/or challenging placements, as well as note a few overall trends.
For starters, a consistent bit of feedback — and one I’ve gotten from multiple sources since the release of Tiers 3 and 4 — is the always difficult evaluation of which player is more valuable between an elite role player and a good-but-not-great primary or secondary creator. A senior analytics staffer within the league went so far as to argue they would prefer essentially the entirety of Tier 4A, largely made up of elite role players or connectors, over Tier 3B, which is made up of borderline All-Star primaries.
I don’t think there is a reliable way to solve this debate and on some level, deciding between, say, Mikal Bridges on one hand and Jaylen Brown on the other is more a function of the rest of the respective rosters than the individual players. In that particular comparison, I think it’s entirely possible, if not likely, that both the Celtics and Nets would be better if the two were exchanged!
In some ways, this is really an extension of the long-simmering question of how to rate the sub-elite, yet still very good, level of on-ball players. At least to my way of thinking, there is nothing more valuable in the league than elite shot creation and nothing more overrated than mediocre shot creation, but finding the importance and desirability of players in between is just hard.
It’s also, in some form, the reason to do this exercise in the first place, as identifying that there is a fairly wide gap between Brown and Jayson Tatum and that the difference between Luka Dončić and Donovan Mitchell is substantial is a vital part of roster evaluation. Avoiding the cheapening of the term “franchise player,” in other words.
Another set of teammates who illustrate this dichotomy is Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. I didn’t think Banchero was an especially worthy All-Star this year. Through games of April 10, there are only eight players who have scored at least 100 fewer points than they would have a similar number of scoring attempts at league average efficiency according to Basketball Reference, with Banchero being seventh on that list. However, on some level, this is a result of Orlando’s lack of other creators. On my Simple Shot Quality model, his 50.2 percent expected eFG% is 24th lowest among the 162 players with at least 500 tracked shots attempted this season.
But to swing back around, the players with the 21st, 22nd and 23rd hardest shot diets are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards and Tatum, all of whom have significantly outperformed their shot expectancies by 209 (SGA, third of 162), 73 (Edwards, 45th) and 151 (Tatum, 13th) points scored, while Banchero has shot essentially at the level of his shot quality (-3 points, 124th of 162). Should he get credit for helping keep Orlando’s offense afloat at all by at least being able to soak up possessions? How would he perform with more creative guard play around him? I’m not entirely sure, which is why Banchero is a hard player to rate.
Meanwhile, Wagner does not have the same self-creation ability as Banchero, but he is superior in most other areas — more efficient scoring, better and more versatile defense, off ball play — in a way which would make him a very plug-and-play addition to any team that already had their primary creative roles filled.
Moving on, there are a few notable players who might have been much higher had I done a tiers update around midseason. Tyrese Haliburton is one. He’s been great this year, a worthy All-Star and the driving force behind Indiana’s powerful offense. But the second half of the year hasn’t measured up to the first, whether as result of nagging injuries slowing him down or defenses starting to figure him out or most likely a combination of both. This, combined with my uncertainty over how well his style translates to the playoffs has him down in Tier 3 when for much of the season I had him penciled into the bottom end of Tier 2.
Damian Lillard is another player who has dropped down a tier over the course of the season. Early in the year, it was easy to give somewhat of a pass based on both the adjustment to a new team and role as well as the coaching turmoil which beset the Bucks for the first stage of the season. But even though he has shown some of the old dominance in fits and starts, such as the 29 points (on 19 shot attempts) and nine assists he tallied on Wednesday to drive the Bucks past the Magic despite Giannis Antetokounmpo’s absence, those performances have been the exception rather than the rule. Over his final four seasons in Portland, Lillard combined for 62.1 True Shooting on 31.4 Usage. In Milwaukee, his efficiency has dipped to 59.3 TS on 28.4 Usage, his least efficient full season relative to league average since his rookie year. For a player who has always been a huge question mark defensively, it’s a worrisome decline at age 33.
Of course, he could shoot the hell out of the ball in the playoffs and help drag the Bucks to the Eastern Conference finals or even NBA Finals and prove he still belongs in the Top 20 discussion.
Speaking of playoffs, I mentioned yesterday that there were a few players who couldn’t readily improve their tiering until the playoffs, with Tatum, Dončić and Joel Embiid as the prime examples. All three have great opportunities entering the postseason this year, with Dončić in particular seeming well-poised to go on a run; the midseason addition of Daniel Gafford and the Mavericks’ new ability to always be able to match Dončić’s creative mastery with a strong dive-and-dunk pick-and-roll partner surrounded with shooting appears to have unlocked something special.
Meanwhile, there are a few players for whom I have already more or less assumed playoff greatness based on past experience. Jimmy Butler and Jamal Murray haven’t exactly had banner regular seasons, but both have track records of playoff dominance.
Bouncing around a little bit, I’m not sure what to do with Ja Morant and so I am essentially treating this as a gap year while acknowledging he has secured himself extra scrutiny next year.
Finally, let’s talk about the large Frenchman in the room. Victor Wembanyama in Tier 2B, among the Top 14 players in the league. I don’t think he has been All-NBA-level over the entire season, but he has been plenty good as a rookie and has shown development over the course of the year to suggest to me that he will start next season with a strong chance at all-league honors.
This growth is especially evident if you compare before and after either his move to starting at center instead of power forward in early December or the insertion of Tre Jones as a starter in early January to pair Wembanyama with a competent point guard.
On the former, he has been a top-five rim protector in the league since then, with a profile similar to that of Brook Lopez over that period. Meanwhile, prior to Jones joining the starters, Wembanyama only managed 53.3 True Shooting Percentage (on 29.9 usage), but since, that mark has jumped to 58.5 TS% on 33.7 Usage while he has raised his assist rate by nearly 50 percent. And all this with his 3-point shooting still very much a work in progress.
Of course, the numbers don’t even tell close to the full Wemby story as demonstrated by the near nightly parade of “Wait, he did what?!” highlights. While he won’t get a chance to prove himself in this year’s playoffs, it seems almost inevitable that, if he can avoid injury, he’ll be knocking on the door of Tier 1 soon as he has delivered on everything he was hyped to be, and more.
NBA players have always gotten an earful from fans, whether at home or on the road. It comes with the job.
But this season, it’s getting darker.
The recent surge in legalized gambling in every pro league, and throughout college athletics, has impacted American sports in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. But along with the potential good that hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues bring to the NBA and other leagues, something new and ominous has arrived: verbal abuse directed at players and coaches based solely on fans’ wagers.
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Fans can now bet in real-time on their smartphones, on all aspects of the game, including minutiae such as how many rebounds one player might get in the first half, and how many points will be scored by a team in the fourth quarter. And if their bets don’t deliver, they’re taking it out on the players.
“It’s getting outrageous,” LA Clippers forward P.J. Tucker said recently. “It’s getting kind of crazy. Even in the arenas, hearing fans yelling at guys about their bets. It’s unreal. It’s a problem. I think it’s something that’s got to be addressed.”
Teams have yet to make drastic changes to their security details, and the NBA has not recommended increased security near the court. But at least one team has added an extra security guard to its bench this season, in response to increased gambling-infused belligerence. Another team has beefed up its cybersecurity staff to detect especially odious vitriol sent by fans to its players online.
“It’s all over the place,” said Ochai Agbaji, a guard for the Toronto Raptors. “It’s the wild, wild west right now.”
For decades, other than one-off events like the Super Bowl and March Madness office pools, gambling was the third rail of sports. College basketball was rocked by numerous point-shaving scandals. Professional leagues forcefully distanced themselves from betting, even refusing to play games in Las Vegas, where it was legal and popular. Then the Supreme Court opened the door to legalized sports wagering in 2018, and a sea change ensued.
Fans rushed into the nascent market, and the pro leagues quickly pivoted. If fans were opening their now-virtual wallets to spend money on games, the leagues wanted a piece of the action.
Teams now have partnerships with casinos and build their arenas next to them. Announcers, long allergic to any references to betting, now commonly cite wagering information during broadcasts. The NBA recently announced that it would allow fans watching games on its streaming app to track betting odds and click through to make bets with the league’s betting partners, FanDuel and DraftKings.
(The Athletic has a partnership with BetMGM.)
But an unintended consequence of this new relationship comes out of the mouths of increasingly irked fans.
“You see people on Twitter, you know, fans going back and forth with players on Twitter about how you lost their money,” Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum said. “I guess it’s kind of funny. I don’t know. I guess I do feel bad when I don’t hit people’s parlays. I don’t want to them lose money. But, you know, I just go out there and try to play the game.”
Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff said last month that a gambler somehow accessed Bickerstaff’s cell phone number and left him threatening texts and voice messages, intimating he knew where Bickerstaff and his family lived.
“It is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure,” Bickerstaff said.
Toronto Raptors forward Jordan Nwora said that comments about betting from fans are “all the time, nonstop.”
“You get messages,” Nwora said. “You hear it on the sideline. You see guys talking about it all the time.
“It comes with being in the NBA. People bet on silly things on a daily basis. So I mean, it’s part of being in the NBA, it’s what comes with it. I get it. People don’t complain when you have a good game. I don’t get messages with people saying, ‘Thank you for helping me.’ ”
A league spokesman said that incidents of fan comments toward players and team staff about gambling were not more prevalent than other fan misbehavior at this point, but it is something the league continues to monitor.
The root of much of the fury is what’s known as a prop bet, formerly a quirky corner of the underground betting universe that has quickly caught on with fans. Prop bets are wagers on parts of a game that might not have anything to do with the outcome. How long will it take for the national anthem to be sung? How many turnovers will a certain player have in the first half? How many total rebounds will there be?
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Prop bets have been the subject of two recent incidents that raised questions about whether basketball players were under the sway of gamblers. A watchdog spotted irregular betting patterns on prop bets in some Temple University men’s basketball games this season. The NBA told ESPN last week that it was investigating Raptors forward Jontay Porter after betting irregularities were flagged on prop bets involving his performances in two games.
NBA players have noticed the shift in fans’ interests.
“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever,” Tyrese Haliburton, an All-Star guard for the Indiana Pacers, said last month.
“I’m a prop,” he added. “You know what I mean? That’s what my social media mostly consists of.”
Haliburton elaborated on his comments in a recent interview with The Athletic. He said verbal abuse at games was much worse than when he came into the league four years ago.
“Bettors have this thing called the ‘banned’ list, and that’s when you don’t hit their bet,” Haliburton said. “So they’re like, ‘You’re on my banned list. I’m not going to continue to bet on you.’ And I think that’s literally all my mentions have been for the last six weeks,” he said, referring to social media.
I also asked #Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton specifically about speaking to a sports psychologist, and he noted in his response how sports betting has consumed a lot of his social media.
“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever. I’m a prop.“ pic.twitter.com/6f2a0vEuiK
Orlando Magic guard Cole Anthony also mentioned the banned list in noting the increased attention and pressure created by parlay betting, when multiple bets are combined into one wager.
“There were a few where I was just like, ‘This is sickening,’ ” Anthony said. “Not sickening, but it’s funny, in a way, to see this stuff and see how serious a lot of people take this.”
The NBA is especially vulnerable to this new fan dynamic. Its players are not hidden behind pads and helmets, and they perform close to fans, some of whom have conversations with coaches and players during games.
Team security does not confront abusive fans — that falls to arena security. Behavior considered “verbal abuse, or being disruptive,” including talk about gambling if it’s particularly nasty, can lead to ejections. Normally, fans are given a verbal warning by arena security that they are violating the NBA Fan Code of Conduct, which is promoted at games. A fan who does not stop the disruptive behavior may then be given a warning card — a written warning that further inappropriate behavior will lead to ejection. A third incident will cause the fan to be removed — though fans can be ejected if they are particularly nasty toward players or staff just once.
The league monitors social media activity through its Global Security Operations Center, with an eight-to-10-person staff. The NBA also shares intel with other sports leagues. Certain players, coaches and referees tend to attract more attention on social platforms than others. League security meets with teams twice a season to remind them about gambling protocols.
Bickerstaff, the Cavaliers coach, said he informed team security about the fan who was threatening him. Security tracked down the person who left the messages and texts, but Bickerstaff and the team declined to pursue a legal case.
Tatum says the discourse “definitely has changed” from his first few seasons in the league.
“I guess when you hit people’s parlays and do good for them, they tell me,” he said. “But then they also talk s–t. Like I’m on the court and I didn’t get 29.5 or whatever I was supposed to do.”
— Sam Amick, Eric Koreen, Josh Robbins, James Boyd, Jared Weiss and Jason Lloyd contributed reporting.
(Photo of Tyrese Haliburton: Ron Hoskins / NBAE via Getty Images)
Atlanta Hawks center Bruno Fernando (24, left) is averaging a career high in points, rebounds and minutes per game this season. Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
The Atlanta Hawks are now 31-39 on the season. They are firmly entrenched in the 10th spot in the Eastern Conference standings, four games behind the Chicago Bulls and five games in front of the Brooklyn Nets. There are many reasons to consider this season another dud heading into the postseason, but there’s also the emergence of reserve center Bruno Fernando to consider. With 12 more regular season games to play, Fernando is looking like a solid reason to be positive about the future of this team.
A former second round draft pick of the Hawks in 2019, after leaving Atlanta following the 2020-2021 season, Fernando has played for the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets, and both times he has been in limited roles off the bench with the occasional spot start. This season he continues to come off the bench for the Hawks but in a much bigger way. He is averaging career highs in points per game (4.8), rebounds per game (4.2), and minutes per game (12.8).
During Friday night’s 132-91 victory over the Charlotte Hornets at State Farm Arena, Fernando scored a career-high 25 points in 26 minutes and made 11 of his 14 shot attempts. “I just try to come in and do my job,” Fernando said during the postgame press conference. “I just try to find ways to make myself available.”
Fernando grabbed six rebounds during the Hornets game and after the game he credited playing behind Hawks starting center Clint Capela for learning how to offensive rebounds better. The 4.2 rebounds per game that he is averaging this season is also a career high.
“I’m going to continue to do as much as I can,” Fernando said after the game.
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Every August, after the NBA releases its schedule for the upcoming season, Michael McCullough, the Miami Heat’s chief marketing officer, thinks about the next 82 games. He not only considers ticket sales and promotions but also sets a meeting with the team’s equipment manager and focuses on an essential part of his job: uniforms.
Laying out the right jerseys used to be an easy exercise across the NBA. There were just two choices. When Rob Pimental, the Heat’s equipment manager and travel coordinator, began his career with the Sacramento Kings in the 1980s, it was just white and blue: white jerseys at home, dark ones on the road. What to wear didn’t demand a conversation.
Today, it needs lots of meetings. It has become one of the benchmark choices a franchise can make each season. Over the last six-plus years, jerseys have grown to become not just merchandise but also part of an entire marketing ensemble, a diadem of that year’s commercial enterprise.
Jerseys were once hidebound by convention — not always constant but at least consistent in color and place — but they are now ever-changing. Aesthetically, the NBA looks different from year to year as it introduces new uniforms with each season. It is exhilarating or exhausting, depending on whom you ask. The league is either running into grand ideas behind the creativity of its teams, or it is running away from convention and diluting its storied brands.
The story of the league’s changeover can be told by the erosion of one old mainstay: the home white jersey. For decades, this was an NBA staple. Now, it is increasingly a rarity.
The process to pick jerseys for each of the 1,230 NBA games each season seems simple: The home team picks its uniform first, and the road team chooses next. But it is exhaustingly complicated. What used to be mostly a binary decision tree is now complex.
In a way, it begins years ahead of time. Teams start designing their latest City Edition jerseys with Nike two seasons ahead of their debut.
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle in many ways,” McCullough said.
The makeover began with the 2017-18 season, when Nike took over the NBA’s on-court uniform and apparel business. Teams occasionally had asked the league to step away from the usual uniform split to introduce or highlight new alternate jerseys. That trend began in the late 1990s and has increased incrementally since.
Still, teams needed permission from the league to do so. Nike brought on a four-uniform system: the Association, a white jersey; the Icon, a dark jersey; the Statement, an alternate jersey; and the City Edition, which changes annually and has no set color scheme. Some teams have a Classic jersey, too.
The Heat wore their white jerseys in Brooklyn against the Nets on Jan. 15. (Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
The NBA streamlined the process. Christopher Arena, head of on-court and brand partnerships for the NBA, used to keep an Excel spreadsheet of every team’s uniform decision for each game, occasionally hunting them down to get their picks in or calling another team to adjust its choice to avoid a color clash. Then the NBA modernized. It debuted NBA LockerVision, a digital database where teams log in their uniforms weeks after the schedule is released.
There are rules on how often a franchise must wear each jersey: Association and Icon must be worn at least 10 times during a season, Statement six times, City Edition and Classic three times. There are guardrails against colors matching too closely, though not all incidents have been avoided. After the Oklahoma City Thunder and Atlanta Hawks played each other in nearly matching red/orange hues in 2021, the league further barred teams from picking jerseys that are too similar.
That upended the regular order. Where white jerseys used to be regularly worn at home, they are now more often seen on the road. Those August marketing meetings are an opportunity to lay out the best times to show off the latest City Edition jersey.
Few teams have leaned in as much as the Miami Heat. In some ways, they are still taken by tradition. Miami’s red-and-black jersey has remained almost unchanged for decades. Every spring, Miami brings back its annual “White Hot” campaign, which has been in place since 2006. The organization wears its white uniforms at home in the playoffs and asks fans to wear white too.
“That’s part of the whole lore of sports, that tradition,” McCullough said. “There’s room, I think, in sports to create new traditions. I like to think that’s what we’re doing, creating other opportunities for people to have another relationship with their team around what the players are wearing. And of course, it’s broadened out for us entire merchandise lines to support these uniforms and to support this second identity. It just becomes kind of who you are.”
As much as those white jerseys mean to the organization, the last few years have allowed the Heat to experiment and debut new designs and color schemes. When McCullough gets the new schedule every summer, he begins to envision the rollout campaign for that year’s latest jersey.
The Heat have created some of the most vibrant City Edition jerseys of the last decade. Their “Vice City” jerseys were a smash hit. The originals were white; subsequent editions have come in blue gale, fuchsia and black. This season, they wear black jerseys with “HEAT Culture” across the chest.
Most often, they wear them at home. The Heat has programmed those City Edition jerseys to be worn 19 times in Miami and just once on the road. Their Association uniforms — or what used to be known as the home whites — will be worn on the road 24 times.
McCullough wants to make sure the City Edition uniforms get enough appearances in Miami to sink in with Heat fans. He wants the Heat to wear them around the holidays, when fans go shopping. He wants to create favorable environments to show them off and build affinity for them.
“You’ve got this whole narrative you’ve woven around this special uniform that you can only do at home,” he said. “That you can’t do on the road.”
The Heat can build a whole campaign around their latest jerseys by wearing them at home. They unveiled an alternate court in 2018-19 to match their Vice City jerseys and have had one each season since. The franchise can pick and choose when to wear the jerseys if the game is in Miami, so they can prioritize the right days.
The Vice City design became its own kind of brand for the franchise. The Heat’s license plate in Vice City colors is the second-highest selling plate in the state, McCullough said, and is tops among all of Florida’s professional sports teams.
“You look at any badass car in south Florida — and you know there’s a lot of badass cars — and they all have the Heat plate on them,” he said. “It is just a cool-looking plate. I’m sure a lot of those plates are not Heat fans. It’s just a badass-looking license plate to have on your car.”
It is a symbol of the Heat’s successful effort. The planning goes across the organization. McCullough surveys Pimental and considers him an unofficial member of the marketing staff. Any uniform decisions are run by him.
Pimental’s job is vast. Whenever the Heat choose their road jerseys, they must consider how it will affect travel. He had to learn how to re-pack for trips after Nike took over in 2017 because of the new possibilities.
For each road trip, the Heat bring a game set of each uniform and a backup set, as well as a few blanks; that’s 40-45 uniforms in each color. If they intend to wear two different uniforms on a trip, they could bring almost 90 different sets.
Then there is everything else: the warmups, the sneakers, the tights, the socks, the practice gear. In all, Pimental said his team and the training staff bring about 3,000 pounds of equipment on road trips.
He calls it “a traveling circus.” It’s a far cry from his early days in Sacramento, but he does not miss the simplicity.
“Sure, maybe (there are) times you get frustrated, but I think it’s cool to have a little more of an identity,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Fads change, things change. You never know if you’ll go back to white uniforms at home. It’s cool to see different things.
“Before, you only saw the white uniforms at home. Now you get an opportunity to see all the uniforms that we have.”
The NBA isn’t the only league that has abandoned the home white jerseys as its core tenet. NHL franchises have flip-flopped during the league’s history and started wearing their dark sweaters at home again during the 2003-04 season. The NFL lets the home team decide its uniforms, and those teams rarely choose white anymore. Even the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t wear white at home until the early 2000s.
NBA teams began pushing alternate jerseys at home more frequently in the decade or so before Nike took over. Arena believes teams wore their white jerseys at home about 75 percent of the time by 2017.
Now, it is far less. The old uniform rules and expectations no longer apply. Arena does not see this as a wholesale abdication from league norms.
“It was already eroding,” he said. “We just put a paradigm around it. And again, eroding assumes that what it was was somewhat perfect, like some statue, and it was eroding to something imperfect. I would argue it was on the way to being flawed, and we’ve now made it perfect.”
The Association jersey is worn at the same frequency this season as it was during the 2017-18 season, Nike’s first year as the apparel distributor, but the split between home and road is stark. Teams wore their Association jerseys roughly 29 times per season in that first season under Nike, and an average of 17 games at home. This season, the Association jersey averaged 29 appearances per team but just roughly nine times at home.
About 22 percent of all games this season will feature a matchup of two teams each in a color jersey. Teams are scheduled to wear their City Edition jerseys about 14 times this season, with 11 of those at home.
The rules the league has put in place makes some jerseys a skeleton key. The Lakers’ gold Icon jersey can pair with anything, Arena said. Other jerseys — like the Indiana Pacers’ yellow, the Thunder’s orange and the Memphis Grizzlies’ light blue — are also versatile and don’t need to only be worn against white as a counterpoint.
The NBA, Arena said, obsesses “over this more than you can imagine.” Uniforms are a part of his life’s work, and he has been with the league for 26 years.
In that time, the league has undergone drastic changes, switched uniform providers several times and watched a new suite of logos and color schemes pop up. For most of that period, some basics never changed, but wearing white jerseys at home is no longer part of that foundation.
“I don’t know that we ever want to be so steadfast in rules and regulations and tradition and biases that we can’t step outside and listen to our teams and our fans,” Arena said. “I think what our teams are telling us was that our fans wanted to see these different uniforms at home, and they were maybe sick of seeing their team in white every single game for 41 games.
“The benefit, I guess you could say, is they get to see the wonderful colors of the 29 other teams come in. They can see the purple of the Lakers and the green of the Celtics and so forth. But they never got to see their team wearing their colors at home on their home floor, which is an incredible dynamic to see.”
(Top photo of Jimmy Butler: Issac Baldizon / NBAE via Getty Images)
The dunk is basketball’s most lionized play. The most iconic ones are canonized, referenced fondly and often, debated for their merits and significance. The sport’s language has created so many names for it: jam, yam, slam, poster, stuff, hammer. It’s a unique club that only few on this world can join. It’s marvelous.
And it hurts like hell.
“Can you think of any other concept where your hand swings at something metal?” 11-year NBA veteran Austin Rivers asks. “It’ll probably hurt, yeah?”
When asked, players catalog the pain dunking has caused: broken nails; bent fingers; recent bruises; lasting scars; midair collisions; twisted necks; dangerous landings. Injuries that cost them games or even seasons.
Derrick Jones Jr., a former NBA All-Star Weekend dunk contest winner now with the Dallas Mavericks, points out two specific marks on his left wrist. Larry Nance Jr., another high flier in his ninth NBA season and third with the New Orleans Pelicans, recalls childhood memories of his father’s scarred arms from a 14-year NBA career that included winning the first-ever dunk contest in 1984. Dallas’ Josh Green remembers one pregame dunk that set his nerves afire.
“I remember thinking, ‘Why would I do this before a game,’” the 23-year-old Green says.
And yet still they dunk.
In the modern NBA, the dunk’s frequency has been increasing, going from 8,254 in the 2002-03 regular season to 11,664 last year. The rise is mostly due to the 3-point revolution and the increased spacing and cleaner driving lanes that come with it. But the league also has taller, more explosive athletes entering every year. With them come even more spectacular aerial feats, ones that enrapture fans and wow even the players who witness them.
What players think of the dunk, and the agony that can come with it, is ever changing. This isn’t some new trend. It’s just that the dunk, for all its allure and mystique, is the most visceral mark of a player’s maturation.
Basketball’s most exclusive club, one only entered 10 feet in the air, isn’t one that players can — or always want to — live in forever.
Dennis Smith Jr., now a member of the Brooklyn Nets, had a 48-inch vertical as a prospect, but says now his struggles with landing affected his shooting form. (Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
When young basketball players first start dunking, they never want to stop.
Smith’s first in-game dunk was an off-the-backboard slam in a state title game when he was 13. His team was up big and his teammates were showing off. “Now it’s my turn,” the 26-year-old Brooklyn Nets guard recalls thinking. “I got one.” An in-game dunk is a status symbol he has never forgotten.
Willie Green, now the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans after a 12-year NBA career, was told as a teenager that toe raises would help him reach above the rim. Every morning in the shower, he counted to 300 — rising onto the balls of his feet with each number until this club finally let him in.
“If you could dunk, people looked up to you, they glorified you,” Green says. “You felt like you got over a big hurdle in basketball. It was a huge step in basketball when I was able to dunk.”
Every player asked remembers how old they were when they first started. “You’re young, you’re bouncy,” Markieff Morris, 34, says. “You dunked so you could talk your s—.” It was the first thing youngsters like him did stepping into the gym, the last before they left.
“When you’re first dunking, your fingers are full of blood because of the (contact),” Philadelphia 76ers forward Nicolas Batum recalls. “But you get used to it. You have so much joy of dunking. You’re one of the few people in the world that can.”
Once players start dunking in games, it becomes even more addicting. “When you try to dunk on someone, you’re hyped up, you’re amped up,” the New York Knicks’Donte DiVincenzo says. “You don’t feel any of that s—.” It’s the same as any adrenaline high. “It feels like energy,” 21-year-old Mavericks guard Jaden Hardy says. As the crowds grow bigger and the reactions reverberate louder, it’s even better.
Marques Johnson, a five-time NBA All-Star who retired in 1990, remembers one slam he had at age 15 in a summer league over a player who had just been drafted to the NBA. To dunk on him, to knock him to the ground, proved something.
“As a young player, if you can hang with guys on the next level,” he says, “it becomes that validation that you belong.”
Johnson, currently the Milwaukee Bucks’ television analyst, played collegiately for UCLA, where he was named the Naismith College Player of the Year in 1977, the first season the dunk was re-legalized in college basketball. “I really believe it’s a big reason why I won,” he says. “People ain’t seen a dunk in college basketball in 10 years.” Johnson, a hyperathletic 6-foot-7 forward, took up residence above the rim.
Once, he missed two weeks with a knee sprain after dunking on a teammate in practice and landing hard. As he lay on the ground in pain, he still remembers what his first question was.
“Did the dunk go in?”
“Yeah,” he was told. “You dunked on him.”
Marques Johnson, shown here with the Bucks, believes dunking was a big reason he was the Naismith Player of the Year in 1977. (Heinz Kluetmeier / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Last season, Christian Wood rebounded his own miss and found an empty path to the rim. He dribbled once, planted both feet, hurled the ball through the rim — and then clutched his left hand as he ran back down the court.
Wood, who signed with the Los Angeles Lakers this summer after his one season with the Mavericks, finished the game but missed the next eight with a broken thumb. “I went for a tomahawk (dunk), trying to look flashy for some reason, and hit my thumb again,” he says. He had already injured it, he says, but that’s the moment when he knew he “had really hurt it.”
As teenagers age into veterans, their relationships toward dunking often change. “To really dunk consistently in the NBA, you gotta be a freak athlete.” Rivers says. For those who aren’t, dunking becomes more akin to a tool than a feat.
“S—, those things are really adding up,” the 26-year-old DiVincenzo says. “A lot of the younger guys want to dunk every single time. I am not like that anymore.”
DiVincenzo still dunks — he had nine last year with the Golden State Warriors — but prefers layups when possible. It isn’t always possible, though. “Sometimes, (a dunk) is the only way to draw fouls,” he says.
When Willie Green neared the end of his career, he recalls hating when defenders forced him into it.
“They’re chasing you down hard on a fast break, and you want to lay it up, but you know if you lay it up, they’re going to block it,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Man. You made me dunk that.’”
Green was a two-foot dunker, which meant accelerating into the air was hard on his knees, especially the left one, which was surgically repaired in 2005. “That force, that gravity, compounded with coming down,” he says. “It takes a toll on you.”
Smith, the ninth pick in the 2017 draft, entered the league with a record-tying 48-inch vertical — and with a dangerous habit of coming down on one leg. While recovering from knee surgery, he learned to land on both of them. “I don’t even think about it now,” he says. But he still does thoracic therapy to treat scar tissues in his wrist from his childhood dunks, which he believes has had an effect on his shooting form.
The league’s freak athletes, the ones Rivers referenced, do have different experiences. Nance Jr., who remembers his father’s forearm scars, has none of his own. His hands are large enough to engulf the ball rather than pinning it against his wrist. “I never really learned how to cup it like everybody else,” Nance says. “I genuinely don’t believe I could do it if I tried.” He drops the ball through the rim rather than relying on inertia.
“Not really,” he says when asked whether it hurts. “Unless I miss.”
Players like him still experience pain from the midair collisions and the misses: when the basketball hits the cylinder’s rear and sends shock waves through their arms; when an opponent’s desperate swipes hit flesh and nerve; when the crash of bodies sends theirs sprawling to the floor.
Anthony Edwards, another alien athlete, doesn’t even refer to what he does as dunking. “I don’t really dunk the ball,” he says. “I just put it in there the majority of the time.” Earlier this month, though, Edwards elevated over the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Jaylin Williams, nicked him on the shoulder and came crashing back down.
Though Edwards only missed two games with a hip injury, the Timberwolves’ rising star admitted he was “scared” and “nervous” in his first game upon returning. And even if missed dunks don’t injure him, there’s still pride.
As Edwards said of them last season: “Those hurt my soul.”
Anthony Edwards, shown here after a dunk in last season’s Play-In Tournament, was recently injured on a dunk attempt against Oklahoma City. (Adam Pantozzi / NBAE via Getty Images)
Kyrie Irving had stolen the ball and was alone at the basket in a December game when he rose up to dunk in front of his own bench. His Dallas teammates had already risen up to celebrate — until they couldn’t.
“I mistimed it,” he says. “My momentum wasn’t there.” The ball grazed the front of the rim and fell out.
The 31-year-old Irving is known for every sort of highlight except dunking, of which he has only 25 in his 11-year career. But a flubbed dunk is embarrassing even for a player like him.
“You just feel bad!” he says. “We’re the best athletes in the world. I should be able to get up there once in a while.”
Later that quarter, the 6-foot-2 Irving had another chance at a wide-open fast break, at redemption. This time, he made sure to prove he could still do it.
“I had to double pump,” he says, laughing now. “I had to get up there, bro. I couldn’t come in the locker room to my teammates, coaching staff, upper management. They would’ve been on my head.”
Still, as players grow closer to retirement, they often hang up their dunking careers first.
Rivers, who remains a free agent after spending his 11th season with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2022-23, recently retired from dunking. “I just prefer laying the ball up,” he said last year. “A dunk takes a lot out of me.” It was the hard landings that ultimately got him to stop, but he believes he became a better finisher once he made the decision.
It’s easier for veterans who never needed to play above the rim. Like, say, Stephen Curry, who seems amused he was asked about something he hasn’t done in a game since 2018.
“I had no problem letting that part of myself go,” the 6-foot-3 Curry says. “I very easily moved on to the next chapter of my career.”
Batum, a 35-year-old with 367 career dunks, also swore off contested dunks before last season. “My body told me,” he said. “It said, ‘No more, bro.’” Now he only dunks, gently with two hands, when he knows he’s alone at the rim.
“When you hit 32, the game isn’t about dunking anymore,” says Morris, now in his 13th NBA season. “It’s about longevity and still being able to play at a high level.”
Caron Butler wishes he had realized that sooner. When he was younger, Butler, who had two All-Star appearances before retiring to become a Miami Heat assistant coach, practiced as hard as he played.
“I overemphasized the two points I was getting to prove a point or show off my God-given ability,” he says. “It would have given me more longevity.”
Butler doesn’t have any regrets. But he thinks about the dunk differently now.
“It’s just two points.”
Caron Butler, shown here leaping between two Cavaliers during the 2008 NBA playoffs, said his attitude toward dunking changed as he got older. “It’s just two points,” he says. (Ned Dishman / NBAE via Getty Images)
It’s just two points.
“I’m listening to an old man talk,” Butler says. “That’s what 13-year-old Caron Butler would say. He would say, ‘I’m listening to a very old man talk about dunking.’”
He’s not the only retired player who sees the irony. Green thinks his younger self, the one who counted his toe raises in the shower, would feel similarly
“Thirteen-year-old me would really be disgusted right now,” he says.
But Green did dunk again earlier in 2023, a windmill slam in a January practice that had his players hollering in amazement. “They always tell me I can’t dunk,” he says. “I wanted to show them I had a little juice.” Green, the league’s fifth-youngest head coach, says that one of his coaching qualities is his relatability.
“When you’re asking high level professional athletes to do something, it helps for them to know that you’ve done it,” he says. “And it helps to know when they look at you that it looks like you still can do it.”
For others, it’s something that hearkens back to the past: to the adrenaline rush they first felt, to the validation it gave when their NBA careers were still dreams. Klay Thompson, perhaps this sport’s second-best shooter ever behind Curry, his Warriors teammate, says one of the best moments of his career was a dunk. After missing two consecutive seasons with major surgeries, in his first game back, he drove to the rim and slammed one. Thompson knew in that moment, he says, that the Warriors could still win another championship — and later that season, they did.
The end result of Klay Thompson’s dunk through multiple Cavaliers in his first game back from ACL and Achilles injuries. (Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images)
Thompson used to stroll onto the court and dunk as soon as his shoes were on. “Now, I need a good hour to get the gears greased and the motor working,” he says. As his body has changed, so too has his appreciation for what dunking means.
“It’s always an amazing feeling hanging on the rim that you can (forget) most people can’t do it,” he says. “I no longer take it for granted.”
It’s just two points for these club members, yes, but it’s more than that. For Johnson, the former Naismith College Player of the Year, dunking still means something special. Johnson turns 68 in February, and he plans to continue his personal tradition that began when he was 55: dunking on his birthday.
It’s motivation, Johnson explains, to stay in shape, which was inspired by his son, Josiah, who films it every year. It started becoming harder when Marques turned 60. “The first two attempts, I’m barely getting above the rim,” he says. It’s harder to palm the ball as his hands lose strength, and it usually takes until the fifth or sixth try before he succeeds.
Johnson, who had hip surgery this summer, doesn’t know if he will succeed next year. After all, he only attempts to dunk on his birthday, never in-between. “I know, eventually, I’m not going to be able to do it,” he says. But his recovery has gone well, and he feels good he’ll dunk once more next February.
He still remembers it, misses it.
“I remember them vividly: the excitement, the adrenaline rushing through your body,” he says. “So the dunk, as you can tell, has meant a whole lot to me.”
When asked what his younger self would think about hearing him talk about dunking now — this exclusive club he first joined as a 14-year-old wearing slacks and dress shoes, one that has represented pain and joy, aging and authenticity — Johnson instead chooses to turn the question around.
“I’d tell 16-year old me,” he says, “do it until the wheels come off.”
(Illustration by Rachel Orr / The Athletic. Photos of Derrick Jones Jr. (left) and Anthony Edwards (right): Amanda Loman and David Berding / Getty Images)
Atlanta rap star Young Dro will take to the stage to perform during halftime when the Atlanta Hawks face-off against the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 17. According to a press release, the game, presented by Georgia Natural Gas, marks the team’s first home game that counts towards the NBA In-Season Tournament.
A native of west Atlanta, Young Dro, a four-time RIAA-certified platinum recording artist, has been rocking shows around the world with his clever wordplay and undeniable stage presence for over two decades.
In 2006, the rap star burst onto the scene with his debut studio album Best Thang Smokin’. The project spawned hits like “Rubberband Banks” and “Shoulder Lean,” which peaked at No. 10 on the Hot 100 Billboard chart. The rapper has collaborated with everyone from T.I. to B.o.B.
In a statement, Young Dro gushed that he was thrilled to have the opportunity to put on for his hometown of Atlanta during the Hawks’ halftime extravaganza.
“I hope my performance inspires resilience, compassion, and confidence in our city’s youth, and inspires them to be part of shaping a future where every child thrives, regardless of the challenges they face,” the “FDB” artist added.
Outside of music, Young Dro, real name D’Juan Montrel Hart, has been using his platform to bring awareness to issues impacting his community at large.
This year, the rapper launched his non-profit organization It STILL Takes a Village, a community group that is committed to ending gun violence and provides resources for individuals affected by mental health issues and substance abuse.
In October, the rap star was a guest speaker at the “Healing a Culture” discussion panel, helmed by MusiCares, a charity that has provided millions in health, financial and rehabilitation resources to musicians in need. Young Dro opened up about how the non-profit helped him to battle his substance abuse addiction and remain sober as he unlocks a new level of his music career.
Get ready, because we’re in for a treat when Young Dro takes to the stage to start the party for the Atlanta Hawks during halftime. The game will begin at 7:30 p.m. with the first 5,000 fans in attendance to receive a special commemorative ticket.
The 2023-24 Nike NBA City Edition uniforms were unveiled last Thursday. NBA fans will be treated to another season where alternate uniforms, according to Nike, continue to “represent the stories, history and heritage that make each franchise unique.”
The uniforms are now in their seventh season with the NBA, and they have been a big hit in the past. Home teams will wear the uniforms throughout the NBA In-Season Tournament, which tipped off last Friday and will run until Dec. 9.
The big question: How does this year’s collection of uniforms look?
The 30 Nike NBA City Edition jerseys for the 2023-24 season.
The unveiling gave The Athletic’s team of Jason Jones, James Edwards III and Kelly Iko an opportunity to discuss the jerseys in depth. The trio conferred about all 30 City Edition jerseys and came up with its own power rankings. The writers ranked each team using a scoring system where 30 points were given to their favorite jersey, all the way to one point given to their least favorite. This explains the numbers in parentheses next to each writer’s name below.
Which jersey was the collective favorite? Here are the rankings and the writers’ thoughts of each, starting from worst to first.
(All images are courtesy of Nike and the NBA)
The Wizards jersey pays homage to the 40 boundary stones of the original outline of the District of Columbia.
Edwards (5 points): This makes me want a Mountain Dew Baja Blast from Taco Bell.
Iko (2): Have you ever chewed, like, five Skittles at once and looked at it? This is that. Come on, y’all.
Jones (1): There’s a lot going on here. Doesn’t really work for me.
This jersey was made in collaboration with Brooklyn artist and designer Brian Donnelly, known professionally as KAWS.
Jones (7): The artwork for “Nets” is supposed to give a graffiti vibe. I wish it would have leaned more into that, especially with this season occurring as hip-hop celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Edwards (6): I’m all for trying to be creative and different; you take a risk when you do that. But the Nets took a risk, and they failed. Miserably.
Iko (1): It’s actually fitting that this was inspired by KAWS’ “Tension,” because that’s exactly the type of headache I get from looking at this for too long. This is a bad jersey. It’s actually baffling because KAWS makes some really dope art.
The triangle-shaped word mark is a reminder of the throwback design after the team moved from Minneapolis in the 1960s.
Jones (10): A mash between the early and modern Lakers. Not a big fan of the triangular shape of “Los Angeles,” but I understand its ties to the early days of the Lakers in the city. What would have been wild would have been something lake-related. That would have stood out more than another black jersey.
Iko (5): What’s going on in Los Angeles? I get it, Laker Nation rides hard for its team, but when I go to the store, I’m not thinking about the triangle offense. It could be worse though … like Brooklyn’s.
Edwards (4): I don’t really care about the reasoning for the placement of “Los Angeles.” It looks bad. Horrific. It’s like someone went to JOANN Fabrics and tried to make a custom Lakers jersey but ended up not measuring the width of the jersey correctly. For such a historic franchise, I expected better.
Memphis’ jersey prominently features the “MEM” logo that has been seen on the waistbands and collars of past uniforms.
Iko (15): I once got lost on Beale Street trying to get to FedExForum in Memphis. These give me the same confused vibe. The font is a cool idea, but it wasn’t executed well enough. Back to the drawing board.
Jones (3): The Grizzlies had my favorite City Edition jersey last season. Not so much this year. It’s basic. Doesn’t have the same personality as last season when the jersey screamed Memphis swagger.
Edwards (2): Someone on social media said the Memphis jersey is a QR code to see the actual jersey, and I can’t stop laughing. Horrible.
GO DEEPER
NBA City Edition 2022-23: Every alternate jersey ranked from 29(?) to 1
Indiana’s jersey has a street-art look resembling the murals and signs throughout Indianapolis neighborhoods.
Edwards (13): I don’t mind this, because it’s different without being too extra. The color combination is obscure, and while it doesn’t make any sense to me in terms of a connection to Indianapolis, it’s not an ugly jersey. Middle of the pack for me.
Iko (6): There is way too much going on. These are a mess.
Jones (2): When I think of Indiana, I don’t think vibrant, which is what this jersey is. I’ve been to Indianapolis plenty of times, but this just doesn’t connect with the city for me.
Heat fans are all in on “Heat Culture,” which this jersey proudly acknowledges.
Iko (10): “Heat Culture” is one of those things that should be said and understood, not displayed on the front of a jersey. Miami has so many more things to offer as a city that could have been used with these jerseys. Missed opportunity.
Jones (9): Nothing “Miami Vice”-related? No vibrant colors? A red-and-black jersey seems pretty simple. Adding “Heat Culture” is a nice touch, but when it comes to Miami, I prefer the “Vice” theme.
Edwards (3): I don’t think saying “Heat Culture” is as corny as most people do, but a jersey that says “Heat Culture” … yeah, that’s corny.
Denver’s jersey shows “5280” across the chest. A mile is 5,280 feet. Denver’s the “Mile-High City.” This one is pretty easy.
Iko (14): This might have ranked higher if pickaxes were on the front and the mountains were on the back. They also could have done without the “5280” slapped across the middle. Three and four numbers on the front of a jersey is for AAU. Distracting.
Jones (8): I’m still not sure how I feel about “5280” across the chest. I understand the significance, but how many numbers do you need on the front of a jersey? It takes away from the Denver skyline in the background.
Edwards (1): Whoever came up with this jersey should be suspended (with pay, of course). I’m sorry. I like Denver as a city, and I love the Nuggets, but these are comically bad. Some players will have six numbers on the front of their jerseys when Denver wears them. Six.
A black jersey with purple and highlighter-green accents gives a vibrant look for a New Orleans team representing a vibrant city.
Edwards (12): Do these glow in the dark? If not, that’s disappointing.
Iko (12): Somehow, some way, I blame (Pelicans writer) Will Guillory for these.
Jones (4): The perfect jersey to wear around Halloween.
Oklahoma City’s jersey aims to celebrate the city’s community art and appreciate the landscape of the Sooner State.
Edwards (20): I like the color combinations, as well as the font of “OKC.” I’m a fan of these.
Jones (5): This scheme matches the “Love’s” patch. Maybe that was intentional. The orange jumps out, but it’s pretty simple overall.
Iko (4): This makes me think of McDonald’s. These are pretty blah, but they might look better framed.
This jersey was designed in collaboration with Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood. “Clips” recreates the team’s word mark from the 1980s.
Edwards (17): I wanted to knock it down some points for being so basic, but the ugliness of some other jerseys made it hard to penalize the Clippers for not trying.
Iko (7): Did Marcus Morris make this as a parting gift? Morris averaged 12 points as a Clipper. This is that, but in jersey form: I came to work and I did the job that was asked of me.
Jones (6): Nothing too fancy with this. No cool backstory or details in the description. Just a plain “Clips” jersey.
“Chicago” printed vertically on the jersey, coupled with “Madhouse on Madison” on the jock tag is set to remind Bulls fans of the old Chicago Stadium days.
Edwards (15): I ended up with them in the middle of the pack because I don’t like the placement of “Chicago.” It should be a little bit lower. That messed it all up for me.
Jones (12): The intent is to be a nod to the old Chicago Stadium of the early 1990s. “Chicago” down the front of the jersey reminds me of the shooting shirts worn by a young Michael Jordan. It’s not the most imaginative, but it works.
Iko (3): I understand the reference to Chicago Stadium from the ’90s, and I’m sure the locals really draw to the style, but I’ve never been a fan of the vertical lettering. It just makes for an awkward space in the middle.
A collaboration with lifestyle brand Kith helps the Knicks celebrate the teams from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Jones (11): There’s a lot going on here. Pinstripes. Doubling up on “New York.” The black down the side. Just a lot.
Iko (11): I feel like the Knicks have had a version of this every year for the last 10,000 years. It’s like the printer lagged out.
Edwards (9): A drunk version of a Knicks jersey. That’s all I got.
The Hawks use lowercase font and a “Lift as we fly” mantra to set the tone for this year’s City Edition jersey.
Jones (15): Nothing will top the MLK jersey for me. I like the blue on this, but it’s pretty basic compared to some of the previous versions.
Edwards (14): They’re fine. They’re middle of the pack to me, which might not say a lot because there are some absolutely horrendous City Edition jerseys.
Iko (13): Maybe it’s the combination of the lowercase font on these and the peachy color that throws me off, but it just seems OK. There’s no story or anything that really speaks to me. It’s fine — nothing more, nothing less.
The Spurs jersey pays homage to Hemisfair, the 1968 World’s Fair. It’s a retro look that values the heart of downtown San Antonio.
Iko (19): I didn’t expect the Spurs to go with the white base, but this will look really dope under the arena lights. Also, Ricky’s Tacos in San Antonio is the best place many have never heard of.
Jones (14): Would I wear this one? Probably not … but I like it. It’s very San Antonio. It definitely fits the city.
Edwards (10): The lettering is cool. That’s about it. This is too basic.
The Warriors jersey embodies San Francisco and its history of cable cars. The “San Francisco” word mark goes uphill as cable cars would around the city.
Iko (18): San Francisco is a unique city, from its transportation system to landscape. That matches the lettering of these jerseys. I’ve ridden through the streets for years, and each time, the hills surprise me. The black on the jersey also is really emboldened, if that makes sense.
Jones (17): The more I look at it, the more I like it. The cable car design of the “San Francisco” lettering works. The simplicity of the design with hints of the cable car history makes this a nice alternate jersey.
Edwards (11): The idea was cool, but the execution is meh to me. It’s an OK jersey with awkward lettering. Not the best, but not the worst.
Toronto’s jersey features a gold background and bolts of electricity as pinstripes. “We the North” is above the jock tag.
Iko (20): Sweet threads. I love the cultural melting pot Toronto is, and that is reflected in the making of this jersey. These will be a hit in the city.
Jones (20): The gold and lightning accents make this one of the Raptors’ best jerseys. “We the North” also reminds everyone that Toronto truly is an international city.
Edwards (7): I don’t like gold uniforms at all. Just a personal preference. I love Toronto, though. It’s my favorite North American city. However, hard pass on the jersey.
Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Leon Bridges inspired the Mavericks jersey. Bridges, a Fort Worth, Texas, native, has his signature on the jock tag.
Edwards (21): I want to first shout out Erykah Badu while we’re on the topic of Dallas and R&B. Legend. This jersey is one of the better ones simply because of the font, colors and simplicity. It’s clean, and it pops. Hard to not like this.
Jones (13): Tapping into the R&B history of the region makes for a cool backstory. The jersey itself is pretty simple, but the details via the input of Leon Bridges are a nice discussion point.
Iko (16): I was actually curious about how and where Dallas would draw inspiration prior to these coming out. Leon Bridges is awesome, especially tied with the city’s history of R&B (shout-out to Tevin Campbell). For some reason, I keep thinking about Michael Finley when I see these.
The state known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” features blue water tones through most of the jersey with “Minnesota” across the chest in white.
Iko (26): Loooove these. The way the white dissolves into the blue gives a chilling effect. My mind immediately jumps to rapper Lil Yachty: “Cold Like Minnesota.”
Jones (19): This gives off calm and soothing vibes, perfect for the Land of 10,000 Lakes. If the Timberwolves ran back the Prince alternate versions every year, I’d be happy, but this is a nice bounceback after last season’s version.
Edwards (8): I guess I’ll be Debbie Downer here. These are mid, at best. Everything is smooshed at the top — the change in color, the number, “Minnesota” and the sponsors. I don’t love how small “Minnesota” reads. These would be lower for me if it weren’t for some of the nastiness that we’ve already talked about.
In addition to having “Buzz City” across the chest, this Hornets jersey celebrates Spectrum Arena, as well as the Charlotte Mint, the first U.S. branch mint.
Iko (21): You can never go wrong with teal and blue, and I really like how they incorporated the hornet influence. I can almost see Baron Davis crossing someone over in these. Nice work.
Jones (18): Charlotte’s colors are some of the best in the league. I’m digging the gold touch, too. Much better than last season’s edition.
Edwards (16): I agree with Jason. The Hornets have some of the best colors in the league. Hard to mess that up. These are clean, not too much.
The Celtics mesh their traditional green with a wood grain pattern, paying respect to the city’s long history of furniture making.
Edwards (22): If you’re not going to be creative, then keep it clean. Boston did. For my Michigan people, this jersey looks like an ad for Vernors.
Iko (17): Maybe I’m in the minority, but I actually like the blending of the white on the front with the wood grain texture on the sides.
Jones (16): Who knew Boston had a history of furniture making? I sure didn’t. The wood coloring on the side is also a nod to peach baskets, the part of history I would expect.
The Kings jersey gives flashbacks of the 1968 Cincinnati Royals. The various crowns above the jock tag add a nice touch.
Edwards (26): I’m going to sound like a hypocrite here, because the lettering doesn’t bug me nearly as much as the “Chicago” on the Bulls uniform, even though it’s just as high up the jersey. I think it’s because of the different colors. It breaks it up a little bit. These colors go together well. It’s sleek and clean.
Jones (22): I’d be in favor of the Kings rocking this full-time. We need something that connects the Kings to their history with Oscar Robertson, and this jersey works.
Iko (8): This is another one that James and Jason probably like, but I just can’t bring myself to it. Maybe it’s the width of the “Kings” stripes, but there’s a lot going on for me. I do like the colors, though.
Celebrating Milwaukee’s Deer District is the theme with this year’s Bucks City Edition jersey. Milwaukee went with a blue and cream colorway.
Jones (25): Another winner for the Bucks in the City Editions. The blue pops, and the cream “wave” is a nice touch. I’m just glad they didn’t go for a black jersey.
Edwards (23): I like the colors, especially the cream design across the middle and down the side.
Iko (9): I’m definitely in the minority with these. I love the historical connection to water used here, but really … using the arch as an ode to Fiserv Forum? Didn’t the arena open, like, five years ago? Not a fan.
The Trail Blazers pay homage to the late Dr. Jack Ramsay, who coached the team to its only NBA title in 1977. Ramsay was known for wearing plaid in Portland.
Jones (24): The plaid in honor of Dr. Jack Ramsay makes this a winner. It’s subtle, but it’s a great look. The Blazers kept it simple, but the history is in the details.
Iko (23): Black is always a good default, and the Blazers did well with these. You don’t have to go for a home run all the time: A simple base hit will suffice.
Edwards (18): Hard to hate it, easy not to love it. The plaid inside the lettering is a nice touch, visually and in terms of the backstory.
With “City of Brotherly Love” across the chest, the Sixers jersey is inspired by the Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia’s famous farmer’s market.
Edwards (25): I’m a sucker for navy blue, red and white. Those three colors go together so well for me. I also really like the font on the front. Two thumbs up.
Iko (22): It’s always hilarious hearing Philly associated with love, having spent quite a bit of time at 76ers games. But, really smooth color transition here, and the lettering is neat.
Jones (21): Navy blue was a good play for the red and white. The Reading Terminal Market lettering also is a great addition. I’m always going to like seeing “City of Brotherly Love” on a jersey.
The Rockets chose to honor the University of Houston’s Phi Slama Jama and Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, two hometown heroes, with their jerseys.
Iko (24): If you’re not from the city, you probably won’t get the cross reference between the University of Houston and the old Rockets teams, but this is a classic blend. This will sell like hotcakes at the Galleria.
Jones (23): Phi Slama Jama gets some love with this design. Had to look up the shooting shirts worn by the University of Houston during Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon’s college days to truly appreciate the design. Going with “H-Town” across the chest is a nice touch.
Designed to resemble a suit of armor, the Magic jersey is Navy with silver outlining and incorporates the franchise’s star in place of the A in “Orlando” across the chest.
Iko (30): My favorite. T-Mac. Penny. Shaq. Türkoğlu. All Magic legends, just like this jersey. It’s nostalgic. It’s smooth. It’s fire. This is how you do it. Take notes, Brooklyn.
Jones (28): Going navy blue with the chain-link stripes feels like a modern version of the early Magic jerseys — which I like. The star for the “A” in Orlando is placed perfectly and will look good on the court.
Edwards (19): I agree with the fellas. A modern twist on a ’90s basketball kid’s favorite jersey. Good job, Orlando.
Cleveland’s jersey, from the font to word mark to patterns, shows love to its thriving performing arts center, considered the largest outside of New York.
Iko (27): These are really dope. There’s intricate detail around the edges, and using the gold to highlight Cleveland’s theater scene is exactly the type of historical tidbit we never hear about. Awesome stuff.
Jones (26): These jerseys work best when I learn something new. I had no idea of Cleveland’s connection to theater until learning about this jersey design. Cleveland has the largest performing arts center outside of New York? Wow. It’s simple, but the details make this one nice.
Edwards (24): I didn’t know that either, Jason. Shout-out to the Cavs. It’s basic, but it’s done well. Good story. Definitely a top City Edition jersey.
Utah’s jersey gives flashbacks of the jerseys from the late 1990s and early 2000s. It features the familiar mountain range across the chest.
Edwards (29): The Karl Malone/John Stockton-era jerseys are some of my favorites of all time, and this is a great tweak of those. Give me any purple on a jersey. These aren’t as good as the Jazz uniforms from the ’90s — those are some of the best ever — but they are nice.
Iko (28): Can the Jazz keep these forever? These are perfect. It’s not too much mountain for Utah fans, I don’t think, and the purple rocks.
Jones (27): I’d take these over what the Jazz normally wear. The purple is perfect. The skyline works in paying homage to the best teams that played in Utah. I move that the Jazz stick with these jerseys.
The jersey draws from the energy of the “Bad Boys” era. The jersey also honors Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly with a “CD2” logo above the jock tag, his signature below it.
Jones (30): One of the worst things from the late 1980s/early ’90s was that the Bad Boy Pistons didn’t play in black uniforms. Alternate jerseys weren’t the thing back then, but if they were, these would have been perfect. And how would anyone not like the crossbones here? The uniform captures the essence of the era perfectly.
Edwards (30): These are clean. The connection to the “Bad Boys” era makes sense. It’s different from what the Pistons have done in the past. Well done. Very well done.
Iko (25): I’d think Bill Laimbeer would rock these passionately. Everything about these screams Detroit Pistons basketball from back in the day — tough as nails, sleek and dark.
Phoenix’s jersey reflects the city’s Hispanic culture, and the “El Valle” logo across the chest celebrates lowrider culture.
Iko (29): It takes real talent to make purple and pink go together. These are the jerseys that make people smile. Well done.
Jones (29): I love foreign languages on jerseys; the Suns hit a home run with this design. I also love the acknowledgement of lowrider culture. The design puts me in a custom ’64 Impala on a sunny day that’s bouncing down the street on switches.
Edwards (28): Purple is my favorite color. I also like pink and teal. So, yeah, I’d be first in line to grab this if I were a Suns fan. Also, like Jason, I’m a fan of foreign languages on a jersey.
GO DEEPER
NBA lineup changes: Who’s the same? Who’s different? Are rotations here to stay?
(Illustration: Sam Richardson / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Nike and the NBA)
What time is it? That’s right … it’s time to make some outlandish statements that people will look back on next spring and cackle hysterically.
OK, that’s not actually the goal, but it is certainly an occupational hazard. Prognostication makes fools of us all; there are just too many things we can’t possibly have seen coming. Thank goodness for that, actually, as sports would be pretty boring otherwise.
That won’t stop me from trying, though. With the regular season starting next week, now is the time to gaze into my extremely hazy crystal ball and make some calls for what will happen in the coming months. In particular, the goal is to make some calls that might go against the tide and are actually, y’know … bold. For instance, “Nikola Jokić will make the All-Star team” is a defensible prediction that likely will come true but doesn’t really clear the bar for this particular exercise.
A bolder prediction, on the other hand, would be something unusual or unexpected. Like, say, predicting that something that hasn’t happened in two decades might happen this season. That would be a rookie — a true rookie — making the All-Star team. The last rookie to make it was Blake Griffin in 2011, but he was in his second season under contract with the LA Clippers after missing his entire first campaign. A fresh-from-the-draft rookie hasn’t made the squad since Yao Ming was voted in as a starter in 2003.
We can qualify that even further because Yao only averaged 13 points a game that season and was voted in despite production that clearly paled next to the other potential options. (To be clear, Yao deserved his next six selections. Just not that year.)
GO DEEPER
The 24 biggest questions for the NBA season: Nuggets repeat? Wembanyama not ROY?
To go back a bit further, to the last time a just-drafted rookie both made the All-Star team and had numbers that truly warranted his inclusion, one would need a full quarter-century. And, what a coincidence … that player happened to be Tim Duncan, in 1998, in his first season as a San Antonio Spur.
Well, 25 years later, I’m going to go out on a limb and say a top overall pick of the Spurs will once again make the All-Star team … and will make it on merit.
Don’t let one bad summer league game get you twisted: Victor Wembanyama is as unique a basketball player to ever enter the league, a rim-denying giant at one end with a guard’s mentality and skill set at the other. You thought Kristaps Porziņģis was a unicorn because he could shoot 3s at his size? Well, picture the same package except with genuine ball skills and the ability to play out of the pick-and-roll.
I watched Wembanyama twice in Vegas last year and announced several of his French games for the NBA app; in every single one, he did something absolutely mind-blowingly unique, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do that before” type stuff. He was far and away the best player in a good overseas league at the age of 18.
Here’s the crazy part: His preseason has been way better than that. Wembanyama seems to have made significant improvement both in his capability as a ballhandler and in his end-to-end speed (it helps when you can Eurostep to the rim from the 3-point line without needing to dribble), producing cascades of easy baskets for himself and those around him.
While his French tape showed flashes of this, he’s been able to do it with greater consistency in the more open floor of the NBA and shown marked improvement in his reading of the court and playmaking. Through two preseason games entering Wednesday night (I know, but humor me), the top pick in the draft has averaged more than a point per minute on 71.4 percent true shooting, blocked four shots and dissuaded countless others from being attempted and compiled a 33.9 PER.
I had thought Wembanyama might need a year to get his NBA sea legs before we really saw his impact. To hell with that. He’s already quite clearly his team’s best player and is likely good enough to lead the Spurs to a win total that may make them slightly uncomfortable. It’s becoming more and more apparent that he’s going to end up with an All-Star-caliber stat line that could, at the very least, put him on the short list for selection.
Victor Wembanyama could very well flex his way right into the All-Star Game this season. (Sarah Phipps / Associated Press)
Here’s the other part: The Western Conference is laden with star talent, but as a frontcourt player, Wembanyama should have an advantage. Other than Jokić, all of his main rivals for those spots have the words “if healthy” permanently attached as suffixes to the end of their names. Between LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, Zion Williamson and Kevin Durant, surely at least one and possibly several will miss the festivities in Indy this February.
Other players will be in the mix too, of course — Memphis’ Jaren Jackson Jr. and Utah’s Lauri Markkanen made it last year, for instance, and Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns is still here — but between the shock and awe value of Wembanyama’s play and the likelihood of injury replacements on the West roster, he has a great chance of making the team even if he isn’t voted in as a starter.
Wemby on the All-Star team is my first bold prediction, but it’s not the only one. Here are some more for the coming season:
No coaches will be fired before the All-Star break
Any prediction involving job security in the NBA coaching profession is a daring high-wire dance above a fiery lava pit, but this might be the season to pull it off. The league’s coaching roster looks as stable as it has in some time; while you can imagine seats getting hot in a few places with a slow start, there’s also the undeniable fact that recent turnover has been so high that there are relatively few long-tenured coaches remaining to get the ax.
Do you know how many coaches have been on the job since before the pandemic year? Four! That’s it! Those are the league’s four “made men,” championship-winning coaches Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, Steve Kerr and Michael Malone, who have a combined 59 seasons with their current teams. They’re not going anywhere.
Meanwhile, 13 teams have a coach in either his first or second season, which would make them unlikely to be dismissed so quickly. Five others are in Year 3, when the pressure normally increases, except four of those clubs are rebuilding and have limited expectations this season. Add it up and, for 21 of the league’s 30 teams, an early-season coaching change seems hugely unlikely.
Again, this profession isn’t exactly renowned for its stability — last season’s first coaching change (the Nets’ Steve Nash) happened on Nov. 1! — so this prediction may end up looking hilarious come February. For the moment, however, we seemingly enter the season with almost unprecedented stability in the league’s coaching ranks.
Minnesota will win a playoff series for the first time in 20 years
That’s right, I have a second thing that hasn’t happened in 20 years that I’m predicting will happen in 2023-24. Good things to happen to the Timberwolves? Have I lost my mind?
Thus far, the preseason focus has been on other West locales — the world champion Denver Nuggets, the reloaded Phoenix Suns and the recent champions in Golden State and L.A. — while the Wolves haven’t garnered nearly as much attention. However, they quietly played well over the second half of last season, going 26-19 after the turn of the new year, and I’m projecting them to land one of the top four seeds in the West.
If that happened, it would be the first time since their conference finals run with Kevin Garnett in 2004. In the only other three playoff appearances for the Wolves since then, they’ve been first-round roadkill as the West’s seventh or eighth seed.
While it’s a little early to pencil in who might be their first-round playoff opponent, the Wolves would have home-court advantage in the first round based on their projected finish, and, particularly if they get the No. 3 seed or higher, would be in a historically strong position to advance.
Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be any particularly compelling reason to bet against Minnesota once it reaches the postseason; the Wolves have the requisite inside-outside weapons in Anthony Edwards and Towns, their potential top-seven playoff rotation looks strong and, besides Towns, the team has strong individual defenders. Will this be the season we see Minnesota play in May?
Because he’ll be the only player eligible for the award! I kid, slightly, but the league’s new 65-game requirement for most of the major awards may knock some fringe MVP candidates out of the running. (Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo finished third last season with 63 games played; Memphis’ Ja Morant finished seventh while playing 57 in 2021-22; and Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid finished second while playing just 51 of the 72 games in the shortened 2020-21 season.)
More seriously, and in keeping with the theme of bold predictions and not regurgitating chalk, I expect the award to come down to Jokić and Tatum in April. There’s an obvious risk in my saying Tatum will win since Jokić enters the season as an overwhelming favorite, which is the blowback from a league-wide sentiment of mea culpa for not giving him the trophy a year ago.
However, Tatum’s durability may give him a leg up in MVP voting despite the fact that he’s not perceived as the best player in the league. He nearly led the league in minutes a year ago and is young enough at 25 to again take on a big playing time load. Additionally, Boston could easily end up with the best record in the league and may do so by several games. As the team’s best player, Tatum almost automatically becomes a leading candidate.
Finally, it’s entirely possible Jokić treats the regular season with a bit less urgency — much as he did in the final month last season — while he tunes up for the games in May and June that truly matter. (On the flip side, Denver’s bench may be so bad that he doesn’t have the luxury.) A Nuggets finish in the middle of a crowded West pack would also dampen his quest for MVP No. 3, and that’s definitely in the cards too.
Nikola Jokić and Jayson Tatum will have to play at least 65 games this season to remain in MVP consideration. (David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
The West will regain dominance over the East
The East had a better record than the West for the second straight season in 2022-23, ending up with 22 more wins. That’s been a rarity over the past three decades; the West has been vastly superior nearly every season since Michael Jordan retired, culminating in the 2013-14 season in which identical 48-win seasons got Toronto the No. 3 seed in the East and earned Phoenix a ticket to the lottery in the West.
The NBA’s three best records also belonged to the East last year, and that part may hold up … partly because the depth of the West is so strong that it will be difficult for any individual team to push its win total much into the 50s. Nonetheless, the unusually tame regular seasons from expected West powers last season are unlikely to be an enduring feature; the Lakers, Warriors, Wolves, Clippers and Suns all figure to add several wins compared to 2022-23, while at the bottom of the conference, the 60-loss Rockets and Spurs could both be vastly improved. Only Portland will take a step back in the West.
OK, this prediction needs a bit more time to breathe and might not really come to fruition until next summer. Still, watch the Clippers, especially if they start slowly. Yes, LA is still all-in on winning and will cut another massive luxury-tax check to the league (their estimated penalty right now is a cool $100 million), and the Clippers could easily add to that figure if they end up trading for Harden.
Nonetheless, this season is a clear pivot point for the team, thanks in part to a new CBA that makes life much harder for teams that spend past the second luxury-tax apron, where the Clippers currently reside. After this year, teams in that position can’t aggregate salaries in trades or take back more money than they sent out. They also can’t use cash in trades, use their midlevel exception, sign bought out players or wear sneakers. Staying over the second apron next year would also result in their 2032 first-round pick being frozen and, if the payroll didn’t come down in future years, ultimately pushed to the back end of the draft.
All this is happening right at the point when Steve Ballmer is surely questioning his ROI on the huge luxury-tax checks; over the past two seasons, his team is 86-78 and has won a single playoff game.
Two other timeline items stand out: First, the Clippers’ new Intuit Dome arena is set to open next year, and second, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard can become free agents this summer. You’ll note that you’re not hearing much about contract extensions for either player right now.
The Clippers still owe future draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder through 2026, so it’s not a blow-it-up scenario as much as a scaling back. They have scenarios in which they could bring back Leonard and George while still skirting the second apron … or perhaps, dare we say it, even staying below the first apron and using their entire midlevel exception to balance out the roster.
Still, this looks to be a tricky dance. Ballmer is willing and able to pay virtually anything for a winner, but the league has never punished expensive rosters like this. Waiving Eric Gordon this June seemed like the first salvo in an organizational rethink about the merits of blasting money out the firehose under the new CBA.
Consider this partly a bet on Tyrese Maxey’s talent and partly a bet against Harden playing a significant role in Philly this season. If Harden is going to either be traded or behave so badly that the Sixers wish they had traded him, then Maxey should be the obvious beneficiary in terms of touches and shots.
Maxey averaged 20.3 points per game last season, but the number ballooned to 24.8 in the 13 games he played and Harden didn’t; that latter average would have placed him 15th in the league.
His other arrows are pointing up too. Maxey won’t turn 23 until November and is still figuring out how to weaponize his proficient 3-point shot (41.4 percent career) with more off-the-dribble attempts and how to parlay his blazing first step into more free-throw attempts. He’s an 85.8 percent career foul shooter but only attempted 3.8 free throws per game last year. That number should only rise as he gets more on-ball reps and figures out the dark arts of foul grifting.
Note that Maxey should also be highly motivated to produce this season, as the Sixers have held off on signing him to a contract extension to preserve 2024 cap space. With a good year, he’ll be able to sign for the Maxey-mum (sorry) next summer.
Denver’s Jamal Murray might be the most obvious first-time All-Star pick in a while, coming off a fabulous postseason that signified his full recovery from a torn ACL in 2021. He posted a 21.6 PER in 20 playoff games, or about a quarter of an NBA season (or half of one if you’re a Clipper); those numbers alone would get him in range of selection, and keep in mind they were posted against playoff defenses. Presumably, life will get easier for him when we add some Blazers and Wizards back into the mix.
As for Brunson, he missed the team a year ago while fellow Knick Julius Randle made it, but the playoffs may have been the tipping point in a swap of leading men in New York. Yes, Randle’s injuries were a factor, but Brunson averaged 27.8 points in the playoffs while taking by far the most shots on the team (over 20 a game). Moreover, those playoff stats were a continuation from the second half of the season: After a slow start, Brunson averaged 27.8 points per game after Jan. 1. Entering his age-27 season, Brunson, it would seem, is primed for a career year.
The Knicks are likely to get one rep in the game if they’re again among the top seven teams in the East when the voting happens, and if so, it seems more likely the choice would be Brunson this time around.
While we’re here, apologies to the Grizzlies’ Desmond Bane and the Nets’ Mikal Bridges, two other players I think will post strong resumes that get them serious All-Star consideration. It’s hard for me to pull the trigger on predicting them to make it unless there is a rash of injuries to elite backcourt players in each conference, especially with Brunson and Murray claiming spots.
The Bulls will blow it up
Consider this a prediction in two parts: First, that the Bulls won’t be good enough to justify keeping the DeMar DeRozan–Nikola Vučević–Zach LaVine band together any longer, and second, that they’ll break out the dynamite at the trade deadline. The key here is timing: DeRozan is a free agent after the season, so the Bulls need to either cash in their stock on the high-scoring 34-year-old forward or sign him to an extension.
Moving off him would be the necessary first step in a process that would likely see the Bulls deal LaVine and Vučević as well, although LaVine has four years left on his deal and thus might be shopped more profitably at the draft in June.
Historically, the Bulls haven’t been fans of tanking, and their first choice will (and should!) be to see how many games this nucleus can win. However, this particular decision might already have been made for them, as the endgame has seemed apparent ever since the seriousness of Lonzo Ball’s knee injury became clear. Chicago can either forge ahead with an expensive, not very good team with limited flexibility, or the Bulls can start over and hope they get lucky in the loaded 2025 and 2026 drafts.
Taylor Jenkins will win NBA Coach of the Year
This has nothing to do with who I think the best coach is (Spoelstra, duh) but rather my reading of the trend lines of the history of this award, which skews heavily toward the biggest surprise in the top third of the standings.
Based on my projections for the coming season and the comparative amount of buzz about the teams I have slated for winning records, the three most likely candidates would seemingly be Jenkins in Memphis, Darko Rajaković in Toronto and J.B. Bickerstaff in Cleveland. (Grizzlies alumni represent!) Boston’s Joe Mazzulla would be a strong candidate too, especially if the Celtics end up with the league’s best record by several games, as I suspect they might.
Nonetheless, Jenkins has the best ingredients in his favor for winning: Nobody is expecting all that much from his team, the Grizzlies are actually pretty good, and there’s a built-in narrative (“Didn’t have Ja Morant for the first 25 games and still …”) ready and waiting. Additionally, the margins in the West are tight enough that the Grizzlies don’t really need to overachieve much to get people’s attention, as I’m projecting a 50-ish win total might be enough to top the conference.
Kevin Durant and the Suns will look to advance in a stacked Western Conference. (Craig Mitchelldye / Associated Press)
Phoenix won’t have the West’s best record but will make the NBA Finals
I would take the field over any individual team in the West, and there’s a risk in making any prediction at all given that several contenders will likely make in-season moves to reshape their rosters. Seven teams have at least a somewhat realistic shot of advancing out of this pool, and that number could expand if a team in the middle class decides to get frisky with an all-in trade.
Nonetheless, right now, I like the playoff version of the Suns better than anyone else in a warty contender field. By the spring, Phoenix will hopefully have figured out some of the balance in its three-headed Bradley Beal-Devin Booker-Kevin Durant monster, and it’s quite possible the Suns will have used another trade chip or two to get more size and depth.
Ultimately, it will come down to Phoenix and Denver, most likely, regardless of which round they end up meeting — much like last year when their conference semifinal series was effectively for a place in the NBA Finals. This time around, I like the Suns’ answers off the bench much more than the ones they came up with a year ago, and I like the Nuggets’ quite a bit less. At the margins, I think that tilts the advantage slightly Phoenix’s way … even with Denver undoubtedly having the best player.
Boston will outlast Milwaukee in the East
The thing about Milwaukee getting Lillard is that it also allowed the Celtics to turn Malcolm Brogdon into Jrue Holiday. Holiday, of course, is about the best antidote to Lillard that mankind has come up with so far, dating to the 2018 series with the New Orleans Pelicans when Holiday harassed Lillard into 35 percent shooting in a four-game sweep.
That said, the Bucks present some real problems for Boston. The Lillard-Antetokounmpo two-man game threatens to be the best in the entire league, and the Bucks certainly can surround it with enough shooting. Dealing with Antetokounmpo might require heavy doses of an aging Al Horford, especially with Robert Williams gone to Portland, and Milwaukee’s dynamic duo also is one that could expose Porziņģis defensively.
There’s also some risk in choosing Boston here based on how the past few postseasons have gone, where the offense too easily degenerates into isolation-heavy slogs with Tatum and Jaylen Brown playing your-turn my-turn. (The Celtics also seem to lose all their mojo at the mere sight of Miami Heat jerseys, but that might not be a factor this season.)
However, that’s where Porziņģis can really help. His ability to punish switches by posting up shorter players is an option that Boston simply didn’t have last year, and it could be a real factor against the postseason switching defenses that have tended to gum up Boston the last few years.
I’m excited just thinking about this series … but I think the Celtics will prevail slightly in the end, much as they did in the second round two years ago.
Boston will beat Phoenix in the NBA Finals
Boston vs. Phoenix would be an incredible Finals because it would involve the Suns’ eternal quest for a first crown against the Celtics’ hope of raising an 18th banner, which would once again give them a leg up on the Lakers on the all-time list. Of course, it would be a first of sorts for Boston as well, as the Celtics haven’t won since 2008 and the current Tatum-Brown-Horford core has yet to get over the final hump.
It seems risky to pick Boston to win four straight playoff series despite the Celtics’ imposing defense and impressive top-seven rotation for the postseason. Historically, the postseason has been about having That Dude, and only a few teams have managed to get to the mountaintop with more of an ensemble cast. Tatum is one of the best players in the league, but he hasn’t yet shown himself to be a playoff cheat code on the Jokić/Curry/Kawhi level.
On the other hand … Boston just has so many ways to hurt you that Tatum doesn’t have to play at an exalted level for the Celtics to win the title. Two years ago, they were up 2-1 on Golden State in the Finals, for instance, before succumbing in six games. Curry was the best player in that series and Tatum only shot 35 percent, yet the Celtics were still in it.
Again, the Porziņģis acquisition potentially looms large, especially if he can hold up on defense, because it allows the Celtics to punish some of the switching schemes that so badly stagnated them in previous postseasons. At the other end, Boston is also one of the few teams with enough elite perimeter defenders to not sweat matching up against Beal, Booker and Durant at the same time. In the end, the Celtics’ defense is good enough that I worry less about the offense.
So, book your hotels for Boston in June, print this out and file it away and prepare to laugh uproariously when 50 things we couldn’t possibly have imagined reshape the season in totally unexpected ways. That’s the beauty of sports, but I’ll keep trying to get this hazy crystal ball to give me a few tips.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Maddie Meyer, Paras Griffin, David Dow / Getty Images)
The NBA’s 180 on load management is giving me whiplash.
Five seconds ago, every available piece of science the NBA told us it had in its possession from its teams said – screamed – the same thing: players not only needed more time off but that the league would be derelict in its partnership with its players if it didn’t align with teams, whose data said: rest.
The league cut way back on back-to-back games. Many teams eliminated morning shootarounds, as they were viewed as disruptive to players’ sleep patterns. Every team had a “Director of Very Important Sports Science and Cutting Edge MahnaMahna” and scores of eager data collectors. Wearables tracked every waking moment of every player, what they ate, and when. Cameras high above each arena tracked every movement of every player on the court.
“Before, it was a given conclusion that the data showed that you had to rest players a certain amount, and that justified them sitting out,” NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars told national media in a conference call Wednesday.
“We’ve gotten more data, and it just doesn’t show that resting, sitting guys out correlates with lack of injuries, or fatigue, or anything like that. What it does show is maybe guys aren’t as efficient on the second night of a back-to-back.”
Dumars’ words echo those of Commissioner Adam Silver, as he introduced the league’s new “Player Participation Program” that was approved by the league’s Board of Governors last month.
“Honestly, that’s what I’d been told as well, that it was the science,” Silver said. “I think it may be why the league didn’t become involved maybe as deeply as we should have earlier on. Part of the discussion today was about the science, and frankly, the science is inconclusive.
“I think in the case here, that part of the commitment here from the league office is we are putting together a group of team doctors and scientists and others and trying to better understand it. One thing I want to make clear: The message to our teams and players is not that rest is never appropriate. And realize, there’s a bit of an art to this, not just a science.”
GO DEEPER
Load management has frustrated NBA, fans and TV partners. But will new rules help?
Now, the NBA has a lot of smart, smart people in its sports medicine department. The department, led by Dr. John DiFiori, helped create the Orlando Bubble in 2020 out of thin air – and, more or less, pulled it off. It then created a comprehensive return-to-play program for the following season that was lauded by other medical people for its thoroughness and honesty about how to deal with COVID cases when and if they occurred. The league had extensive and continuing dialogue with the Players’ Association, before, during and after the two sides hammered out the newest Collective Bargaining Agreement about these kinds of issues. It’s a partnership.
And during all of this, the NBA’s position was consistent: the science, the science, the science tells us so.
Just eight months ago(!) this is what Silver said during All-Star Weekend in February, in Salt Lake City: “I hesitate to weigh in on an issue as to whether players are playing enough because there is real medical data and scientific data about what’s appropriate. Sometimes, to me, the premise of a question as to whether players are playing enough suggests that they should be playing more – that, in essence, there should be some notion of just get out there and play. Having been in the league for a long time, having spent time with a lot of some of our great legends, I don’t necessarily think that’s the case.
“The world that we used to have where it was just, ‘Get out there and play through injuries,’ for example, I don’t think that’s appropriate. Clearly, I mean, at the end of the day, these are human beings – many of you talk to and know well – who are often playing through enormous pain, who play through all kinds of aches and pains on a regular basis. The suggestion, I think, that these men, in the case in the NBA, somehow should just be out there more for its own sake, I don’t buy into.”
And now … forget all of that?
To be fair, Silver has said, multiple times over the last few years, that he was concerned about the effect of load management on the league’s fans, who were increasingly paying to attend games in which no one they hoped to see play had on a uniform. And it became especially hard for the NBA to push teams to push their players to play after COVID reached our shores, though the league’s $100,000 fines instituted in 2020 for teams that group rested players was limited to nationally televised games.
The league also clearly leaned into, let’s say, encouraging its players that more participation was warranted by tying a minimum games played requirement for many of its individual awards going forward.
But at every turn, the league dropped back to its default position: We’re following the data.
So, are we to believe the science turned on a dime? Since February?
Did NBA players skip the line in the evolutionary process this spring, and suddenly grow a third lung, that now gives them greater breathing capacity? Have they been enhanced, like Grace in Terminator: Dark Fate, now better able to withstand the grind of an 82-game season, after not being able to go on past game 65 or so without congealing?
And, coincidentally, I’m sure: the data changed that quickly just as the league is reaching a key moment in its discussions with its current and potentially new media partners on a new rights deal, to replace the expiring one in 2025? Or, did the networks and/or tech companies vying to air or stream NBA games in the near future say, with justification: “For our eleventy billion dollars we’re spending to buy these rights, you damn sure are gonna make sure that Giannis and Steph and the Joker suit up on the regular”?
I’m not saying it’s the only consideration for TV/tech companies — who don’t know that they’re scheduling the Lakers back-to-back when they make their schedule requests; they don’t see the full 82 until you or I do. But it’s hard to believe they don’t push hard on that particular action item with the league’s media committee.
GO DEEPER
Let’s talk load management: Is it a problem? How do we know it works?
For the last decade-plus in the NBA, it’s been all about the numbers, all about the data, all about the science, even as the league (he noted, quietly) implemented both a Play-In tournament after the 82-game regular season, and before the two-month-long playoffs, and will now have an in-season tournament during the 82-game season, which will add an 83rd game to the two teams that make the in-season tournament final.
Rest, but play a little more, too, so that the regular season actually means something – and so we have another package to parlay into another sweet revenue stream.
The numbers ruled. And so, midrange jumpers were now stupid; rebounds no longer mattered. Big men who got in the way of all the driving and kicking were anathema; we only want rim runners now. And teams’ medical staffs all erred on the side of caution, to try to head off stress injuries and similar maladies before they got worse, by sitting players as much as possible. The days when players, proudly, would play all 82 games because that was what was expected of them were dismissed as Codger Thinking, ridiculous clinging on to the old days by old people who didn’t understand that they were shortening their careers by playing in meaningless games. (It wasn’t as if players back in the day didn’t deal with mental health issues as well.)
The NBA seems to want everyone to forget.
What’s more likely: All the teams’ data for the last half-dozen years has suddenly been discovered to be irreparably, incontrovertibly wrong? Or, the league went along with that data, ignoring those who said “Wait; Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas and John Stockton and Karl Malone and Patrick Ewing all suited up as much as possible, year after year, and didn’t fall apart,” because it didn’t want to push back against alleged “modern thinking”? That it couldn’t take a position of “Well, we trust our players,” because someone would present a paper at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference calling such thinking outdated? That it had to justify what every team, from its hedge fund CEO ownership on down, was now saying was “best practices?”
Dumars, one of those codgers, said Wednesday: “Obviously everybody’s not going to play 82 games, but everyone should want to play 82 games. And that’s the culture that we are trying to reestablish right now.”
Whatever the process the NBA used to go back to the future, I’m glad it did. It’s all right to keep some old-school thinking along with the new jack intel.
Fans can’t be guaranteed they’ll see the league’s top stars when they buy tickets; legit injuries happen. But if the league leaves it up to teams to make close calls on player health, the teams will protect their investments, every time. And I know enough about most players to know that, given the choice, they’ll opt to play. Whether out of ego or incentives or genuine care about the fans who pay top dollar to see them, they want to suit up.
That’s how you make the regular season more meaningful.
(Photo of Adam Silver: AAron Ontiveroz / The Denver Post via Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — There’s Kobe, wearing the uniform of a team from Los Angeles. There’s Kobe, the last one on the court at practice and getting yelled at because the buses are waiting for him.
How fitting. Just like old times.
There will never be another Kobe Bryant, of course. And make no mistake — Kobe Brown and Kobe Bufkin would be the first two players at NBA Summer League to insist that there will never be another Bryant. They would never pretend otherwise. But for the first time since the Hall of Famer retired in 2016, the NBA is about to have fans watching guys named Kobe again.
Brown is in Summer League with the Los Angeles Clippers. Bufkin is entering his rookie year with the Atlanta Hawks. Both were named for Bryant, who — for now — is the only player named Kobe to make it to the NBA. In a couple of months, that seems likely to change.
“It means a lot,” Brown said. “There’s definitely a target on my back, I feel like. A lot of guys, when they hear the name Kobe, they think of Kobe Bryant. Obviously, I’m not him, by any means. But I try to keep that edge and play as hard as I can, just like he did.”
It’s impossible to know exactly how many people are named Kobe. It remains relatively unusual.
According to the Social Security Administration, there was a six-year stretch — 1998 through 2003, coinciding with Bryant’s early years in the NBA and first three championship seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers — when the trend of giving babies that name peaked; the most was in 2001, when 1,552 baby boys had Social Security card applications filed for them with that name.
The name still had a small following, maybe a few hundred babies each year, until 2020, the year that Bryant, daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash on a foggy Sunday in Southern California. Another 1,500 boys were given that name that year, surely many in tributes to Bryant’s life and career; the most popular name that year for newborn boys, according to the government data, was Liam, which was used about 20,000 times. (There were also variations, such as Kobee and Kobey, and a few dozen American newborn girls were given the name as well in 2020.)
“It’s never affected me too much when it comes to playing ball,” said Bufkin, who was born in 2003. “I try not to think about it as much when I’m actually on the court. But obviously carrying the name comes with a certain work ethic that you’ve got to try to match. And it’s hard as hell to match it. If I get halfway there, I’ll be all right.”
Case in point: The Hawks had a Summer League practice this week that was scheduled to go for 45 minutes, with a bit of shooting afterward. Most players were off the court after about an hour and 15 minutes. Almost all of them had their sneakers off and were ready to head to the bus a few minutes after that, but Bufkin was still on the court, working on drives from half-court against a defender.
“Just trying to follow the blueprint,” Bufkin said.
The popularity of the Los Angeles Lakers great remains overwhelming 3 1/2 years after his death.
Bryant jerseys are still extremely common among Lakers fans. Nike plans to re-relaunch the Kobe brand this summer, and Bryant is the cover athlete for two editions of NBA 2K24 — “NBA 2K24: Kobe Bryant Edition” and “NBA 2K24: Black Mamba Edition,” with the tie-in there being the 24 that was one of Bryant’s two NBA jersey numbers. And there is another tribute of sorts coming at the Basketball World Cup; Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards is set to wear No. 10 for USA Basketball this summer, the number Bryant donned when he played for the national team.
“It just shows how much he inspired generations,” Bufkin said. “I was kind of part of the first generation to come behind him, and it’s crazy that our parents were willing enough to name us after him.”
Brown has never been inside Crypto.com Arena, the building that the Clippers call home, as do the Lakers. It’s the arena — then called Staples Center — where Bryant played half his games in his 20 seasons with the Lakers, scored his career-best 81 points against Toronto in 2006 and called home for five championship runs and 18 All-Star campaigns.
“It’s definitely a blessing,” Brown said. “I’m excited to go inside the building, see it, actually play where he played all those years and did so much for the city of Los Angeles.”
Given that they’re both first-rounders, Bufkin and Brown seem like locks to be in the NBA when the new season opens this fall. Bufkin was drafted No. 15 overall out of Michigan by the Hawks — and also has a brother named for an NBA player in Isaiah Thomas. Brown was selected No. 30 overall out of Missouri by the Clippers.
They’re not Kobe Bryant. But they do represent a new way for the Kobe Bryant legacy to live on.
“It’s an honor, just that so many people have been impacted, like all of us, by Kobe, that people are honoring their children and choosing that name,” said Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka, who was Bryant’s agent. “And we’ll probably see more and more of that, because it’s such a special thing.”
ATLANTA (AP) — Quin Snyder has been hired as coach of the Atlanta Hawks to replace the fired Nate McMillan, the team announced Sunday.
The Hawks reached an agreement with Snyder on a five-year deal only five days after firing McMillan on Tuesday. The team has scheduled a news conference for Monday to introduce Snyder.
The announcement from the team Sunday came shortly after the Hawks’ second straight win under interim coach Joe Prunty, a buzzer-beating 129-127 win over the Brooklyn Nets.
When announcing McMillan’s firing, general manager Landry Fields stressed that Atlanta’s eighth-place standing in the Eastern Conference was not acceptable for a team that advanced to the conference finals in 2021. On Wednesday, Fields confirmed Snyder was a candidate.
Because Snyder, 56, was available, the agreement to return to Atlanta, where he was an assistant on Mike Budenholzer’s staff during the 2013-14 season, was reached quickly.
The decision to fire McMillan at the All-Star break allowed Fields to negotiate exclusively with Snyder. Had Fields waited until after the season, other teams might have had interest in Snyder.
“From our first conversation, it was clear that Quin had all the characteristics we were looking for in our next head coach,” Fields said in a statement released by the team. “He has both an incredible basketball and emotional IQ, and we share the same core values and basketball philosophies of having honest communication and collaboration with players, tremendous attention to detail and placing a great emphasis on player development.”
Snyder said he’s “thrilled to go back to Atlanta.”
“I am excited to collaborate with Landry to create a successful program that devoted Hawks fans are proud of and cheer for and am grateful to Tony, Jami and the Ressler family for this opportunity,” Snyder said in the team’s statement. “My family and I are looking forward to immersing ourselves in the community and calling Atlanta home.”
Snyder was coach of the Utah Jazz from the 2014-15 to 2021-22 seasons, accumulating a 372-264 record and leading the team to the playoffs in six of his eight seasons.
McMillan went 99-80 as Atlanta’s coach, including a 27-11 record as interim in the second half of the 2020-21 season. His success that season in leading Atlanta to the Eastern Conference finals earned him the full-time position.
McMillan was unable to follow up on the 2021 postseason success.
The Hawks finished 43-39 in the 2021-22 season and, after escaping the play-in tournament, lost to the Miami Heat 4-1 in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The pressure on McMillan to guide the Hawks closer to the top of the conference increased this season. The team’s win-now approach became more clear when Danilo Gallinari and three first-round picks were traded to the San Antonio Spurs for All-Star guard Dejounte Murray.
The trade formed a backcourt pairing of All-Star guards in Murray and Trae Young and placed more heat on McMillan. Despite the addition of another top scorer in Murray, the Hawks struggled near .500 most of the season. They lost four of six games before the All-Star break and were one game under .500 when McMillan was fired.
There was no immediate announcement about Snyder’s Atlanta staff. The new coach will have only one day before making his debut with the team in Tuesday night’s home game against Washington, so the expectation is Snyder will retain at least most of McMillan’s staff which continued to operate under Prunty.
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Atlanta Hawks announcer Bob Rathbun convulsed and lost consciousness on Monday while he and analyst Dominique Wilkins previewed the team’s NBA home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Rathbun was about to shuffle through his notes when he leaned back and began what appeared to be some sort of seizure.
Bally Sports Southeast, which airs the Hawks games, said on Twitter that Rathbun was “treated for dehydration” and was “stable and responsive” as he headed to the hospital for “further evaluation.”
The Hawks had no further updates on Rathbun’s condition when reached Tuesday morning.
ATLANTA, GA – OCTOBER 19: John Collins #20 of the Atlanta Hawks drives to the basket against Jabari … [+] Smith Jr. #1 of the Houston Rockets during the second half at State Farm Arena on October 19, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
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When the Atlanta Hawks re-signed John Collins to a five-year contract worth $125 million, they must have had a plan in regards to his future development.
At least, that seemed like the consensus at the time, given that no team in their right mind would spend that much money, only to leave one of the most dynamic offensive forwards in the NBA as a background prop.
As the calendar pages have turned, however, the Hawks proved that they indeed did not have a plan with Collins. Or, if nothing else, their plans changed.
Collins, despite averaging over 21 points and 10 rebounds per game in the 2019-2020 season, has been reduced to that of a bit player, scoring only 12.4 points per game, and sporting a career-low shot attempt rate on a per-minute scale.
Needless to say, the offseason acquisition of Dejounte Murray plays a part, as the Hawks backcourt of him and Trae Young are taking over 42 shots per game, and dominating the basketball. You’d think having two elite playmakers would unlock Collins to the point where he could showcase his offensive skills, but that has not happened.
Instead, the Hawks have pivoted towards De’Andre Hunter as their third option. That in itself isn’t a bad thing, as Hunter is a fine player who offers more on-ball versatility than Collins, and frankly fits the mold of a new-age power forward more.
Yet, the evolution of Hunter, and the usage held by Young and Murray, has left Collins out in the cold long enough. Since the aforementioned 2019-2020 season, Collins has seen his own involvement lessen every single season.
So, who could use a forward, who not only displays outstanding offensive efficiency (Career TS of 63.1%), but also a reliable three-point shot, and quality rebounding?
Enter the Golden State Warriors.
Right now, the defending champions look overwhelmed. They lost key bench players, such as Otto Porter Jr and Gary Payton II, from last season and hoped to even the scales with internal development from James Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga, and Moses Moody.
That has not happened yet, and it may not happen this year. While all of them could still turn into reliable, and even important NBA players, they’re all seemingly a few years away, which isn’t doing the Warriors any favors.
After all, Stephen Curry will turn 35 in March. Draymond Green and Klay Thompson will both turn 33, leaving Andrew Wiggins (27) and Jordan Poole (23) as the only high-impact players on the roster under the age of 30.
In short, they need a talent injection. And soon.
Collins, who’s earning $23.5 million this season, is more financially viable as a solution than for example former Warrior Kevin Durant and his $44.1 million, who has also been rumored as a trade candidate since asking out of Brooklyn over the summer.
Matching salary would be fairly straightforward, as Wiseman, Kuminga, and Kevon Looney amounts to $22.3 million. While this adds to Golden State’s luxury tax bill, a Collins acquisition would dramatically improve their chances of repeating as champions this season.
The challenge for the Hawks is whether or not they would even be interested in adding several long-term projects to their roster, when they just acquired Murray over the summer.
Of course, a third team could be added to the trade as to re-route Wiseman and Kuminga to a team more inclined to focus on the long-term.
Here, a team like the Sacramento Kings might make sense, especially if they ultimately accept that they don’t stand a strong chance of getting into the playoffs this season.
Moving off of Harrison Barnes, who is on an expiring contract, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, if they lean into a youth movement. Barnes would make a strong theoretical fit with Hunter in Atlanta, as the duo would be entirely interchangeable at the forward slots.
Naturally, getting three teams to agree to the parameters of a large trade is always tricky. But this would solve many of each franchise’s concerns.
Most importantly, Collins stands a chance at realizing his vast potential.
Here we go: The top 10 in our 2022-2023 League Pass Rankings! We revealed Nos. 30-11 on Tuesday, and you can read about the rankings formula there.
10. DALLAS MAVERICKS (35)
Look at this soul-snatcher:
That is the smile of someone who knows he has you. The Mavs’ offense is one-dimensional — Luka Doncic walks ball up, runs two-man game — but that dimension contains multitudes. The typical spread pick-and-roll pairs ball handler and rim-runner; Doncic can do that with any of Dallas’ bigs. He can make all the passes blindfolded.
Doncic’s size and comfort in the middle of the paint — the dead zone for some ball handlers — open up endless possibilities. He’s at his most predatory dragging smaller defenders into pick-and-rolls. Switch, and he mashes them in the post with smirking cruelty. (He took sadistic pleasure brutalizing Patrick Beverley in the 2021 playoffs.) Send help, and he picks you apart.
Even against like-sized defenders and traditional coverages, Doncic is a three-steps-ahead genius burrowing inside. His high-arching step-back is borderline unblockable, and he has hit 50% from floater range over the past two seasons — and a LeBron James-esque 73% at the rim last season.
The threat of those shots unlocks Doncic’s generational passing. He understands how every up-fake, pivot, and half-spin freaks help defenders into thinking they should swarm — and which passes any slight rotation might expose. Last season, he even started throwing straight backward overhead passes to pick-and-pop bigs. Maxi Kleber and Christian Wood must be ready at all times.
This is my favorite piece of Mavs art in ages:
The navy sings against the new white-washed floor.
The Lakers ranked No. 2 last season, but the idea of them — How will Russell Westbrook fit? — turned out to be way more interesting than the experience.
The Lakers played fast, but they were boring — unorganized, dispirited, lacking any cohesive identity. LeBron James remains the ultimate chessmaster, but there’s little reason to suspect the overall product will be much different. (Darvin Ham said this week he’s considering starting Anthony Davis at center, and leaning there would boost L.A.’s watchability. You can’t play Westbrook, LeBron, Anthony Davis, and a traditional center — even one with decent range like Thomas Bryant or Damian Jones. Don’t sleep on Jones’ passing!)
They scored this high only because of their art — including the league’s prettiest court — and the comedy category. Are Beverley and Westbrook really friends? Like, really? Or will latent tension boil over? Comedy can become pathos, and we reached that point with Westbrook last season when the Sacramento Kings’ blared “Cold as Ice!” on every bonked jumper and layup.
Will James engage pout mode once he breaks the scoring record if the Lakers are toast? James achieved peak eye-rolling sulkiness ahead of the 2018 trade deadline, when he realized the Cavs were dead barring a roster shake-up. It was bizarrely enthralling.
Thumbs up to these white throwbacks — replicas of the jerseys the team wore in their first-ever game, per league officials. They even have faux belt loops! Powder blue is always welcome.
The Wolves ranked first in pace and second in scoring efficiency after Jan. 1 last season. They have one blockbuster young star in Anthony Edwards, fast becoming a three-level scorer as his confidence soars on pull-ups and step-backs.
Edwards wants to dunk people into oblivion — the bigger, the better. He flies at the rim as if he thinks he can dunk through humans — that they will disintegrate beneath him.
One of the league’s keenest offensive tinkerers — Chris Finch — must figure out how to mesh Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert in an unusual double-center look that has to work given the Wolves traded everything short of the old Metrodome baggie for Gobert.
Finch will get creative on defense, too. On some nights, the Wolves might flip-flop matchups — slotting Towns onto centers, and stashing Gobert elsewhere so he can act as roving shot-blocker. We might see glimpses of last season’s blitzing defense as a surprise adjustment.
Kyle Anderson weaponizes his slowness; defenders stumble ahead of his elongated moves, allowing Slow-Mo to saunter through creases. He snatches some of the league’s cleanest live-dribble steals. Jaden McDaniels still seems like a blank canvas, and looms as Minnesota’s swing factor. Jaylen Nowell jacks and struts with a gunslinger’s bravado. How will D’Angelo Russell — on an expiring contract — respond if Finch yanks him for Jordan McLaughlin in crunch time again?
The Wolves relegated their gaudy neon green to the trimmings on this pristine new jersey:
Standing ovation for the fangs extending down off the “M” and “V.”
PSST: Towns’ averages in 11 postseason games: 19 points, 12 rebounds, 2 assists, 3.5 turnovers (gag!), and many, many silly fouls. He has three single-digit scoring games, plus a dud in last season’s play-in. It’s time.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is one-of-one. He evolves each season — more floaters, more screening in the pick-and-roll, snappier passing. He supplies highlights both preposterous and of the most visceral basketball violence. Antetokounmpo rising from underneath the rim, off two feet, and cramming on someone’s head is perhaps the rudest act in the sport.
I loved his recent speech about the importance of will over skill. It was once fashionable to compare Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons — enormous, turbocharged ball handlers with rickety strokes. What might Simmons accomplish if the Philadelphia 76ers surrounded him with shooters — as the Bucks have done for Antetokounmpo?
Even five years ago, before Antetokounmpo cracked the top five in MVP voting, the comparison failed the smell test. Antetokounmpo was bigger, faster, longer — better. Most of all, he was tougher. While Simmons’ struggles at the line turned into something of a phobia, Antetokounmpo kept coming — kept drawing contact, kept risking failure, kept improving. That’s will.
The Bucks are a fast-break machine — Four Steps or Less — but their half-court offense finished dead last in points per possession in the playoffs. Even with Khris Middleton out, that raised alarms internally. I suspect the Bucks will spend the regular season honing anti-switch devices on offense and experimenting with new looks on defense — including snuffing 3s after spending years living with above-the-break triples.
Who emerges as trustworthy playoff guys among George Hill, Jevon Carter, Joe Ingles, Jordan Nwora, and Serge Ibaka? If the answer is “no one,” the Bucks could face critical depth issues. How much Antetokounmpo at center will we see?
Once every few games, an opposing player annoys Jrue Holiday — and draws out Holiday’s playoff-level defense as punishment. What a nightmare.
Marques Johnson was a five-time All-Star, nailed a supporting role in “White Men Can’t Jump,” and is now one of the best analysts in any sport. Not fair.
Boston’s stars offer different stylistic ingredients, but they don’t always synthesize on offense. The defense … holy hell. They are huge, mean, smart — a switching forcefield. (Marcus Smart and Blake Griffin have to wager on who takes the most charges, right?)
They are also strategically quirky. The Celtics clicked into place when they shifted their center — Robert Williams III — onto nonthreatening wings, unleashing him as a free safety.
Time Lord didn’t just reject shots. He obliterated them. He spiked some before they even left shooters’ hands — before they really became shots at all. Others, he smashed against the backboard with such force you almost expected them to become impaled in the glass. From mid-January on, Boston allowed 105.4 points per 100 possessions — four points stingier than the league’s No. 2 defense.
The Celtics became one of the greatest defenses of all time, even as smart opponents began exploring counters to Boston’s scheme — running Williams around off-ball screens, using more false actions. Expect more of that cat-and-mouse game now that opponents have had an offseason to study.
Boston found its flow on offense too. Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Smart cooperated in more two-man actions — forcing switches Tatum and Brown could exploit. Tatum’s liquid grace and Brown’s straight-line power make for a perfect contrast. Derrick White added Spursian quick decision-making. (Update: He should be part of the Griffin-Smart charge-taking wager too!)
The Celtics’ green uniforms are maybe the best in sports, and they improved their historic court by removing the chunky white circle from underneath the leprechaun:
The tribute to Bill Russell is understated and noble.
Grant Williams never shuts up. Mike Gorman and Brian Scalabrine are tremendous. Boston is under championship pressure, with a coach — Joe Mazzulla — thrust into the spotlight under bad circumstances. What is Mazzulla about? How do the players respond?
5. NEW ORLEANS PELICANS (37)
You have to be good and watchable to rise here; the algorithm sees 50-win upside.
I don’t care if these guys shoot a single 3-pointer. I just want to see Zion Williamson pinballing to the rim, bodies flying everywhere after making even glancing contact with this linebacker phenom. He gets from arc to rim faster than a camera flash, out of every action: pick-and-rolls as screener or ball handler; post-ups in which he plows through victims like shorter Shaquille O’Neal, or spins around them like wider James Worthy; end-to-end rampages you almost feel through your screen. (The Pelicans with Williamson have played at ludicrous speed.)
The roster isn’t really built for it, but please, Willie Green, give us some Williamson at center!
Forget second jumps. Williamson has the league’s quickest third and fourth jumps. Pity the fools who box out Williamson and Jonas Valanciunas. Reserve them extra time in the cold tub, maybe the hospital.
CJ McCollum might put a defender on his butt at any moment. He connects complex dribbles — hesitation, crossover, pull-back — with unusual fluidity, and cans all variety of floaters with either hand. Brandon Ingram’s midrange arsenal is simpler, but almost as effective.
Larry Nance Jr. is all flare screens and twirling handoffs, and he’ll play tons of crunch-time center. Herbert Jones’ arms actually typed this column from New Orleans; instead of shooting 3s, should he just reach all the way from the arc and plop the ball in?
Jose Alvarado’s crouching, hide-and-seek backcourt steals are incredible theater. He’ll have ball handlers looking over their shoulders even when he’s not in the game. He is Keyser Soze.
The Pelicans are due some fresh art. The bench overflows with interesting players. Here’s hoping Dyson Daniels earns run.
4. DENVER NUGGETS (38)
Nikola Jokic might be the most inventive passer in basketball history, and is for sure No. 1 all time among bigs. He dares passes everyone else is scared to try — slips to cutters where the passing window is no bigger than the basketball itself.
Jokic imagines passes no one else sees — and then makes them. As he’s gotten in better shape, he’s added occasional dunks and tornado baseline spins.
The regular season is about finding the right balance of defensive schemes for Jokic. This is perhaps the biggest season in Nuggets history; they need everything in place for the playoffs.
Jokic has his pick-and-roll mind-meld partner back in Jamal Murray. Murray’s role in their two-man devastation has long been underrated. He’s an ace pull-up shooter with a knack for slick pocket passes that lead Jokic into open space.
They have the league’s prettiest and most varied give-and-go partnership. We see the classic — Murray bolting away from handoffs, and Jokic lofting him buttery goodness:
But they also turn routine pick-and-rolls into give-and-gos within that tricky midpaint area:
That is a mini masterpiece. In terms of both shot selection and process, Denver is a nice antidote to 3s-and-dunks spread-pick-and-roll hegemony. Murray’s Blue Arrow celebration is cool.
Michael Porter Jr. is perhaps the X factor of the season. Will he accept third-banana status? Kentavious Caldwell-Pope locks the starting five into place. Bruce Brown does the same for the bench, and gives Denver crunch-time lineup flexibility. Once every 10 games and out of absolutely nowhere, Jeff Green posterizes someone.
Are you worried about Denver’s bench offense? Bones Hyland isn’t.
3. MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES (39)
Ja Morant is the new League Pass superstar. He is a hellacious rim-attacker, cocking it back and hammering pain onto larger humans; he jumped over and through Malik Beasley for the highlight of last season.
Morant’s sneering swagger set the tone for the team from day one. There is nothing fake about the Grizzlies’ puffed-chest arrogance. They do not conceive of themselves as the little guy challenging Goliaths. Trash-talking LeBron James is not, for them, unearned pluck. They believe they are Goliath, now.
Morant could chase points, dominate the ball, hunt the spectacular. Instead, he brings teammates with him — empowers them, uses the attention he draws to create shots for them. Morant is a whip-smart cutter, willing to cut as a decoy (or to catch lobs above the square). He slows down in transition, knowing trailers come open in his wake.
Memphis defends with ferocity — Dillon Brooks going chest to chest with all comers, everyone swiping at the ball. The Grizz forced heaps of turnovers, and blazed at the league’s second-fastest pace. Do not look away from the Memphis alley-oop machine.
Desmond Bane has borderline Ray Allen-level precision in his jumper. Remember when Steven Adams carried Tony Bradley — 6-10, 250 pounds — away from an altercation as if he were about to take Bradley to Suplex City? What a legend.
The young guys will get chances filling in for Jaren Jackson Jr. and departed veterans. I give it two games before an opposing announcer expresses shock at John Konchar’s leaping ability
Can you spot the subtle upgrade from last season’s court …
… to their new one?
They eliminated that silver-blue racing stripe along the baseline that always confused me.
2. GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS (40)
The Warriors came so close to reclaiming their No. 1 perch, with Draymond Green providing a new, unfortunate reason to tune in to Golden State’s basketball symphony.
Green’s punch might have been one hot-tempered man going through personal issues losing control, and slugging his trash-talking foil. It became more because we saw it, yes, but also because of the deeply human and almost literary arcs one could project onto it.
Green, in the final year of his contract, might be aging out of the dynasty he helped build. Jordan Poole, on the verge of his first massive deal, is a keystone in extending that dynasty beyond Green’s NBA lifespan. A decade ago, when this all started, Green was the low draft pick who roared — trash-talking his elders, challenging them, refusing to show deference. That is how Poole relates to Green now.
To win a title, there can be no fissures. There will be lingering tension over what happened last week. How will it manifest? How long will it last?
The potential basketball tragedy of all this — of contract realities and personality conflicts intruding upon this Bay Area basketball idyll — is that Green, Klay Thompson, and Stephen Curry should finish their careers together as Warriors. That is how it’s supposed to be. What they share is why we follow sports — an understanding of one another’s tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses so deep, they barely have to talk on the court. Every simple action between them contains a dozen counters, and they choose them in the moment, in sync, in step, always connected.
It is a bond of winks and nods that cannot form unless you share tens of thousands of reps at the highest level. And it is, still, beautiful to watch.
Andre Iguodala is part of their fabric too, and he gets another chance at a proper swan song. The army of lottery picks is in position to seize roles. Whether they are ready will go a long way to determining Golden State’s repeat chances. Jonathan Kuminga is at eye level with the rim before you even realize what’s happening.
Golden State is a top-five art team. Curry, Green, and Thompson will wear captain “Cs” on throwback jerseys — rare in the NBA.
These new alternates are nice:
The Warriors deal in bright yellow and blue. This clean navy look is a pleasing change, even it is eerily similar to the University of California, Berkeley color scheme. I like how the shorts echo the team’s bridge-wiring motif.
1. BROOKLYN NETS (41)
I considered invoking the Ian Eagle Corollary, which dates to the Joe Johnson “It’s not that bad here!” era and allows me to reduce the Nets score if the light-hearted categories — art, comedy — lift them higher than they deserve. I opted against it, and so the Nets three-peat as League Pass champions — which has really worked out for them in the Kevin Durant–Kyrie Irving era.
This team could be gone in 30 games — boring, bad, an entire era demolished. Irving could find new reasons to be the basketball player who doesn’t play basketball. Ben Simmons could melt — flinching at the threat of contact, wilting under Hack-a-Ben, holding a prolonged missed free throw contest with Nic Claxton. (Claxton is 6-of-25 from the line in the postseason.) All that could push Kevin Durant to renew his allegedly dormant trade request, at which point the Barclays Center may as well collapse into a sinkhole.
That’s the severe downside. The more likely downside is the Nets are run-of-the-mill good — a playoff team, but not strong enough to lift the stench of self-inflicted misery.
The journey to either of those bad places is disaster-movie riveting. Simmons hasn’t played a real game in 16 months; there is justified interest in every move he makes. Even that functional downside scenario features plenty of Irving and Durant, two flashbulb attractions.
Whatever your feelings about Irving, he is a show — a Maravichian dribbling magician with a bottomless bag of soft floaters and twisting layups. His lefty runner takes your breath away. Two seasons ago, when the Nets were quasi-functional, Irving was the one who got them running in transition.
Durant is one of the dozen greatest players ever, and perhaps the most well-rounded offensive force the game has ever seen. He is elite at literally every subsection of offense. He can assume any role, at any time. Even when Durant is raining pull-up fire, it might not be the classical beauty of his gangly game that draws you in. What really hits you in the gut — what mesmerizes — is the sheer invincibility of it, the way Durant exercises total dominion over everything from every place on the floor.
And that’s the upside. The soul-sapping melodrama can make you forget: This might work. They might be happy. They could be redeemed. They might be unstoppable on offense, Simmons tapping into his inner Draymond Green with endless shooting around him. They will take risks and innovate to survive on defense, and there is night-to-night joy in watching a team sink its teeth into that challenge.
The broadcast is as good as it gets, and the art is solid — including this alternate court, first revealed here, that matches the ABA-era stars-and-stripes uniforms the Nets are bringing back:
The differently colored painted areas — one blue, one red — are a gamble, but they work here.
It’s time for our silliest preseason tradition: The 11th (how???) annual League Pass Rankings, a watchability scale to help you avoid wasting time on things like, “Wait, has this team actually ordered its players to tie their shoes together as part of its Lose-A-Rama for Victor Wembanyama campaign?”
These are not power rankings! They are derived from a formula Bill Simmons found scrawled on parchment paper inside a glass bottle that washed up on the shores of Malibu.
Teams are scored 1-10 in five categories:
ZEITGEIST: When you talk about this team at parties, do people slink away?
HIGHLIGHT POTENTIAL: Do you linger on games in case a superstar does something amazing?
STYLE: Where are they on the continuum from “Golden State Warriors beautiful game” to “Julius Randle just took four jab steps and launched an 18-footer”?
LEAGUE PASS MINUTIA: All the little things that mean too much to damaged die-hards: announcers, court designs, uniforms.
The Jazz aren’t really a basketball team after detonating the Donovan Mitchell–Rudy Gobert-Quin Snyder-Making-Amazing-Faces era. They are an airport waiting area for players, only those players have to play together a bit because the NBA mandates the Jazz field a team instead of working together “Ocean’s Eleven”-style to rig the lottery.
They are the NBA Spider-Man Pointing meme of shoot-first combo guards: Jordan Clarkson, Collin Sexton, Talen Horton-Tucker, Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Lauri Markkanen and Malik Beasley aren’t exactly prime John Stockton, either. Poor Mike Conley can bring the ball up, pass it once and head into the stands for a drink. (I am excited to watch Sexton again. He averaged 24 points on 47.5% shooting two seasons ago, and purists dismissed it because the Cleveland Cavaliers stunk and Sexton’s a blah passer. Putting up those numbers is not easy. Sexton plays with classic little guy bravado, flinging himself inside for rebounds and going at larger superstars as if they should be scared of him.)
We are only one year removed from the Utah broadcast team shrieking at Rudy Gay’s debut as if the Jazz were getting prime Karl Malone. I can’t wait to hear how the Jazz are not really tanking, how dare anyone suggest it, the honorable caretakers of this community treasure would never allow that toxin to infect your beloved Jazz Men.
The new uniforms are a crime against NBA art:
The black and yellow ones are high school gym class-level. Why is a team with such a rich color palette going all-in on black? The white ones are passable only because the Jazz note — a perfect piece of sports art — is front and center, but they’ve even sullied that by removing the blue, yellow and green in the note head in favor of (yup) black.
The new court at least has the smoky white-gray shadow of that note along the sidelines.
The Pacers are one trade from challenging the San Antonio Spurs as frontrunners for the league’s worst record. They fall behind the Spurs here only because of the “zeitgeist” category; winning five titles buys San Antonio gravitas, especially when their last tank job kick-started that dominance.
Tyrese Haliburton is more entertaining than the entire Spurs team. He operates two steps ahead of defenses, and takes joy in passing. He gets off the ball early instead of hunting assists. When Haliburton is on the floor, the ball flies. He celebrates assists more loudly than baskets. You will sometimes catch Haliburton shouting with glee as his big man is about to cram one of his feathery lobs. (Haliburton and Isaiah Jackson are a fun alley-oop connection.) He might lead the league in assists.
Indiana’s young (and raw) bigs seemed to catch Haliburton’s spirit; the Pacers had the ball shifting side-to-side. Terry Taylor is the most ferocious offensive rebounder you don’t know. He will Kool-Aid Man through four guys to snag a second chance.
T.J. McConnell must be furious Jose Alvarado seized his throne as the king of the back-court sneak steal. I expect McConnell to respond by wearing a Hamburglar mask and hiding in the stands.
Chris Duarte bobs and weaves behind screens with liquid veteran guile. Bennedict Mathurin is a blast of athleticism for a team that ranked 27th in dunks. There’s plenty of room on Aaron Nesmith Island!
28. SAN ANTONIO SPURS (21.5)
The Spurs were for so long the League Pass nerd team: Manu Ginobili driving Gregg Popovich mad with thread-the-needle passes; Boris Diaw’s roly-poly, spinning, shoulder-checking drives; Kawhi Leonard snatching the ball from people. They birthed the Spursgasm, and raised the sport to perhaps its stylistic zenith in 2013-14.
Welp.
Can I interest you in the Low-Risk Point Guard Sibling Olympics between Tre and Tyus Jones? What about Point Josh Primo? Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell should develop into really good support starters, but it’s hard to hone your secondary playmaking on a team this light on first-option types to bend defenses — even if Popovich will have everyone sharing and moving. (Vassell is the biggest draw — a potential 3-and-D monster who has flashed ball-handling chops.)
At least Jakob Poeltl free throws have drama; he has hit below 50% over three seasons, and that will be a big deal if Poeltl — a fine player — ends up on a playoff team again.
Jeremy Sochan is fun, and leads three 2022 first-round picks who should see minutes.
Is this the best non-fiesta jersey in Spurs history — maybe the best, period?
I love that spur jutting out of the “X” in that new “SATX” wordmark. That gorgeous pattern down the sides is rendered in the style of Mexican serapes. The Texas state logo is a nod to the team’s origins as the Dallas Chaparrals in the American Basketball Association.
This 50th anniversary court, though …
The gold doesn’t go, and the center-court logo looks as if someone draped a carpet over the big spur.
27. OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER (21.5)
They’d be at least three spots higher with Chet Holmgren healthy. Without him, the roster is a morass after the strange-but-cool Shai Gilgeous-Alexander/Josh Giddey/Luguentz Dort trio. I mean this in a good way: It is really hard to find a perimeter trio with almost zero overlapping skill among them.
Giddey is the tall genius passer who dares long-range, no-look lasers with zero margin for error. Dort is the brick wall who lofts ceiling-scraping 3s and bulldozes inside. Gilgeous-Alexander is the ungraspable phantom, everywhere and nowhere at once as he slithers into the lane — different limbs seemingly operating at different speeds, and moving in different directions.
Good luck distributing minutes beyond that. If you’re chasing wins, you’d play Kenrich Williams and Mike Muscala. Then there are at least seven young guys who merit time — including three of the first 34 picks in the last draft.
Aleksej Pokusevski has shown hints that he’s a basketball player, not just a gangly novelty. He has vision, and a knack for blocking shots. (Does he think you get more points if jumpers go in at higher velocities?) Tre Mann is crafty. If a Darius Bazley corner 3 hits the side of the backboard, does it make a noise? (Don’t sleep on the Thunder hiring Chip Engelland — longtime assistant coach and shooting guru for the Spurs.)
A juicy subplot: midtier playoff teams cannot afford losses to the Wembanyama Brigade. Those can be the difference between No. 6 and the play-in. The Thunder signaled doom for the Los Angeles Lakers last season with two massive early comeback wins.
The broadcast is less propaganda-y than it once was. Progress!
26. Washington Wizards (24)
The cherry blossom uniform is the best thing to happen to this franchise since the Charlotte Bobcats took Michael Kidd-Gilchrist No. 2 in 2012. They should give these uniforms a no-trade clause.
The team with perhaps the most blah art collection of the last 15 years — this is the first season they’ve used multiple courts! — nailed every detail: the soft-pink; the gradual shift to gray on the shorts; the stenciled flowers dripping down the sides.
Gandalf is back!
After years of ignoring their kooky wizarding heritage, the team is tiptoeing into some semi-ironic hipster embrace of it. It took me years before I realized the contrast between the wizard’s white beard and black cloak formed a “W.” (I might have problems.)
Oh, the team! The Wiz could push for a high-end play-in spot, or skid early and Avada Kedavra themselves into the Wembanyama sweepstakes.
For a team that has been under-.500 since 2018, they have few (if any) young prospects you are dying to watch. Deni Avdija is a heady ball-mover who enjoys defense — remember when he started forming an “X” with his forearms after stops? — but needs to do more on offense. Rui Hachimura was empty calories last season; he has a lot to prove in the final year of his rookie contract.
Kyle Kuzma was awesome across the board, and elevates NBA fashion. Bradley Beal is one of the league’s most artful three-level scorers — a sleek blend of old school and new school. You often hear how Beal can’t be the No. 1 guy on a title team, but who cares (other than Wiz fans who can recite his salary cap hit in 2027)? How many such players exist? Beal is a star, and would look incredible as the second-best player — and maybe No. 1 scorer — on a great team stacked with defenders. (In other news, the Wiz had a three-year window in which they could have traded Beal for a gazillion draft picks.)
The funniest random NBA streak is Orlando’s 10-season run ranking 20th or worse in points per possession. That is Dimaggio-level consistency in offensive incompetence. I really hope they are 20th on the last day of the season and go all-out for 19th.
I think we are on rebuild No. 3 post-Dwightmare? This one might take. Paolo Banchero is the offense-first fulcrum the Magic have searched for this entire decade — an all-court hub with the passing and shooting chops to lift his teammates. Franz Wagner is an ideal secondary wing — all heady cuts and snappy passes, with the touch and ball-handling guile to take the reins mid-possession. Wendell Carter Jr. is only 23, and he’s already a decent starting center. They should land another high pick in this draft.
Cole Anthony plays as if he thinks he’s the best player on the floor, and I love it. He’s a solid backup and spot starter.
Everything else is a mystery. Unless Wagner becomes an every-possession point-forward — that seems a stretch — the Magic still need a perimeter orchestrator. What, exactly, is Jalen Suggs?
Jonathan Isaac’s return sometime between now and 2030 would introduce some ultra-modern lineup combinations. Can you go giant, with Wagner and all three of Isaac, Banchero and Carter? What about the center-less front-court of Wagner/Isaac/Banchero? I will never give up on Chuma Okeke!
The broadcast trio of David Steele, Jeff Turner, and Dante Marchitelli is tremendous. They have fun without degenerating into shrill homerism.
24. CHARLOTTE HORNETS (24.5)
This is the floor for a team featuring one of the league’s most inventive passers in LaMelo Ball; Eric Collins’ rapturous play-by-play; Kelly Oubre Jr. talking trash to everyone in earshot; and some of the league’s best and most immediately identifiable art. (Here’s hoping they bring back the mint shade they unveiled two seasons ago; the Hornets can own that.)
This alternate court is another hit:
That all-purple silhouette of a scary-looking Hornet leaps off the screen. The stinger theme echoes along the sideline, and on the outside of the “H” and “S” of the accompanying jersey:
The half-basketball with turquoise lining is the rare instance where dividing the circle by color works.
The Hornets played fast and ranked No. 2 in dunks last season, but almost half those dunks belonged to Miles Bridges and Montrezl Harrell. Steve Clifford teams typically don’t play fast, or experiment with the funky “nothing else is working, let’s try this?” zone defenses James Borrego cooked up.
(Clifford is a really good coach. Even so, we have not spent nearly enough time discussing how hilarious and perfectly Hornets it is that Charlotte hired one coach — Kenny Atkinson — only for him to bail once he got a look inside, and then turned to the coach they fired four years ago.)
Pairing Clifford with a chaos agent like Ball will either result in an untenable tug-of-war or a healthy meeting in the middle. (Clifford has little choice but to play a pile of unproven young guys.) I’m curious how Ball finds his footing in slowed-down, half-court sequences — what moves and passes he leans on, how he incorporates teammates.
Terry Rozier has canned an inexplicable number of clutch jumpers over the last two seasons. There is something mesmerizing about watching Mason Plumlee decide, “Screw it, I’m going to unleash this reeeeeeaaaally slooooooowwwww spin move from the foul line. It’s my time to live, baby!” Did you know Plumlee switched to shooting free throws lefty last season? That happened!
23. NEW YORK KNICKS (26.5)
The Knicks played at the league’s second-slowest pace, and their games featured tons of free throws. Their starting five was unwatchable, unless you enjoy Julius Randle, RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson bumping into each other. The rollicking bench shocked them to life, and if the basketball gods are kind, we will see more Barrett alongside Obi Toppin and Immanuel Quickley. (You never know when Toppin might stage his own in-game dunk contest.)
Toppin is a quick-twitch ball-mover, and Quickley went up two levels as a playmaker last season. Isaiah Hartenstein will have the ball popping, and stitch the bench together. If Robinson isn’t on point, we might see Hartenstein finish games.
Jalen Brunson should restore order and spacing to the starting five. The Knicks boast Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier, Madison Square Garden’s theater lighting and a pristine royal blue court. (I will drop them one spot if they introduce more black-and-orange art. You are the Knicks of New York freaking City. Do not be Team Halloween!)
I would like an in-game feed of Leon Rose and slouching, hangdog James Dolan sitting next to each other in silence, only the Knicks would never risk accidentally broadcasting Dolan shouting back at fans urging him to sell the team. (The camera might also catch them frowning at Tom Thibodeau’s refusal to play Cam Reddish.)
The potential for cranky Randle turning against the fans again adds to the comedy score.
22. HOUSTON ROCKETS (27)
On the one hand: Houston ranked first in dunks and second in pace, and features a bunch of telegenic young players. Jalen Green goes from zero to 100 in a nanosecond, and hunts bodies at the rim. He can also slow down for smooth midrange pull-ups — a nice break from Houston’s dunks-and-3s credo.
How do you even describe Alperen Sengun? He attempts such unusual feats of pivotry that you sometimes wonder if he traveled even though you just watched him shift both feet three times without dribbling. Was that so weird, it was somehow legal? Sengun could carry the ball 20 steps and still be astonished the referees whistled him for traveling.
He sometimes pass fakes to no one — literally to empty space — just to get defenders leaning into that void. Is it genius or madness?
On the other hand: Houston fouled the bejesus out of everyone and gagged up one of the highest turnover rates in recent history; its style of play — young guys running and gunning — lends itself to raggedness.
Tari Eason will clean up the defense. He is here to lock victims up. Jabari Smith Jr. brings some preternatural polish.
Do Derrick Favors and Maurice “I’m coming for Ish Smith’s record” Harkless ever wonder, “Wait, what city am I in?” It hurts the comedy score that Eric Gordon is too professional to write “Trade me!” on his shoes a la Chris Morris.
Boban Marjanovic cameos are always welcome. Every move Garrison Mathews makes — kicking his legs out on jumpers, running smack into picks — carries a hint of danger. Every team needs a Jae’Sean Tate.
21. SACRAMENTO KINGS (27.5)
This is too low for Sacramento.
You never know when the #KANGZZ might appear in-game. Example: Remember when NBA Twitter kicked into Conspiracy Theory mode because Vivek Ranadive sat courtside between the general manager he had recently fired (Vlade Divac) and Divac’s replacement (Monte McNair)? Because it was the Kings — with their “Game of Thrones”-style power structure and habit of hiring coaches before GMs — anything was possible.
In describing that bizarre scene, Jason Jones of The Athletic recalled Ranadive tweeting happy birthday to Jimmer Fredette (whose selection at No. 10 in 2011 after a nonsensical trade down is another #KANGZZ moment) “while negotiating a buyout [with Fredette] at the same time.” Even the tweet in question has a hidden #KANGZ treasure:
Ranadive is making the “hang loose” gesture in front of another photo of him flashing the “hang loose” gesture.
Anyway, Team Play-In-Or-Bust should be a fast-paced scoring machine built around the already sophisticated De’Aaron Fox-Domantas Sabonis two-man game. They are a natural match: opposites in build, but tethered in craft and wink-wink IQ. Sabonis might flip the angle of his screen two, three, four times, and Fox shifts in sync with each move. Sabonis can brutalize switches, push in transition and even run the occasional inverted pick-and-roll.
Malik Monk is a show, Kevin “Red Velvet” Huerter adds shooting and underrated playmaking, and Keegan Murray intrigues. I will miss the Haliburton-Richaun Holmes lob connection, but Holmes’ push shot — the best of its kind — carries on.
The algorithm is angry Miami discontinued its instantly iconic “Miami Vice”-style jerseys.
The Heat are a sneakily hard sell for casual fans. They were 28th in pace and 26th in dunks, and they foul a lot. Watching Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry, and Bam Adebayo make magic in tight spaces is an acquired taste. You have to really pay attention to notice all the smart cuts, shoulder fakes, give-and-gos, and slick interior passes that make Miami’s half-court offense hum — when it hums.
Lowry gets them moving with overzealous full-court hit-aheads. I’m excited to see what Tyler Herro does as a permanent starter. He became over-infatuated — with the team’s encouragement to some degree — with becoming a high-volume pick-and-roll ball handler at the expense of some catch-and-shoot 3s. He should recalibrate 15% or so in the direction of Klay Thompson.
There is something beautiful and almost contradictory about Jimmy Butler’s bruising game. He doesn’t just plow into people. He’s violent and physical, but never reckless. In a blink, he can transition from a burrowing drive into a stop-on-a-dime jumper that drips with surprising softness. He brings the same balletic ferocity to his off-ball cuts. (Butler might be the league’s most underrated cutter.)
The flip side of self-serious #HeatCulture is that there is almost nothing funny — unintentionally or otherwise — about the Heat.
19. PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS (29)
There is nothing in basketball like an avalanche of Damian Lillard 3s. In Portland, the buzz builds as fans realize: We might see one of those nights. It reaches a euphoric crescendo when one final 30-footer forces a timeout, and Lillard, scowling, stares and nods at the crowd in his house.
On the road, you hear fear — really hear it. It starts with low murmuring: Uh oh. As the streak unfolds, the noise morphs into a sort of collective shriek that begins when Lillard pauses mid-dribble as if he might launch.
For the first time in ages, the Blazers have surrounded their star with some oomph: Josh Hart rampaging end-to-end; Nassir Little testing the limits of his game; Anfernee Simons flicking 3s and hunting tin; Gary Payton II rim-running and committing felonies on defense; the unknown of Shaedon Sharpe.
Simons might have the league’s prettiest floater; he pogo-sticks into the clouds, above reaching defenders, and flips that baby from all angles.
Chauncey Billups might have to start from scratch on defense after last year’s blitzing scheme failed.
The Blazers have the best team name, and maybe the best top-to-bottom art. This floor is close to seizing my No. 1 court design spot from the Lakers:
A few teams have experimented with differently colored painted areas. That contrast works better on the boundaries — as the Blazers have done here. The pinwheel might be the best logo in U.S. sports; whoever decided to extend the striping from the center-court pinwheel onto each sideline deserves a big raise.
Lillard planted the pinwheel smack in the center of the new jersey he helped design — and echoed its striping down the sides:
More teams are trying jerseys showing only their primary logo — no wordmark at all — and the pinwheel is well-suited to that. The Blazers were smart to render the numbers in white instead of black.
18. CHICAGO BULLS (30)
This an eight-spot drop from last year, reflecting Lonzo Ball’s importance as Chicago’s fast-break engine and the connective tissue between the disparate styles baked into the roster.
I was gobsmacked watching from courtside last November as the Bulls ran circles around the Lakers at Staples Center. LeBron James didn’t play, but Chicago’s blowout win was so emphatic, his absence seemed almost immaterial. The younger, bouncier, cockier Bulls looked as if they were playing a different sport. They passed and cut and jacked 3s ahead of the Lakers. Ball and Alex Caruso terrorized L.A. on defense. The Lakers quit. The Bulls danced.
That team vanished six weeks later, and has never returned. It got slower, more predictable, over-dependent on DeMar DeRozan’s graceful but somewhat repetitive midrange game. Zach LaVine is the best dunker since Vince Carter, but wings don’t dunk often enough to warp viewing habits; Lavine dunked 62 times in 67 games. (Derrick Jones. Jr. might literally jump over someone at any moment.)
If LaVine cans one or two fading step-back 3s — he’ll do that from the corners too! — definitely stick around. A high-degree-of-difficulty swish-fest may be coming.
Nikola Vucevic is a footwork artist on the block, but playing alongside LaVine and DeRozan marginalized that part of his game and turned him into a run-of-the-mill pick-and-pop shooter; Vucevic averaged eight post touches per 100 possessions, second-lowest of his career, per Second Spectrum.
Ayo Dosunmu and Patrick Williams offer the appeal of the unknown, and how they develop — and how fast — is of immense importance to a team that could be trapped in upper-class mediocrity. Williams’ career could spin in an unusual number of directions; the Bulls might even spot him minutes at center.
Adam Amin and Stacey King keep the broadcast light-hearted, and lose nothing when Jason Benetti fills in. The logo, court, and jerseys (other than anodyne black alternates) are top-notch.
17. TORONTO RAPTORS (30)
Some fans are concerned about strategic homogeneity — every team playing spread pick-and-roll, chasing the same shots. That concern is overblown, but there is an easy antidote: Watch the positionless, avante-garde basketball experiment unfolding in Toronto!
The Raptors’ rotation amounts to Fred VanVleet and several tall people who can do lots of things on offense and guard everyone on defense. They leverage their length in ways you’d expect, and some you might not: switching, playing wacky zones, bombarding the offensive glass, and posting up size mismatches. They do the unthinkable on defense: allow lots of 3s (basically) on purpose, confident their speed and preposterous arms make for frightening closeouts. (Only Matisse Thybulle has blocked more 3s than Chris Boucher over the past three seasons.)
Playing mismatch ball can be laborious; Toronto possessions after made baskets lasted 18.3 seconds — highest in the league, per Inpredictable. But even the grueling nature of its half-court offense runs counter to trends in a way that makes it appealing.
Scottie Barnes — 6-9 point-whatever — is the perfect foundational player for this ethos, and might soon grasp the superstar tools to lift Toronto’s offense from the muck. He seemed to play last season in second gear, digesting the speed and dimensions of the NBA before pushing the throttle. By the playoffs, he appeared to have a better understanding of how good he could be.
Pascal Siakam is a fine all-around No. 1 option, and VanVleet is that greater-than-his-statistics guy you appreciate more the longer you watch him. Every seemingly innocuous move — every cut, dribble, wink, shoulder fake — opens a few inches of space, and those inches eventually add up to an open shot.
You never know where that first Precious Achiuwa dribble might lead — everything from a dunk to a pass into the fifth row is in play — but his transformation into a stretch center changed Toronto’s offense.
The announcers, court, and red-and-white jerseys are all great. The pitch on Jack Armstrong’s “Get that gah-bage outta here!” call somehow gets higher every season. Thumbs down to the alternate black-and-gold look.
16. DETROIT PISTONS (31)
Cade Cunningham has that rare Luka Doncic-style ability to find life in places where possessions often die — in the extended paint with a live dribble that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, against a set defense.
Cunningham is strong enough to keep pushing, tall enough to see everything. Most of all, he’s smart enough to know how every pivot and twist might manipulate the defense. One lunge inside from a help defender, and zip — the ball finds a shooter. Once Cunningham refines his touch around the rim, every possibility will open up.
Jaden Ivey’s lightning-bolt drives might form the perfect duality alongside Cunningham’s patient game. Corralling the Pistons could someday be like facing consecutive pitches from Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson.
Bojan Bogdanovic widens the floor. Saddiq Bey should find the right water level in his game. Don’t mess with Isaiah Stewart. Beef Stew should shoot more 3s, and he’s the keystone to Detroit’s switch-everything defense. Jalen Duren is a high-flying, rim-munching backup center who might even share the floor with Stewart in short stints.
The rest of the bench is a bit of a mystery.
There’s also this:
Was anyone yearning for the return of the 1990s teal and flaming horse? Do fans like these now? Is the affection ironic or genuine? Do teal and red mesh? The flaming exhaust pipes and “DP” corner logos are kinda cool.
The new black jerseys — with fat striping as a Bad Boys call-out — are a bust. Black has been every team’s “whatever” alternate for a decade, and the blocky, outlined black lettering looks generic.
I do like Detroit’s two main courts, with the edges of a basketball along each sideline echoing the central logo:
15. LA CLIPPERS (31.5)
The Clips are about as entertaining as it gets for a slowish team that lives on jumpers and rarely flies above the rim. Paul George glides in a way that makes everything (except dribbling through traffic) look effortless.
There is majesty — power, strength, rigid up-and-down precision — to Kawhi Leonard’s pull-up game. Leonard showed two seasons ago that he can still dial up peak Spurs-era sharktopus mode on defense, and there is no wing player alive who instills the same level of panic as Sharktopus Kawhi. He is the rare weakside help defender who dictates terms — vibrating on his toes, arms spread fingertip to fingertip — in that netherworld between a corner shooter and the big man rumbling down the lane. Even the best ball handlers freeze at the sight of that menace: Is Kawhi’s guy open? Oh, wait, Kawhi is gonna apparate into that passing lane. What about the lob inside? Could he snatch that too? Overthink, and Leonard has already won.
If that Leonard is back when it counts, the Clip are in the inner circle of contenders.
John Wall, Norman Powell and Terance Mann are the jolt of head-down, north-south speed this team needs. (The Clips are so deep, a lot of preseason analysis has skirted past Powell. He is a critical variable, and should finish lots of games.) The Clips will play five-out, centerless lineups, and every game will teach us something about which perimeter trios work best around Leonard and George.
You know your art is dull when no one notices the difference between your primary court and the “special” alternate:
This is shockingly low for a 64-win team with a layered pick-and-roll attack, potential for drama with Deandre Ayton, and the return of the classic purple sunburst jerseys.
Phoenix even amped up the pace last season, unusual for a Chris Paul team. Devin Booker is a vintage scorer, with his velvety leaning midranger and a sneaky-nasty post game. He and Paul rain old-school fire. Paul’s maximize-every-edge perfectionism can be irritating — the rip-through is coming the second Phoenix enters the bonus — but it’s what makes him who he is.
(It also results in on-court disagreements, one of which gave us the iconic fake-laughing meme. That thing transcends basketball. Try it out in your life. It’s a great way to end those exchanges of small talk with long-lost high school classmates you don’t really like.)
It is so satisfying when Paul kicks that fastidiousness and decides to preen — showing off fancy yo-yo dribbles, or nutmegging someone just because he feels like embarrassing them.
The young guys will stretch themselves; Cameron Johnson piled up 20-plus-point games last season, and Mikal Bridges has dabbled with quick-hitting duck-ins. (Bridges’ defense is a show. He envelopes people — the rare wing defender so long, he can block his own guy’s shot before the ball really escapes the shooter’s hand.)
But we’ve seen and enjoyed this movie enough for now: Paul and Booker snaking their way to midrangers from the right elbow, the Suns’ steadfast defense forcing those same shots on the other end. They are Team Bizarro Shot Selection.
The algorithm underestimates how interesting it will be watching Trae Young and Dejounte Murray figure out how to amplify each other. There could be hiccups over the first 20-plus games. Will Murray make enough catch-and-shoot 3s? Will Young play off the ball, like, at all?
The variety is welcome. Young can do almost whatever he wants against any pick-and-roll scheme. We know about the 3s ands floaters (and foul-baiting flails), but Young still doesn’t get enough credit for his next-level anticipatory passing. He sees everything early, and can make almost any pass — including long lefty slingshots and other across-the-floor reads off-limits to most 6-1 guards.
Still: Too much of anything gets redundant, and Murray offers a reprieve — plus the ability to float across huge chunks of space on defense.
Young’s lob passing makes Atlanta a perennial top-10 dunk team. John Collins gets way above the rim and finishes with panache and power. Onyeka Okongwu is a two-handed thunder dunker. Okongwu will be a starter sooner than later; he and De’Andre Hunter are the biggest X factors for the Hawks now.
Young leaning into WWE-level villainy is great television. Bogdan Bogdanovic punctuates hot streaks with sumptuous snarling trash talk. Aaron Holiday is a little cinder block who attacks the rim with the aggression of someone a foot taller.
12. CLEVELAND CAVALIERS (32.5)
We’re in the range where every team feels too low, and this will indeed end up low for the Cavaliers. Between their four stars, Cleveland has something for every fan. Donovan Mitchell supplies the highlights; he is a hunched blur, attacking along sharp diagonals and seeking to inflict pain at the rim. Jarrett Allen fears no dunker at the summit. Darius Garland is all staccato craft and demoralizing ultra-long 3s. Evan Mobley is getting ready to show the breadth of his game. They all complement each other.
I have never liked the Cavs wine-and-gold scheme, but their creative team has produced a clean new jersey set:
Both shades are muted in a pleasing way. The Cavs found a spot — on the left side of the shorts — where their gigantic “C” stands out without dominating. Turning the “V” in “Cavs” into a basket is a nice homage to the Mark Price/Brad Daugherty era.
They’ve cleaned up the court too, refilling the painted areas and erasing the shaded city skyline:
We need another Ricky Rubio–Kevin Love reunion tour. Remember how unhappy Love seemed as the lone championship holdover on a rebuilding team? That story almost never ends with said veteran sticking around to enjoy the fruits of that rebuild, and it’s remarkable Love is here and happy.
J.B. Bickerstaff proved last season that he is willing to buck convention: ultra-big lineups, Mobley lording over the top of zone defenses, copious amounts of Dean Wade.
For reasons I can’t explain, I enjoy how Robin Lopez sits on the floor in the corner instead of on the bench.
John Michael and Austin Carr are a nice mix — the serious one and the silly cackler. Keep an eye on Michael at the broadcast table, standing and leaning and crouching to keep eyes on the action. He does not want to watch through a monitor.
11. PHILADELPHIA 76ers (33.5)
Joel Embiid guarantees a top-12 finish here. Few athletes have ever combined so much grace, power and high-IQ feel. On three straight possessions, Embiid might: rain in a soft midranger; then obliterate someone on the block and dunk them through the floor; and finally pump-and-go from the arc, Eurostep around one sucker, and kiss in a falling layup.
The James Harden-Embiid two-man game was so potent, Embiid so effective scoring off Harden’s pocket passes, defenses resorted to desperate and dangerous counters: Should we, umm, not even leave Embiid and just let Harden drive almost to the rim — and then swarm from one of Philly’s shooters? We get to see a whole season of that cat-and-mouse-and-beard game. (They lose points for how many free throws they generate. It’s a slog.)
Tyrese Maxey takes over when Harden rests, but he’s almost more fun playing off Philly’s two stars. He waits along the arc, like a sprinter in the starting block, primed to catch a kickout and fly through the diagonal crease Harden has unlocked.
Matisse Thybulle teleports on defense. He is way over there, and then suddenly and implausibly, he is blocking your shot. There is a feast-or-famine element to almost every Philly reserve. You can’t look away.
Philly a top-four art team. Kate Scott and Alaa Abdelnaby are talented enough that they don’t have to resort to homerish propaganda. It hurts the credibility of the overall product.
I appreciate referees for allowing Montrezl Harrell to do pull-ups on the rim after dunks. I’d watch a broadcast that just zooms in on P.J. Tucker making life miserable for opponents.
