12 Quick Takes on the New NBA Season
NBA Substack on the first 10 days and nights
We asked 12 leading NBA voices on Substack:
Your take on the NBA season so far?
Check out their answers and subscribe!
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You wouldn't know it judging by the conversation on the interwebs, but there are actually things happening this season other than teams taking lots of 3s. I know. It sounds crazy. But I swear, there really are other things to talk about.
The Cavs and Warriors have joined the Celtics and Thunder in demolishing everybody. Paolo Banchero dropped 50. Bilal Coulibaly is breaking out. The Nuggets are going to overtime against terrible teams. The Lakers are (gasp!) kinda fun to watch. The Hawks are ... the opposite of that. Jayson Tatum fixed his shot, Mikal Bridges' was apparently never broken, LaMelo Ball is back, Dereck Lively II looks better than last year ...
So much is happening! Basketball is good and fun, and we don't have to pretend it's not.
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The first 10 days of the NBA season have really hammered home that coaching matters in the NBA. When you look at the competitive level of the Lakers (from good to great), Nets (from horrid to passable), Cavaliers (good to great) and Suns (good to great), it's hard to ignore the impact new coaches have had. Meanwhile, even incumbent coaches — like Steve Kerr and Ty Lue — are reminding us they have something valuable to offer their teams. Coaching matters, even if it's hard to measure.
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I wanted to write about the 10 teams taking at least 40 3s per game compared to last season's one (eventual champions Boston). I wanted to rant — again — about how Injuries Suck after posting two such columns already during a painful October ... and then a long-term Paolo Banchero injury emerging without warning on Halloween Night.
But it's the Bucks. It has to be the Bucks. The newsiest development of the regular season's first 10 days, for all the possibilities available, can only be the Bucks and how bad they've looked and, most of all, how the drumbeat about how this all impacts Giannis Antetokounmpo's future in Brewtown began even before Halloween arrived. Milwaukee has lived down to every downbeat prognostication about this team looking so old and slow around Giannis ... who happens to be throwing up some monster stat lines already. Is Khris Middleton's return — whenever that happens — going to fix all this?
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The Sixers' superteam plans are not exactly working right now. Philly is 1-3 with losses to the Raptors and Pistons, two of the three worst teams in the league by the Elo ratings. Their odds in my composite forecast model have gone in this direction since preseason:
Preseason: 76.8% to make playoffs | 9.2% to make Finals | 4.2% to win Finals
Current: 61.8% to make playoffs | 7.2% to make Finals | 3.5% to win Finals
Now, we might say that the early struggles are due to 2/3 of their Big Three sitting out. And it's true that Tyrese Maxey has been minding the store alone with both Joel Embiid and Paul George missing the start of the season. But given the injury histories of those two — and the way Philly plans to load-manage the regular season — the Maxey-led Sixers are going to be a configuration the Sixers use quite often this year. And its early returns are concerning.
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It's a copycat league. The Celtics ran roughshod over the NBA playing a 5-out system predicated on 3-point shooting. Though not every team has a stretchy 5, offenses are certainly joining the 3 party. After offenses hovered around 39% of shots coming from 3-point range for several seasons, the NBA as a whole has surged to 42%, the first time it's ever eclipsed the 40% mark.
Shockingly, the Magic are taking more than half their shots from downtown, up from 36.9% (25th highest) last season. Let's see if that continues with Paolo Banchero out.
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I spent the start of this NBA season in Italy. I scrolled through highlights of the first few days’ games after gawking at the Colosseum, turning to find an older gentleman in a Championship Raptors hat take in the same view from the floor up into the ancient stands. I saw a guy in a Dončić jersey duck out of the path of dueling scooters in the narrow streets of Naples Spanish Quarter, stood behind another guy in an Embiid jersey gasping aloud at the same murals in Pompeii as me. On Ischia, I fumed toward a storm rolling over the Tyrrhenian at Lonnie Walker IV being waived and on Mount Etna, well, honestly on Etna I didn’t think about basketball at all.
It was the first time in years I haven’t been on the same continent as NBA basketball as it began for another season and with time zones and an ocean between us, well, I didn’t mind the buffer from early season overreactions. The basketball, eventually, drifted to me.
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If you don’t like 3-pointers, today's NBA might not be for you. Teams have realized how insanely valuable the 3-ball is, and they are getting attempts up at a record pace. Sure, someone will zag and start pounding the ball inside again. But, for now, long balls are going to be a major part of the attack.
However, this doesn’t mean the game is “bad” or “every team is the same.” Everyone is taking 3s, but how they get there varies greatly. Some of the teams who take the most triples play the prettiest basketball in the entire NBA.
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Free throws are up (yuck!), offensive rebounding is rising (yay!), rookies are off to a slow start (yuck!), and some new stars are emerging (yay!). There’s a lot going on, but to me, the most interesting part of the season so far is the sheer amount of parity we’ve seen.
As of this writing, we have only two undefeated teams in Cleveland and OKC and one defeated team in Utah. Anybody is a threat to beat anyone else on any given night, and it’s made for an extremely enjoyable watching experience.
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Remember when the NBA solved the "is scoring too high?" question last season by allowing defenses to be more physical? Well, we are back to square one. Fouls, free throws and reviews are up from last year, the games lack rhythm and players don't seem to know how the rulebook is going to be interpreted night to night. Last week the Philadelphia 76ers and Toronto Raptors combined to shoot 99 free throws … and Joel Embiid wasn’t even playing!
Please, can we go back to the closing months of last season?
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Recent champs are fading. Both the Bucks and Nuggets have struggled out of the gates, and their respective stars — each of whom remain top-five players in the league — don’t look, at least right now, like they’ll be enough to elevate their supporting casts. Each franchise has been given the benefit of doubt that you earn when you win a title. Each is at risk of having the type of year that loses you that good will going forward.
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I’ve been quite satisfied with the start of the season, except for one thing: The rookies have been largely underwhelming.
According to Basketball Reference’s Stathead database, an average of five rookies per season have scored more than 10 PPG through the first five games of their career, going back to 2000-01. Thus far, zero rookies have met that criterion — Carlton Carrington will be the first if he continues his play in his next (fifth) game.
Reed Sheppard is barely playing, Cody Williams is shooting below 30%, and Zaccharie Risacher has been … fine? Largely disappointing from this year’s freshmen.
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Victor Wembanyama posted another 5x5 on Thursday, but on offense, he remains who I thought he'd be, at least for now.
When I scouted Wemby's games in the French league I started to doubt some of the hype — specifically his ability to become an impactful offensive player in the NBA.
Sure, his extremely long reach enables him to catch lobs that maybe no one else can. But his height can also hurt certain aspects of the game, such as ball-handling — he’s racked up more turnovers than assists this season. And thanks to perhaps the league's worst shot selection, he's made only 24% from 3.
On one end of the floor at least, Wemby remains a major work in progress.