We made it folks, real basketball has gone in the books! Who put it in the proverbial books and where are the actual books? No one really knows, but something something go visit your local library and read. And with three marquee match-ups last night, one could just select any single match-up from last night and enjoy slightly above average basketball experience, but we’re here to recap all three, which will definitely lead to this post being slightly above average, right? Right?
Right.
So let’s start talking right away about Celtics and Pistons. First, many Pistons type things happened. We’ll be singing the “small sample size” mantra for the next couple of weeks, and today we’ll be shouting “It’s just been one game!” but it’s still encouraging to see that Jalen Duren (22 PTS, 9 REB, 1 AST, 1 STL, 1 BLK) can still make a basketball go in the hoop post-playoffs, Duncan Robinson (21 PTS, 5-9 3PT) is still Duncan Robinson and Cade will do many Cade-like (22 PTS, 4 REB, 8 AST) things. I don’t know what else to say, the Pistons looked very Pistonee to me. So onto the Celtics, who looked very interesting and did many interesting things, but of course the highlight, or the lowlight of the night would be Jayson Tatum‘s line, shooting 6-23 and 0-7 from three.
Now, some noticed I was a bit lower on him than my peers going into the season, and while I have no super-prescient powers, we are looking at a guy who doesn’t have an equal partner on the court anymore (PG’s amazing performance notwithstanding, 38 points on 7-12 from three) with Brown in Philly, and quite frankly, coming back from a major operation and a player who has never really had a solid jump-shot… well, I’m not going to go so far and say my valuation is already justified, but clearly there is some rust here. Let’s talk in a couple of weeks, but just talking mechanics, something seemed a bit off with Tatum.
And if you thought I was low on Tatum, then you would also say I was low on Tyrese Maxey (28 PTS, 4 REB, 5 AST, 3 STL, 3 BLK), yet he persevered. AGAIN, one game, but despite the Sixers “clunkiness” on the court (sorry, best description I can conjure) the dynamic was clear. Facilitation, facilitation and find the shot. Unless it was Brown of course, then you just add several dribbles and a push-off, voila. Jokes aside, Joel Embiid (13 PTS, 11 REB, 6 AST, 2 STL, 3 BLK) looked especially like a facilitator, something reminiscent in their dismantling of the Celtics in the last playoffs series they played. LeBron did very LeBron things and looked super LeHappy doing it. LeJoy phase perhaps? (14 PTS, 9 REB, 7 AST).
Knicks looked okay, not great, not terrible. With the now spammed caveat of just one game, I am concerned with KAT’s minutes (24), and that really seemed to be their missing ingredient at the end of the game. This is the result of foul trouble early, but this is something that Karl-Anthony Towns has had issues with in the past… I’m expecting 32-34 minutes nightly at least, so Andre Drummond showing stat production in 24 minutes may not be an every night thing. Hopefully. All apologies to Drummond owners.
Also, both Brown and Brunson had terrible plays in the last few seconds, both very Brown and Brunsony… if you know, you know.
Last game of the night was more or less par for the course of what we should expect from the Thunder all season long. SGA doing very SGA like things with 32 PTS, 6 REB, 4 AST and 3 STL and 3 BLK. Aday Mara was also very impressive in a limited 12 minutes, at least from the defensive side, and Chet Holmgren had a very muted game with just 14 points on 3-8 shooting. Maybe he can gain another two pounds…
On the other side, Spurs struggled a bit, fueled by Victor Wembanyama‘s 1-13 night. I continue love seeing Stephon Castle (24 PTS) and Dylan Harper (18 PTS) get minutes and volume, I think both players are ripe for another level if they can manage their minutes with Fox and company. There was also a fight on the court, but since there’s no Steven Adams anywhere to be seen anymore, it would really just be Wemby and Chet and teams looking like someone threw a bunch of toothpicks on the court…
Jay is a longtime Razzball everything who consumes an egregious amount of Makers Mark as a vehicle to gain wisdom and augment his natural glow. Living in the D.C. area, he also likes spending time visiting the local parks and feeding lettuce to any turtles he encounters, including Mitch McConnell.
