That’s right, Part 2 is here (Part 1 is here!) and most of the NBA has survived the week unscathed? (Question mark because who knows what could happen as I type this sentence. Definitely enough time for hamstrings to be torn if you ask me.) And as I’ve been alluding to, even though it feels like we’ve played so many games, we’re still primarily in the early part of the NBA season where anything can happen at any time… and if that wasn’t the case for the first few weeks of this season so far, I am pretty sure it would just be a graphic of knees imploding.
Let’s get the Lakers out of the way, where most of my peers are going Wemby rest of season, I’m actually just going to plant my flag with Luka. There isn’t anything super-analytical going on here, it just looks like Luka wants it, he’s in the best shape of his life, he looks engaged and he has a team that has shades of Doncic’s old Mavs team that went to the Finals a few years ago. Having a great head coach doesn’t hurt and while the Lakers bench and defense can be suspect at times, that doesn’t really matter in fantasy, so it’s just simple for me, if he stays healthy, his offense production will simply be too hard to match by any other peer, put up numbers like peak James Harden. And yes, Austin Reaves is good and it shouldn’t be a secret, Reaves put up monster averages last season whenever LeBron or Luka or both were out of the lineup, so nothing here is surprising.
Some random thoughts…
- Joel Embiid is broken but I also think he will also be okay… He’s still doing what, 18/10/4? Miserable percentages, but I think anything from him at this stage is positive.
- Cooper Flagg is this good and can be better.
- I think this is what we expected from Cade Cunningham and the rest of the Pistons (Duncan Robinson generally good, John Collins generally bad).
- Did y’all expect this from Steph Curry’s 38-year-old season? I already discussed Yaxel in my last post, but even without Kristaps, this team is making some noise, already looking better in this five-game win streak than they did at any point last season.
I know after two losses it was easy to kinda question what was going on in San Antonio, but after a slick eight game win streak, the conversation has flipped full spectrum with the Spurs being slotted into the Western Conference Finals by many a talking heads. I’m actually okay with that talk as the West in general looks a little in flux (as I’ll touch on multiple times throughout this post) but the obvious takeaway is this team will go where Victor Wembanyama takes it. And while you could take everything I said above about Doncic and kind of apply here (plus being the top metric defender in the league) so I’m not really going to argue between 1 and 1A here. What I will say is that I am quite interested in seeing how Wemby adjusts as the season hits it’s stride in several more weeks… you have the games logged last year plus the play-offs, the physical defenses they’ll be matching-up with… no red flags here, but it’ll be something to monitor.
While Doncic and Wembanyama are my 1 and 1A for the rest of the season, Nikola Jokic has seemed to stabilize himself for now… but the elbow still kinda concerns me. I know these are just feelings, but we’re only dealing with feelings at 10 games in (roughly) so that’s pretty much it. The rebounds are down, the three point shot looks a little broken and just overall Jokic hasn’t looked quite like Jokic, but let’s take a look again in 10 more games.
Some closing thoughts…
- We knew the Hornets would stagnate, but to this degree? And while in the real world, the Ball trade was heralded as a great long-term bargain, the Wolves are still feasting without Edwards, much to do with Ball’s play and Rudy Gobert’s defense.
- The Cavaliers are a work in progress, and while many picked them to be regular season darlings, I actually think it’ll take a while for them to settle a bit. I know the Watson thing is easy to pick on, but there’s no where to go but up offensively here, so there is that…
- Despite losing Ja Morant, the Trailblazers have continued to look strong but are reaching a difficult part of their schedule starting with a weird back-to-back with the Thunder, who are streaking after losing basically half their roster from injuries.
- The Brooklyn Nets and New Orleans Pelicans remain interesting teams if you are looking for players who could be finding a change of scenery in a couple of months… nothing crazy, but they have what teams are seeking and may not care about the RELEGATION ZONE. (The rule is you have to yell it.)
- And let’s wait a couple more weeks on the Pacers, Suns, Clippers and Magic. Some of it is injury, but these teams have looked hopeless and broken when that may not actually be the case. Okay, the Suns might be broken, but the other three and their principle players should have something to say in the coming weeks…
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.
