Five NBA Things I may or may not have Liked: il Ciabattino, Project Hail Mary, RPLBJ, 65-Lame, Luklear
il Ciabattino
I believe Alex Caruso has earned a new nickname– The Cobbler. Why? Well, it’s not because, as someone with presumably Italian heritage, he makes fine leather shoes, although you never know. No, it’s because Caruso recorded the first blocked shot in NBA history with his own shoe.
This is the most Alex Caruso play that has ever existed. He springs, like a panther stalking its prey, into action so violently that his shoe becomes displaced from his foot. Instead of taking the time to, you know, put his shoe back on, he instead grabs it and gets right back to work. Carrying his shoe around like a child who refuses to be separated from their favorite stuffed animal, he closes out on Wendell Carter Jr, before helping on a Tristan Da Silva drive.
With Silva to his shoe-hand side, Caruso did what any enterprising person would: he clubbed the ball right out of Da Silva’s hand with his shoe. Unfortunately, the rules don’t have a sense of humor, and instead of being a clean block, Caruso was whistled for a technical foul. I’d have preferred a kickball call to have a thematically consistent end to the bit, but referees are the cops of sport, not the comedians.
According to Basketball Reference, Caruso’s officially registered nicknames are: Bald Mamba, Bald Eagle, Carushow, GOAT, A.C., White Mamba 2.0, and The Accountant. All of these pretty much suck. I mean, maybe The Accountant is okay, but that feels like an ethnic reference. However, I think The Cobbler captures the magnitude of his industrious artistry, while calling back to a play that will forever populate his highlight reel.
Project Hail Mary
The NBA’s decision to remove heaves from players’ individual shooting totals has been a rousing success. While it would have been cool if players had the wherewithal to not care, they did, and addressing it has led to some incredible highlights. However, this is not one of the instances.
With four and a half seconds left in the third quarter, Jonathan Kuminga secured a defensive rebound, turned up court, took one dribble, and then launched a near-perfect pass from the opposite free throw line to a streaking Jock Landale. When I say near perfect, I mean it. As the ball left his hand, there were about three and a half seconds left in the quarter. For this audacious Hail Mary to work, he basically had to serve up an alley-oop to give Landale a chance to score before time expired. Unfortunately, he didn’t get it just right.
Fortunately, Kuminga’s near-perfect pass was actually a perfect shot. While the shot is simply sublime, my favorite part is Kuminga’s reaction. He’s so stunned by what transpired that he almost looked mortified before the warm joy of reality finally set in. Kuminga, by shooting for the moon, reached the stars.
Role Playing LeBron
The Los Angeles Lakers are rolling, and LeBron James has decided to reinvent himself for the umpteenth time. Out of every player in NBA history, James is the single most perfect player. That doesn’t mean he’s the best, but no player has ever excelled at every aspect of the sport as he has. According to Basketball Reference’s position estimate, he has finished a season qualified for every single position, and with the Lakers, he has spent 15% of minutes at point guard, 10% at shooting guard, 25% at small forward, 40% at power forward, and 10% at center.
If you had to build a team out of one player in history, the only answer is LeBron. At his peak, he could do anything, fill any role, and be nearly the best at it. Now, 23 seasons into his career, and a few games from breaking the All-Time games played record, LeBron has taken the largest treasure trove of basketball experience and morphed into one of the most devastating role players in the league. Over his past five games, he is averaging 20.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 5.8 assists, and 1.4 steals on a 68.7% True Shooting and a 21.8% usage rate.
We’ve always known he was an elite cutter, transition weapon, and ball mover, but when shackled by the responsibility of generating offense, those skills were saved for FIBA. It hasn’t been smooth sailing for LeBron this season, but his acceptance and excellence in a supporting role, for the first time in his career, might just be what propels the Lakers from the doldrums of mediocrity.
Over the past five games, he has a per-game plus/minus of +7.0, a massive improvement over his start to the season, when it came in at -0.2, with a usage of 28.2%. I don’t think people fully appreciate just how absurd his career has been. When factoring in the playoffs, LeBron easily set the All-Time games played record while spending 100% of those minutes as his team’s offensive engine. That’d be like a running back setting the games played record in the NFL.
65-Lame Rule
The NBA’s 65-Game rule is under siege, and for good reason. With the news that Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung, his quest to reach 65-games and qualify for end of the season awards has taken a serious hit, and with it, people are up in arms. While the slow-moving ecological disaster that was the 65-Game rule has been obvious for some time, Cunningham’s injury seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Outside of Cunningham’s candidacy potentially being wiped away, Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Maxey are both currently out and might not qualify. Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Deni Avdija, Devin Booker, Kawhi Leonard, and Pascal Siakam are all either a game or two away from falling short. Even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic are a two-week absence away from seeing their season erased from awards’ history. While it’s unlikely that they all miss the 65-game threshold, the fact that there’s a distinct possibility that the players who are currently one through seven in Value Over a Replacement Player (VORP), a counting stat, might not be allowed to receive any end-of-season awards is absurd.
If this doomsday scenario were to hit, we would literally have the most fraudulent MVP in modern voting history. Playing games is part of the value equation, but the best players in the league rack up so much more value on a per-minute basis that they don’t even need to hit 60 games played to be one of the five most valuable players. Hopefully, for the league’s sake, Jokic, SGA, Luka, and Wemby hit the 65-game threshold, and we can all laugh about the asteroid that was a fraction of a degree off from ending humanity. But hey, remember the dinosaurs? Why should we be so lucky?
Luking the Narrative
Before the Lakers ripped off this 11-1 stretch to take firm control of the Western Conference three seed, the narrative enveloping Luka Doncic was not particularly kind. For some reason, averaging 32.7 points, 8.6 assists, and 7.8 rebounds per game on 61.1% True Shooting meant Luka was the reason the Lakers were struggling to a 34-24 record, despite Austin Reaves missing 26 games and LeBron James missing 18. If that sounds facetious, that’s because it is.
While I understand that Doncic whines incessantly to refs and his defense wanes with a concerning regularity, he was leading the league in scoring, and his late-game excellence was a major reason the Lakers have the best clutch record in the league. However, to silence the haters, podcasters, and idiots, Doncic has exercised the nuclear option.
Over his past 12 games, he is averaging 36.3 points, 7.5 assists, and 8.6 rebounds per game on a True Shooting of 64.6%, and crucially, the Lakers are 11-1. Unfortunately, basketball discourse never strays too far from the safe harbor of QB-Wins. If the Lakers were 7-5 in this stretch, I doubt the doubters would be satisfied by his incandescent play. Is Doncic a perfect player? No, but he is one of the five best players in the world, who can rise to the level of absolute best for months at a time. For some reason, people are much more apt to focus on Doncic’s negatives, while eschewing his strengths. He’s been awesome, and the Lakers have punched above their weight ALL SEASON. Maybe that should have been the narrative all along?
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