Five NBA Things I May or May Not Like: Injuries, MVPs, Wizardry, Zion, and Shamrocks
This is a direct ripoff of Zach Lowe’s Ten Things column, but, here’s the catch, it’s almost certainly worse. But hey, at least I’m trying. These are five NBA things I may or may not have liked.
Injuries
Over the weekend, the NBA was hit with another rash of injuries. Jalen Brunson went down with an ankle injury, LeBron James suffered a groin strain, Amen Thompson rolled an ankle, and there are a whole host of minor maladies holding players back, to say nothing of the major injuries that have already derailed players’ seasons. All it takes is a quick scroll through ESPN’s injury tracker to show just how banged up the league is right now. From my count, that’s 109 players listed as either out or day-to-day.
The reason for the NBA’s injury woes is a complex web of factors that have been building for decades, but regardless of the cause, it just plain sucks. Across all major professional sports, injuries feel like they’re rising and the NBA has the added downside of the league being built around its stars. Some fans root for laundry, but who’s wearing the laundry is disproportionately important to the experience. For all the pearl-clutching over stars missing games for rest, the NBA has a real injury problem. There are still a ton of excellent players suiting up night after night, but nothing is more deflating than realizing a Celtics-Sixers game will be without five former All-Stars.
The MVP Dead-bate
On Sunday, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets faced off in a battle of two of the Western Conference’s elite. The Thunder ultimately prevailed 127-103 with a dominant fourth quarter. However, this matchup, with the insane tip-off time of noon local time, was more about its two stars– Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic. In a normal season, Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander would be running away with the MVP award, but unfortunately, one of them will have to settle for second.
In an MVP race this close, head-to-head matchups will inevitably play an outsized role in the general discourse for the award. If you pay attention to Tim Bontemps’ MVP straw polls throughout the year, you’ll know that Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks’ victory over the Thunder in the NBA Cup final boosted Antetokounmpo to the detriment of Gilgeous-Alexander. Personally, I hate this line of reasoning.
Basketball is a team sport. Teams win, and teams lose, but star players are left with the bill. The Thunder are the best team in the NBA because they have Gilgeous-Alexander and an incredible supporting cast. That supporting cast is the difference between the Thunder and the Nuggets in the standings and was the difference between the two on Sunday. The Nuggets and the Thunder will face off again tonight, which is just insane, and another Thunder win will thrust Gilgeous-Alexander further ahead in the MVP debate, and it shouldn’t.
Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander need to be judged on their own merits, not the merits of their teammates, front office, and coaches. In recent years, NBA awards voters have started to veer from the “best player on best team” voting pattern that dominated the first three decades of media voting, but in a race this close, I fear voters will toss their hands up and use it as a tie-breaker. That’s a cop-out, and Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander deserve better. They’re both deserving of the award and split ends will determine the winner, but those split ends need not be who had the better team around them.
(If you’ve never seen Ralph Bakshi’s 1977 film Wizards, check it out. It’s uneven, trippy, probably not for kids, and 100% topical to current events)
The Wizards!
As a Washington Wizards fan, I have absolutely loved the direction the franchise has taken over the past 18 months. Their attempt to extend the John Wall and Bradley Beal era was idiotic, and entering a hard tank was always the right call. However, I also love that the Wizards are 4-2 in their last six games, and 7-8 over their past 15. Their -2.0 net rating over this 15-game span is incredible considering they’re at -11.9 on the season. The beauty of starting a season 6-41, is you can have an inexplicable run of mediocre play and it won’t kill your chances of landing a top-five pick.
However, the icing on the cake was their insane victory over the Toronto Raptors (the winner gets to be the 51st state). On Saturday night, the Wizards won by the thinnest of margins 118-117 over the Raptors. Yes, a one-point victory is as thin as it gets on the scoreboard, but this contest was won by a fraction of a second and a centimeter of fingernail. The Raptors, in their own tank quest, had benched their starters down the stretch and finished the game with a motley crew of G-League adjacent NBAers. Since this was the Wizards, that wasn’t enough to guarantee defeat, and the game came down to a final shot.
Securing the inbound pass with 2.3 seconds, Jamal Shead drove right, flung up an incredible half-hook over former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart, and scored at the buzzer to give the Raptors the lead. The stadium erupted. The bench mobbed Shead. I turned off the television. And the Wizards won? Some things need to be seen to be believed. Just watch this puppy.
This is what basketball is all about. A nail-biter between two lottery-bound teams coming down to the final play, a heroic shot, the crowd going nuts, and then confusion as the referees review the shot and suck every last drop of life out of 20,000 Canadians. This is how teams like the Wizards win. They need every last bounce to go their way, and on Saturday night in Toronto, they got them.
The Celtics are “Back”
I’m old enough to remember when the Celtics were struggling. From mid-December through January, the Celtics went a very pedestrian 11-10. A season after cruising to a title and a 21-5 start inevitably makes mediocrity a crisis. But there’s a catch. The Celtics were never mediocre. Over that 11-10 stretch, the Celtics posted a +7.1 net rating, which would be the third-best net rating in the league. So while the the wins started the dry up, the Celtics were still very much an elite team, and that’s what they’ve shown over their past 17 games.
Since losing to the Houston Rockets on January 27th, the Celtics have gone 14-3 and posted a net rating of +9.3. If it weren’t for the Cavaliers and Thunder, the Celtics’ 46-18 record and +9.0 net rating would have them as the odds-on favorites to win the title. However, the Celtics have managed to be an elite team despite starting their preferred starting lineup of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingius, Derrick White, and Jrue Holiday only 23 times this season.
In one sense, the Celtics are back, but in another, they’ve yet to arrive. That aforementioned starting five has produced a -1.64 net rating in 307 minutes together, a far cry from the +11.16 net rating in 623 minutes they managed last season. When the Celtics’ death machine gets humming again, they’ll look just as formidable as last season. So, even though they’re back, there is still more to come.
Zion and Murphy
If it wasn’t for the collapse of the Sixers, Suns, and Mavericks, people might still remember the Pelicans have endured the season from hell (probably not, if we’re going to be honest). However, as awful as their season has been, there have been two big positives– Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy III.
Williamson and Murphy aren’t surprise breakout candidates, but that doesn’t mean their recent play isn’t exciting. Since returning from injury, a 20-game sample, Williamson has averaged 25 points, five assists, and seven rebounds on 61.6% True Shooting. For the season, his offensive BPM is at 5.6 and he’s at a career-high in usage and assist percentage. Thus far, this has been the best version of Zion since his incredible second season, and it has reasserted the belief that he can be an All-NBA level contributor.
Due to injuries, Murphy has to shoulder the largest usage of his career and has thrived. He’s averaging a career-best 21.8 points and 3.7 assists and has largely held his shooting efficiency despite a massive increase in volume. I’m not sure if Murphy has shown enough to be the second option on a title contender, but he has certainly shown enough to be the third. His incredible trajectory since college, going from Rice to UVA to the NBA in successive seasons, suggests Murphy might not be done growing.
The Pelicans’ defense can be charitably described as there and it will cause them to lose a heaping helping of games down the stretch. However, Zion and Murphy are proving to be a real offensive foundation from which to build, which is incredibly unusual for a team in their position. Depending on where the Pelicans land in the draft lottery, they could be in line for a Grizzlies-like rebound next season.
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.