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      What’s Wrong With the Los Angeles Lakers

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      Repeating as N.B.A. champion is difficult — but the Lakers didn’t expect it to be this hard.The Los Angeles Lakers braced for a season of strain after the shortest off-season in league history.They did not anticipate this.The Lakers did not envision long stretches without both LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and a regular-season slog that is testing them in new ways after the rigors of being confined within the N.B.A.’s restricted-access campus at Walt Disney World for three months last summer. James, Davis and Co. began the 2020-21 season as overwhelming title favorites, having emerged from bubble life as N.B.A. champions, but factors that raise the degree of difficulty on the Lakers’ repeat bid are starting to stack up:Davis has missed the past 23 games because of persistent Achilles’ tendon discomfort and an adjacent calf strain. There is some hope within the organization that he will return to the lineup after the Lakers’ five-game Eastern Conference swing underway, but any injury that involves the Achilles’ tendon, no matter how purportedly mild, is going to spook people until Davis gets back on the floor. Achilles’ tendon injuries remain the most feared in the sport.James has missed the past nine games after sustaining a high-ankle sprain during a game against Atlanta on March 20. The reflex assumption, because this is James, is that he will return by month’s end and duly return to elite form. Given that James is 36, and in his 18th season, we should probably also acknowledge the possibility that his recovery won’t be seamless.Sunday’s 18-point loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, their Staples Center co-tenants, was the first in an 11-game stretch against teams in playoff or play-in positions. The Lakers were fifth in the Western Conference standings entering Tuesday, but there is mounting worry in Lakerland that a slip to sixth, seven or worse is getting more and more unavoidable. This is the first season that teams seeded seventh through 10th in each conference will be subjected to a new double-elimination playoff play-in round.The roster moves that looked so good in November, winning raves for the Lakers’ front office, haven’t panned out. Dennis Schröder and Montrezl Harrell have not proved capable of pinch-carrying the Lakers during the regular season when James and Davis are unavailable. I believed, as resolutely as the Lakers, that they would be, but Schröder and Harrell tend to be more concerned with their own scoring than anything else. When the Lakers explored the trade market for both last month, it seemed to confirm their own uncertainty about the fit.The Lakers’ recent signing of center Andre Drummond, right, has caused some friction with center Marc Gasol, who signed with the team as a free agent in November.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesThe Lakers’ biggest triumph since Davis went down was signing the crown jewel of this season’s buyout market: Andre Drummond. Yet it must be noted that the Lakers were desperate to go all out for Drummond in part because of a sense that their frontline was lacking. Marc Gasol, signed as a free agent in November, hasn’t replaced Dwight Howard or JaVale McGee as convincingly as the front office had projected. Gasol has since publicly acknowledged his disappointment that the Lakers felt a need to bring in Drummond.Whether it’s the injuries, or the team’s middling 10-12 record since Davis last played on Feb. 14, or mounting pressure stemming from the Lakers’ woeful 3-point shooting (24th in the league), or other factors, this group does not appear to have the same chemistry as the Lakers did in the N.B.A. bubble. Maybe these Lakers can still get there, but there is clearly much to fix in the final 22 games of the regular season.Coach Frank Vogel insisted on Monday that the Lakers were “not looking at the standings at all,” but that is easier to say than uphold when the competition looks tougher than it did last season:— The Utah Jazz readily acknowledge that they can’t hush naysayers until the playoffs, but they have also won 22 consecutive home games and remain on pace to become the first team in league history to average 17 made 3-pointers per game.— The Denver Nuggets made a clear win-now upgrade at the trade deadline by adding Aaron Gordon to their core of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. and, as of this Newsletter Tuesday, would have home-court advantage over the Lakers in a first-round series as the fourth seed.— Also: One of the most important players from the Lakers’ championship run — Rajon Rondo — is suddenly a member of the Clippers via trade. After his ineffectual stint as an Atlanta Hawk, skepticism persists that Rondo, at 35, will provide the offensive organization and playmaking that the Clippers badly need. Yet he has delivered often enough in the postseason that the Lakers are respectfully wary of his becoming Playoff Rondo one more time for the Los Angeles franchise still chasing its first championship.That assessment of the competition didn’t even mention the Phoenix Suns, who missed the playoffs for the past 10 seasons but have risen to No. 2 in the West by pairing Chris Paul in the backcourt with Devin Booker, or the three powerhouses in the East: Philadelphia, Milwaukee and a superstar-laden Nets squad coping with its own serious injury issues.James and Davis remain so feared as a duo that, for all the other legitimate concerns about these Lakers that we’ve listed, getting both back in coming weeks and keeping them upright throughout the playoffs would surely fix so much. I am likewise bullish on Drummond’s potential impact when he gets the chance to finally play with the two stars and, for the first time in his N.B.A. career, focus on a complementary role that emphasizes his rebounding and defense.My issue is assuming that James and Davis will heal in linear fashion that makes everything fine once they return. Ill-advised as it is to write off James in particular, after he led his teams to the N.B.A. finals in nine of the past 10 seasons, that’s a bold leap to make given the gravity of these injuries.When I published N.B.A. power rankings every Monday during the regular season for 15 years at ESPN, I occasionally sparred with angry readers who blamed The Committee of One, as I had dubbed myself, for jinxing their team with a ranking too lofty. Perhaps I should consider, along the same lines, some responsibility for the Lakers’ woes over the past two months, because Davis started missing games shortly after I devoted my Feb. 2 weekly dispatch to his partnership with James and how flawlessly they’ve meshed as teammates.Far more likely, though, than the Lakers getting derailed by a supposed newsletter jinx is the like-it-or-not reality that ill health threatens to be the Lakers’ undoing for the second time in James’s three seasons in Hollywood.Corner ThreeThe Charlotte Hornets of the 1990s were fun behind Larry Johnson, left, Muggsy Bogues, center, and Alonzo Mourning.Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty ImagesYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: I am a lifelong Nets fan. I’m 61 now and I clearly remember the team’s pre-N.B.A. years. Julius Erving was the greatest player to ever play for the Nets, and without him the franchise would not exist. But he sometimes seems to be forgotten in Brooklyn — and so is the A.B.A.The Nets recently posted a tweet indicating that James Harden was only the second Net in team history to record a triple-double that included 40 points, along with Vince Carter, but I was sure that had to be incorrect. I looked it up online and found that Erving did this twice in the A.B.A.My question: Does the N.B.A. count A.B.A. statistics? And if so, why don’t the Nets refer to them? Looking forward to your coverage soon of the first Nets championship in 45 years! — Dave Lederer (Sharon, Mass.)Stein: Love the enthusiasm for the A.B.A., Dave. But A.B.A. statistics were not (and most likely will never be) officially combined with N.B.A. statistics, so the Nets refer to their history only since 1976-77 when they make such announcements about milestones.This wonderful page maintained by Basketball Reference with multiple career scoring lists shows how Dr. J would be No. 8 and Dan Issel would be No. 11 if A.B.A. points were added to the damage they did in the N.B.A. Yet the list posted there is purely for discussion purposes, because the N.B.A. established its policy long ago, leaving Erving at No. 72 among N.B.A. scorers and Issel at No. 148. The four A.B.A. franchises that joined the league for the 1976-77 season (Denver, Indiana, San Antonio and the Nets) were treated more like expansion teams than merging teams.The A.B.A., of course, was way ahead of its time with the early adoption of the 3-pointer and the introduction of a slam dunk contest eight years before the N.B.A., and faster-paced play in general that I sadly didn’t get to see for myself. The merger season was the first that I could call myself a truly aware N.B.A. fan; 1977 Topps basketball cards with the electric green backs still weaken me when I come across them as does the Buffalo Braves set from that season that I keep on my desk.The recent death of Elgin Baylor had me venting anew about what a shame it is that Baylor’s offensive brilliance isn’t as appreciated as it should be because television footage from the 1960s and 1970s was not as widely distributed as it should have been, compared with, say, baseball footage from past eras. When I started covering the Los Angeles Clippers in February 1994, Baylor was the general manager and I told him that, to that point, I had scarcely seen five minutes of his playing career. This was years before the advent of NBA TV, of course, so the Clippers called N.B.A. Entertainment in Secaucus, N.J., to assemble a Baylor highlight reel on VHS tape for my edification.A.B.A. footage, as you can imagine, was even more scarce, though thankfully there’s a smattering on YouTube now. I can’t remember seeing any in my formative years as a basketball fan. The red, white and blue ball was all I knew.Q: ⁦‪More watchable than the Larry Johnson-Alonzo Mourning-Muggsy Bogues Hornets of the early 1990s? — @BBH821510 from TwitterStein: I got a few responses like this on Saturday when I tweeted about the Hornets losing Gordon Hayward for at least four weeks to a sprained right foot.Just for some fun, and perhaps in a bow to the hyperbolic nature of social media, I have been referring to Charlotte this season as the Most Watchable Hornets Ever. It’s my go-to hat tip to these Hornets given how entertaining they’ve been since drafting LaMelo Ball in November, signing Hayward in free agency and combining those two with Terry Rozier, whose player efficiency rating is at a career-best 17.7.The Hornets teams that featured Johnson, Mourning and Bogues are remembered with great fondness by Charlotte’s fans and duly respected here. Charlotte also had some strong teams in the back half of the 1990s, after trading away both Johnson and Mourning — but I think it actually helps my case if you have to rewind that far, to a time long before the N.B.A. League Pass era, to come up with a counter.Q: What happens when a team forfeits a draft pick as the Milwaukee Bucks did in the Bogdan Bogdanovic case? Will there still be 60 players selected in that draft? — Yul Bessori (Israel)Stein: No. The 2022 draft will have only 59 picks after the Bucks were docked their second-rounder for that year as punishment for what the league deemed impermissible contact with Bogdanovic before free agency began in November.Not long after Milwaukee reached an agreement with New Orleans on a trade for Jrue Holiday in November, ESPN reported that the Bucks would also acquire Bogdanovic, who was a restricted free agent, from Sacramento via sign-and-trade, with the Kings poised to land Donte DiVincenzo as part of the exchange. But free agency was still more than three days away at that point, prompting the N.B.A. to investigate how the Bucks had agreed on terms. Milwaukee was essentially forced to abandon its pursuit of Bogdanovic or risk more severe penalties.Bogdanovic ultimately signed a four-year, $72 million offer sheet from Atlanta, which Sacramento declined to match, causing the Kings to lose the restricted free agent without compensation. The Bucks, though, have rebounded from their missteps about as well as they could have hoped, persuading Giannis Antetokounmpo to sign a five-year contract extension worth $228 million in December even without landing Bogdanovic. Then on Sunday they announced that they had signed Holiday to an extension, reported to be for four years and worth up to $160 million.They also made a useful addition last month by acquiring P.J. Tucker in a trade with Houston, but questions persist about the dependability of the Bucks’ bench. Milwaukee’s other problem is the competition — at least at the top of the East. The Bucks have to be wondering, even after all of their moves, if they really have enough to beat out the Nets and Philadelphia for a spot in the N.B.A. finals.Numbers GameGolden State’s Stephen Curry is close to passing Wilt Chamberlain as the franchise’s career-scoring leader.Mary Holt/USA Today Sports, via ReutersUpdated entering Tuesday’s games.44League officials can only hope that the basketball public was too focused on the Final Four in men’s and women’s college basketball to pay close attention to the N.B.A. on Saturday, when a league-record three teams lost by at least 44 points on the same day: Oklahoma City (48 points to Portland), Orlando (46 points to Utah) and Detroit (44 points to the Knicks). This was just one day after Golden State trailed by as many as 61 points in a 53-point loss to Toronto.14The Raptors had won just one of their previous 14 games before blasting the Stephen Curry-less Warriors. Curry has missed six of Golden State’s past nine games with a tailbone contusion.130Curry needs 130 points to surpass Wilt Chamberlain (17,783) as the Warriors’ career-scoring leader. Getting there will make Curry the 10th player in league history to rank as a franchise leader in points and assists, joining Mike Conley (Grizzlies), Alex English (Nuggets), Kevin Garnett (Timberwolves), Michael Jordan (Bulls), LeBron James (Cavaliers), Oscar Robertson (Kings), Reggie Miller (Pacers), Isiah Thomas (Pistons), Dwyane Wade (Heat).20The Houston Rockets’ recent 20-game losing streak was twice as long as its worst stretch during the 14-68 season in 1982-83 that led to the drafting of Ralph Sampson. Those Rockets started 0-10 and never had a longer winless run after that. Houston’s 20 consecutive defeats this season marked the N.B.A.’s fifth such streak since 2000, according to Stathead. Philadelphia lost 28 consecutive games from the end of the 2014-15 season through the start of the 2015-16 season and 26 games in a row during the 2013-14 season; Cleveland lost 26 consecutive games in 2010-11 in its first season after LeBron James’s free-agent departure to Miami; and Charlotte lost 23 consecutive games in 2011-12.22Utah is a spotless 22-0 at home in 2021 after losing its first two home games of the season in December.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo Couldn't Miss at the All-Star Game

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyon pro basketballGiannis Antetokounmpo Was the All-Star Who Couldn’t MissA 16-for-16 night highlighted a game that many players didn’t really want to play.While Giannis Antetokounmpo banked in a couple of 3-pointers, most of his damage came at the rim.Credit…Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressMarch 8, 2021Updated 9:23 a.m. ETATLANTA — Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks unintentionally banked in two of his three 3-pointers. He took 11 shots in the first half, and five more in the second half, without missing one. He also made a priceless memory with his infant son before the game even started, leaning down to Liam Antetokounmpo at courtside for some quick ball-handling work as the opening tip approached.When the N.B.A.’s 70th All-Star Game was over Sunday night, Antetokounmpo seized the game ball without waiting for anyone’s authorization, cradled it with his left hand and collected the Kobe Bryant Trophy as the occasion’s most valuable player minutes later. It was, at least for Antetokounmpo, about as perfect as an All-Star Game gets.That the sentiment could be applied to even one participant at State Farm Arena was a grand surprise given how the N.B.A.’s All-Star Sunday started. Weeks of unease and second-guessing about the league’s decision to summon 24 players from 18 teams to Georgia for an All-Star Game, in the ongoing clutches of a pandemic that caused 31 game postponements in the first half of the season, seemed to be validated some eight hours before tipoff, when it was announced that Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers would not be allowed to play.Antetokounmpo had a sweet moment on the sideline with his son Liam.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesExposure in Philadelphia to a barber who had tested positive for the coronavirus caused Embiid and Simmons to be barred from playing, even though their coach, Doc Rivers, said both players tested negative on Sunday in Atlanta. League officials thus had to be relieved, at night’s end, to see Antetokounmpo so giddy about his 35 points on 16-for-16 shooting — albeit almost all of that from at-the-rim range — and to hear the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James speaking so excitedly about the rare opportunity to play beside Golden State’s Stephen Curry.As the captain of the victorious Team LeBron, James benched himself for the second half of a 170-150 victory after scoring a modest 4 points in 13 minutes. He spent the rest of the evening encouraging Portland’s Damian Lillard (32 points) and Curry (28) to “back up further and further to shoot,” as James explained via his Twitter feed. Lillard and Curry duly drained eight 3-pointers each, including back-to-back flings from halfcourt to close out a 60-point second quarter (yes, 60) that looked laughably effortless.It was a marked change in tone from the afternoon, when the Nets’ James Harden, among numerous players dismayed by the Embiid and Simmons developments, said this All-Star Game had essentially been “thrown upon us.” James, remember, called the concept a “slap in the face” a month ago, explaining that he and many other players had been led to believe they would get an All-Star break free of basketball after the league postponed its originally scheduled 2021 All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis to 2024.The uniforms used Sunday night were those designed for Indianapolis, inspired by an old Pacers scheme from the 1980s in yellow and blue, adding to the night’s “forced” feel — to use another Harden description. No matter how many times Commissioner Adam Silver has insisted that the league’s motivations for staging the game were to reward its global fan base and bring a needed spotlight to historically Black colleges and universities, as much as the obvious “economic factors,” this was one instance where players voiced more (and louder) skepticism than members of the news media.“All in all, obviously the league did a hell of a job of being able to put this together still,” James said afterward, withholding any further criticism. He had just improved to 4-0 as an All-Star captain, helped along by the stunning array of M.V.P. candidates he drafted (Antetokounmpo, Curry, Lillard, Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Dallas’s Luka Doncic), as well as the absences of Embiid and the injured Kevin Durant, the other team’s captain.“There’s always a lot of back and forth on these different decisions, but once guys get here, I think they’re grateful for it,” said Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns. Paul, of course, doubles as president of the National Basketball Players Association and is James’s close friend, which made for an uncomfortable month after James was so forceful in initially questioning the wisdom of holding even this scaled-down version of All-Star Weekend.To try to make this venture as safe as possible, league and union officials agreed that the players would spend no more than 36 hours in Atlanta, flying in and out via private jet and maintaining the daily coronavirus testing that has governed the season so far. Traveling parties were required to check in at the league’s hotel by 7 p.m. Saturday and then stay at the hotel until departing for the arena Sunday afternoon, with an array of private postgame flights scheduled Sunday night. Players were allowed to bring up to four guests. Teams were allowed to send three club representatives with them — one each from the athletic training staff, team public relations and team security.LeBron James gushed on Twitter about finally getting a chance to play a game as Stephen Curry’s teammate rather than his rival. “Well overdue and I loved every single second!”Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesThe idea, Silver said, was to create a “mini bubble” and keep everyone granted access to the league’s inner sanctum away from the bustling nightlife that swirled around them. League officials were well aware that many Atlantans had shown little interest in heeding recent pleas from Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to stay home and treat this as the made-for-television event that the N.B.A. intended. The N.B.A., in fact, was moved to send roughly 200 letters containing cease-and-desist orders to local party organizers who used the event name or logo to promote unaffiliated events across the weekend, according to a league spokesman.Beyond the $20-plus million that Turner Sports was projected to generate in advertising and sponsorship revenue through Sunday’s broadcast, estimates for precisely how valuable this substitute All-Star experience would be for the N.B.A. have been difficult to come by. It was widely reported late last year that starting the 2020-21 season during Christmas week rather than mid-January would result in a $500 million revenue gain. No such projections have been released in connection with the All-Star Game, but one league insider with a firm grasp of money matters told me last week that just keeping a valuable partner like Turner happy, by preserving the network’s most valuable N.B.A. content of the year, was worthy of any trouble.Fake crowd noise was pumped in to amplify the understandably modest buzz generated by an invitation-only crowd of 1,500. TNT likewise had concerns of its own to contend with, competing for viewers against Oprah Winfrey’s interview on CBS with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.Commissioner Adam Silver said of the game, “It would have been a bigger deal not to have it.”Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesSilver insisted at a news conference on Saturday that he had weighed it all before deciding that “we should do it for our fans and for our business” once the league “got to the point where we felt we could do it safely.”“For me,” Silver said, “it would have been a bigger deal not to have it.”Atlanta’s previous All-Star Game, in 2003, when the Hawks’ home was known as Philips Arena, was Michael Jordan’s final All-Star Game. This one will take its own place in league history, thanks to the unusual circumstances, but Silver proposed that “maybe it should be judged when people are looking back as to what this meant to them as opposed to what some of the initial reactions were.”Maybe.“It was more fun than I thought it would be,” Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics said.Lillard, who on another night might have wrested M.V.P. honors from Antetokounmpo with his repeated splashes from 40 feet and beyond, said: “It just didn’t have the All-Star Weekend feel, just because it was so quick, it was so quiet, it was empty. But I think once we got on the floor, that was like the only time it snapped into like, ‘This is the All-Star Game.’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The 7 N.B.A. All-Stars Who Would Be King (or Just M.V.P.)

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe 7 N.B.A. All-Stars Who Would Be King (or Just M.V.P.)Near the halfway point, this season’s race for the Most Valuable Player Award has top-tier candidates from the usuals (LeBron James) to the newcomers (Joel Embiid).Damian Lillard is keeping the Portland Trail Blazers competitive despite injuries to key players, as he has done for years. He’s a top-tier candidate for M.V.P.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated PressFeb. 26, 2021, 5:27 p.m. ETOne of the fiercest debates among fans and observers each N.B.A. season is over who should win the Most Valuable Player Award.This season — already strange because of the coronavirus pandemic — has created the most wide-open race for the coveted award in several years.Being named M.V.P. is official recognition that a player is not just a star, but a superstar. Every winner of the award who is eligible has made the Hall of Fame. But the qualifications for the award vary by voter, which is partly what makes the debate so contentious.Is it for the best player? If so, why hasn’t LeBron James — a four-time recipient — won every year? Is it for who has the best stats? Is it for who does the most with the least talent around him? Is it for the best player on the best team? Should past playoff performances factor in? (The winner is chosen by members of the news media, but The New York Times does not vote on awards.)Sometimes, the answers are easy. Last year, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks was a runaway winner. His stats were top notch (fifth in scoring, second in rebounding), and the Bucks had the best record.The 2016-17 season had one of the most hotly disputed M.V.P. races ever, among James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Kawhi Leonard. Westbrook, who finished that season with his first triple-double average and led the league in scoring, ended up winning, even though his team at the time, the Oklahoma City Thunder, was only the sixth seed in the Western Conference.Almost halfway through this season, several players have made a compelling case to be a top-tier candidate.Statistics were updated entering Friday night’s games.LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers25.6 points/8.1 rebounds/8 assists per game; 50.2 field goal percentageLeBron James is the best player on the team that entered the weekend with the fourth-best record in the league, and he has already won four M.V.P. Awards.Credit…Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressThe Case For:James, 36, has played every game so far. His true shooting percentage — a measure of scoring efficiency that factors in free throws and gives more weight to 3-pointers — is at a solid 59.2 percent, despite a recent slump from the perimeter. The league average is around 55 percent. James is the best player on the team that entered the weekend with the fourth-best record in the league. And he’s LeBron James. His numbers rival those of his previous M.V.P. seasons. If you believe that he should have won the award then, there is no reason he shouldn’t win now.The Case Against:James has another elite player, Anthony Davis, as a teammate. If you believe in the literal definition of valuable, then you must consider that when James sits, Davis, if healthy, fills some of the void in a way the vast majority of players can’t. Put another way: No other candidate has a teammate as good as Davis. Also, James is 13th in the league in scoring. He’s ninth in assists and 22nd in rebounding. The last M.V.P. to not be top 10 in points, rebounds or assists was Dirk Nowitzki in the 2006-07 season.Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers29.6 points/11.2 rebounds/3.1 assists per game; 51.6 field goal percentageThe Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid is performing well across the board. He ranks fourth in the league in scoring.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated PressThe Case For:Embiid is anchoring the best team in the Eastern Conference on both ends of the floor and does not have another bona fide top-10 player supporting him. He’s fourth in the league in scoring, while being absurdly efficient (64.4 percent true shooting).The Case Against:Embiid’s counting stats are fantastic, but he’s not as good a passer as other contenders. And even with his gaudy numbers, there is an argument that Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets is having a better season.Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets26.9 points/10.9 rebounds/8.4 assists per game; 56 percent field goal percentageNikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets is in the midst of having one of the five best offensive seasons in the history of the league.Credit…Harry How/Getty ImagesThe Case For:Jokic’s traditional stats are eye-popping, but when you look under the hood, you see he is putting together one of the greatest seasons ever. That is no exaggeration: His O.B.P.M. (a measure of how much a player contributes offensively compared with an average player) puts his performance at not just No. 1 in the league this season but among the five best offensive seasons in league history. It’s a higher O.B.P.M. than Larry Bird ever had. Michael Jordan had only one season better. Jokic’s win shares per 48 minutes — an estimate of how many wins an individual player is responsible for — lead the league, and also rank as one of the highest in history. He’s doing all of this while not having a teammate who will make the All-Star Game this season.The Case Against:The Nuggets are only 17-15. There is a chance they won’t even make the playoffs this season. It’s hard to give an M.V.P. to someone, no matter how great, if his play isn’t leading to wins.Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors30 points/5.5 rebounds/6.3 assists per game; 47.9 field goal percentageStephen Curry is putting up nearly identical numbers to his 2015-2016 season, which is considered one of the most dominant in N.B.A. history.Credit…Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe Case For:Curry has played every game this season except one and has kept the Warriors afloat, despite Klay Thompson’s missing the whole season, and Draymond Green’s missing time because of injuries. From a statistical perspective, Curry is putting up nearly identical numbers to his 2015-16 M.V.P. season, which is considered one of the most dominant in N.B.A. history. This run might be even more impressive, given the lack of consistent playmakers around him. Curry is second in the league in scoring.The Case Against:As with Jokic, the team success isn’t there. The Warriors are 18-15 and are closer to missing the playoffs than to getting home-court advantage.Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers29.6 points/4.4 rebounds/8 assists per game; 44.7 percent field goal percentageThe Case For:Lillard’s numbers are consistently exceptional from year to year. This season, however, he’s doing this without the second- and third-best players on his team, CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic, who have been sidelined with injuries. Despite not having another elite playmaker next to him, Lillard has carried Portland to 18-13 and fifth place in the Western Conference. From a “doing the most with the least” perspective, combined with elite statistics, Lillard and Curry have the best cases.The Case Against:There’s no obvious hole in Lillard’s M.V.P. case other than simple competition. It’s a deep field, and Lillard’s numbers are on par with those of multiple candidates, including Curry and Luka Doncic.The Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard, left, and the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic are both contenders for this season’s M.V.P. Award.Credit…Michael Ainsworth/Associated PressLuka Doncic, Dallas Mavericks28.5 points/8.4 rebounds/9 assists per game; 47.4 field goal percentageThe Case For:Doncic is, once again, having one of the best all-around seasons in the league. He does it all. He’s an elite scorer and passer, while also being one of the best rebounding guards in the league. The Mavericks have been in flux for much of the season, as multiple players have missed games because of health concerns related to the coronavirus, so Doncic, as the only All-Star on the team, has to shoulder much of the offensive load.The Case Against:As things stand right now, Dallas, at 15-16, would not make the playoffs. The last time a player from a below-.500 team was named the M.V.P. was 1976, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won the award in his first year with the Lakers. Doncic is also a streaky shooter, so his percentages might not hold up as the season goes on.Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks28.9 points/11.7 rebounds/5.9 assists per game; 55.5 field goal percentageGiannis Antetokounmpo has positioned himself for a third straight M.V.P. Award.Credit…Rick Bowmer/Associated PressThe Case For:Antetokounmpo’s numbers are in line with his previous two seasons, both of which won him M.V.P. Awards. He’s top 10 in rebounding and scoring, something only Embiid can also say.The Case Against:Fairly or not, Antetokounmpo’s falling unexpectedly short in multiple playoff runs will be on the minds of voters. Additionally, if he wins the award, it would be his third straight — and there may be voter fatigue when there is such a deep field. The Bucks are only 20-13, slightly below preseason expectations. In almost any other season with that stat line, Antetokounmpo would be the runaway winner.Honorable Mentions:Kyrie Irving/James Harden/Kevin DurantThe players in the Nets’ trio are individually having exceptional seasons, rivaling all the other candidates. But they play on the same team, making it difficult to pick one most valuable player, and each has missed a significant chunk of time.Paul George/Kawhi LeonardBoth players are having essentially the same great seasons on the Los Angeles Clippers. Leonard is averaging 26.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game, around the same as George. And the Clippers have the second-best record in the league. As with the Nets, it’s hard to pick one player to give the award to, especially with others putting up better stat lines.Donovan MitchellHe is the best player on the best team in the league. But his all-around stats don’t match those of other candidates.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stephen Curry Sees Your Tweets, and Your Team’s Weaknesses

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.The Friendship of LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStephen Curry Sees Your Tweets, and Your Team’s WeaknessesAn up-and-down season for the ailing Golden State Warriors has social media abuzz with people doubting Curry, but he’s playing better than ever.Awards and championships can’t keep the critics from coming for Stephen Curry. “I saw all of it,” he said. “It was hilarious.”Credit…Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressFeb. 19, 2021, 6:09 p.m. ETStephen Curry missed 38 of the first 56 3-pointers he attempted this season. His Golden State Warriors were punchless without the injured Klay Thompson alongside him in their famed Splash Brothers backcourt, losing by 26, 39 and 25 points within the first five games.There was little at the time to suggest that Curry would soon be crashing the race for the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award and inspiring his coach, Steve Kerr, to say that “this is the best” version yet of his star guard.Curry has stopped short of saying he agrees. The likely explanation: He is as audacious as ever with his shot selection, confidence, celebratory shimmies and ambition. So he keeps expecting more and resisting limits, even as his 33rd birthday nears next month.“I am playing well,” Curry said in a phone interview — but insisted that he can still get better.“I know that’s kind of crazy to say,” he added.Such talk is not crazy to the Warriors. Shaun Livingston, a former teammate who has moved into the team’s front office, said Curry was noticeably stronger absorbing contact after working on his body in the off-season. Curry cited an improved ability to read defenses as an even bigger development in his game.After a broken hand and the N.B.A.’s pandemic-imposed hiatus limited him to five games last season, Curry has rebounded emphatically. He busted out of his early 3-point-shooting struggles with a career-high 62 points against Portland on Jan. 3, passed the Hall of Famer Reggie Miller for second place in career 3-pointers made on Jan. 23 and hung 57 points on the Dallas Mavericks two weeks after that.Curry is averaging 30 points, 6 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game while shooting 49.2 percent from the floor and 42.5 percent from 3-point range. They are the most robust figures he has produced since 2015-16, when he was named the league M.V.P. for the second successive season. The offensive surge has him on pace to join Michael Jordan on a very short list of players to average 30 points per game at age 32 or older.Curry said he is more patient this season: “How I see the game when I’m on and off the ball, seeing what the defense is giving you and knowing that I’ll find a way to get some space.”Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated PressTeam officials have grown accustomed to seeing him hush skeptic after skeptic since his arrival from Davidson College as the No. 7 overall pick in the 2009 draft. They understand that Curry, who became the sort of revolutionary franchise cornerstone no one envisioned back then, may have to stay at a supernova level to get his 16-13 team back to the playoffs. They have also learned by now that there is little point in trying to curb his aspirations or quirks — even when that means having to watch Curry scroll through potentially toxic social media criticism on his phone at halftime.Andrew Bogut, the recently retired former Warriors big man, revealed last month on his new “Rogue Bogues” podcast that Curry was prone to check his Twitter mentions “if he had a bad half.” Asked to verify the story, Curry laughed and said it had indeed become “a really bad habit.”Bogut last played alongside Curry for the final month of the 2018-19 regular season and the playoffs, which were marred by the serious injuries to Kevin Durant (Achilles’ tendon) and Thompson (knee) and halted the Warriors’ remarkable run of three championships in five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals. Asked how regularly he still takes a peek at halftime, Curry said: “Probably more often than you think.”As such, before that 62-point eruption against the Trail Blazers, Curry was keenly aware of mounting social media criticism doubting his ability to carry an injury-hit team and claims that a poor season for the Warriors could damage his legacy.“I saw all of it,” he said of the critical tweets. “It was hilarious.”Ill-advised as the doomscrolling seems, given the potential adverse effects on his mental health, Curry said he is more focused on “the comedy I get from it” than trying to “keep the receipts” from fans and the media who don’t believe in him.“It started by accident to be honest,” he said, the day before being named an All-Star starter for the seventh time. “I had this ritual with my wife where, at halftime, she’d send me some encouragement or kick me in the butt a little bit if I was playing bad. And, obviously, with how iPhones are constructed, that Twitter button is just right there. It’s easy to get wrapped up in it for a minute or two. To this day, I don’t know how Bogut caught on, because it wasn’t like I was reading the tweets out loud.”“I think he just wants to be great. I saw him chasing greatness last summer when no one was watching”, said Bruce Fraser, a Warriors assistant coach. Curry and Fraser warm up before Monday’s game against Cleveland.Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter two games with at least 10 3-pointers earlier this month, Curry missed 15 of his first 18 3-pointers against the Miami Heat on Wednesday — only to drain two clutch 3-pointers in overtime in the come-from-behind victory. It was the kind of performance that sets social media ablaze, with critics calling for his two M.V.P. trophies to be repossessed and supporters responding by “just asking” why he lives in so many people’s heads rent-free. (Translation: Why talk about him so much if he’s not as potent as advertised?)“I don’t think he plays the game with spite or trying to prove people wrong,” said Bruce Fraser, a Warriors assistant coach, who works as closely with Curry as anyone in the organization. “I think he just wants to be great. I saw him chasing greatness last summer when no one was watching. The main piece to his success is the time that he’s put into it and his push last summer.”Eight-plus months off, as part of one of the eight teams that did not qualify to finish last season in the N.B.A. bubble at Walt Disney World, led to the most productive off-season of Curry’s career. It was the ideal tonic after the Warriors played well into June for five straight springs. Curry was in the gym constantly, with his longtime personal trainer Brandon Payne as well as Fraser, adding muscle to play through contract and evade clutching and grabbing off the ball, and to gird himself to head inside when defenses played him too tight outside. Defenses hound Curry so closely on the perimeter that he is driving the ball more than he has since 2015-16; nearly 30 percent of the shots Curry has taken this season come within 10 feet of the basket.“I’ve always been a late bloomer,” Curry said of the strength boost, “so it’s not a surprise.”When Curry was misfiring early this season, Fraser refused to worry. He was sure Curry was ready for the challenge of leading a mostly new team apart from the title-tested Draymond Green. Fraser was the one, after all, flinging the passes at a post-practice shooting session on Dec. 26 when Curry made 105 consecutive 3-pointers — 103 of them on camera.The purity of Curry’s stroke told Fraser that the real issue was how Curry was adjusting to an array of new defensive coverages. With Durant now on the Nets, Thompson unavailable and scant dependable shooting elsewhere in the lineup, Curry needed to get used to opposing teams locking in on him like never before.“At the beginning of the season, it was really hard for him,” Fraser said. “Box-and-ones, double teams, traps, triple teams. In transition, I’ve seen times when Steph’s been coming down the floor and there are four guys around him.”Teams are committing multiple defenders to Curry, with no consistent offensive threats beyond him on the Warriors.Credit…Neville E. Guard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFraser’s recap hit upon one of Curry’s favorite subjects. At this stage of his career, Curry seems to enjoy talking about the nuances of reading the game as much as his actual shotmaking.“My patience is a lot better now, if I had to pick one thing,” Curry said. “How I see the game when I’m on and off the ball, seeing what the defense is giving you and knowing that I’ll find a way to get some space. I’m enjoying this run for sure.”The intensity and variety of the coverages “keeps me sharp,” Curry said.The benefit and wisdom of keeping an open ear to the latest critical chatter is much harder to see — So how much of a prime do you have left, Steph? — but that may be one more green light Curry has earned.“If you occupy spaces that people never thought you could, there’s always going to be attempts to try to explain it away,” Curry said. “That kind of comes with the territory. I like to have fun with it, though.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stephen Curry Scores 62 Points in Win Over Trail Blazers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStephen Curry Answers His Critics With a 62-Point GameA career-best performance against Portland reminded the league what the Golden State Warriors guard can do.Stephen Curry’s incredible night led to a win for the Golden State Warriors and a postgame interview that was interrupted when his teammate Damion Lee doused him with water.Credit…Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesJan. 4, 2021Updated 10:08 a.m. ETStephen Curry has heard the criticism. He is aware his legacy is being questioned, and he knows that any bad game will start again the reconsideration of his accomplishments. But after scoring a career-high 62 points for the Golden State Warriors in a 137-122 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night, Curry sent a clear message to his critics: Keep talking.“I like being talked about because there’s expectations,” he said.Curry’s career-best performance came in a matchup with one of his biggest on-court rivals — Damian Lillard of Portland — and on the heels of a storm of social media criticism in which his legacy as a team-lifting superstar was called into question.“Cue the Jordan meme: ‘I take all that personally,’” Curry said with a laugh, referencing a line by Michael Jordan in the documentary “The Last Dance.”Curry then explained that the performance — he had 31 points at halftime — came from a much simpler place than people might be assuming: “I had an opportunity to assert my will on the game early and create some energy.”Asserting his will included shooting 18 of 31 from the field, 8 of 16 from 3-point range and 18 of 19 from the free-throw line. Curry became the first player since Kobe Bryant on Dec. 20, 2005, to score at least 30 points in each half of a game, and he bettered his previous career high of 54 points, which was set in a road loss to the Knicks in 2013.His 62 points also were the most by any player this season and made him only the fifth player in franchise history to score 60 or more points, a feat last accomplished by Klay Thompson, who had 60 in 29 minutes during a blowout win over the Indiana Pacers in 2016. Rick Barry, Joe Fulks, Thompson and Curry have one 60-point game apiece for the Warriors, while Wilt Chamberlain had 27.“He came out looking like a man on a mission,” Draymond Green said of Curry, who scored 21 points in the first quarter.Thompson welcomed Curry to the 60-point club with a tweet, and Curry’s younger brother, Seth, who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers, took the opportunity to poke fun at Stephen’s critics, who seem to turn nearly every game into a referendum on his legacy.Curry said his brother’s tweet was the best one he’d seen so far and that criticism was just part of being a superstar.“I don’t get frazzled too easily and I’m very confident in who I am as a person and as a basketball player,” he said. “There’s not going to be anything you can say about me or to me that’s going to affect that. At the end of the day that’s how I got here.”While Curry has played well early this season, averaging 32.3 points and 6.2 assists through six games, there is no question that the Warriors are a far cry from the juggernaut once led by Curry, Thompson, Green and Kevin Durant. Golden State opened the season with blowout losses to Durant’s Nets and the Milwaukee Bucks, and looked inept in a loss to Portland on Friday. While their poor play has come mostly from newcomers like Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre, a heavy share of the blame has landed squarely on the shoulders of Curry, the Warriors’ best player. His most persistent critics have questioned why a two-time winner of the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award can’t lift a lesser team to relevance in the way LeBron James has done.Green, who recently returned from an injury, rejected that premise.“Everybody is always going to try to find a reason to nitpick something Steph does, whether it’s that you haven’t won a Finals M.V.P. or you haven’t carried a team,” Green said. “If I’m not mistaken, he carried the 2015 team.”“To be honest, he’s carried every team, because he’s been the leader of the group since I’ve been here.”Many of Curry’s younger teammates were not with Golden State during the championship years. They were left struggling to describe such a dominant performance.In addition to his typical outside shooting, Curry was aggressive at getting to the rim, leading to a career-high in free-throw attempts. Credit…Tony Avelar/Associated PressJames Wiseman, the team’s rookie center, compared it to a video game. “It reminds me of 2K,” he said, “because I used to play with Steph all the time, and I used to drop like 60. So, just like actually watching in person, that was phenomenal.”Oubre, a veteran wing acquired during the off-season to help fill in for the injured Thompson, brought the perspective of having been one of Curry’s opponents, saying “I was just happy to be on the same side as him tonight, because I know it stunk for the other team.”Curry declined to predict if big-scoring games would become a regular occurrence. But he objected to a reporter’s saying he couldn’t score 62 points every game, playfully responding “Hey, why not?”And Coach Steve Kerr, who said he had lifted Curry in the game’s final minute “so the 42 people in the stands could give him a standing ovation,” said he was perplexed why anyone would criticize Curry in the first place.“I’m not playing dumb: Does he really take criticism?” Kerr asked. “I’ll check out Twitter later. I hope they are saying something good about him tonight.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      8 Fearless N.B.A. Season Predictions

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonNets and Clippers Win BigMVP: LeBron or Luka?The Reloaded LakersWill the Nets Reign?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketball8 Fearless N.B.A. Season PredictionsHouston’s James Harden is widely expected to be traded soon. But Kevin Love? Zach LaVine? LaMarcus Aldridge? They could be on the move, too.The outlook for James Harden is now about when, not if, he will be traded from the Houston Rockets.Credit…Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressDec. 23, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETThe N.B.A.’s 75th season began Tuesday night with wins by the Nets and the Clippers. A new calendar year arrives in just nine days.The time, then, has never been more right to consult our crystal roundball for the usual batch of eight (almost) fearless predictions for what awaits in #thisleague in coming months:James Harden will be traded no later than Jan. 25 — two full months before this season’s trade deadline.The initial rumblings, at the start of Harden’s standoff with the Houston Rockets, suggested that a trade was unlikely to materialize until closer to the March 25 deadline. The Rockets were determined to first see if they could repair their relationship with Harden, then to leverage the two guaranteed seasons left on his contract on the trade market.More current rumblings indicate that tension within the Rockets is mounting each day Harden goes untraded. The Athletic illuminated some of that tension with a report Tuesday that Harden recently threw a ball in practice at Jae’Sean Tate, his new rookie teammate. Both sides now want to move on as quickly as possible. It’s time.I still regard Philadelphia as the most likely landing spot for Harden, largely because Ben Simmons most closely fits the description of the sort of building-block player Houston is holding out for in return. I’m also told that the familiarity between Daryl Morey and his Rockets successor, Rafael Stone, will outweigh any lingering ill feelings from Morey’s move to Philadelphia as president of basketball operations less than two weeks after he walked away from his Houston contract. I know Morey has said that Simmons is going nowhere. I also know Morey made similar statements about Chris Paul before he traded Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook.The Heat let it be known this week that they are not actively pursuing Harden, which is a blow for the Rockets because Miami is one of those fearless teams with the oft-proven gumption to embrace an enigma like Harden in spite of the various red flags. The Sixers and the Nets, though, may not be the only other options: In recent days, it has become known that Toronto, Boston and Denver have also had exploratory talks with Houston.The Rockets will keep probing the market, as eager to move on now as the superstar they catered to for the past eight seasons.At least three of the following five players will be traded this season in addition to Harden: LaMarcus Aldridge, Aaron Gordon, Buddy Hield, Zach LaVine and Kevin Love. Maybe even all five.Love’s case is the most intriguing. He has $91.5 million left on his Cleveland contract with two more seasons after this one. Yet the flurry of contract extensions we’ve seen during the N.B.A.’s truncated off-season may encourage a team or two out there to sacrifice some future salary-cap flexibility to absorb Love’s deal, knowing that free-agent options will be more limited than anticipated.Both Aldridge and Gordon are interesting candidates with their shorter remaining contracts to slot in Boston’s $28.5 million trade exception, which the Celtics (depending on their willingness to run up their luxury-tax bill) can use to add absorb a huge salary in a trade.Kevin Durant will be first player in N.B.A. history to go from an Achilles’ tendon tear to Most Valuable Player Award candidacy.Kevin Durant’s game looked as fluid as ever during the preseason.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressIn Tuesday’s New York Times, as part of a staff compendium of award predictions for the coming season, I went with Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks as my M.V.P. selection. As strong as Doncic’s case will surely be, I’ve been asking myself if I should have gone with Durant.It is super early in his comeback, true, and the Nets will be wary of overtaxing their star forward during the regular season. But Durant is shooting, moving and, yes, dunking as fluidly as we’ve ever seen a player post-Achilles’ tendon surgery.Even at 32, Durant looks highly capable of changing the devastating history of the most dreaded injury in the sport. Then again, Durant is one of the sport’s true offensive unicorns, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.The Eastern Conference will earn your respect.I can’t claim to have invented the phrase, but I think I’ve been using “Leastern Conference” jabs in stories for almost 20 years. Even in recent seasons that produced a champion from the East, depth on that side of the N.B.A. has often been lacking.This season will be different. Although the West still has more teams that can credibly compete for a playoff spot, it appears that more challengers to the Lakers’ throne (starting with Milwaukee, Miami and the Nets) can be found in the East.Sorting out the East’s top seven, if the Indiana Pacers are indeed more dynamic offensively under new coach Nate Bjorkgren, should be complicated and fun.Finishing sixth in each conference will mean more than it ever has before.One of the best things about the N.B.A.’s play-in playoff round, beyond giving four more teams than usual a pathway to the postseason, is how much more value finishing sixth in the East or West holds.The No. 6 seed clinches a first-round playoff berth. The No. 7 seed slips into a four-team scramble that, in the worst-case scenario, could result in an early off-season. In the N.B.A.’s ongoing quest to make the regular season more meaningful (and watchable), this should help.The No. 9 or No. 10 seed in either conference would have to win two consecutive games to bump off No. 7 or No. 8 for a playoff spot.Game 1: The format calls for the seventh-place team in each conference seed to play No. 8, with the winner claiming the No. 7 seed.Game 2: The No. 9 seed goes up against No. 10. The loser is eliminated.Game 3: The loser of Game 1 faces the winner of Game 2. The Game 3 winner claims the final playoff berth, with the loser heading to the lottery.Got it?There will be All-Star balloting, like usual, even if there is no All-Star Game.All-Star festivities will be different this season, but we’ll still fight about selections and snubs as usual.Credit…Nathaniel S. Butler/NBA PhotosThe N.B.A. has already announced that its 2021 All-Star Weekend, which was scheduled to be held in Indianapolis, has been postponed to 2024 to give the Hoosier State another shot at hosting. Indianapolis last played host to an N.B.A. All-Star Game in 1985.I think the league, deep down, would like to arrange a simpler All-Star Game, just this season, if it made sense to do so. That, however, is a lot to ask in these coronavirus times — especially when a true midseason break of some sort is sure to be welcomed by players after the shortest off-season in history for most teams.Can you live with traditional All-Star balloting, coaches selecting the reserves and the usual Twitter fisticuffs over who got snubbed? I’m pretty sure we’re going to get all that.The Miami Heat will reach the N.B.A. finals again.This is going to be harder than it sounds if you remember the above warnings about the East’s top seven.It will be doubly difficult if you endorse the belief in some league circles that the Heat would not have advanced to the finals at Walt Disney World if not for some bubble anomalies, like the lack of travel and the absence of hostile environments on the road. Miami’s ever-demanding culture for players that puts so much emphasis on fitness and focus, as the theory goes, had its roster primed to cope better than anyone with the long bouts of isolation in the bubble and other mental-health challenges.I don’t buy it. I think the Heat have a worthy, versatile, defensive-minded team that orbits around Jimmy Butler and will be stronger this season as Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson develop. They beat the Lakers twice in the finals, remember, despite the injuries sustained by Adebayo and Goran Dragic.Miami was not a mirage.There will be a loud campaign for the N.B.A. to start cooking up a new all-time team, featuring 75 players as the league’s 75th birthday nears in June, to replace or update the league’s list of 50 greatest players named in October 1996, the league’s 50th season.And if I’m wrong and no loud campaign materializes, I will start it myself.The Scoop @TheSteinLineGrizzlies fans will have to watch Ja Morant from home for now.Credit…Brandon Dill/Associated PressCorner ThreeTrevor Ariza has probably been on your favorite team.Credit…John Raoux/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: The West is obviously going to have more than eight teams vying for playoff spots. Which teams do you think we can rule out now? — Natalie Anfuso (Wayne, Pa.)Stein: I totally understand why you’re asking, because it’s a difficult question to answer. If you’re looking to rule out teams completely, I would feel comfortable naming only Oklahoma City — and that’s just because the Thunder have aggressively embraced a rebuilding posture. It wouldn’t surprise me, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander running the offense and Al Horford and Luguentz Dort anchoring the defense, if even the Thunder proved to be a tougher out than expected.Every team in the West that finished eighth or lower last season has grander visions of this season’s ceiling. No. 8 Portland believes it will contend for a top-four seed after the acquisition of Robert Covington and some additional roster tweaking. Memphis placed ninth and is counting on a similar finish, at worst, purely through Ja Morant’s presumed improvement in Year 2. And No. 10 Phoenix is widely regarded as playoff material now after going 8-0 at the Walt Disney World bubble and then trading for Chris Paul.While outsiders await a potential trade that ships out a veteran like LaMarcus Aldridge, DeMar DeRozan or Patty Mills, No. 11 San Antonio is optimistic that the experience its younger players gained in the bubble will make the Spurs a playoff sleeper. No. 13 New Orleans is one of the more difficult teams to assess and figures to have a puncher’s chance to reach the postseason purely based on the track record of its new coach, Stan Van Gundy, and Zion Williamson’s promising preseason. Golden State, of course, is expected to bounce back from the league’s worst record (15-50) to contend for a playoff berth — even with Klay Thompson out for the season after he tore his right Achilles’ tendon in November.I have more confidence in Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell clicking and No. 14 Minnesota joining that mix ahead of No. 12 Sacramento, but the Timberwolves and the Kings have to be considered playoff long shots in a conference this deep. The Kings, remember, have missed the postseason for a league-high 14 consecutive seasons and, even with a revamped front office, left numerous rival teams stunned by their decision not to match Atlanta’s four-year, $72 million offer sheet to Bogdan Bogdanovic.Q: Maybe it wasn’t part of the wildest off-season ever, but Luke Ridnour had a wild week in 2015 — he was traded five times, if I remember correctly. Did he ever play for any of them? — Barron Hall (Chicago)Stein: Good follow-up question to our recent debate in this space about the proper amount of awe in response to the leaguewide frenzy of transactions in the days before and after the Nov. 18 draft. Ridnour was actually traded four times in a week in June 2015 — one trade more than Trevor Ariza was subjected to last month — but he never played for any of the teams involved.In fact, Ridnour never played in the league again after his stint with Orlando in 2014-15. He had a nonguaranteed contract worth $2.75 million for the 2015-16 season, which is why Ridnour kept being moved, but he decided to stop playing after Toronto acquired him from Oklahoma City in trade No. 4. The first three trades sent him from Orlando to Memphis, Memphis to Charlotte and Charlotte to Oklahoma City.Ariza is on the Thunder’s opening-night roster and, according to my old friends at HoopsHype, has been traded 10 times in his career — more than any other player in league history. Ariza is likely to be mentioned frequently as the potential recipient of an in-season contract buyout that makes him a free-agent target for contending teams like the Lakers, but who would be surprised if Oklahoma City finds a way to trade him again?Q: I honestly don’t know what normal is anymore, but the last five minutes of the Golden State-Sacramento game last Tuesday night were pure joy. All the rookies and reserves were playing their hearts out, Kyle Guy’s buzzer-beater gave the Kings a win, and Steve Kerr, Alvin Gentry and Luke Walton were all laughing through their masks. As a basketball-starved, 70-year-old woman, I enjoyed all of it. Bring it on! — Gigi CoeStein: You get the last word, Gigi. Let’s hope, as the regular season opens Tuesday night, that we have lots of scenes like the one you describe to dissect and savor.Numbers GameCharlotte’s LaMelo Ball has wowed with his passing. Not so much his shooting, yet.Credit…Matt Stamey/Associated Press6Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo last week became the sixth player to sign a so-called supermax contract extension, joining Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Portland’s Damian Lillard, Houston’s James Harden, Washington’s Russell Westbrook and Houston’s John Wall. Two marquee stars who were eligible to sign supermax deals with their former teams but declined: Anthony Davis (New Orleans) and Kawhi Leonard (San Antonio). Utah’s Rudy Gobert was also eligible for the supermax but signed a five-year deal on Sunday with the Jazz at roughly $23 million below the highest amount he could have received.3The supermax contract was introduced to help incumbent teams retain superstar players, after Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City for Golden State in July 2016, but Harden recently became the third of those six supermax recipients to request a trade. Westbrook has been traded twice since signing his supermax with Oklahoma City in September 2017. Wall signed his with Washington in July 2017 and was traded for Westbrook on Dec. 2 after both players asked for a trade.26.2Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball threw some of the best passes I’ve ever seen during the preseason — including a one-handed bounce pass against Orlando on Saturday with skip and bend that should be enjoyed over and over — but Ball, a rookie guard, is struggling as badly as feared with his shooting. Drafted No. 3 over all by the Hornets in November, Ball shot 26.2 percent from the field and 27.3 percent on 3-pointers in Charlotte’s four exhibition games.44.3With a career conversion rate of 44.3 percent, Philadelphia’s Seth Curry ranks second in league history in 3-point percentage behind Golden State Coach Steve Kerr, who was a career 45.4 percent shooter from long range. The Warriors’ Stephen Curry is sixth at 43.5 percent, behind Hubert Davis (44.1 percent), Drazen Petrovic (43.7 percent) and Duncan Robinson (43.7 percent).5,739We can’t forget that Stephen Curry, coming into this season, had attempted 5,739 3-pointers in his 11 N.B.A. seasons. That’s more than Kerr (1,599), his brother, Seth (1,007), and Miami’s Robinson (641) combined (3,247).Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.comAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More