24 Sloppy Seconds

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Praise Jebus — our long national nightmare is over. Jimmy Butler — AKA General Soreness — finally got his pre-agency wish as Minnesota traded him (along with always-injured young big man Justin Patton) to Philadelphia, where his hardscrabble, competitive nature should fit in seamlessly with the team and the city. In return, Minny received Dario “The Homie” Saric, Robert Covington, Jerryd Bayless’ salary, and a 2022 second-round pick. There is so much to unpack, and while some of it is on Minnesota’s side, for now let’s break it down from Philly’s perspective. The trade means many things to many people, but where else can I start other than the centerpiece…

JIMMY BUTLER: In the end, Jimmy Buckets got what he wanted: out of Minnesota, and to a more competitive situation, while keeping his Bird Rights intact with a franchise for whom he might be interested in signing long-term. So long as the on-court fit with franchise cornerstones Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid is not problematic, the expectation is Butler will decline his player option next summer and re-sign with the Sixers for five years and approximately $190 million, making Butler the obvious “winner” in the whole sordid mess, even if he had to torch every professional bridge he’d ever built, along with his reputation, in the process. [Not to be confused with The Process, which is now officially dead and buried, even if it’s effectively been over since the moment former GM Sam Hinkie left the building. But that’s a whole other matter, and it’s been covered ad nauseum elsewhere.]

While playing alongside Simmons and Embiid — and for a real, live, not-stuck-in-2007 head coach in Brett Brown — should require Butler to do less of the heavy on-court lifting, he is also now squarely in the superstar cross-hairs. On his third team in three years, and having been given everything he asked for, if he can’t make it work with Philly, it becomes more than fair to wonder if the problem lies not with the organizations who couldn’t properly cater to his talents, but rather with the man himself. There are no more excuses, and no more nonsense is likely to be tolerated. It’s ‘put up or shut up’ time.

THE ROTATION: Starting a lineup featuring three of the top (roughly) twenty players in the league unquestionably raises the team’s ceiling, but it doesn’t mean the transition is going to be seamless. There are some questions to answer with this rotation. Saric and Covington were nobody’s idea of superstars, but they were players who filled specific roles and responsibilities, and they played — A LOT. Saric was averaging 30.5 minutes per game, even as his production fell off to start the year following his promising sophomore campaign in ’17-’18. Covington was deployed even more heavily at 33.8 minutes per game. After subtracting out the Thibodeau Minutes Tax, it’s easy to see Butler (36.1 mpg with Minny this year) slotting directly into Covington’s minutes, leaving a Croatia-sized hole in the rotation at power forward.

Wilson Chandler could move into the starting lineup and essentially split combo forward duties with Butler. Neither is truly a power forward, but both can fake it for stretches of time while providing added switchiness on defense. While Chandler has a pretty long track record as a solid player, at this point in his career, handing him additional minutes may amount to more of a Band-Aid than a deserved promotion. Mike Muscala has averaged 21.3 minutes over nine games, which is already about the upper bound of what his role should be. Amir Johnson, somehow in his 14th pro season but still only 31 years old, remains superficially useful (especially on defense) but is best suited as a low-minutes backup center. Rookie Jonah Bolden isn’t ready for primetime yet.

The in-house answer could be to leverage the versatility of Ben Simmons, making him the full-time defensive power forward and distributing Saric’s minutes among the guards and wings, while allowing Simmons to continue to run the show at the offensive end. JJ Redick is about maxed out (31.1 mpg), but rookie Landry Shamet has been a pleasant surprise (and seems to have a nice rapport with Simmons), and TJ McConnell (and his never-ending well of grittiness) could handle more than the 14.7 minutes he’s garnered to this point. There are options, but how they replace all those starters’ minutes will go a long way in determining the success of the trade.

You may have noticed I neglected to mention one of the guards in Philly’s rotation. Trust me, I didn’t forget about him; I’m contractually obligated to give him his own section. OK, deep breaths…here we go…

MARKELLE FULTZ: Welp. Anyone who tells you he knows how this will all turn out for Fultz is full of shit. At first blush, replacing a low-usage, sharpshooting wing (Covington) with a ball-dominant one who does not historically space the floor as well (Butler) would appear to be a death blow to Fultz’s chances of succeeding in Philly. In addition, besides the potential spacing issues and role dysphoria, from a psychological standpoint, after the crap he just pulled in Minnesota, is there ANY player on Earth who Philly’s front office should be more wary about putting in the same zip code of Fultz and his fragile psyche than Butler? It doesn’t take much imagination to draw the MJ/Kwame parallels. What could possibly go wrong?

Brett Brown has already been trying to pull off a balancing act, giving Fultz (somewhat undeserved) minutes to help build his confidence while attempting to win games more or less in spite of him in the meantime. The challenge of serving those competing aims is only ratcheted up when the rotation shortens AND the guy you add has proven himself to be a hyper-competitive maniac who will gleefully take a blowtorch to the team’s chemistry in exchange for a few more wins. The combination does not feel like a recipe for success, and if dead weight has to be cast off, Fultz seems like the obvious candidate.

To be fair, I do not think Fultz is a lost cause as an NBA contributor. He’s 20 years old, and he was drafted first overall for a reason: his potential is tantalizing, if only the player Philly thought they were getting out of college would finally show up. Perhaps that player is still in there somewhere, but the odds he comes out while wearing a Sixers’ uniform are getting longer by the day. If I were a lottery team with a gaping hole at point guard (Phoenix and Orlando, I’m looking in your directions), I would certainly be sniffing around about acquiring Fultz on the cheap. Both squads have logjams in the frontcourt, so it might make some sense (read: DOES make A LOT of sense) to trade out of some of that depth to take a flier on a top-of-the-draft talent who may just need a change of scenery to get a new lease on his NBA life. Even if Fultz turns out to be a colossal, Olowokandian bust, would those teams really be much worse off than they started?

Suffice it to say, I do not envy Fultz for the trials he is about to undergo. Things will probably not end well for him in Philly, but I am here for every second of the drama.

JUSTIN PATTON: Just a brief note on Patton. I really liked him coming out of Creighton. In college, he was long, springy, and surprisingly effective away from the hoop. He reminded me of a poor man’s Marcus Camby. Unfortunately, injuries have completely derailed his pro career to this point. I hope he and Jimmy Butler get along, since their professional destinies seem to be indelibly linked. [The pick which became Patton was also a throw-in by Chicago in the Butler-to-Minny trade last year, for reasons which have never been adequately explained.] Mostly, I hope he eventually gets healthy so we can see if he becomes a useful NBA player, rather than being remembered as nothing more than Jimmy’s perpetual trade appendage.

OFFENSE: Adding a star is generally the rising tide that lifts all boats, but after subtracting two of the team’s only reliable floor spacers, it does have to be asked: where is the outside shooting going to come from now? And will the lack of spacing cramp the offensive styles of Simmons and Embiid?

Going into Wednesday’s game, the Sixers are 10th in 3-point attempts per game (33.3), but only 23rd in 3-point percentage (33.7%). Saric was responsible for some of the delta in willingness vs. ability, having taken 5.4 3PA per game but only hitting at a 30% rate; he did shoot 39.3% from range last season, though, so some regression to the mean was to be expected had they not traded him. Covington was a rock-solid shooter, canning 39% on 5.9 attempts per game (actually down from 6.9 attempts per game last season). Throughout his career, he has shown no ability whatsoever to create offense for himself or his teammates, but if all you need is a low-usage, 3-and-D wing, there are few better options out there than RoCo.

The good news is Jimmy Butler has been a more willing AND able outside shooter so far this season than in previous campaigns. His 3PA per 36 minutes this year (4.5) would easily be a career high over an entire season, and he is also shooting a career-best 37.8% from downtown. His typical three-point attempt is also likely to be of a more difficult variety than the standard catch-and-shoot Covington normally sees, so it’s not crazy to think Butler could even see a further uptick in his outside efficiency when afforded the types of looks he’ll get from all the defensive attention drawn by Simmons and Embiid.

What happens in Saric’s spot is another question. As I mentioned, The Homie was not shooting well to start the year, but his theoretical floor-spacing ability did help to draw defensive gravity his way, and he was always a guy who could attack a closeout and keep the play moving. Again, Wilson Chandler is the obvious candidate to soak up some of the role, but he’s a career 34% shooter from behind the arc (on nearly 2,300 attempts, so he is what he is) and not quite a playmaker on Saric’s level, so one suspects teams will sag off and force him to can open shots in lieu of conceding space to Philly’s other, more dangerous options. Shamet is already almost exclusively a 3-point shooter, attempting 8.1 triples per 36 minutes of court time while converting at a Chandler-ian 34.2% rate, so he could take on some of Saric’s minutes and role, if Brown is willing to sacrifice some size, rebounding, and experience at the other end of the floor. Young Turkish wing Furkan Korkmaz has shot 35% from distance on limited attempts, so perhaps he gets an audition for a bigger role as Butler acclimates.

Adding another playmaker should be a boon for Ben Simmons, as he’ll be able to spend more time as a screener and a decision-maker in the short roll, where he excels. He’ll offer no floor spacing when Butler attacks the rim, but Simmons is a savvy cutter off-ball and could see an uptick in easy looks at the rim off actions where Butler is the primary ball handler.

The bigger question is what happens to Embiid. The Process is putting up young Shaq numbers this year, and is garnering MVP consideration (as I thought he might). He is doing it, however, in a not-terribly-efficient manner, shooting “only” 48% from the field and 30% from three (on 4.2 attempts per game, probably more than a guy as physically dominant as he is should be shooting) with a heavy Usage Rate (31.9%, 6th in the league). The hope would be the possessions Butler siphons off from Embiid are the low-efficiency variety — the handful of “go ahead, shoot it” threes, pull-up 2’s, and off-balance runners JoJo seems to toss up every game, to the exasperation of fans everywhere — and he instead focuses on doing more of the things at which he dominates.

I talked about Fultz already, but within the context of the offense, it’s difficult to see him getting a lot of run and having much success playing with the revamped top unit, so I would expect a move to the bench for him, even if his minutes remain steady. Putting the ball in his hands more frequently against second unit defenders could help to build his confidence as well as to stagger his minutes with Simmons. Fultz has struggled when sharing the floor with Simmons, so a move to a bench role, while not a long-term solution, could help boost Markelle’s production in the short-term, as well as his potential trade value, should new Sixers GM Elton Brand determine Fultz’s situation is simply untenable.

On the whole, the Sixers’ offense has been middling: 10th in scoring offense, 20th in offensive rating. On paper, the addition of an All-NBA player sporting a 22.7 PER should propel the offense into the upper echelon of the league, but it’s going to take time, and the questions of fit are going to pop up incessantly if things don’t quickly coalesce.

DEFENSE: The main question here is not one of talent, but rather of continuity. Trading out RoCo for Butler is swapping one All-Defense player for another, and Saric is no one’s idea of a lockdown defender, so whoever fills his minutes shouldn’t have a terribly difficult time replicating his production. The top unit, however, had developed a nice defensive chemistry, and the Sixers were sitting at a respectable 9th in Defensive Rating this season after climbing all the way up to 4th last year. Rebuilding that chemistry will take time, and any stumbles in the meantime could end up costing Philly valuable playoff seeding to the likes of Milwaukee, Toronto, and Boston. The long-term gain is worth the potential short-term pain, but it’s something to watch as Butler settles into his new digs.

THE FUTURE: So what happens next? First, we see if the on-court experiment actually works. Assuming it does, then the cap and roster gymnastics begin. As it stands right now, the Sixers are still in a pretty enviable cap situation. Even with Embiid’s 5-year max extension kicking in this season, Philly is still well below the luxury tax line and has one more season after this one on Ben Simmons’ palatable rookie scale salary figure. He will undoubtedly sign a max extension next fall, kicking in for the ’20-’21 season. Butler has the well-chronicled player option in his deal for next season, which he will obviously decline to become an unrestricted free agent. At that time, if the Sixers are willing to do so (a bigger ‘if’ than one might think), he can sign a five-year/$190 million max deal which would carry him through his age-34 season. Including Butler, Philly would have only seven players under contract next season — Chandler, Redick, McConnell, Johnson, Muscala, Patton, and Korkmaz will all be unrestricted free agents — so in addition to the big, fat raise Butler will theoretically accept, they’ll have to fill out the rest of the roster with role players while also attempting to leave room under the tax line (assuming ownership really cares about such things) for the coming bump to Simmons’ cap number. Things are rosy now, but it’s going to get tight quickly.

On the plus side, filling out the rotation may not be as tough as it seems. With three stars locked in for the long haul, the front office would probably have an easy time selling ring-chasing vets and buyout guys on taking a discount to compete for a title. They also have the bargain basement contracts of rookies Landry Shamet and Zhaire Smith (yet to play this year due to injury but a potential big wild card for them) locked in through ’21-’22, assuming the team exercises all options on both guys. They have Fultz locked in for two more years after this one, even if the final team option year in ’20-’21 gets a little pricey at about $12.3 million. [Can you imagine if they DECLINED the team option on the #1 overall pick? He’d probably be traded before it got to that point, but it’s not impossible.]

Beyond managing the cap, how else can Brand look to improve the roster going forward? Now that The Process has officially concluded, the organizational mandate to hoard draft picks could be turned on its head, and the Sixers still have quite a bit of additional draft capital they could choose to cash in on trades. In addition to all their own future firsts, they hold Sacramento’s first-rounder in 2019, but only if it falls at #1 overall, which is unlikely given how shockingly competent the Kings have looked thus far. [Boston gets the pick otherwise, because of course they do.] They also have Miami’s unprotected first-rounder in 2021 — acquired when they broke Mikal Bridge’s heart on live TV and moved down in the draft this past year to select Zhaire Smith — an asset which has the potential to be wildly valuable. Finally, they still are owed as many as EIGHT second-round picks over the next five years — Sam Hinkie loved nothing more than extracting future second-rounders other GM’s figured they’d never miss — any of which could be used as deal-sweeteners.

They have young, potentially valuable players on the roster other teams might covet: Smith, Shamet, and…gulp…Fultz. They even have a couple mid-tier veteran contracts (in the $9-$15 million range) often necessary to facilitate deals by making the salary cap math work. Redick, at $12.3 million this year, isn’t going anywhere; his shooting is too valuable. Wilson Chandler is an expiring deal at $12.8 million, so he is the most likely salary casualty if he can’t handle a larger role and an upgrade becomes available at power forward.

Based on the way they pushed their chips to the center of the table for Butler, and the current state of the roster in its aftermath — specifically the festering hole at the 4 — it feels like the Sixers aren’t done dealing just yet. I mentioned Orlando earlier. Who says no if the Sixers offer this deal:

In my fake trade, Philly also throws in the Miami 2021 first-rounder, as well as Chicago’s 2019 second-rounder, which is looking like it will wind up in the mid-30’s. Gordon’s length, athleticism, defensive ability, and decent shooting (he’s at 35.6% from three so far this year) would fit in beautifully with Philly’s other pieces. It would help Orlando clear out the logjam in their frontcourt, give them a long, low-cost look at Fultz, and stock their draft pick cupboard for the future if things don’t improve. Gordon’s extension, which kicked in this year, also features a descending salary structure over its four-year course, essentially making it designed to be traded, and simultaneously a big benefit for a Philly team that will still need the flexibility to add pieces around the margins in future years as they bump up against the tax. As an opposing team, would you want any part of a starting five of Embiid, Gordon, Butler, Redick, and Simmons? Me neither.

This is just one example. It may have stung a bit to cash in Saric and Covington in the Butler deal, but even so, this team still has a ton of avenues to improving the roster further, and now, seemingly the motivation to do so as well. The Eastern Conference, left for dead only a few months ago when LeBron bolted for Hollywood, is now the scene of a full-fledged arms race at the top. Buckle up.

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Your humble columnist does not endeavor to dismiss or denigrate college basketball. I like college ball. I really do. I just like it for somewhat different reasons than many people.

I’m with the masses on some of the stuff. Gambling is fun, and the NCAA Tournament is perhaps the easiest, most accessible, and most exciting form of sports gambling in the known universe. Those first four days of the Tournament are a viewing experience like no other, with constant drama and intrigue flooding your eyeballs for twelve straight hours each day, even if you have no connection whatsoever to the specific teams in question. It’s terrific.

Passion, excitement, and gambling — that’s what most people cite as their reasons for liking (and even preferring) the college game. All well and good. You do you. What’s oftentimes missing, however, is you know, actual GOOD basketball. This is where I struggle. College fans like games; pro fans like the game. The distinction matters. The two leagues get lumped together because they are ostensibly playing the same sport, and one league typically feeds the other. In reality, they are similar games being played by two different species: one by regular humans and one by aliens. And the college game is a bit like science fiction. Sometimes the aliens are quite obvious, and other times they hide in plain sight with the humans. This is a big reason — perhaps my primary one — for watching college basketball: spot the aliens and study them.

This is all a long-winded way of saying the college season has begun, and with it, the scouting of next year’s NBA draft prospects. The NCAA does weirdos like me an annual solid by lumping together a bunch of the high-end talent on the first night in a kick-off event they call the Champions Classic. The event was held on Tuesday night and featured two clashes of NCAA blue-bloods: no. 10 Michigan State vs. top-ranked Kansas, followed by the headliner, no. 4 Duke vs. no. 2 Kentucky. So while most people were busy kvetching over election results, I was garnering first impressions of the current crop of aliens. Let’s get to it.

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There is obviously nowhere else to begin but with Duke. I have few rules in life, but one of them is this: if a college team trots out the three best players in the country — and at least two of them look like can’t-miss NBA superstars — then they get my top billing.

I’m talking, of course, about the Blue Devils’ devastatingly overqualified trio of R.J. Barrett, Zion Williamson, and Cam Reddish. It seems foolish in retrospect that Duke nabbed the top three prospects in the country coming out of high school and somehow were only ranked no. 4 going into the season. This team is going to be soul-crushingly dominant, and it starts (but doesn’t even end) with these three guys.

We’ll start with Barrett, the no. 1 overall high school recruit. Unlike Zion, he seems easier to quantify because we’ve seen players like him in the past. Everything about his game looked like the smooth, ball-dominant superstar wing NBA teams would build in a laboratory. Without getting into the politics of the one-and-done rule, it is simply disappointing we’re going to have to watch him dismantle college teams for a whole season. By all rights, he should be playing against pros right now. He’s that good. He has effortless range with sound shooting mechanics, polished ball handling and decision-making instincts, an easy control over his speed and changes of pace, and undeniable athleticism. He looked engaged on defense, and got his long limbs into passing lanes and in position to contest shots. It’s one game, of course, and I don’t want to speak in hyperbole, but for lack of a better term, he looked damn near perfect.

If there is any criticism to be leveled, it’s in how it took Barrett 26 shots to get his 33 points, but let’s not pick nits already. He displayed a tidy floor game with six assists and four rebounds in 32 minutes, and an advanced feel that belied his tender age. On the broadcast, Jay Bilas repeatedly compared him to James Harden, and I do see the parallels, even if the fact they are both lefties makes the comparison a touch lazy. Much like The Beard, Barrett shows the same ability to manipulate the defender and the geometry of the floor to get to his desired spot, along with unexpected strength to finish through contact. The effortless first step and off-the-dribble shooting ability were there, but when combined with the length and athleticism, I come up with a slightly different (albeit not left-handed) comp: Tracy McGrady.

If a player with Harden’s craft and T-Mac’s physical tools sounds terrifying, it’s because it is. I could keep gushing about Barrett, but you get the idea. The outline of an NBA superstar is very much there, and one doesn’t have to squint at all to see it. This guy is LEGIT.

Speaking of terrifying…umm…did you SEE Zion Williamson? How is there a person like him, and how on Earth is that person only 18 years old? It makes no sense. I am not old enough to have witnessed young Barkley, but based on the grainy highlights, it looks like Zion is basically teenage Sir Charles, if you made him lefty, three inches taller, replaced all the baby fat with pure muscle, and for good measure, gifted him with an extra six inches of vertical leap. I mean, what college kid in his right mind is getting in the way of this?

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As a recruit, I heard the hype and saw the dunk mixtapes, but when this game began, I had one question on my mind: Sure, he can throw down crazy dunks, but can he actually PLAY? Umm, yeah, that would be a resounding ‘Yes.’ Forget the leaping ability for a second; a kid listed at 285 pounds shouldn’t have the kind of explosive first step he does. He dusted much smaller players off the dribble, and once he got a step (or just even with the defender) on the drive, his ridiculous vertical made contesting the shot damn near impossible. He played a lot of point guard in high school, and it shows in how well he reads the game for a guy with such prodigious athletic gifts. He made plays off the dribble and from the elbow, and showed a good feel for anticipating ball flight and timing on rebounds (which he then immediately turned into fast break opportunities with his speed and ball handling). His playmaking instincts might have been the most impressive aspect of his debut, and I can honestly only think of about 4-5 players on the planet who could have executed this sequence:

Dear God.

The early shooting returns were also good: he shot 11-for-13 for 28 points, including an early three and an off-the-dribble long two later in the game. That said, his jumper is about the only part of his game that looks the way you would expect from a 285-pound human. The form is a little clunky, he doesn’t totally square himself to the hoop, and he kind of hucks it up from his shoulder — it’s vaguely Zach Randolph-esque — but if he hits from the outside consistently, then I don’t know what possible answer there could be for him defensively.

There’s no way of telling what his ceiling is yet (or if he has one), and it is obviously blasphemy to say it out loud, but aesthetically (and athletically), there are noticeable hints of LeBron James to Zion’s game. No less an authority than Steve Kerr said the same. Beyond the now-familiar cognitive dissonance of a person so large also being so explosive, there were lots of smaller, more ephemeral moments where a little tinge of LeBron deja vu would be present: using his speed and frame to create space and an angle to get a layup on the glass in a way other guys cannot; crossing his man up at the three-point line, taking one dribble, leaping from further away than should be possible, and throwing down a tomahawk jam, all in the span of two seconds; the anticipation and coordination necessary to see and execute the fast break bounce pass in the video above; the way defenders just seem to bounce off of him on the drive; and the look of “what the hell just happened?” on opponents’ faces after he pulls some supernatural shit. There’s something special brewing with this guy, and I am here for all of it.

This is all incredibly unfair, because if he were on any other team in America, we’d be standing around the water cooler, talking about how good Cam Reddish is. He’s set on a slightly bigger frame than Barrett (6’8″ and 218 lbs vs. 6’7″ and 202), boasts similar athleticism and only moderately less skill, but make no mistake: Reddish also looks like a terrific player. He made a number of impressive defense-to-offense plays, which could ultimately reflect the way he’ll need to get his shine given his spot in the pecking order on Duke’s roster, rather than the type of player he’ll actually become long-term. Much like many of Kentucky’s one-and-done guys who historically take on smaller roles in college before blossoming into stars in the NBA, we may not get to see the full breadth of Reddish’s game this season as he does his best to fit in around the overwhelming talents of Barrett and Williamson. In any case, he looks every bit a top-10 talent, if not higher. Scary stuff.

And somehow, we aren’t even done with the “NBA talent on Duke” section yet! Freshman point guard Tre Jones — who is, in both appearance and playing style, practically a clone of his older brother, former Dukie and current Minnesota Timberwolf Tyus Jones — will inevitably get overlooked in the draft process because of his low usage and cushy ecosystem, be drafted lower than he should, and have a long, productive NBA career. It’s practically written in his genetic code. Even Marques Bolden, who appeared to be a complete lost cause as a freshman two years ago and wasn’t much better last year, appears greatly improved and could perhaps have a cup of coffee at the pro level at some point. I’m not even sure what to make of Jack White (no, not that one) yet. What an embarrassment of riches.

Even more amazing is how Duke didn’t put up this performance against some early-season cupcake; it was against freaking Kentucky, the no. 2 school in the country! UK has its own set of NBA prospects, so despite the utter pants-ing they endured, they deserve a little love too. Coach John Calipari’s recruiting class this year lacks some of the star power of previous years (in part because Coach K landed most of the big fish for Duke), but there are some potential NBA role players in the mix. Their most talented player appears to be Keldon Johnson, a 6’6″ freshman guard who scored 23 points on 8-16 shooting against Duke. He’s got NBA size and athleticism and projects as a competent scorer, but nothing about his game shouted “Star!” at me from the rooftops. Looks like a late lottery guy on first inspection.

Pro scouts keep expecting a breakout which never comes from sophomore forward P.J. Washington. He has an NBA build (at 6’8″ and 225 lbs), but in the several times I’ve now watched him play, I’ve yet to see any glimpses of a real impact player, or even a well-defined skill set. He gets labeled as “versatile,” but sometimes that’s just code for “doesn’t do anything particularly well.” Cal will work his usual magic and get Washington a shot at the next level, but I am skeptical he’ll stick in the league long-term. Freshman big man E.J. Montgomery (6’10”, 225 lbs) showed a faint outline of something resembling talent, but I’ll need to see more before I can render a judgment. Freshman guard Tyler Herro put up decent stats but didn’t look particularly impactful. The rest of the roster is full of standard fare, low-talent try-hards for whom the NBA has little use. It’s tough to evaluate any of these prospects individually due to how badly they got outclassed as a group — and of course it’s only one game — but no one on UK blew my skirt up, and even in a loss, we’d probably see some glimpses if they were there.

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The evening’s undercard featured no. 10 Michigan State, who replaced two lottery picks from last season (Jaren Jackson, Jr. and Miles Bridges) with… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

The team mostly back-filled its rotation, and while they will undoubtedly be a tough out at the college level (as they generally are under coach Tom Izzo), there isn’t much NBA-level talent here. I suppose backcourt mates Joshua Langford and Cassius Winston could get looks at the Summer League/G-League level and perhaps sneak their way onto the back ends of rosters, but that’s damning them with faint praise. Freshman forward Aaron Henry showed a little life in limited minutes, but he doesn’t strike me as a one-and-done type.

Their opponent, no. 1 Kansas, appears to have a bit more to work with in terms of prospects. Junior forward Dedric Lawson played his first game for KU after transferring from Memphis and sitting out last season. He looked the part of an athletic combo forward with some playmaking chops, putting up 20 pts/14 rebs/6 asts/2 stls/2 blks, albeit on 5-18 shooting. He should get a look at the pro level, but he is already 21 years old, which will certainly depress his draft stock, to the extent it exists. KU’s main one-and-done possibility is freshman combo guard Quentin Grimes, who looked solid in his debut, putting up 21 points (including 6-10 from deep) and 4 assists in 30 minutes. He’ll need to show more than just the outside stroke to stay in the top-10 where he is currently projected, but it’s a promising start.

Had 7’1″ junior center Udoka Azubuike come along during the era of Kelenna Azubuike, perhaps he would have been considered a top prospect, but these days, big men with his skill set just aren’t highly sought-after in NBA circles. Azubuike does appear to have improved his footwork from last season, and he isn’t a total plodder a la Dakari Johnson, so maybe some team will take a chance on him using the old “you can’t teach 7-1” logic, but he remains a woeful free throw shooter and not nearly as good of a rebounder as one would expect from such a massive human, so his chances of sticking in the league look remote.

I will be back with more scouting insight — and eventually mock draft content — as the season progresses, so stay tuned!

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Break up the Nugs! With a win over Boston Monday night in Denver, the Nuggets moved to 9-1 over their first ten games, cementing themselves as the surprise elite team of the NBA’s opening stretch. [Some might argue for the Bucks, but I covered the reasons they could vault into contention back in preseason.] What has keyed their fast start, and will it continue? Let’s jump around and look at some story lines:

Associated Press

CANADIAN, BAKIN’: Jamal Murray torched Boston’s second-ranked defense on Monday for 48 points, yet received more attention for the last two points he DIDN’T score. [Tangent: I get why teams are miffed when someone shoots unnecessarily out of “victory formation,” but come on. Is there no room for nuance here? The guy had 48 points, and he just wanted to get fifty. Give him a break. Fifty is a big deal; if he’d have made the last shot, when negotiating for his next contract, you don’t think his agent would bring up the time he poured in fifty damn points? Against the Celtics? The circumstances are extenuating enough that we should be able to give Murray at least a partial pass for his unwritten rules violation. In any case, it seems like REALLY sour grapes for the Celtics to be giving him a hard time for it, after he just laid FORTY-EIGHT POINTS on them, including nineteen in the fourth quarter of a competitive game. If you don’t want him to be shooting for 50 in the closing seconds, perhaps do something about him scoring the first forty-eight, no?]

Anyway, Murray’s had a few duds early on, but overall, he’s posting career-highs in points (18.9), rebounds (4.5), assists (3.4), field goal percentage (46.7%), minutes (32.6), PER (17.4), and Win Shares per 48 minutes (.151), and he’s at 22.3 ppg (on 51.5% shooting) over his last six games. The leap many were expecting from him is happening; it’s just been taking place in small increments prior to Monday’s coming-out party. He looks like a much more complete offensive player this season, particularly off the dribble, even as his outside shot has faltered early on (31.4% from 3 on 5.1 attempts per game), so his numbers should improve further as he straightens things out from deep. His Usage Rate is up, his turnover rate is down, and he is grading out as a net-positive on defense for the first time in his young career. Still only 21 years old, the arrow is pointing way up.

YOUTH GONE WILD: In addition to Murray, backcourt mate Gary Harris has taken another step forward in his development as well. The 24-year-old Harris’ production has been nearly identical to Murray’s (seriously, it’s uncanny how similar their statistical profiles are this season), but both the metrics and the eye test paint him as the superior defender of the two. He has improved every season in the pros, and is in the first year of a 4-year/$84 million extension, which could end up looking like a bargain as he hits his prime on the back end of the deal.

The bench has also had some success relying on young contributors. The usual small sample size caveats notwithstanding, the five-man bench mob of Malik Beasley (22), Monte Morris (23), Juancho Hernangomez (23), Trey Lyles (23), and Mason Plumlee (the old head at 28) has a net rating of +5.8 points per 100 possessions in just over 42 minutes of court time thus far. Morris is the kind of guy who will have a completely unremarkable ten-year-plus career in the league because he just knows what he’s doing on a basketball court. Hernangomez has been legitimately useful on both ends of the floor in a 3-and-D role (46.2% from 3 and a 104 Defensive Rating). Trey Lyles has struggled a bit with shooting and turnovers, but — and you may begin to notice a trend here — has been quite competent defensively.

[Here is where it’s helpful to point out the Nuggets’ front office could have simply drafted OG Anunoby with the 13th pick in the 2017 draft, rather than outsmarting themselves by trading back for the 24th pick plus Lyles, then getting stuck with the seemingly useless Tyler Lydon when Anunoby got scooped up by Toronto one pick earlier. Lyles is a nice player, but OG would have been the snuggest of fits for this roster, and they missed out on him because they tried to get too cute. Anunoby, for his part, is now marooned behind Kawhi Leonard — AKA the much, much better version of OG Anunoby — and seemingly regressing in Toronto, when he could be thriving as the ideal low-usage, 3-and-D starting SF for Denver. The NBA Butterfly Effect is infuriating sometimes. But I digress.]

As a team, the Nugs have the fourth-youngest average age in the league, which is generally not a formula for the type of success they’ve enjoyed so far. Of course, we can’t talk about the youth movement in Denver without bringing up the 250-pound Serbian elephant in the room…

NIKOLA JOKIC IS A MONSTER: I may have greatly understated the Joker’s MVP chances in my preseason column, listing him as an honorable mention. [Vegas had him at 100-to-1, so it’s not like his MVP bandwagon was exactly full to the brim.] He has instead become the league’s strangest, most contradictory superstar. He remains a bit doughy, plodding, and unathletic, and his scoring is down a tick so far this year, but by virtually any standard you could want to apply — game tape, traditional stats, advanced metrics, etc. — Jokic rates as one of the most indispensable players in the game.

His counting stats are no doubt impressive: 17.0 ppg/ 10.0 rpg / 7.7 apg/ 1.1 spg/ 1.0 bpg on 52/38/83 shooting splits. The assists obviously stand out, and it is no longer a hot take to argue in good faith that Jokic might be the best passing big man in NBA history. His court vision, awareness, feel for the game, and ability to deliver on-time, on-target passes to shooters and cutters is sui generis for a man of his size, but the traditional stats alone don’t entirely capture how special this guy is.

When we start to dig into the advanced metrics and rate stats, the picture becomes clearer. First, it’s important to remember he is still playing only 29.3 minutes per game, good for 91st in the league. If he ever gets his body in peak condition, we could certainly see a guy who does all the things he already does well PLUS gobbles up more minutes and possessions, which could conceivably get him closer to the 25+ ppg range. Even with the low minutes load, he is still a stat nerd’s wet dream. The efficiency jumps off the page: he is just 108th in the league in Usage Rate (which is a touch misleading, but let’s not get off track) but 4th in PER and 7th in Assist Percentage (and the only non-guard on the list until LeBron at 22nd). The all-in-one value metrics are even kinder to him: he’s 6th in total Win Shares (6th on offense, 4th on defense), 1st in Win Shares per 48 minutes (.293), 1st in Box Plus/Minus (11.3; 6th in OBPM, 2nd in DBPM), 3rd in Defensive Rating (99.6), and 2nd in VORP, just a tick behind Steph Curry, who you may have noticed is also playing like an MVP again.

You get the idea: by virtually every measure of overall on-court value we have at our disposal, Jokic rates as one of the league’s very best players. This isn’t overly surprising from an offensive perspective. What’s shocking to some is how much progress he has made on the defensive end. Metrics have always painted Jokic as a somewhat better defender than what his reputation suggests, but the game tape often showed a guy who simply lacked the foot speed and athleticism to consistently get to the right spots, stick with guards on switches, and contest shots. While he is never going to be a Rudy Gobert-like presence in the paint, he has cleaned up a lot of the positioning mistakes and become much more vocal. The return of Paul Millsap to the lineup — he played only 38 games last season — has undoubtedly helped Jokic. Millsap no longer carries the offensive value he once did during his prime in Utah and Atlanta, but he remains every bit the defensive standout he’s always been. Having another defensive captain on the back line has simplified both the matchups and the responsibilities for Jokic, allowing him to mature into the best version of himself.

Speaking of Denver’s D…

WAIT, THEIR DEFENSE IS…GOOD? Despite the inevitable boost from Millsap’s return, Denver’s leap on the defensive end from “comically awful” to “elite, maybe?” has to rate as one of the biggest surprises of the early season. They are currently sitting at 4th in Scoring Defense and 3rd in Defensive Rating after ranking 22nd and 25th last season, respectively. Our mental image of the Nuggets is always of a team who plays fast-paced, high-scoring shootouts in order to take advantage of their opponents’ lack of preparedness for the elevation in Denver, but this simply doesn’t appear to be who they are now. They rank only 24th in pace and 13th in scoring, both of which seem unfathomable. During the preseason, I questioned the addition of Isaiah Thomas, suggesting the goose he would provide to an already-potent offense may not be worth the chance he would trigger a complete defensive meltdown. Thomas still hasn’t suited up, so I haven’t been proven wrong in the technical sense yet, but it looks as though I was badly misreading the baseline the team would be starting from upon his return. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone.

There’s no reason to suspect the uptick on the defensive end is fluky or likely to regress to the mean. Their strength of schedule has been middle-of-the road, and all of the ancillary metrics back up what we’re seeing. They are doing a relatively good job defending the three, cleaning the defensive glass, and keeping offenses off the free throw line, all indicators of a healthy defensive ecosystem. Even better, the team could continue to improve on both ends because…

HELP IS ON THE WAY: The Nuggets have a number of potentially important role players on the shelf at the moment, even if some of that was by design to extract maximum value. The front office upped its risk profile in both free agency and the draft for the chance to reap big dividends, nabbing former All-Star Isaiah Thomas and former #1 overall high school recruit Michael Porter, Jr.  Both players remain out indefinitely with injuries and will need to be integrated carefully upon their returns to avoid physical setbacks as well as not upset the chemistry the current rotation is enjoying. Regardless, the potential for big-time scoring punch off the bench is clearly there for IT and Porter, despite the very different career stages they inhabit.

Perhaps more crucial will be the return of Will Barton. “Will the Thrill” is currently recovering from surgery to repair hip and core muscles, and will likely be out until sometime in December. Barton, the 40th overall pick in 2012, has worked hard to become a legitimately useful player. He acts as an agent of pace and chaos in a rotation where both are often needed. His absence has meant bigger roles for Hernangomez — who, as mentioned earlier, has been sneaky productive — and second-year journeyman Torrey Craig. At 28, Craig is what he is: a low-usage 3-and-D wing, except the “3” part of the equation is purely hypothetical. He’s started all eight games since Barton’s injury, but is only 3-of-19 from deep in 18.3 minutes per night. Craig has been solid on defense and the boards, but getting Barton back will once again slot him into a reduced role, and he could see even less burn if they are eventually able to assimilate Porter in any meaningful way. Lastly, the team is still without 2018 second round pick Jarred Vanderbilt out of Kentucky, who remains out indefinitely with a foot injury. Vanderbilt is something of an unknown after playing only 14 games at UK last year, but there is a scenario where his defense, rebounding, and energy earn him a spot in the rotation upon his return.

Suffice it to say, the team’s scintillating start does not appear to be a fluke. If coach Mike Malone can keep the defense playing at a high level and manage to incorporate the reinforcements along the way, there is a path to 55+ wins, MVP consideration for Jokic, and homecourt advantage for at least one playoff round in the brutal West. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

NBA.com

In these dark and serious times, it’s important to have a little fun once in a while. So just for today, I’ll take off my analyst hat and try something different: I’m going to attempt to create the worst 2018-19 NBA team possible.

I call this team the Trenton Hassell All-Stars. I chose Hassell as my avatar not because he was the worst player I could think of; rather, he represented the best statistical mix I could find of lack of production combined with volume of playing time. For this exercise, I’m only going to use stats accumulated this season, but to get a better idea of what we’re talking about, it’s illuminating to look at the breadth of Hassell’s ‘meh’ NBA career. From 2001 to 2010, Hassell averaged 5.8 ppg/2.8 rpg/1.8 apg on 44.5%/31.8%/75.4% shooting splits, the type of stats any number of middle-of-the-bench guys might rack up before being quickly chewed up and spit out by the NBA machine. Except that’s not what happened to him. Hassell averaged 25.3 minutes per game for his career, and started 428 out of the 644 games he played over those nine seasons. He averaged 28.0 minutes per game (4th-most on the team) for the 2003-04 Minnesota Timberwolves, a team that went 58-24 and made it to the Western Conference Finals. He was an important player for them, and the team succeeded in spite of his beyond-pedestrian statistical contributions. [Having apex KG probably helped.]

Look, I get it: some teams need low-usage defensive specialists, and the ’03-’04 campaign did rate as Hassell’s best (103 Defensive Rating). He garnered some attention for his defensive work that season, but neither the statistics nor his reputation in the league ever reflected anything particularly special happening. He never made an All-Defense team, and he totaled only nine Defensive Win Shares for his career. [For the arithmetically disinclined, that’s an average of one per season. As a point of reference, Carmelo Anthony, AKA “the guy everyone makes fun of for his lousy defense,” has 34.4 Defensive Win Shares for his career, which equates to 64% more DWS per minute played than Hassell.] The aforementioned ’03-’04 season was the only time Hassell ever reached the playoffs. He wasn’t particularly good at anything as an NBA player, yet he carved out a big role and an extended career for himself, while earning over $27 million in the 2000’s, which in today’s dollars is like, I don’t know, $4 billion or something.

These are the players I want on my team — guys whose role outstrips their production in a significant way, and who generally don’t make up the difference by being elite defenders. The rules of the game are simple: using only statistics from the ’18-’19 season, create the most statistically underwhelming rotation (of 12 or less guys) possible while filling the entire available 240 minutes per game. Positional designations are of limited importance in this exercise, but you will notice this team would be pretty light on big men.

Eat your hearts out, Cavs, Bulls, and Suns, because I’m about to unveil the tank-iest team fake money can buy. Here we go:

[Note: all statistics are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted, and are current through Wednesday’s games.]

STARTING FIVE:

DJ Augustin, PG, Orlando Magic
Avery Bradley, SG, LA Clippers
Justin Jackson, SF, Sacramento Kings
Stanley Johnson, SF/PF, Detroit Pistons
Dante Cunningham, PF/C, San Antonio Spurs

BENCH:

Langston Galloway, G, Detroit Pistons
Terrance “Turd” Ferguson, SG/SF, Oklahoma City Thunder
Torrey Craig, SF, Denver Nuggets
Alex Abrines, SG/SF, Oklahoma City Thunder
Solomon Hill, SF/PF, New Orleans Pelicans
Meyers Leonard, C, Portland Trail Blazers

There you have it, and I didn’t even need all 12 roster spots (or Jeff Green!) to fill the allotted minutes. First, let’s look at how the stats break down, and then we’ll discuss the selections.

Starters Per Game:

Bench Per Game:

Starters Advanced Metrics:

Bench Advanced Metrics:

First, a disclaimer: yes, I understand the lack of Usage Rate among these players makes comparing this team to a “real” team a useless exercise. Someone would have to shoot the ball, so obviously the stats would end up looking pretty different if you put them on a court together. But since this is a dumb, pointless exercise anyway, we’re going to ignore this intractable problem and plow ahead.

The Trenton Hassells would be clocking in at a Big Ten-like 57.9 points per game, less than half of what eight NBA teams are currently putting up nightly. The team would be averaging a respectable 31.5 three point attempts per game, which would place them 17th in the league. However, we’d only be converting 25.7% from downtown, which would rank dead last. These guys made the team for a reason. We’d be last in rebounding, last in assists, last in free throw attempts, and last in field goal percentage by a country mile. Good times.

The advanced metrics are also a nightmare. The team combines for .303 Win Shares per 48 minutes, which is less than Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, and Dame Lillard are each providing ON THEIR OWN. Our total Box Plus/Minus is -25.6 points per 100 possessions, so basically every NBA team would run the Hassells out of the gym almost every game. Our total VORP is negative, which suggests we could grab a bunch of dudes playing in Europe and probably be equally competitive. It’s ugly.

Surprised by any of the individual names? Avery Bradley obviously sticks out as someone who doesn’t belong, except so far this year, he does. He’s been atrocious on offense, and hasn’t made up for it with his usually tenacious defense. Bradley had groin surgery in March, which ended his ’17-’18 season, so perhaps he is still recovering and will return to form as the season progresses, but until such a time, he’s relegated to the Hassells. Torrey Craig and Meyers Leonard don’t entirely belong, as both have been pretty good defensively for competitive teams. Leonard was mainly added because we needed another big man and he plays the right amount of minutes, and Craig, for his clear defensive acumen, is just an absolute zero on offense, and gets way more minutes than he should for a team with real aspirations in the West. [Yes, I know Will Barton’s injury has a lot to do with this.] The other half of our all-Longhorns backcourt, point guard D.J. Augustin, would probably be the team’s offensive hub, to the extent one exists. He’s the only guy with a PER above 10 — which is, you know, still bad — and profiles as an above-average outside shooter. Stanley Johnson would also probably take on a lead role for this squad, which tells you mostly everything you need to know.

Dante Cunningham is an interesting addition to the team because he represents our closest comp to Hassell. He cuts a similar profile (slightly above-average defender and low usage/stay-out-of-the-way offensive player), but his path has been much different. He’s a superior player to Hassell by virtually any metric you want to use, yet his NBA journey has been circuitous and not terribly fruitful. He’s played for seven franchises in ten seasons, he’s been traded three times (not counting the time the draft pick which ultimately became him was traded in ’08), and he’s earned “only” $16.6 million total prior to this season. [Compare that to Hassell’s career earnings, which came in the decade prior to Cunningham’s, in a significantly tighter salary cap environment.] Part of his misfortune stems from the charges of domestic violence he faced in 2014, right as he was beginning to carve out a real role as a player. The charges were later dropped, but it took him some time to regain his standing in the league, and as the game evolved around him, his skill set came to be seen as less valuable. Now, at age 31, he’s making $2.5 million this year — the third-highest salary of his career, oddly enough — but also ending up in columns like this one and more or less playing his way out of the league. For his troubles, we’ll make him the honorary team captain. Congratulations, Dante. You’ve “earned” it.

I doubt the team would go 0-82 — it’s just too difficult to play that many games and not stumble ass-backwards into at least a few wins — but one has to presume this would be the worst team in NBA history. On the plus side, at least this grim roster wouldn’t be terribly expensive. The total salary for the team would be just a shade under $68 million, which would be fine for their imaginary ownership, except for the unfortunate fact the league has a salary floor, which this season is set at $91.7 million. If the team didn’t take on additional salary, it would be forced to pay out the difference to the players on the roster. Carmelo would have been a nice get for the team prior to his buyout from Atlanta; his $27.9 million salary for this season, 31.2 minutes per game, and 9.9 PER could have been the shitty crown jewel for the roster, and he’d have been happy to make up for our Usage deficit. Alas, his 13.2 points per game is just a little too productive for my tastes, regardless of how inefficient and chemistry-damaging those points are. Maybe next season, assuming he’s still in the league by then.

Happy Friday, everyone. Enjoy your weekend, and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE ON TUESDAY!

The regular season is in full swing, and as much as we like to pretend we can predict how things will play out, every new season brings its share of teams who either under- or over-perform expectations in the early going. In honor of Halloween, let’s play a little Trick or Treat. It’s simple: “trick” means the team’s surprising start is a blip on the radar and a course correction is coming; “treat” means what we’re seeing is here to stay.

Let’s start with the teams who have overachieved so far:

[Note: all records and statistics are through Sunday. All statistics are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.]

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS: TRICK

The first true, post-Lob City iteration of the Clips has been a pleasant surprise, as they sit at 4-2, tied for 4th in the brutal West. And I know what you’re thinking: “Sure, Mr. Fancy-Pants Analyst, but now you’re going to tell me it’s all smoke and mirrors and the numbers say they are actually lousy and have just been lucky so far, right?”

Not so! The analytics paint the early-season version of this team as elite in virtually every way: they have a +9.2 point differential, are top-8 in both Offensive and Defensive Rating, and B-R’s Simple Rating System (a single metric which accounts for both point differential and strength of schedule) pegs them as the 4th-best team in the league thus far (behind Milwaukee, Denver, and Golden State). SRS may be overrating LA slightly, in the sense that their four wins have come against Houston (twice), OKC, and Washington, all of whom have been severe disappointments — see below — but their two losses have been against other elite teams in Denver and New Orleans, and the Clips were in the mix late in both of those games. They absolutely POUNDED OKC, Houston, and Washington in three of the four wins, which is exactly what good teams are supposed to do against struggling squads.

There are also still significant avenues for the team to improve. Eminently-useful big man Montrezl Harrell has averaged only 20.2 minutes per game, compared to the 17.5 minutes doled out to the aggressively-washed Marcin Gortat. As the delta in quality between the two players becomes as obvious to Doc Rivers as it is to the rest of us, one presumes Doc will start to adjust his rotations and increasingly utilize Harrell (he of the 27.4 PER and 24.1 points/11.0 rebs/3.9 blocks per-36 minutes) at the pivot over Gortat. Rookie Shai Gilgeous-Alexander looks like the real deal, especially on defense, and his role and impact should expand as he continues to acclimate to the NBA game.

Their extreme depth remains enviable; Doc hasn’t had to give much burn to young guards Jerome Robinson and Tyrone Wallace, so as the season drags on and injuries inevitably strike, the Clips should have useful contributors ready to step in and fill the void. Co-defensive stoppers Avery Bradley and Patrick Beverley have both been mostly horrendous on the offensive end in a combined 49 minutes per night, and while neither guy is ever going to be a primary option or anything close to it, a return to form for both players is likely, which could help lessen some of the burden on offensive hubs Tobias Harris, Danilo Gallinari, and Lou Williams. Their depth and bevy of young assets also puts them in a tremendous position to improve the roster via trade if the right deal becomes available, and Doc Rivers no longer being in a position to sabotage roster-building efforts can only be seen as a positive.

With all of that said, I still can’t help but think we’ve already seen the best version of this team, and some serious regression is coming. Speaking of Gallinari, he has been fantastic so far, averaging a hair under 19-and-7 on 46/43/96 shooting splits, along with a 21.1 PER and .215 Win Shares per 48 minutes, both of which would easily represent career-highs over an entire season. His jump in Usage Rate (24.2% through 6 games) seems sustainable given his role, but history suggests some statistical normalization and his annual extended injury absence are both on the horizon. If Beverley and/or Bradley don’t come around offensively, can Doc continue to justify giving them big minutes, and if not, what impact will it have on their 8th-ranked defense? Does anything on Doc’s resume suggest he won’t keep overplaying Gortat’s decaying corpse, while suffering the concurrent opportunity cost of under-utilizing Harrell? Will SGA hit the rookie wall? Can Lou Williams, in his 14th season, keep producing at a near-All Star level? Without a true top-tier star on the roster — Tobias Harris has been undeniably excellent but will always be miscast as an alpha dog — can they hang against the West’s elite? The early losses against Denver and New Orleans, while competitive, suggest they may be overmatched against more star-studded, playoff-bound rosters.

In the end, the Clippers’ depth and chemistry should carry them to more wins than their preseason projections, but the fundamental limitations at the top of the roster make their current 50+ win pace unsustainable, short of a blockbuster trade that probably isn’t forthcoming. Also, the Clips owe a lottery-protected first-round pick to Boston (via Memphis) which becomes a second-rounder if it doesn’t convey by 2020, so if they start to fade at all down the stretch and the playoffs become less likely, they could be perversely incentivized to execute a mini-tank to ensure they keep the pick. Thanks again, Jeff Green!

SACRAMENTO KINGS: TREAT, MAYBE?

Sitting at 9th in the West with a 3-3 record doesn’t sound like any great shakes, but for the perpetually crap-tastic Kings, it represents real progress. The league’s youngest team (tied with the Bulls) has been predictably rotten on defense (28th in the league in scoring defense, 22nd in Defensive Rating), a weakness they have mostly been able to offset with their high-octane, equal opportunity offense (5th in pace, six players averaging double-digit points per game). De’Aaron Fox is massively improved and appears well on his way to making good on his promise as the 5th overall pick in last year’s draft. Willie Cauley-Stein and Nemanja Bjelica are seamless fits in their respective offensive roles, and while questions will probably forever persist about whether Marvin Bagley III was the correct choice at #2 overall (and whether he’s actually playing the right position), his per-36 numbers so far paint the picture of exactly the prolific scorer and rebounder he was billed as in the pre-draft process. The team should improve further upon the return of Bogdan “Double Bogey” Bogdanovic (I’m committed to making “Double Bogey” happen as a nickname; it’s so fetch), as he is perhaps their most complete all-around player and will allow Justin Jackson and Iman Shumpert to downshift into roles more appropriate for their skill sets.

Are they going to challenge for a playoff spot all season? Probably not, but for a young team perennially stuck in the West basement — and one which doesn’t own its first-round pick next year and thus has no reason to tank — the tangible improvement we’ve seen early on can only be viewed as a real treat for their beleaguered fans.

DETROIT PISTONS: TRICK

The argument you thought I was going to make earlier about a team having a good record but not actually being good? Now’s the time for that one. Detroit is out to a 4-1 start, but the stats paint it as a function of an easy schedule and good luck in close games. The Pistons have played the second-easiest schedule thus far, have a -1.4 point differential, are 25th in SRS (easily trailing Eastern dregs such as Washington, Brooklyn, and Orlando), and sit at 18th and 15th in Offensive and Defensive Ratings, respectively. Based on these factors, their Expected Win/Loss record is 2-3, but they beat rotten Brooklyn, Chicago, and Cleveland squads by a total of 12 points, as well as a slow-starting Philly team by one in OT — on a night when Blake Griffin erupted for 50 points and had so many flames shooting out of his fingers, he could’ve been mistaken for a Street Fighter II character — before getting drubbed by 20 against Boston, the first legitimately good team they’ve played.

Point Blake has been a revelation, even beyond his detonation against Philly, but the wing rotation remains an utter turd sandwich (and is now dealing with injuries as well), and the degree to which the roster depends on contributions from replacement-level cannon fodder like Ish Smith, Reggie Bullock, Langston Galloway, and Zaza Pachulia does not bode well at all over the course of the season. I still wouldn’t be surprised to see Detroit sneak into the playoffs, since the last 2-3 spots in the East are so wide open, but make no mistake: regression is coming for this team, and it is going to hit HARD.

Getty Images

And now, a look at the underachievers:

HOUSTON ROCKETS: TRICK

The Rockets’ disastrous 1-4 start has been essentially the inverse of Detroit’s unsustainable 4-1 opening salvo. Houston has played the league’s toughest schedule, and their rotation has been a mess due to injuries and CP3’s suspension following the SpitGate fracas with the Lakers. James Harden injured his hamstring in the loss to Utah and missed the beatdown at the hands of the surging Clippers in Paul’s first game back in action, and they are also now dealing with an injury to low-key important swingman James Ennis, as well as the continued absence of backup PG Brandon Knight. Carmelo Anthony has looked like the same washed-up gunner/defensive liability he was in OKC, and is certainly not a player deserving of 31 minutes and 13 shots a night at this juncture. The defense has notoriously cratered, from 6th in Defensive Rating last season to 28th so far this campaign. The team’s -8.8 point differential is ugly, and Harden is likely to miss at least their next two games, so we may still be a few days away from rock bottom.

But, to quote my son’s favorite theater-loving koala, “You know what’s great about hitting rock bottom? There’s only one way to go — and that’s up.” The schedule will ease up some in November, the team’s Big Three of Harden, Paul, and Capela will all get back on the court together and start to flash some of the form we saw last season, and the defense (Carmelo notwithstanding) will begin to find its footing, even with the baked-in regression from the league adjusting to (and largely copying) Mike D’Antoni’s switch-everything scheme. Clearly, this team lacks some of the versatility it displayed last season, and isn’t going to get anywhere near 65 wins again (and perhaps may even struggle to reach Vegas’ 56-win over/under), but there is simply no way a team led by Harden and Paul is going to continue to be this bad over any extended period.

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER: TREAT

Much like Houston, the Zombie Sonics are 1-4, but the difference is they’ve actually been a decent team, with the critical exception of “the moment when the ball leaves the fingertips of their shooters.” They’re playing at a brisk pace (8th in the league) despite human Tasmanian Devil Russell Westbrook missing the first two games while recovering from offseason knee surgery, and the defense (12th in Defensive Rating) has been a little disappointing given the team’s lofty expectations, but not awful by any stretch. Offensively, most of the available player tracking data suggests the Thunder are getting decent looks — they just aren’t going in the basket. The team is tied for last in the league in FG% (41.2%), last in 3FG% by a wide margin (24.8% — woof), and second-to-last in FT% (65.3%). An individual player with those types of shooting splits would be out of a job, so there simply has to be a significant regression to the mean coming for OKC in the shooting department.

The record will inevitably improve as shots begin to fall, but even discounting the early struggles, is there a path to the 50-55 wins many expected from this team in the preseason? Color me skeptical. It will take Westbrook some time to fully regain his form, and at a certain point, it becomes fair to wonder how many times a player SO reliant on athleticism — and two weeks shy of turning 30 — can come back to full strength from knee injuries. Paul George and Steven Adams remain excellent complements to Brodie, but after the top three, the roster begins to have a lot of question marks. Dennis Schroder “should” be the team’s fourth option, but it will be a while before we figure out to what degree he can coexist with Westbrook and how much they can play together without compromising the defense. So far, they have a net rating of -7.9 points per 100 possessions in 38 minutes sharing the floor — discouraging early returns even with the usual small sample size caveats.

Jerami Grant is an intriguing athletic combo 4/5, but the improved shooting stroke we were promised has not materialized. If he can’t provide spacing for the ball handlers and be anything more than a theoretical perimeter threat, then he can’t continue to get 30+ minutes a night, even if the alternatives aren’t much more appealing. Nerlens Noel remains a talented-but-inconsistent enigma, and there’s a decent chance Patrick Patterson simply isn’t an NBA-caliber player anymore. Beyond Paul George, the wing rotation appears equally unsettled. Twenty-year-olds Hamidou Diallo and Terrance “Turd” Ferguson show occasional flashes (VERY occasional in Turd’s case — he’s shown no discernible improvement from his rookie season to this point), and the theoretical floor-spacing provided by Alex Abrines doesn’t remotely make up for all the other holes in his game. At 25, doubts are rightfully creeping in about whether it’s ever going to happen for him.

When you watch the league’s “complete” teams play (Milwaukee, Toronto, Boston, Golden State, and a few others), you get the sense each guy is sacrificing some burn, that they “deserve” more playing time relative to what is actually available. I get the opposite sense watching the role players on OKC. These guys are being over-extended beyond what their skill sets dictate, which is never a good place to be. Getting Andre Roberson back (if in fact they ever do) will help sort the rotation out in an organic way, but his well-chronicled 26% career 3FG% obviously won’t help mitigate any lingering shooting woes. Beyond Roberson, there is no cavalry coming. GM Sam Presti has little flexibility, either financially or in terms of valuable trade assets, to substantively improve the roster mid-season. Perhaps they get some internal development from Ferguson, Diallo, or Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, but for all intents and purposes, this is the roster they’ll be going to war with all season.

Again, the offensive results have nowhere to go but up, but will it be enough to vault the team back into contention? I don’t see it.

WASHINGTON WIZARDS: TREAT

In the immediate run-up to the season, the Minnesota Timberwolves emphatically declared they would be the undisputed biggest shit-show in the league, to which the Wizards confidently replied, “hold my beer.”

While no one should be overly surprised at the ongoing chemistry-induced meltdown taking place in DC — your humble columnist was all over it well before their 1-5 pants-pooping began — the real shocker in all of this is that somehow Dwight Howard has nothing to do with it. Free agent addition Howard, noted malcontent and locker room contagion, hasn’t played yet this year due to a literal pain in his ass, which as injuries go, is so on-the-nose it feels like it has to be made up. But fear not, the Wizards’ pre-existing condition (namely, the Wall/Beal/Porter core) has it covered in the drama department, so one can only imagine how cancerous things will get once Dwight returns to the court and adds his inane brand of nonsense to the locker room mix. How predictably disastrous it all is takes nothing away from how fascinating it will continue to be.

On the court, the schedule has been undeniably tough (2nd most difficult in the league thus far), but the beatdowns at the hands of the Warriors and Clippers wouldn’t sting quite so much — and locker room tensions wouldn’t be cranked up to 11 — had they pulled out winnable games against Miami and Sacramento. The defense has been a sieve (26th in Defensive Rating), and the offense hasn’t been much better (24th). They are playing quickly (3rd in pace) but inefficiently, making it difficult for them to keep up in shootouts of their own design. The big man rotation of Markieff Morris, Jeff Green (hello, old friend), Ian Mahinmi, and Jason Smith might be the worst in the league. Getting Dwight back can only help, but if you’re counting on Dwight Howard to be your savior in 2018, I have some bad news.

Bradley Beal is still playing at an All-Star level (at least on the offensive end), and Kelly Oubre, Jr. continues to grow into a bigger role and add elements to his game, but otherwise there aren’t many bright spots to highlight. Scott Brooks’ reputation as a coach seems forever destined to outstrip his actual performance, but the organization’s perpetual reticence to seek out greener pastures — whether it be in owner Ted Leonsis’ baffling fealty to longtime GM Ernie Grunfeld or Grunfeld’s unwillingness to break up a roster well past its expiration date — makes it fair to question if anyone is even paying attention to how hot Brooks’ seat probably should be.

The schedule lightens up after they finish their current West Coast swing, and perhaps some semblance of peace can be restored in the locker room (particularly if the results start improving), but it’s important to remember this isn’t exactly a team starting from a high baseline. They won only 43 games last year and finished 8th in the East. They have no buffer to absorb a decline. They’ve weathered rough patches before as a team — including starting out 6-12 in 2016-17 before going 43-21 the rest of the way — but to argue Dwight is going to come back and author a complete defensive turnaround and inspire Ubuntu-type chemistry requires a level of spin and magical thinking even the politicians in DC couldn’t muster. Heads are going to roll, and I’m not talking about Ichabod Crane.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Slam

The NBA season has officially begun — huzzah! Did we learn anything about the four teams playing last night we didn’t already know? Let’s quickly overreact to the first 48 minutes of each team’s season. Here we go:

BOSTON CELTICS:

–Nowhere to start other than Jayson Tatum. During the offseason, the consensus was the “other” Celtic who would end up inhabiting one of the now-vacant East All-Star spots was Gordon Hayward. That’s still possible, but we better keep one open for Tatum as well. When was the last time we saw a 20-year-old with this kind of polish on both ends? He looks comfortable in everything he does on the floor: nothing is rushed, the decisions are all sound, he is in the right positions defensively, and he is confident in his handle, both on drives and setting up his pull-up game. It looks too good to be true for a guy so young. I said a month ago Tatum “could easily blossom into a full-on superstar as early as this season,” a call which is already looking pretty prescient. He was the Celtics’ best player on the floor last night, and it wasn’t close. Scary stuff.

–Everyone knew they had depth going into the season, but seeing it in action was impressive. Kyrie and Hayward looked rusty as hell, and it didn’t matter one bit. They got really productive minutes from Marcus Morris, Aron Baynes, Terry Rozier, and Marcus Smart. They didn’t even have to use Semi Ojeleye or Daniel Theis — and those are pretty good players!

–The Baynes/Horford combo put the clamps on Joel Embiid on the interior. Embiid got his 23 points, but it took 21 FGA to get there, and he turned it over 5 times (more on that later). It generally looked like they had him under control, and early on, it’s easy to envision a scenario where they pull the same thing on the other “unicorn” (ugh) big men around the league, and even to look forward to a potential Finals matchup, where they could ensure a then-fully operational Boogie Cousins won’t be the X-factor in the series.

PHILADELPHIA 76ERS:

–I included a section on Joel Embiid in my MVP prediction column yesterday, but it turns out I may have been hyping the wrong Sixer. Ben Simmons was dynamic last night, putting up a crazy 19/15/8/4/2 stat line, and generally exerting complete control over the offense with his size, vision, and athleticism. The overall offense wasn’t terribly productive, obviously, but they were also playing against what will likely end up being a top-2 defense in the league, so better days lie ahead. We’ve always known Simmons was the real deal, and yes, of course he still needs a jumper, but he was so impressive last night. He felt like the “most valuable” player on that team.

–Speaking of Embiid, it’s easy to get caught up in his entire presence and forget he’s 24 and has only played 131 competitive basketball games in the last five years. That’s it. It comes into focus when you watch just how sloppy he continues to be with the ball — he is so physically overwhelming with the rock in his hands while simultaneously being incredibly inefficient with it. Sometimes, he posts up and does a drop-step/baby hook where it looks like he’s just gently placing the ball in the hoop — it’s almost Wilt-esque, it appears so easy — and then the next two times down, he dribbles from the 3-point line into an off-balance, contested runner on one possession and throws the ball into the stands on the next. It’s maddening, yet understandable when viewed through the lens of his inexperience.

–It was an “uneven” 24 minutes for Markelle Fultz, at best. The good news is, he looked semi-competent on defense, using his length and quickness well. Offense was another story. He just looked lost. I’m not in his head, of course, but it looks like when he plays with Simmons, he doesn’t seem to know where he fits on the court. He doesn’t appear to know what to do with himself when he’s off-ball (which is a lot), and then tries to do too much when he finally gets it, leading to bad shot selection and turnovers. Coach Brown will need to better define his role and responsibilities — and Markelle will need to buy into it — if he is going to put last year behind him and start to capitalize on his prodigious athletic gifts.

–It will look better when they get Wilson Chandler and Mike Muscala back healthy, but the depth beyond Simmons and Embiid certainly leaves something to be desired. Dario Saric looked passive. Robert Covington is strictly a 3-and-D guy and gives them virtually nothing else. Amir Johnson is dangerously close to being washed. Landry Shamet could eventually be OK, but at present, he does not appear to be ready to perform in actual NBA games that count. Redick will always hit some shots, and TJ McConnell provides steady backup minutes, but boy, it sure looks like this team is a couple pieces short, especially compared to Boston.

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS:

–They are who we thought they were. Even on ring night — and the first damn game of the season, mind you — they look like a team bored by how superior they are to their opponents, with the ability to shift into the higher gear for juuuust long enough to put the other team away. They didn’t have their usual post-halftime blitzkrieg, and actually allowed Paul George to go off during that stretch and bring OKC back into the game, but it never really felt like they were in any danger. The talent gap just remains so vast — particularly against a Thunder team missing Westbrook — that they can dick around and toy with their opponents for long stretches of games and it doesn’t even matter. Sigh.

–Speaking of, we say it every year, but man do they turn the ball over a lot, and in pretty stupid ways. I suppose it’s a good thing they don’t get this habit under control because then no one would have a chance against them, but it’s a little frustrating as a fan watching what might be the greatest NBA team ever assembled be so consistently careless with the ball. Mostly, it makes me sad the other teams aren’t good enough to force the Warriors to tighten up.

–The last few seasons, the Dubs’ big man rotation has been the lone chink in the armor for the champs, and it looks like they may have patched up that hole as well. Damion Jones started at center and looked surprisingly competent, and Kevon Looney seems to be maturing and gradually excising the things he doesn’t do well from his game. Once they can rotate those two guys with Boogie as he recovers and acclimates to his new environs, they’ll be an even tougher cover than they already are. Scary.

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER:

–No Russ makes it tough to evaluate anything, but Dennis Schroder seemed willing to step in and do his best Westbrook impersonation. He fired up more threes than he should, given his statistical profile (natch), but otherwise looked pretty good. The role players they are counting on to be either improved (Terrance “Turd” Ferguson, Alex Abrines) or resurgent  (Patrick Patterson) were mostly MIA, and it appears Schroder immediately becomes OKC’s fourth-best player. This is fine, so long as Billy Donovan is smart enough to play Schroder and Russ together once Westbrook returns to the lineup, and that Schroder is able to properly adjust to the impending downshift in his role. He’s too good of a player to just get Westbrook’s scraps, especially considering how unimpressive the rest of the options are beyond Russ, PG, and Adams.

–Speaking of Steven Adams, he is just ever so much fun. He is a hulking seven-footer — an endangered species in today’s game — who looks and acts like a Dothraki. He’s only 25, his points and rebounds have increased every year of his career, and the only statistical category he ever leaves a zero in is “fucks given.” The things he does are increasingly undervalued, but he does all those things really well! And did I mention he looks like a Dothraki? What a delight.

Getty Images North America

I have to start here, because everything I’m about to say falls apart if I don’t: Russell Westbrook should not have won the MVP in 2016-17.

The best player in a given season is not always (or even frequently) the one who takes home the MVP award. Most of us implicitly accept this conceit, but even in this context, Westbrook’s win was an aberration. The season after Durant bolted for greener pastures in Golden State, Westbrook’s Thunder won only 47 games and finished sixth in the Western Conference, both shockingly low for an MVP winner (hold that thought). His stats were historically overwhelming — though oddly less so when he repeated the triple-double feat the following year — and the narrative of taking the league on single-handedly made for a story voters could get behind.

Besides the triple-double thing (which is no doubt impressive but pretty arbitrary — people just love round numbers), his stats did not outshine those of James Harden by a big margin, if at all. They were first and second in scoring; Brodie had more rebounds, but The Beard had more assists. You could make a case for either one, depending on which advanced metrics you prefer: Russ led the league in PER, BPM, and VORP; Harden led in Win Shares (total and per-48 minutes). There’s not really a “right” answer statistically, but Harden had one huge advantage: his team won 55 games and finished third in the conference. And while it doesn’t sound revolutionary to say the MVP should be on a team that wins a lot of games, the history of the award suggests it’s even more important than you’d think, which is why Russ receiving the trophy is such an anomaly.

Determining what makes a player the “most valuable” is incredibly complex, both in an objective and subjective sense, but predicting who will actually win the MVP award is a little simpler. Picture a triangle, with the three points being Wins, Stats, and Narrative. In most seasons, the player who wins is the one who fills in the largest possible triangle. Westbrook winning was unusual because of the shape of the triangle — enormous ‘Stat’ point, pretty large ‘Narrative’ point, historically small ‘Win’ point — and whether he set a precedent for what an MVP winner can now look like, or he just turns out to be the exception that proves the rule is hard to know because it is still relatively fresh in our minds.

History suggests the latter is the more likely explanation, so for this analysis, it would behoove us not to give team success short shrift. In the last two decades (since Michael Jordan’s second retirement from the Bulls), the team of the MVP winner has won an average of 61.1 games. [Note: I’m extrapolating the 1998-99 and 2011-12 lockout-shortened seasons to a full 82 games for consistency.] Sixty-one is a huge number of wins, though, so it’s probably unfair to make it our benchmark. A better number might be 54, which is the next lowest win total for a winner during this span. [Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns in 2005-06, in case you’re wondering. This was another odd MVP year: Nash had already won in ’04-’05, so his narrative case wasn’t particularly strong. Kobe came in 4th despite how Russ-like his season was — he scored an unreal 35.4 ppg with a then-NBA record 38.7% Usage Rate, but the undermanned Lakers, still reeling from losing their other transcendent superstar, won only 45 games. Sounds familiar, except Kobe’s narrative also worked against him: Bryant was perceived as a petulant gunner who had forced Shaq out of town, and the season started just over a year after his acquittal on sexual assault charges, the backlash from which had not yet “blown over,” if in fact it ever truly did. LeBron finished second, putting up a righteous 31.4/7.0/6.6 in his age-21 season, but the Cavs only won 50 games, and Bron was still a couple years away from taking over as the league’s undisputed best player. Dirk, who finished third, may have had the best case, leading a 60-win Mavs’ team and putting up similar-if-not-better stats than he would in winning the MVP the following year for a 67-win juggernaut, making him our Harden in this comparison. OK, recent history lesson over. Let’s move on.]

So if a team needs to crack about 54 wins to get their guy in the conversation — incidentally, 54 wins tends to be the historical benchmark for contention, so it dovetails nicely — then what is the statistical bar? The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement already has its own “Derrick Rose Rule,” but it works well in this context, too. Rose’s MVP campaign in 2010-11 illustrates the other side of the Westbrook coin: the upstart Bulls led the NBA with a 62-20 record, and the narrative gods conspired against LeBron, through both voter fatigue (he had won the award the previous two seasons) and his heel turn from The Decision. This left Rose as the default “narrative” choice, despite statistics which, from a historical perspective, were a little underwhelming for an MVP. He averaged 25.0/4.1/7.7 on 44/33/86 shooting splits with a 23.5 PER and .208 Win Shares/48 minutes (LeBron: 26.5/7.5/7.0, 51/33/76 shooting, 27.3 PER, .244 WS/48). Despite the relatively modest stats, team success and voter hive-mind coalesced, allowing him to garner 113 out of a possible 121 first-place votes, easily outpacing Dwight Howard, LeBron, and Kobe.

In 2018-19, LeBron is on another new team, and voters will be in no hurry to hand Harden a second trophy — he basically won last year by wearing everyone down with his annoyingly consistent excellence — but given the offensive explosion of the pace-and-space era, it’s nearly impossible to envision a scenario where someone takes home the award without putting up eye-popping stats, even if the near-instant buyer’s remorse associated with Westbrook acts as a cautionary tale for voters. So let’s keep the “Rose Rule” in mind as we break down the candidates.

Analyzing a player’s ‘Narrative’ is a much more subjective, nebulous exercise, and it tends to bleed into the other categories, which is why it grinds my gears that it ends up being such a major factor in who wins the award every year. Has the player won before? Did his team exceed expectations? Did he do something to “turn off” the voters? Is he on a new team? Is he cancelled out by another star teammate? Is it “his time”? All of these factors impact voters, and since they are all writers, it can be easy for the story to take on an outsize influence relative to what’s actually happening on the court. It may not be an ideal system, but it’s the one we have, so we neglect to account for it at our peril.

Now that I’ve masterfully buried the lede, where does this leave us for this season? Here are Vegas’ current MVP odds:

LeBron James +300
Anthony Davis +350
Giannis Antetokounmpo +400
James Harden +500
Kawhi Leonard +600
Kevin Durant +950
Russell Westbrook +950
Joel Embiid +1400
Stephen Curry +1500
Kyrie Irving +2500

Let’s start crossing names off the list based on our three criteria, but first, a few honorable mentions:

NIKOLA JOKIC, DENVER NUGGETS:

WINS: There is some optimism the Nuggets are ready to take a step forward in the West, with a full season from Paul Millsap — who played only 38 games last season — and internal development from their young core. Vegas has their over/under at 47.5 wins, and the over is at -125 (meaning you’d have to wager $125 to win $100), so the betting public thinks the total is a little low. I tend to agree, but getting near 54 wins would represent something of a perfect storm, in terms of health, a resurgence from Isaiah Thomas, Jokic making the leap, and coach Mike Malone cobbling together a marginally competent defense (25th in Defensive Rating last season). Not out of the question, but a lot has to go right.

STATS: Jokic has a cool statistical profile as the league’s preeminent passing big man, and he blew the doors off after the All-Star Break last year (21.7/11.0/6.5 with 53/46/85 shooting). If he can maintain similar efficiency over an entire season (unlikely) and bump his scoring up closer to the 24-25 ppg range (also unlikely), then he could find his way into the conversation. However, if young guards Gary Harris and Jamal Murray continue to mature and take on bigger roles in the offense, IT returns to 70% or so of his Boston form, and Michael Porter, Jr. shows flashes, then there may not be enough to go around for Jokic to get there, even on a team that figures to be as offensively explosive as Denver.

NARRATIVE: His ascent from anonymity has been a nice story, and his flashy passing is highlight-worthy, but I doubt it’s enough to move the needle of the national conversation in a meaningful way. The prevailing narrative also suggests he is a woeful defender — even if the reality doesn’t entirely line up with the perception — which hurts his case when the other big men in the conversation are all considered DPOY candidates.

VERDICT: Probably a first-time All-Star, but not quite ready for his close-up yet.

DAMIAN LILLARD, PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS:

WINS: This is a tough sell. The consensus seems to be Portland bumped up against its ceiling last year with 49 wins, and after their playoff humiliation at the hands of New Orleans, Vegas is way down on the Blazers this year (O/U 42 wins). The untimely death of owner Paul Allen could be either a galvanizing force/rallying cry or the final straw in splintering a locker room already facing questions of fit and chemistry. With all the same core personnel, there’s not much reason to see a leap coming on either end of the floor, so 54 wins feels like a pipe dream.

STATS: Lillard finished 4th in MVP voting last season (a little strange he’s not even in Vegas’ top ten this season, no?) with a pretty Rose-like season — 26.9/4.5/6.6 on 44/36/92 shooting and a 25.2 PER — but at 28 years old, he’s probably right in the ballpark of his apex. Building on those numbers in a significant enough way to move up in the voting, particularly given the young guns looking to make the leap around the league, feels like a long-shot.

NARRATIVE: Works against him a little, if anything. There are whispers of locker room discord and (thus far unsubstantiated) rumors of a possible trade to the Lakers if this season starts off poorly. Not exactly MVP-type story lines.

VERDICT: An elite offensive player in his prime, but it’s hard to argue he’ll get any closer than he did last season.

VICTOR OLADIPO, INDIANA PACERS:

WINS: The Pacers took a big jump forward last year to 48 wins, and Vegas largely expects them to remain in place this season (O/U 47.5), despite being a sexy sleeper pick among many media types to continue their ascent. They made some nice ancillary moves, and Myles Turner finally ditched the baby fat, but are Tyreke Evans and a yoked Turner worth 6 or 7 extra wins? I don’t think so either.

STATS: Obviously enjoyed a breakout season last year, but fell well short of the Rose Rule. He’s still only 26 and could develop further, but his ceiling is limited relative to the others on the list. Pass.

NARRATIVE: Still enjoying his honeymoon as a star player after being yanked around in Orlando and relegated to a spectator in OKC. The “reclamation project” narrative is all well and good, but it probably doesn’t boost his candidacy in a meaningful way.

VERDICT: May not be done growing as a player, but even his apex probably won’t be enough to jump the line.

JIMMY BUTLER, MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES (?): Just kidding. Kind of.

ESPN.com

TIER ONE: THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORDS

KYRIE IRVING, BOSTON CELTICS:

WINS: The Celtics are loaded with stars and depth. Vegas gives them the second-highest over/under (58.5), and bettors are banging the over (-165) like it’s a porn star. If Boston posts a win total in the mid-60’s, as I’m anticipating, someone on their roster will have to be in the MVP conversation, and Kyrie is the obvious candidate.

STATS: In the era of analytics, we’ve gotten much better about properly appreciating efficiency, and this is where Kyrie really shines. He just missed out on a 50/40/90 season last year (49/41/89 splits), and there’s no reason to suspect his looks will get any worse with the return of Gordon Hayward and the continued development of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The question is, with so much surrounding talent, will he be needed enough to produce the kind of statistical volume voters want to see? His most important statistic will ultimately be in the Games column. He has an ever-growing laundry list of injuries in his rearview, and Brad Stevens will have the dual luxuries of resting Kyrie liberally due to the other talent on the roster as well as bringing him back slowly whenever the inevitable injury does occur.

NARRATIVE: As powerful a narrative as “best player on the best team” should be, Kyrie is likely to suffer a bit here. Unfair or not, “most valuable” is relative to one’s surroundings. With so much other talent on hand, voters will probably ding Kyrie for being less essential than stars on less-formidable rosters, and the team getting within one win of the Finals last year without Irving in uniform will do little to quell the confirmation bias.

VERDICT: Has to stay healthy, and probably won’t outshine his fellow stars by enough to grab voters’ attention.

STEPH CURRY AND KEVIN DURANT, GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS:

WINS: Lumping these two together for obvious reasons. The team will naturally win plenty to get both guys in the conversation, so no issues there, but when your ceiling is “Greatest Team of All Time,” it’s pretty difficult to exceed expectations.

STATS: Both players are clearly capable of putting up transcendent numbers on their own, but the presence of the other and the system in which they operate tends to artificially suppress their overall statistical output. Both are supernaturally efficient in ways that shouldn’t even be possible.

NARRATIVE: All of the things which put them in the conversation are the same things which take them out. These are two of the top five players in the world by most any metric, and they’ve both already won the award in the absence of the other, but how can you argue someone is the most valuable player in the entire league when he may or may not even be the most valuable player on his own team? Durant’s narrative will always work against him so long as he’s on Golden State, and Curry will forever have to live up to (or exceed) his scrumtralescent ’15-’16 season in order to garner votes. Much like with Kyrie, having an overwhelming talent advantage comes with a lot of perks, but MVP votes is usually not one of them.

VERDICT: If we can’t have nice things, neither can they.

Layne Murdoch/Getty Images

TIER TWO: BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

RUSSELL WESTBROOK, OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER:

WINS: To quote The Who, “We won’t get fooled again!” OKC upped its win total by one (to 48) last season, and yet Westbrook fell to fifth in MVP voting. With Paul George in the fold, Russ is highly unlikely to ever approach the meth-fueled level of usage and statistical volume of his MVP season, but even if he does, it won’t sway voters unless it comes attached to a jump towards the top of the West standings. Vegas has them pegged at 48.5 wins, which feels about right, considering the uncertainty surrounding the health of Westbrook’s knee, and how much, if any, we’ll see of defensive ace Andre Roberson this year. The depth is improved, Terrance “Turd” Ferguson could be impactful in a bigger role, and Melo is no longer around to hijack possessions, so there is some upside, but the team will have to take a big leap forward and Russ will have to stay healthy for it to translate in the voting. No thanks.

STATS: Not much more to cover here. The voters’ fascination with triple-doubles has waned, and the presence of PG and Dennis Schroder should siphon off just enough usage to pull Russ back from the statistical event horizon.

NARRATIVE: If people already regret the one they gave you, it’s pretty tough to make a case for another one.

VERDICT: No. Just no.

JAMES HARDEN, HOUSTON ROCKETS:

WINS: Their O/U is set at 55.5 (-175), which is both a little disrespectful after last season, and a sign of how difficult it will be to exceed expectations this season to a degree where voters will want to reward Harden again. Topping 65 wins is a virtual impossibility, and any regression will be placed at Harden’s feet, fair or not.

STATS: Similar to Russ, he is what he is: often infuriating and devastatingly consistent. There’s no reason to suspect a significant drop-off anywhere in his statistical profile, but his case was always going to come down to the next category.

NARRATIVE: He probably deserved the award in ’16-’17, and he definitely deserved it last year, but now that he’s won it, voters are likely to do everything they can to not give it to him again, regardless of merit. Voters will be happy invoke a lower win total as justification for what is actually an implicit rebuke of his unappealing style. [Additionally, I’m pretty sure no one wants to hear him drunkenly stammer his way through another acceptance speech — what the hell was that??] We all have to respect the brutal efficiency of his game, but that doesn’t mean we have to celebrate it.

VERDICT: *Curls up in fetal position*

Sports Illustrated

TIER THREE: THE KNOWN UNKNOWNS

JOEL EMBIID, PHILADELPHIA 76ERS:

WINS: With an O/U of 53.5 and a young core with tons of room to grow — and thus exceed expectations — this one feels like almost TOO snug of a fit.

STATS: Here’s where it gets tricky. Embiid’s per-minute stats are as good, if not better than, anyone on this list. If he plays 70+ games and 2,500+ minutes, Philly will be looking at the perfect confluence of circumstances, and he could absolutely challenge for the award. However, that ‘IF’ should be so big and glowing, you could slap it on a hotel in Vegas. And even in this unlikely scenario, he still might not stack up statistically to the two big men I’ll be discussing shortly. Sure, Jo-Jo put up a 27.2/13.0/3.7 per-36 minutes last season — straight-up, prime Shaq numbers — but he did it with sky-high usage (33.4%, third in the league), questionable efficiency, and a comically bad turnover rate. If he drastically improves in those areas (he might), his menacing defense maintains or improves (it should), and the team throws up 60 wins (???), then he is right there in the conversation with Anthony Davis. But would I bet on all those things happening AND him staying healthy all year? Woof.

NARRATIVE: It’s possible we’re still a year or two away from Embiid becoming the undisputed king of this category, but even as things stand now, there are not many guys for whom the voters would rather root. He is still very much in the “honeymoon/100% approval rating” phase as a superstar. His ubiquitous social media presence and transparency with the media make him a perfect modern avatar for the game. His hyper-modern ability to both step out and shoot and also put the ball on the deck at 7’2″ (don’t try to tell me he’s only 7 feet — I have eyes), combined with his throwback ability to post up and defend the rim, endears him to “nostalgics” and “prisoners of the moment” alike. There is a non-zero chance fellow young star Ben Simmons could take the leap and cancel Embiid out to an extent, but that’s about the only thing holding him back in this category.

VERDICT: All the ability is there, but too many things have to go right.

LEBRON JAMES, LOS ANGELES LAKERS:

WINS: Probably the biggest question mark in this entire column. Your guess is as good as mine.

STATS: We’ve grown so inured to LeBron’s statistical greatness that it’s nearly impossible for him to do anything to surprise us, which certainly works against him in this context. Also, his first seasons with new teams (2010-11 and 2014-15) rate as two of his worst statistical seasons (relatively speaking, of course), so there is likely to be an adjustment period coming this season as LeBron figures out how much control he needs to exert over the offense and who he can trust. While his stats will obviously still be good in an absolute sense, with the numbers likely to be put up by the names below, it could be enough to sink his candidacy.

NARRATIVE: It seems like it’s been ages since this category rated as a net-positive for LeBron, but here we are. No one considers him a villain for leaving Cleveland this time, he’s approaching the twilight of his career, and everyone wants to see someone challenge Golden State for the throne, so the stars have kind of aligned for him to be buoyed by his narrative again, rather than anchored down by it. If he integrates seamlessly with the young core and the team comes out of the gate strong (unlikely, but possible), watch out for all the “You guys forgot LeBron is the best player on Earth, didn’t you?” stories that will start flying around.

VERDICT: Lack of continuity suppresses the win total juuuuust enough, and everyone continues to take LeBron for granted while he’s here.

KAWHI LEONARD, TORONTO RAPTORS:

WINS: The team won 59 games last year, the O/U is 55.5 this year, and oh yeah, they added Kawhi Leonard. As long as he’s healthy, it’s hard to envision team success being the problem.

STATS: The best version of Kawhi we’ve seen (’16-’17, 3rd in MVP voting) nudges up statistically to the Rose Line, which is a bit concerning. However, he only played 33.4 mpg that year, so IF HEALTHY (he should just legally change his name to “Kawhi Leonard If Healthy” at this point), new Toronto head coach Nick Nurse could play him enough minutes to comfortably eclipse the benchmark, but his statistical ceiling remains a roadblock to his candidacy, relative to his peers. His efficiency and defensive chops are a boon, of course, but given the rarefied air we’re approaching now, they are not as distinguishing as one might think.

NARRATIVE: Works for and against him. A new team and a mildly redemptive “comeback” story are promising at first glance, until you stop and think about how those circumstances came to be. San Antonio Kawhi had all this political capital as the quiet, humble, team-first superstar, which made it all the more whiplash-inducing when he decided to use his injury as leverage and hold the league’s most venerated franchise hostage for an entire season before demanding a trade. Some of the backlash has died down as the actual games approach and we remember how freaking good of a player he is, but the residue of his messy exit from the Spurs is going to be hard to completely wipe away, at least this season.

VERDICT: Voters won’t want to reward his pre-agency tactics, and a lack of complete statistical domination will provide the justification.

TIER FOUR: THE HARDEST CUT

ANTHONY DAVIS, NEW ORLEANS PELICANS:

WINS: This feels like the possible rub for The Brow. Forty-eight wins last season and an O/U of 45.5 this year, so a big jump forward in wins is basically a prerequisite for AD’s candidacy, but it’s unclear exactly from where it will come. The team played at the league’s fastest pace last season and was 3rd in points per game, so it may be a lot to expect much improvement on that end, without even factoring in the loss of Boogie Cousins who, for his many faults, is a phenomenal offensive talent. Davis is already one of the league’s very best defenders, and he should continue to get better, but the team ranked only 14th in Defensive Rating last season, so he’ll need a better effort from his teammates on that end if the Pels are to join the ranks of Western contenders. The addition of Julius Randle should help, though trying to play him in lineups with both Davis and Nikola Mirotic could prove to be an awkward fit.

STATS: Umm, yeah, they’ll be fine. Have you seen this guy play? He’s a nightmare. From February on last season (31 games), he averaged 30.8 ppg and 11.8 rpg on 52% shooting. It’s not at all crazy to suggest he could put up similar numbers for an entire season. As long as he’s healthy — and his durability concerns from earlier in his career appear to be behind him — his statistical case is pretty unassailable.

NARRATIVE: It is definitely “his time.” He is at (or near) the peak of his powers. His team is on the rise. He hasn’t won the award before. He’s never given the fans or the media a reason to turn on him. He works hard, consistently gets better, plays outstanding defense, and keeps his mouth shut. What’s not to like?

VERDICT: He’s a beast. Nothing can stop him. Except…

THE WINNER

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO, MILWAUKEE BUCKS:

WINS: The Bucks are poised to make a huge jump in the East. They won 44 games last year, and the O/U is set at 48, which both feels low and gives them a lot of room to improve (unlike, say, Toronto, who is starting from a high baseline). The offense was already a top-10 outfit, but they were just 19th in Defensive Rating under the “tutelage” of Jason Kidd and Joe Prunty, and the upgrade to Mike Budenholzer could be the most impactful personnel change in the East. They brought in more shooters to space the floor for Giannis to attack the interior. A 55-win campaign feels very much within reach for this team, more so than for the Pelicans, anyway.

STATS: I don’t even know where to put Giannis’ statistical ceiling. He may not have one. I mentioned this in my Bucks’ preview column, but last year — in his age-23 season, mind you — Giannis averaged 26.9 ppg, 10.0 rpg, 4.8 apg, and 1.4 bpg, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (in ’74-’75) as the only player to hit all four benchmarks in the same year since blocks became an official statistic. And Milwaukee only ranked 20th in pace last season; Coach Bud’s Hawks’ teams ranked an average of 11th during his five seasons at the helm, and they never ranked lower than 7th in 3-point attempts. Giannis had a high usage rate last season (31.2%, 7th in the league), but there is certainly room for him to do more. So to recap: a 6’11”, 23-year-old athletic super-freak who put up historic numbers last season, will now have more possessions, more space, better shooters around him, a better defensive scheme, AND will be more physically and mentally mature. Does any part of that suggest we aren’t about to see some absolutely INSANE numbers?

NARRATIVE: Much like Embiid and Davis, another guy who has the 100% approval rating going for him. Everyone likes this guy and everyone wants to see him succeed. As I mentioned, the team has a lot of room to surprise. If he develops a remotely consistent outside shot (say, 34-35% from three), he’ll have his “Uh oh, Happy learned how to putt!” moment and the media will lose its collective shit about how unguardable he is. Everything is lining up perfectly for him, and I can’t come up with a reasonable counter-argument, so he’s the pick.

VERDICT: The Greek Freak takes home the hardware.

Happy NBA season, everybody — let’s do this thing!!