Brian Windhorst and a team of ESPN's Insiders sort out life and the news from in and around the NBA world, including how the New Orleans Pelicans face a market quandary, what the Dec. 15 deadline really means for trades, the newest player rivalry in the West and how the Sacramento Kings are lighting a path to the playoffs:
The Pelicans sit, unexpectedly, near the nexus of the NBA's future.
Young and upwardly mobile in the midst of a possible breakout season, the Pelicans have a good value roster that looks certain to get more expensive in one of the league's smallest markets. Their starting point guard, CJ McCollum, is running the labor talks for the National Basketball Players Association. Their owner, Gayle Benson, sits on the exclusive and powerful owners committee charged with forming league strategy.
The Pelicans' future might ride on superstar Zion Williamson's health and continued progress. But it might also hinge on the deal their organizational leaders are shaping.
So far, the talks are proceeding:
Without great animus. The sides just agreed to push back a deadline for a new collective bargaining deal from December to February.
Largely in secret. The sides have vowed to clamp down on leaks, and thus far it seems to be working because even teams that don't have representation on the negotiating committee have been kept at a distance so far, sources told ESPN.
One item that appears to be an issue are the rules allowing rich teams to continue a wild spending spree that has dwarfed their midsized rivals, multiple sources told ESPN.
A team like the Pelicans -- one of two NBA teams that has never paid a dollar in luxury tax (the other is the Charlotte Hornets) -- must compete against the likes of the Golden State Warriors, LA Clippers and Brooklyn Nets, who are currently in line to pay a shade under $600 million combined just in tax payments this year. Including those taxes, the three teams are planning to spend more than $900 million this season on payroll.
The 18-8 Pelicans, who host the Utah Jazz on Tuesday (9 p.m. ET), are on a seven-game winning streak, despite star Brandon Ingram missing all of them with injury and top defender Herbert Jones out the past five with injury.
Williamson has positioned the Pelicans for success because he's just had maybe his best three weeks of his career. He is finding an elusive rhythm that has seen him return to the mix of brute force, ballhandling and defensive playmaking that was expected of him when he was the No. 1 pick in the 2018 draft.
Williamson was cleared for full contact last spring as he recovered from a broken foot that cost him all of the 2021-22 season. His teammates and coaches knew he was still naturally being protective after two of his first three seasons were derailed by injury.
It's unmistakable how freely he is playing over the past month combined with being in optimal shape. It shows up everywhere: improved aggression and focus at the defensive end, more activity on the glass and the ruthless basket attacks that often prove unstoppable, even when the opposition follows the scouting report to slow him.
Pelicans coach Willie Green is putting the ball in Williamson's hands more at the top of the floor and letting him attack in isolation, leading to averages of 30 points and six assists during the winning streak.
Williamson is the centerpiece, sure, but the Pelicans started the week at the top of the Western Conference in large part because they have one the league's deepest rosters. Built through the draft and trades by vice president David Griffin and general manger Trajan Langdon, Green has a rotation that can legitimately go 11 players deep on any night.
Williamson is already going to be getting more expensive, with his new contract spiking his salary by $20 million to $33 million next year. Griffin also signed McCollum and forward Larry Nance Jr. to extensions before the season.
This is what teams in the large middle class grapple with -- it's what McCollum and Benson gobble up time in Zoom calls debating. How can teams keep their talent but have parameters that allow talent to be dispersed?
After deciding how the money is shared -- getting to roughly a 50/50 split took a lockout to happen 11 years ago -- haggling these agenda items is at the heart of these talks every handful of years. Players want free agency and teams want competitive balance, an age-old tale. Behind the scenes, executives and agents and their opinions on this process are as thick as trade chatter this year.
As for the Pelicans, well, they want a way to keep building. The circumstances have assured them a seat at the big table where it will be decided. That influence is another way they seem to be assured to be in the conversation this season.
Now front-office insider Bobby Marks shares insights on the (soft) opening to trade season:
Flurry of December deals? More like February fun in forecast
There is a misconception the NBA trade season officially opens Dec. 15.
Yes, 74 players who signed free agent contracts are trade-eligible who weren't before. And yes, 89% (up from 73% a year ago) of the 441 eligible players under contract can be dealt.
But it is naive to think just because the calendar says Dec. 15, Los Angeles Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka and his 29 other counterparts wake up Thursday morning saying, "Let's make a deal."
That is not how it works.
A trade does not come about because of a mid-December date but rather dialogue among the 30 teams that started in the offseason and continues weekly during the regular season.
A trade happens because of specific circumstances, whether financially motivated (there were two trades last January based on finances alone), or basketball-driven that can impact now and/or the future.
Is a Nerlens Noel-JaVale McGee hypothetical trade too rich for the Dallas Mavericks to pass on now? The Mavericks would increase their luxury tax bill $13 million this season but shed the remaining $14 million owed in the next two seasons.
McGee signed a three-year, $17.2 million contract with Dallas in the offseason and is not allowed to be traded until Thursday. He has played a career low 8.8 minutes this season.
Phoenix Suns president of basketball operations James Jones best explained it as it relates to trying to find a trade partner for veteran forward Jae Crowder.
"There's no window where they say, 'Hey, all deals are done here,'" Jones told reporters last month. "We have natural deadlines, like the trade deadline, we usually have a flurry of deals. But other than that, it's just finding the right fit. And we just haven't been able to find that, yet."
That sentiment is a reason why it has been 12 years since the last Dec. 15 trade. It is also the reason why 84% of the trades consummated were either on or during the week of the February trade deadline.
There will certainly be a trade or two in the next month, but unless there is a trade too rich to pass on, teams are in a holding pattern until the week of Feb. 9, 2023.
Here's NBA reporter Andrew Lopez on the best new player rivalry in the West:
CP3 vs. GTA: The sequel is here
It started out with a kick. How did it end up like this?
Chris Paul and Jose Alvarado have fired up one of the league's more unlikely rivalries in less than a year's span.
Things became spicy during the 2022 playoffs when Paul's top-seeded Suns hosted Alvarado's eighth-seeded Pelicans.
Alvarado was the pesky rookie doing his best to stay on the same playing field with the wily veteran. One of Alvarado's goals was to get Paul with his patented "Grand Theft Alvarado" sneaky steal, where he hides on the baselines hoping to spring up on unsuspecting opponents to force a steal or a turnover.
Alvarado tried the move in Game 2 in Phoenix, and Paul waved him away, as if to say, "Your sneaky tricks won't work on me, young fella."
Fast forward two games, and Alvarado's persistence paid off. He got Paul with a patented "GTA" toward the end of Game 4, much to the delight of fans inside New Orleans' Smoothie King Center.
But things turned chippy.
In Game 5, Paul kicked Alvarado in the groin on a shot attempt that wasn't whistled. He was assessed a flagrant foul by the NBA the following day. In Game 6, Paul caused a bloody lip after he connected with an elbow to Alvarado's face. Officials called a defensive foul on Alvarado, but in the pool report after the game, he admitted Paul was off-balance and caught Alvarado with the elbow.
Paul got the last laugh because Phoenix prevailed in the series, 4-2. Paul went 14-of-14 and scored 33 points as the Suns sent the Pelicans home.
The Pelicans and Suns have squared off three times this 2022-23 season and things have picked up right where they left off. The first game in Phoenix was uneventful, but that wasn't the case this past weekend in New Orleans.
Things got intense with Paul and Alvarado in Friday's win, including at the end of the game. After Williamson's 360 windmill dunk with 1.9 seconds left to put the Pelicans up 11, Paul jogged up the court with Alvarado by his side. Replays showed Paul elbowing Alvarado when the second-year player got closer to him.
As the buzzer sounded, Alvarado and Paul had to be separated by Green (and, comically, the Pelicans' mascot) -- who played in New Orleans with Paul and coached him with the Suns before heading to New Orleans -- before both benches cleared.
Paul dismissed any talk of Alvarado postgame. Alvarado refused to say Paul's name -- instead calling him "that person" -- which most likely was a callback to Paul butchering the pronunciation of Alvarado's last name following Game 6.
In Sunday's game, Paul had six points, 11 assists and was 3-of-10 from the field before fouling out in overtime. Alvarado picked up three fouls in a 30-second span, two against Paul, and finished with two points in 10 minutes.
And while another playoff matchup down the road is a possibility, the last regular-season round will be Saturday when the Suns host the Pelicans.
Which player will take control then?
And NBA reporter Tim Bontemps caught up with the beam team:
Mike Brown on Kings' resurgence: 'You got to believe'
It's been more than 16 years since the Sacramento Kings participated in a playoff game.
That's what made it all the more striking to hear Mike Brown -- the 12th man to coach the Kings during their NBA-leading postseason drought -- talk before Sunday's game in New York not just about making the playoffs, but succeeding in them.
"When I took this job, one of the things that I truly believed in is if we did it right, we can have a chance at this thing," Brown said before his Kings, sans De'Aaron Fox, lost to the Knicks. "Not just to make the playoffs -- which is not what I'm looking to do -- but to advance.
"You take a job to try to build a championship-level team organization. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But you got to believe."
Belief has been something that's been hard to come by in Sacramento for a good long time, and understandably so. But Brown, after spending the past several years working a couple hours west on Interstate 80 with the Warriors, has, for the first time in years, given the incredibly loyal Kings fan base something to hold onto.
Fox, who has missed the past two games with a foot injury, is playing some of the best basketball of his career. He and Domantas Sabonis have forged a strong partnership, and the Kings sit sixth in the league in offensive rating.
More importantly, though, they are fifth in the Western Conference standings -- just one game out of fourth -- and 1.5 games out of 11th.
The bunched-up nature of the West standings shows how fleeting the early season success for the Kings could be. What will determine how long it lasts -- and whether #LightTheBeam continues to be one of the more enjoyable things of this NBA season so far -- is whether Sacramento can continue to get stops at the defensive end.
Brown, who has always been known as a defensive coach, has the Kings up to a tie for 15th in the league in defense -- after ranking 27th last season, and dead last the year before that.
And, as he talked about believing Sacramento can be a team that can make noise in the playoffs, Brown made his goal clear.
"If you don't have a top-10 defensive team, you may make the playoffs," he said. "There's a lot of teams in the past that made the playoffs from watching the regular season, because they could put up 130 points.
"But as soon as they hit the playoffs, they struggled. They never got over the hump."
Since starting out the season 0-4, where have the Kings ranked in defense while winning 14 of their next 21 games? You guessed it: 10th.
What is entirely unclear is whether they can sustain this effort. The Kings don't seem like a team that should be able to be this successful defensively. Sabonis, while a terrific offensive player, is undersized at center, and leaves Sacramento lacking in rim protection. Sunday against the Knicks, they started Kevin Huerter and rookie Keegan Murray on the wings.
But opposing scouts praised Sacramento's teamwork, physicality and energy defensively, and pointed out how those traits can make up for a lack of talent. And then there is Brown, whose defensive background is paying dividends.
Brown believes this group has the capability of sustaining its stellar efforts.
"I think we can," Brown said. "I do. We're going to keep working, and we'll try to get there."
If it can, Sacramento's playoff drought will stop at 16 years -- and Brown's first season with the Kings will be a smashing success.