It's the last 10 things of the year! This week, we highlight the majestic Kevin Durant (leading the on-fire Brooklyn Nets), the hapless Los Angeles Lakers' defense, the importance of Average Starting Center Guy and a stalled Chicago Bulls All-Star.
1. Kevin Durant is everything, including the simple things
When Durant crumpled in Toronto during Game 5 of the 2019 Finals, the historic weight of it slammed you in the stomach. This was an immortal, fallen. Durant was on pace then for an outside chance at Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's scoring record. He was about to hit free agency and tilt the league's entire balance of power -- again.
Would he ever be the same?
I don't know if Durant is playing the best basketball of his life for a Brooklyn Nets team that is 15-2 since controversy and roster uncertainty appeared to push it to the brink of unsalvageable. The fact that it's even a debate is remarkable -- a joy, a gift to the game.
Durant is averaging 30 points, 7 rebounds and 5.5 assists. He's shooting 56%. That would be a career high. He remains the game's most well-rounded scorer, perhaps ever. Take any play type -- pick-and-rolls, post-ups, isolations, pindowns -- and you'll find Durant toward the top in points per possession. He is near his sneering peak on defense, switching into people's jerseys, calling out coverages, menacing suckers at the rim. Nine years after winning his only MVP, Durant is coming for another.
He just passed Tim Duncan, another immortal, for 15th on the NBA's all-time scoring list. By season's end, he could leap to No. 10. If he averages 60 games and 25 points over his next four seasons, Durant will pass Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant -- and slide into No. 4.
What stands out now is the speed and calm with which Durant dissects defenses. Nothing is forced. He's making the right read on time, every time. He sees everything before it unfolds.
That pass is out of Durant's hands as the trap is still forming. Durant is trusting teammates, empowering them, and they are repaying that trust. (Nicolas Claxton, unsung hero of Brooklyn's recovery, has made a lot of shots like that lately.)
Got that pass covered? No problem. Durant anticipates every downstream rotation. He'll swing it to the next open guy in the chain -- the resurgent T.J. Warren below -- and let Warren hit Claxton from a cleaner angle:
On some nights, Brooklyn's support players won't finish as many of these sequences. Durant and Kyrie Irving (on fire, too) will need to do more heavy lifting. They're ready. But handing the baton to teammates early in possessions might get Durant the ball back five seconds later with an advantage.
The Nets of the past five weeks are a title contender. They need to prove it can last. Ben Simmons hasn't made a free throw since Nov. 25, and there is always something -- some looming crisis.
But there is also Durant, and he has reminded us again: As long as he's healthy, never count his team out.
2. The Lakers' defense without Anthony Davis
Man, this is ugly. The Lakers have no shot on defense without Davis. They appear to know this, and that gutting knowledge saps their effort -- and accelerates their implosion. It is a cycle of despair. Every defensive possession is one continuous blurting sad trombone.
For the season, the Lakers have allowed 115 points per 100 possessions with Davis on the bench. That would rank 28th among teams. Since Davis went out with a foot injury, they have surrendered 122.5 points per 100 possessions. Opponents aren't even scorching from deep, either. The Lakers are just structurally broken.
It's open season at the rim. The Lakers are small at every position around LeBron now. They are playing teensy lineups that have no chance. Thomas Bryant, Davis's replacement, has trouble keeping the ball in front of him and doesn't scare anyone at the basket.
The Lakers without Davis are shaky on the glass. They force no turnovers. They offer no physical resistance.
The Lakers are "only" three games from the play-in, but there are two teams between them and the No. 10 seed and they are also only three games ahead of last in the West. The upcoming schedule is tough. The season is spiraling. There is no point in trading picks to prop up this sad group if Davis is out a while. Celebrate LeBron breaking the scoring record, get Davis healthy, use cap space wisely and take another shot next season.
3. Jusuf Nurkic, maximizing his game
It's tempting to label Nurkic a dinosaur. He's not elite at any one thing that modern centers are supposed to do. He's not a screen-and-dunk guy, or rangy pick-and-pop threat. He's not a pogo-stick rim protector. He doesn't really switch, either. He has never been a great post-up option. He's a good passer, but not someone who can run your offense. He is Average Starting Center Guy.
But average starting centers are good, and Nurkic has stretched his old-school skill set about as far as it can go toward modernity.
Nurkic is 26-of-56 (46%) from deep after canning 32 combined triples in eight prior seasons. The Blazers sometimes stash Nurkic in the corners so Jerami Grant can screen for Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons. Nurkic is even coaxing some bumbling close-outs, and loping past defenders with burly drives that teeter on the edge of capsizing -- and yet mostly work out!
There is some fun "lineman running for touchdown" suspense to Nurkic's off-the-bounce game.
Nurkic has always been a good passer. He's confident enough to take some healthy gambles:
It's easy to miss how awesome that pass is. Nurkic squeezes it through a teensy window. He has to skim it low and lead Lillard far to avoid LaMelo Ball's outstretched arm.
Relying as heavily as Portland does on a center like Nurkic might cap your ceiling, but he's an innings-eater who stabilizes your floor.
4. Are the Cleveland Cavaliers one guy (or one skill) short?
Cleveland has the league's second-best point differential. Their core four are all 26 or younger. The Cavs aren't really playing for today, but the numbers say they are a contender now.
They have beaten the Boston Celtics twice, and the Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks once apiece. They will get Ricky Rubio and Dean Wade back. The Darius Garland-Donovan Mitchell backcourt is explosive enough to compensate for the iffy spacing baked into the Evan Mobley-Jarrett Allen duo.
But the Cavs are young and mostly untested. I'd stake them a little less 2023 championship equity than Boston, Milwaukee and even the Sixers in the East. They're down to 11th in points per possession, and they're 17th this month. Spacing gets borderline claustrophobic when their fifth player is Isaac Okoro or Lamar Stevens. Defenses are swarming Cleveland's stars, and coaxing the ball toward Okoro, Stevens and other fifth-option types.
Mobley and Allen aren't quite polished enough yet to consistently bail out possessions one-on-one. (Mobley will get there.)
Extending Kevin Love's minutes imperils the defense. Caris LeVert is average on that end, but he's at 33% for his career on 3s and works best as a score-first jitterbug. Okoro has looked better of late. Wade is good, but perhaps a little overstretched as a mega-minutes starter.
The best in-house solution for now might be to slide more of the Okoro/Stevens minutes to LeVert and Cedi Osman.
League sources expect the Cavs to search the trade market for another short-term wing option.
5. The stalled 'other' parts of Zach LaVine's game
LaVine is an all-world scorer. In his two All-Star seasons, he hit 40.5% on 3s and 55% on 2s. The list of players who can score that efficiently on such high volume is very short. Even now, in a down season following knee surgery, LaVine is up to 37.5% from deep and 51% on 2s. He's approaching 70% at the rim after struggling early. His burst is coming back. The Bulls will not give in -- yet -- to the vultures screeching for a rebuild.
But the other parts of LaVine's game haven't grown along with his scoring. His off-ball defense is a mess. He goes under screens against elite shooters, loses cutters and mistimes some rotations -- slashing inside to help a beat late, making him late to recover outside.
Those rotations are really hard. LaVine is smart. He works. He talked through the X's and O's of defense on the Lowe Post in 2019 -- what he sees on film, where help should come in certain situations. He gets it. He just hasn't been able to translate it into games.
He's far from the only reason Chicago ranks 17th in points allowed per possession. The Bulls built around three below-average defenders in LaVine, DeMar DeRozan (on another clutch heater) and Nikola Vucevic.
But they are miles worse with LaVine on the floor, and his off-ball defense contributes to Chicago allowing heaps of 3s. Opponents have hit 38% from deep against the Bulls -- second highest in the league. Some of that is luck. Some of it is tenuous defense.
LaVine's turnovers -- once a major problem -- are down, but a lot of that is because he ceded so much of the offense to DeRozan. He still burps up some ugly, almost inexplicable passes. Post entries are an adventure.
The assumption has been that if the Bulls pivot to a rebuild, they'd trade DeRozan and Vucevic for youth and picks, and then remodel around LaVine. But another teardown would be painful, and the Bulls owe the Orlando Magic their first-round pick this season if it falls outside the top four.
LaVine is in the first year of a five-year max contract. What if they investigated trading LaVine for multiple players and retooling around DeRozan? What return would LaVine fetch?
6. Naz Reid, silver lining
It's not a full-on disaster in Minnesota ... yet.
The 16-19 Wolves are somewhat afloat despite a hail of injuries and what we'll politely call some roster fit issues. Their schedule over the next three weeks is tough-ish, and the line is pretty thin between "afloat" and "oh, god, we owe our unprotected pick to the Utah Jazz because of a bananas trade and we're behind the Oklahoma City Thunder."
Reid is doing his part to keep their season alive. He is one of those backups at risk of getting buried under old-school coaches who see only his flaws: undersized at center, too slow to play power forward, so-so on defense. He's not bouncy and doesn't fit into any neat big man archetype.
But Reid is a basketball player -- smart, well-rounded, with good feel -- and Chris Finch is the type of coach who sees strengths and searches for ways to make them sing.
Reid is enjoying his best season as he approaches unrestricted free agency: 10.5 points per game in just 17 minutes on a career-best 56% shooting -- 38% on 3s, 65% on 2s. Reid is rebounding at career-high levels and holding his own on defense.
The Wolves are plus-3 with Reid on the floor, which is amazing considering they are minus-60 in 168 minutes Reid has played with either Rudy Gobert or Karl-Anthony Towns. With Reid at solo center, the Wolves have blitzed opponents (mostly bench lineups, but still) by 10.5 points per 100 possessions.
Reid has a nifty face-up game. He will occasionally surprise you with explosive attacks and soft finishes:
Reid was so good in that Monday game against the Miami Heat -- and Gobert so out of sorts -- that Finch benched Gobert down the stretch. Gulp.
As I said at the time of the Gobert deal, all the (very justified) concerns about the price and the Gobert-Towns fit overshadowed the more mundane reasons I didn't like the trade: Gobert is 30, and on a mammoth contract that is not a trade asset. If the Wolves ever consider flipping Towns to recoup assets, almost the entire return -- picks, players, all of it -- should align with Anthony Edwards' timeline, not Gobert's.
7. Saddiq Bey's weird half-season
Amid injuries and a general talent dearth last season, Bey got to overindulge in Carmelo Anthony midrange mode -- pounding and jab-stepping into contested jumpers. Bey can make enough of those shots to keep things interesting, but that was never going to be his role on a good team.
This season was supposed to reorient Bey as a 3-and-D spot-up option. Cade Cunningham seemed poised for a breakout. Jaden Ivey and Bojan Bogdanovic would soak up secondary ballhandling. Bey would jack 3s, rampage on catch-and-go drives and defend across four positions.
That hadn't really materialized until Bey busted out for 28 points Wednesday against Orlando. Detroit's decision to go super big -- starting Isaiah Stewart and Jalen Duren alongside Bogdanovic -- shoved Bey into an amorphous bench role. (Stewart has improved his face-up game to make those lineups semi-workable.)
Detroit's revamped bench includes two score-first types who need the ball in Alec Burks and Marvin Bagley III. With Cunningham now out and Killian Hayes starting (once he completes his suspension), some bench lineups lack the dynamic ball handler to feed Bey catch-and-shoot 3s.
That has left Bey searching -- toggling between last season's iso ball and a too-fringy spot-up role. Bey is averaging more isolations than last season -- and still producing less than one point per possession on those plays, per Second Spectrum tracking. His 3-point volume and assists are down. He's shooting 32% from deep. (He has generally been a slow starter.) He has been up and down on defense.
I'm still bullish on Bey finding his water level as a good two-way role player. The next 45 games could be telling. Bey will be eligible for an extension this summer.
8. Luke Kennard's gravity
Are the Clippers finally coalescing into a Finals contender and not a load management science experiment? They're 7-3 in their past 10 games, destroying opponents by almost 13 points per 100 possessions with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George on the floor. Their clash in Boston on Thursday night -- a revenge game for the Celtics after the Clippers blew them out in L.A. two weeks ago -- felt like a real heavyweight battle.
Leonard looks more himself, generating separation for those pivoty midrangers. The Clippers' small-ball, center-less lineups don't really work without Leonard's combination of length and physicality. He even snared a couple of weakside sharktopus steals in recent games.
With George, Leonard, and one of Nicolas Batum and Marcus Morris, those five-out lineups might have enough size even without Robert Covington. (The Clips acquired and then extended Covington in part to be the rim protector in those groups, but he's out of the rotation for now.)
Covington's exile has alleviated some roster crunch, but the Clippers are still deep enough to present Tyronn Lue some thorny rotation choices. Barring a consolidation trade -- and you can bet the Clips will look, they always do -- someone will be unhappy about minutes every night.
It feels more and more like that "someone" shouldn't be Kennard or Terance Mann. Mann injects the slow-poke, sometimes moribund Clips with speed and oomph. He makes enough 3s.
Kennard is too good a shooter and secondary playmaker to ever again lose his rotation spot. Teams will pick at his defense, but the Clips have to live with that. Kennard is smart and tries hard, and they have the goods to cover for him.
He's shooting 48% on 3s after leading the league at 45% last season. Kennard has never hit below 39.4% in any season. He is one of the best shooters alive, a roving five-alarm fire, and he opens way more space for LA's stars than any of its other support players.
Kennard is an underrated passer. The Clips leverage that by having him screen for George and Leonard in pick-and-rolls. Switch, and Kawhi feasts on a mismatch. Trap Leonard, and Kennard springs open against a scrambling defense. You sometimes spot two panicked defenders sprinting at him -- exposing leaks everywhere:
The Clips have scored 1.28 points per possession on any trip featuring a Kennard ball screen -- 10th among 267 players who have set at least 50 picks, per Second Spectrum. They have walloped opponents by 10.2 points per 100 possessions with Kennard on the floor.
9. Using the whole shot clock in one late-game sweet spot
I gave the Heat a one-man standing ovation for how they managed this last-second possession -- up three toward the end of regulation -- against Minnesota on Monday:
Miami got the ball with 29 seconds left, and about a 4.5-second differential between game and shot clock. The Wolves, down three despite the Heat (as usual) missing half their team, elected not to foul. This differential is the precise spot where the trailing team's decision on whether to foul gets murky.
When such teams play for the stop, their opponents too often let them off the hook by shooting early. The smart move is what Miami does here: shoot with less than one second on the shot clock, effectively extending the possession beyond 24 seconds while the ball is airborne and (in the event of a miss) caroming off the rim -- eating up most of that 4.5-second differential.
Minnesota gets the best-case scenario -- a rebound zooms right to the Wolves -- and even that leaves only 2.5 seconds to get a shot off. One bobble, and you're toast. (Minnesota botched the inbound, and did not get a shot up.)
Milking the full clock as the Heat did risks a live-ball turnover. It's an easier call up three than one or two, since the Wolves could not win with a 3-pointer. The Heat didn't need points.
Miami nails subtle end-of-quarter situations like this. Erik Spoelstra knows how to win on the edges.
10. When a color-versus-color jersey matchup hits
Time softens our reactive rage against change. I barely remember that orderly world in which home teams wore white and away teams wore their only road jersey.
I never minded the jumbling. Some traditional road jerseys -- Chicago's red, Boston's green -- are so gorgeous and iconic, those teams should probably just wear them every game. The endless flow of consumer-gouging alternate uniforms -- half of which are instantly forgettable -- is annoying, and ditching the rigid "light home/dark road" triggers occasional dissonance: Wait, why are the Blazers wearing white with red trim against the Bulls in Chicago? You can forget which team is which.
But when a color-versus-color uniform matchup really hits, it's glorious.
That is sweet: a pleasing, stark contrast, and two strong colors you immediately associate with the respective teams. I could barely pay attention to the game.