Sure, the Thunder swept the Suns, and San Antonio and Boston look primed to take care of their foes in a gentlemanly way. But each of the other series has had some serious drama.

Let’s take a peek at one stat (okay, you and I both know it’ll be a lot more than one) explaining each series so far.

Thunder 4, Suns 0

11.1%

In the regular season, the scrappy Phoenix Suns ranked third in the NBA in opponent turnover percentage, forcing mistakes on 16.5% of opposing possessions (just 0.3% less than the Thunder, in fact)!

It was to be a strength vs. strength matchup, as OKC led the league in taking care of the ball during the regular season. If the Suns had any hopes of an upset, it started with flustering Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Co. into uncharacteristic miscues.

Unfortunately, the Thunder are as unflusterable as John Tucker in a thong. As you can guess based on the series brevity, OKC laughed at Phoenix’s attempts to bother them. The Suns have turned OKC over on a paltry 11.1% of possessions, dead last of all playoff teams and well below the Thunder’s regular-season turnover rate of 12.4%. In other words, OKC’s strength only grew stronger when it came up against the Suns’ strongest statistical indicator.

That’s unfair, and a pretty bad sign for everyone else.

Magic 3, Pistons 1

Instead of a stat, let’s start with a GIF. This ought to come with an NSFW warning:

Good god. That scalping by Jamal Cain is the kind of violence usually reserved for HBO high-fantasy shows, but it perfectly encapsulates what’s happened in this series: Orlando is punking Jalen Duren and the Pistons.

There is plenty of blame and credit to go around for the way this series has unfolded. The Magic have played the ferocious brand of defense we’ve waited all year for. Cade Cunningham’s problems with turnovers and three-point shooting have reared their heads for the second straight playoffs. Daniss Jenkins is pounding the air out of the ball, Duncan Robinson can’t defend, and the team’s perimeter guys have struggled to make consistent offensive impacts. The lack of secondary ballhandling and shooting has predictably forced Cunningham to shoulder an Atlassian burden, one that’s ground him to dust by the end of these rock fights.

But Duren’s broad cannonballs were supposed to help carry some of that weight. Instead, his inability to impact the game stands as the series’ — and perhaps playoff’s — biggest individual disappointment.

He will garner some All-NBA votes this season, and he earned a lot of goodwill for carrying the team offensively when Cunningham was out with a collapsed lung. But after averaging 19.5 points per game in the regular season and looking like a true-blue offensive engine on the block, Duren is down to just 9.0 in four games against Orlando. He’s shooting a ghastly 41.7% from the field and has the highest turnover rate in the entire playoff field!

Orlando’s Wendell Carter Jr. is one of the few players in the league as strong as Duren. Unable to overpower Carter, Duren has proven shockingly incapable of affecting the game on offense in any other way, either. Every Duren possession feels like this:

I’ve seen people say that the Pistons aren’t doing a good enough job of delivering the ball to Duren, but I’ve also seen a guy who doesn’t really look like he wants the ball. Every time there’s a close-up on him, Duren has the thousand-yard stare of a guy who is disassociating for emotional protection.

Carter is even lighting up Duren on the glass, although some of that might be due to Duren’s need to step up and play rim protector against the Magic’s bevy of hard drivers.

Let’s be blunt. If Duren were simply playing below-average games instead of catastrophic ones, the Pistons could well be the team up 3-1 right now. The Magic have had their own scoring struggles, and Duren’s defense has been solid. But without any kind of offensive punch, Detroit is bringing silk gloves to a brass-knuckle fight.

Duren’s immense struggles this postseason could seriously cost him on a personal level, too. He bet on himself last offseason by refusing a contract extension. Up until this point, it looked like a genius move (and he’ll still earn a far bigger contract now no matter what happens). But any talk of a near-maximum contract has to be tabled for an offense-first guy who can’t crack double digits in the playoffs, right?

Lakers 3, Rockets 1

61.5%

No team has disappointed me more than the Houston Rockets. Even with Kevin Durant missing two games (in addition to the long-ago losses of Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams), their incomprehensible game plans, lackluster effort, and general discombobulation have flashed like a neon sign in a dark Memorial City strip mall.

It’s been particularly jarring when juxtaposed with the attention to detail that JJ Redick and his similarly injury-riddled team have shown. The Lakers have been the adults in the room.

Of course, it helps when you never miss a shot. LA has a middle-of-the-pack offensive rating thanks to poor offensive rebounding and a ton of turnovers, but they are leading all playoff teams with a whopping 61.5% true shooting. Shooting 51% from the field and 41% from deep (and that’s with going just 5-for-22 in Game 4) across four games will wallpaper over most flaws.

This isn’t pure luck, either. As I’ve noted several times already, Houston’s defense has mostly consisted of gambling for steals, confused finger-pointing, and frustrated shrugs. How many times has a defensive breakdown resulted in a Laker with enough time to sip a margarita before casually flicking the ball toward the goal?

I’ll tell you. In the regular season, 48.3% of the Lakers’ field goal attempts were listed as “open” or “wide open”. In these four games against the Rockets, a young, athletic team that should have no trouble keeping up with LA, that number has risen to 52.6%. That’s a huge jump, particularly given that Houston is ostensibly a defense-first team.

Down 3-1, Houston at least avoided a sweep with a big win on Sunday. But if they want to do more than that, they’ll have to start by forcing the Lakers to miss some shots.

Also, I’m feeling another outdated movie reference coming on. Here’s a bonus stat that made my head explode and reconstitute like Jeebs from Men In Black:

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If you’ve watched any of the Lakers/Rockets series so far, you’ve seen the double-teams on Kevin Durant and LeBron James. They’ve flown fast and furious around the two aging-but-still-super stars, the twin suns that everything else in the series orbits around.

Analyzing Game 2 (Durant missed Game 1), I was struck by some high-level similarities in the defensive game plans of both teams and even more struck by the differences in how those teams responded.

First, the logic. It makes sense to double Kevin Durant. Durant views the double-team as an affront to the spirit of basketball, something that lesser beings do when they can’t meet him on his level. Guess what? He’s right! But that doesn’t make it any less of a useful strategy against a score-first player like Durant, particularly when he’s surrounded by an ineffective supporting cast.

Houston is heavily dependent upon Durant for dribbling and initiation (the absence of injured point guard Fred VanVleet has been keenly felt); only Alperen Sengun (whose limitations these two games have been another story) can be considered even an above-average positional passer or ballhandler. And the Rockets’ coach, Ime Udoka, starkly refuses to play the only other really good shooter on the roster in Reed Sheppard. (Sheppard, the #3 pick in the draft just two years ago and a guy lacing 39% of his triples on huge volume, played just 11 minutes in Game 2. He scored 17 points on 5-for-14 shooting from deep in Houston’s Durantless Game 1.)

Lakers coach JJ Redick knows all this, and I’ve been impressed with both the Lakers’ defensive gameplan and their crisp rotations. The double, after all, is only the first step. A successful pass out almost guarantees a 4-on-3 situation for a moment, and defenders need to move like they’re tied together in a foosball row to close any gaps. Watch how the Lakers send two at Durant not once, but twice, in this excellent defensive possession:

You can smell the rubber burning as Durant tries to process what is happening. Even with Sheppard, Houston has a ton of non-shooters the Lakers can play off of, which makes the resulting rotations much shorter. The LA communication is on point, and no good opportunities emerge.

Sure, the Rockets score, but it’s only because a deflection from Marcus Smart actually helps Houston’s Josh Okogie get a clean run at the basket (and the ensuing offensive rebound). That play goes down as two points, but there’s no chance Houston viewed that as a successful possession.

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On the other side of the coin, the Lakers spent much of Game 2 hunting Sengun in the pick-and-roll. Udoka decided in the second half to send an extra body at James, allowing Sengun to retreat back to the paint. Even on the occasions the Lakers didn’t score, it felt like LA had a clean look:

I hated both the strategy and the execution. The Lakers surround James with guys like Luke Kennard, Rui Hachimura, and Smart. Those players are limited in many ways, but Kennard led the league in three-point percentage for the third time in his career this year, Hachimura has shot above 41% from deep for all three of his seasons with the Lakers, and Smart is, at least, a very willing shooter who went 5-for-7 from beyond the arc in Game 2. Kennard and Smart are capable enough ballhandlers and passers, too.

In other words, these are hard players to shut down if they have a numbers advantage.

Speaking of numbers, I rewatched Game 2 and hand-tracked every possession that featured a double on James and Durant.

LA doubled Durant a whopping 26 times. Two of those resulted in kick balls, which I excluded since they reset the possession without giving either side a major advantage. The remaining 24 possessions generated 26 points, or 1.08 PPP. That’s not as ghastly as you might expect, but the numbers were way worse earlier in the game. 10 of those 26 points came on the final four doubles in the last few minutes of the game, when the Lakers were nursing a lead.

By comparison, the Rockets doubled James seven times, and the Lakers scored 11 points on those possessions — 1.57 PPP.

These are exceedingly small sample sizes, but it’s worth noting how much harder the Rockets had to work to score. In addition to the Smart deflection to Okogie, Houston notched points on a different deflection that ended right in Sengun’s hands. They also had several buckets that came off offensive rebounds, which count, but aren’t always indicative of clean offense.

In addition, the Rockets only made one three-pointer in those 24 possessions. The Lakers generated two in their seven possessions.

From Houston’s point of view, I don’t understand why they felt the need to double-team LeBron at all. Sure, James can score on Sengun. But the King is old enough to remember when the California redwoods were saplings. Can he do it over, and over, and over? If I’m Udoka, I want to see if James has it in him to score 45 points. That beats the alternative of watching Kennard and Hachimura and Smart bomb wide-open threes, doesn’t it?

Part of the disparity is that LeBron has a larger word count in his passing dictionary than Durant. Look at this laser beam to Hachimura:

Durant can’t consistently make reads like that, and frankly, his bricktastic teammates are unlikely to make the shot, anyway:

The Rockets had limited success passing to players like Sengun, Okogie, and Thompson at the free-throw line for burrowing drives to the basket, but those just as often ended in aimless passing around the perimeter or blown contested layups.

The double team is hardly a new or novel strategy. There are counters. In fact, LA has done the same thing to Houston all season, and the Rockets have actually used adjustments in the past! Like, for example, playing Sheppard, who averaged nearly 26 minutes in three contests against the Lakers in the regular season.

Udoka’s distaste for his guard is clear, but he doesn’t have many other options to invigorate a rusty offense. Of course, Sheppard needs to make his shots, but just the threat of Sheppard should lubricate some of the parts.

By contrast, look at what Redick is doing with Luke Kennard, a bigger but arguably even worse defender! Reddick has successfully hidden Kennard away from the action on guys like Okogie and Eason, while the former Dukie has obliterated the Rockets with his shotmaking. Even when Kennard gets caught up in things, he’s done an admirable job of rotating to and away from the double team when required.

Besides just playing their best shooter more, the Rockets need to leverage Durant in more creative ways. They had a beautiful Horns set early in the second that had Durant set a screen for Sheppard, forcing Kennard to switch onto Durant. Amen Thompson roared up from the corner to set a screen on Kennard. Marcus Smart, guarding Thompson, instinctively moved toward the flaring Durant, which opened up a rolling lane down the middle:

That’s a nice use of Durant’s off-ball gravity! Unfortunately, after that one time, I didn’t see a play like it again. Houston devolved into running the same pin-down screens for Durant to come up to the top and get the ball over and over, which allowed the Lakers to keep doubling. The lack of variety absolutely killed the Rockets, who posted the second-worst half-court offensive rating of any team in any playoff or play-in game this season (behind only Orlando from Wednesday night!).

This series isn’t over yet. The Rockets are younger, more athletic, and desperate, and they were in Game 2 right up until the end. Playing at home should give them a boost.

But Udoka will have to bend on principles that he holds dear. It kills him inside to watch various Lakers torch Sheppard in isolation, but he’ll have to swallow and bear it. He’ll need to live with Sengun guarding LeBron James. He might even need to do more on offense than push the “Kevin Durant, do something” button over and over again.

That is a lot of mental grappling and self-reflection required in the 72 hours between Game 2 on Tuesday and Game 3 tonight. But Udoka is coaching for his team’s life, and perhaps his head-coaching career. If not now, then when?

I forgot which coach said this — eight games in two days is a lot even for me! — but someone with a big paycheck said that Game 1s are about fact-finding. And despite a lack of late-game drama, there were plenty of facts to be found.

Let’s briefly examine each series through the lens of one telling play. These aren’t always highlights. They’re just the snippets that help me tell the stories I found most compelling.

Cleveland 126, Toronto 113

This game didn’t feel as close as its not-particularly-tight final score would indicate, thanks to the combined efforts of Donovan Mitchell and Max Strus.

Mitchell, who has the sixth-highest postseason scoring average in NBA history (!!), dropped 32 points. Strus got luus, lacing 24 of his own in the same number of minutes. No play was prettier than this one:

Mitchell gets the steal, races down the court, fakes out the defender with his vehement gesturing, and drops a dime to Strus, who converts the twisting alley-oop layup right as the quarter horn sounds. It was either beautiful or deflating, depending on which team you were rooting for.

Their chemistry went beyond the numbers, too. The Athletic’s Joe Vardon had a very fun story about how Mitchell had to play peacekeeper with an official, Tony Brothers, to keep the quick-tempered Strus out of trouble. Give it a read here.

The other story in this game was Cleveland’s ability to keep the Raptors out of transition. Toronto only had three fast-break points after leading the league with 18.9 in the regular season. While the Cavs had only two themselves, Cleveland is far better equipped to score in the halfcourt. If Toronto can’t get out and run, they won’t be able to keep up in this series.

(Side note: It was brutal watching the Raptors waste a game in which they got eight combined threes from RJ Barrett, Scottie Barnes, and Jamal Shead in the first half alone. The trio averaged less than half of that per game during the regular season!)

(Side note, part deux: Kenny Atkinson was not messing around with this one. It looked like Donovan Mitchell might be done for the night after the Cavs opened up a big fourth-quarter lead, but he popped back in after the Raptors cut the margin to 18 with 3:57 left in the game. Atkinson’s seat might be hotter than we realize; he’s not taking any chances.)

Knicks 113, Hawks 102

As I asked in the preview: What do the Hawks do with Karl-Anthony Towns?

The online spaces are screaming for Atlanta coach Quin Snyder to put a wing (Jalen Johnson? Dyson Daniels?) on Towns and move center Onyeka Okongwu onto reluctant shooter Josh Hart, as many other teams have done. I’m not quite as high on that strategy for the Hawks, and I think Saturday showed why.

Towns had a cold shooting night through three quarters before finding his groove from deep late, but the sheer physicality he played with proved too much for even the Hawks’ centers. KAT drew 10 free throws in this contest. If this is what Towns is doing to Okongwu, what would he do to the far smaller wings?

Jalen Johnson likely is too valuable to the Hawks offensively to carry such a defensive burden and risk foul trouble. Daniels’ ability to take away Towns’ dribble and harass him on the catch is interesting, but Towns could simply shift to the block and mash the skinny guard like a potato.

It was hardly the best Towns night. He had five turnovers and five fouls, and his three blocks only partially offset some bad defensive moments that let Okongwu run wild from deep. But no matter how you cut it, 25 points on 13 field goal attempts is strong offensive output; something probably needs to change. Having a center in the paint to back up the primary defender could help corral Towns, but “could” is doing a lot of work here. Will going smaller help, or play into Towns’ strength(s)?

Orlando 112, Detroit 101

Look at this sexy Banchero pass (sorry for the phone-video quality):

For all the talk of Banchero’s broken jumper this season, it’s his lack of playmaking improvement that has disappointed me as much as anything. After his rookie year, I believed that Banchero could have operated like fellow Blue Devil Jalen Johnson, a legitimate point forward. So far, I’ve been wrong.

He only finished with four assists, but plays like this— the angle, the creativity, the perfect touch — still inspire hope for better in the future.

It’s funny how results determine whether a player is “patient” or “slow.”

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Tonight, the last two playoff series will be finalized. Let’s preview the ones we know the way we always do at Basketball Poetry. Say it with me now: Key Questions and X-Factors.

2) San Antonio Spurs vs. 7) Portland Trail Blazers

Season series: 2-1 Spurs

Somehow, Victor Wembanyama played 65 games this season (including the NBA Cup championship, which counts for award eligibility purposes and nothing else, for some reason?), and none of them were against Portland. Despite that, the Spurs still won the season series.

When even the most optimistic Blazers articles are titled things like “Five Reasons the Spurs Won’t Sweep,” you know things are rough.

Key Question: Can the Blazers score?

Some people are higher on Portland’s prospects than I am, to be fair. But I’ll be dumbfounded if this goes six games.

San Antonio has its flaws, but the Trail Blazers just aren’t particularly equipped to take advantage of them. While Portland has talented individual defenders, no one on the roster can guard Wembanyama. The Blazers are an elite offensive rebounding team, but the Spurs are the best defensive glass-cleaners in the game. And Portland’s shaky shooting (fourth in volume, 27th in three-point percentage) could be death with Wembanyama shutting down the paint.

Perhaps Deni Avdija can have another monstrous 40-point game, bludgeoning his way to the free throw line over and over, to carry Portland to one victory. Expecting more than that is a bridge too far.

I feel bad dismissing Portland out of hand. They’ve been the league’s second-best defense since March 1st, after all. But San Antonio has been the fifth-best defense in that timeframe, and they’ve also been the second-best offense. This simply isn’t a fair fight.

X-Factor: San Antonio’s shooting

The Spurs have actually been fine from beyond the arc this season, sitting almost exactly at the league median for both volume and accuracy. I don’t think even an extended cold streak from downtown will put their series in jeopardy — but it will tell us some interesting things about their future prospects.

As we’ve talked about many times, their spacing comes mostly from the frontcourt. But young guards Dylan Harper and Steph Castle have been hot from downtown of late — both are lacing well over 40% on below-average but non-zero volume since the All-Star break. If those two guys continue splashing, even just a couple of times per game, the Spurs won’t just win this series running away — they might win the whole damn thing.

3) Denver Nuggets vs. 6) Minnesota Timberwolves

Season series: 3-1 Nuggets

They say familiarity breeds contempt. They are right.

The Nuggets and Wolves have split two playoff series in the last three years, and the winner reached the Conference Finals each time. Intriguingly, the principal characters have remained pretty much the same in that timeframe, give or take a Julius Randle.

There’s also a lot of incestuous familiarity between the two franchises at all levels. Guard Bones Hyland was an outcast in Denver, but he’s a fan favorite in Minnesota. Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly helped build the Nuggets into who they are today, and Denver head coach David Adelman was a former assistant under his dad in Minny.

Most of the four matchups were pretty close (although the Nuggets had to deal with a variety of injuries and still came out on top). Denver is clearly the superior team, but they don’t have much margin for error against a Minnesota squad that knows what’s coming and has a history of rising to the playoff occasion. The iffy hamstrings of Aaron Gordon, Spencer Jones, and Peyton Watson make those margins even tighter — if those guys are compromised, the Wolves have a shot at an upset.

I think Denver should win this handily, but unlike in some of the other matchups, there are well-lit paths to a Timberwolves surprise.

Key Question: How do the Wolves guard Jokic?

This is always the question, right? The Wolves made relative hay back in 2024 by putting Karl-Anthony Towns on Jokic and letting Rudy Gobert encamp in the paint like a giant trapdoor spider, a strategy that became more and more popular for teams with two bigs.

Is Julius Randle up to that task?

Randle is one of the stronger power forwards in the league. At times in his career, he’s flashed quick hands, too. But he isn’t as big as Towns, and his defense has gotten slower and sloppier as he’s gotten older. The Wolves are relatively short on playmakers, too, and they can’t afford Randle to fall into foul trouble.

I didn’t see a ton of Randle on Jokic in the regular season. Certainly not enough to draw conclusions. Was that simply coach Chris Finch saving it for the playoffs? Or was it a reluctance born from pessimism?

Regardless, Jokic has averaged 36/15/11 against the Wolves this season, mostly coming at the expense of Rudy Gobert. Something has to change.

X-Factor: The Wolves’ bench

The Wolves have an athletic advantage at several positions. Anthony Edwards has traditionally dominated the Nuggets, and if Watson isn’t around to shadow him, he will continue to do so. Jaden McDaniels has thrived, too.

But for the Wolves to really apply some pressure, they’ll need their rocket-powered bench guys to fly up and down the court, punishing a bad Nugs transition defense. Bones Hyland flamed out in Denver, but has resurrected a career teetering on the edge of oblivion in Minnesota. Trade acquisition Ayo Dosunmu has provided the exact sort of north-south pace-pushing that the Wolves needed. Lineups with the two together have a +7.0 net rating and a transition attack in the 92nd percentile. Hyland is always looking for a hit-ahead to Dosunmu:

I’m confident they’ll swing at least one game. Can they do more than that?

4) Los Angeles Lakers vs. 5) Houston Rockets

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82 games are in 30 different books. The play-in tournament begins tonight and concludes on Friday; real playoff basketball starts on Saturday.

I’ll have playoff previews coming for you at the end of the week, but before the postseason inevitably leaves a sour taste in the mouths of millions of fans, I wanted to take a look back at some of the happy surprises from the season.

Don’t worry, we’ll cover disappointments. And oh, there will be disappointments. I’m at the gym right now, working on my finger wagging. But I’ll wait until the playoff dust settles before I show off those muscles. For now, let’s stay positive.

This is very much a subjective exercise based on internal expectations, so comment below with your most pleasant surprises!

1) A healthy LaMelo Ball

It’s terrifying to consider, but the Miami Heat (or the 76ers or Magic) could summarily end Charlotte’s intoxicating season with one hot night. Everyone is rooting for Charlotte, even some people in South Beach, who just want to see this up-and-down Heat season end with a stake in its heart.

Hopefully, Charlotte advances from postseason to playoffs. But even if they don’t, this season has been a tangible proof of concept. Something here works. And for all of Kon Knueppel’s shooting, Brandon Miller’s two-way development, and Moussa Diabate’s euphoric antler celebrations, it’s Ball’s reliability that steered the way.

I’ve long defended Ball, but that was partly based on projection. What would Ball look like on a competitive team? He’d need to take away one bad shot per game (one is enough; part of Ball’s effectiveness is his mischievous lack of regard for basketball convention). He’d need to try harder on defense. And he’d need to stay out of walking boots.

Mission accomplished on all fronts. Ball has cleared an expert-level limbo bar by playing the best defense of his life; his usage and turnover rates have dropped; and he has played 72 games. 72 games is more than he’d tallied in his previous two seasons combined! You can’t impact games if you don’t play, so some people were beginning to forget just how good a healthy Ball can be.

There are similarities here to Tyrese Haliburton. The statistics will never quite do justice to their impact on their teammates. Players play harder and better when the ball dances around, when there is a little bit of faerie magic sprinkled on the court. Ball chucks fistfuls of it, willy-nilly:

And I can’t stop laughing at his complete disregard for shooting mechanics. Ball’s feet on any given three-pointer look like someone playing QWOP (iykyk):

We’re all better off when Ball is playing ball.

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2) Great new broadcast partners

I can’t really overstate how great the new media broadcast partners have been.

Amazon Prime and NBC/Peacock have featured fantastic on-air talent (Udonis Haslem, Blake Griffin, Maria Taylor, Jamal Crawford, Ashley ShahAhmadi, and many more), some cool presentation flourishes, and, most importantly, new ideas for showcasing the game.

People don’t fully appreciate how much the old TNT/ESPN shows have damaged the NBA’s brand. Sure, I know everyone loved Kenny and Chuck and Shaq and EJ. However, I genuinely believe they are responsible for a significant chunk of the negative tenor in casual discourse around the game today.

Their constant disparagement of the current game and its players over the years have slowly, insidiously poisoned an entire fanbase against the product. “Inside the NBA” was about “Inside the NBA”, not the NBA. (And the less said about the desultory efforts of ESPN, the better.)

To have studio shows that are insightful, fun, and genuinely appreciative of the modern game has been such an unbelievable breath of fresh air; I hadn’t fully appreciated how stale the oxygen had been before.

(Side note: This doesn’t seem to be a popular opinion, but I’ve really grown to enjoy the weird split booth on Peacock that puts Austin Rivers on one team’s bench and Robbie Hummel on the other. Sure, the broadcast can be a little disjointed, but they have garnered some interesting soundbites and tidbits from being so close to the action!)

Peacock and Prime’s successes even caught the eye of their main competitor. ESPN attempted to rise to the challenge this season, as the additions of (now departed) Michael Malone and Tim Legler elevated the actual basketball talk. They tried new things. For example, their awkward VR strategy segments were hardly flawless, but there’s clear potential there.

But Peacock and Prime are the clear leaders in broadcast quality. As long as NBC promises never again to exhume Michael Jordan’s corpse for a shambolic interview, I’ll keep cheerleading the experience.

3) A philosophical Rookie of the Year race

I’ve already talked enough about the rookies in question, but it’s so fun that Kon Knueppel versus Cooper Flagg has been an actual basketball storyline for nearly the whole season. You have to go back to the 2021-22 season, when Evan Mobley, Scottie Barnes, and Cade Cunningham battled, for the last rookie race that was even remotely tight.

This one is arguably even more interesting because of the philosophical differences in the two candidacies! Knueppel’s ability to score a lot without missing a lot for a good basketball team has introduced new variables into the Rookie of the Year equation. The award’s framework is suddenly far more three-dimensional. Counting stats, efficiency, team success, career potential. All of these must be considered, some in ways they’ve never been before. It’s exciting to see voters and media members grappling with new ideas around something with decades of heavy history. It’s something I’ve struggled with, in the best possible way.

Here’s hoping that we get another fantastic finish with next year’s crop of highly regarded rooks.

4) Daniss Jenkins

Jenkins has been the perfect totem for the Pistons as a whole. He’s — scrappy feels too patronizing, too head-patty — snarly? He’s snarly, in your face with both the defense and the trash talk. He’s hit big shots all season long, flashed some playmaking chops, and stepped up his game when Cade Cunningham sat with a collapsed lung and other ailments. It’s been a heavenly season for the former St. John’s player, who appeared in only seven matches last year.

Detroit has wildly exceeded expectations. Everyone on the payroll deserves credit. But they’re also a team that Vegas thinks is fraudulent. I disagree, but I understand why. So many of the core rotation players are bricklayers!

We’ll see how shaky shooters like Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland, Javonte Green, and Kevin Huerter (not a mistaken inclusion in this list) do in the playoffs, when non-perimeter-threats have become increasingly marginalized. I think, or at least I hope, that Detroit’s strengths are strong enough to outweigh that weakness, at least for the first few rounds.

If the lights prove too bright for some of the bigger names on the roster, expect to see a heavy dose of Jenkins. He’s not as big as Holland, Thompson, or Green, and he’s not as quick-trigger as Huerter or Duncan Robinson, but he might be the team’s most well-rounded supporting guard.

5) An active trade deadline

All year, we heard rumblings that this trade deadline would live up to its name as teams grappled with the difficulty of trading under the Aprons Dreadful. There were a few days near the end when the rumor mills were as quiet as the grave.

But there’s simply too much friction in the league for inaction — unhappy players, nervous GMs, angry owners. Sparks will always fly. 27 teams ended up making at least one deal, and while nothing will ever top the shock value of the Luka Doncic trade from last year, there were a number of eyebrow-raising moves involving big names.

Jaren Jackson Jr. to the Jazz. Jonathan Kuminga for Kristaps Porzingis in a distressed-asset swap. The Cavs and Clippers trading point guard old for point guard new in James Harden for Darius Garland. The Bulls collecting every single small guard in the game like Pokémon, and yet somehow trading the best one (Coby White) away for peanuts and Rattatas.

Anthony Davis and Trae Young (not at the deadline, but still!) to the Wizards. Ivica Zubac for a delectably protected pick that could give the Clippers a top-five draft selection this year. Jared McCain to the Thunder, Ayo Dosunmu to the Wolves, Keon Ellis and Dennis Schroder to the Cavs.

That’s a non-comprehensive list of impactful moves made this year, and it’s a serious roster.

A trade liveline is good for business, both personal (you people love yourselves a good trade grade!) and more broadly. It keeps the NBA near the top of the news cycle even during events like Super Bowl week. And it adds a dash of spice to the middle of the season.

Count me in for next year, please.

6) The Boston Celtics

We’ve already talked about Boston plenty and will do so plenty more in the coming weeks. But still.

We’ve got Baylor Scheierman credibly defending Tyrese Maxey and Luka Doncic. We’ve got Hugo Gonzalez, the tree-trunk-legged Spanish rookie drafted 28th overall, becoming a net rating gawd despite almost literally never touching or passing the ball (2nd percentile for usage rate, 0th percentile for assist rate). We’ve got Jordan Walsh attacking the offensive glass like it insulted his mother. We’ve got Neemias Queta turning into a legitimate NBA starter and defensive force. We’ve got Luka Garza hitting one of the most audacious daggers I’ve seen in some time:

The surprise isn’t only that this team was so good. It’s that the Celtics were so fun!

I also want to shout out the Phoenix Suns, in particular, for turning themselves from an offseason laughingstock into a hard-nosed, blue-collar team almost overnight. They’re a lot of fun to watch, and I’ll be rooting for them to emerge from the play-in.

7) A leveled-off three-point attempt rate

Here’s something interesting. For the first time in a few seasons, the number of three-pointers attempted was actually lower both per-possession and per-game than last year.

A lot of people, including players, coaches, and media partners, think the NBA is too three-point heavy. My issue isn’t really the number of threes. It’s the risk of stylistic homogeneity. My dream is an Association where one team can shoot 100 threes and another can shoot zero, and both are equally viable ways to win.

While that’s not happening anytime soon, it is comforting to know that the three-point rate has momentarily plateaued. Players keep getting better and better at shooting from deep, but theoretically, that means defenders have to stay even tighter, which opens up more driving lanes and increases the value of two-pointers. Your mileage may vary here, but I’d like to think those things can find an equilibrium that isn’t too far removed from where we are now.

Eh, epiphany is too glamorous a word. Take the Instagram filter off, and it’s more like I belatedly came to a stunningly obvious conclusion. I’m not an awards voter. So why the f*** am I limiting myself to the NBA’s stupid 65-game rule for these columns?

I’ve traditionally called this article the “most deserving” All-NBA teams. How could I name it that and leave off guys who miss qualifying by fewer minutes than a Scrubs episode?1 I can’t. Unless the league surprises us all and grants Luka Doncic’s and Cade Cunningham’s planned “exceptional circumstances” appeals (I wouldn’t hold my breath; despite his other, more legitimate absences, Doncic could have qualified if he hadn’t been suspended a game for accruing too many technical fouls2, and Cunningham’s collapsed lung, while rare, is still just an injury incurred during normal play)3, this year’s All-NBA Teams will be an absolute sham.

There needs to be a historical record of who really deserved it. Think of the basketball historians sifting through the physical and digital wreckage of society in 50 years, trying to figure out what the hell happened to NBA awards in the mid-2020s. Someone needs to be brave enough to name the 15 best players in the Association this season. I volunteer as tribute.

So I’m throwing off the 65-game shackles. That does not mean that games played don’t count at all; Giannis Antetokounmpo won’t be making my ballot after missing more than half the season. But guys like Cunningham and Doncic? You’d better believe they make it.

Forgive me for the lack of consistency with previous awards, but hopefully you’ll agree that this is better late than never. History needs a record of the real 2025-26 NBA season.

[Oh, and quick note: Don’t forget to check out Good Take, the podcast I co-host for RealGM Radio! Yesterday, we covered the playoffs’ biggest X-Factors (Denver and Detroit fans, this one’s for you), how to weigh off-court behavior in awards voting, and a potential Cavs-Hawks playoff matchup. Listen and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and/or anywhere else. Thanks!]

First Team All-NBA

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder

Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets

Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

Luka Doncic, Los Angeles Lakers

Cade Cunningham, Detroit Pistons

It’s wild that the bottom three of this group potentially might not qualify in real life (and Jokic still needs one more game, although he has no health issues at the moment — knock on wood).

I already laid out the MVP cases for SGA, Jokic, and Wemby. Read that here. Luka Doncic, too, is a no-brainer. He’s leading the league in scoring by more than two points per game4 on nearly 62% true shooting, throwing ridiculous dimes, attacking the boards, and is even tied with two All-Defensive team candidates with 1.6 steals per game.

It’s a shame that late-season injuries have decimated the Lakers’ playoff chances; I would have liked to see if a full-strength Los Angeles squad could have shocked the world against San Antonio in a second-round matchup. Alas, Doncic will have to settle for being on the Poetry All-NBA teams, the sole source of basketball truth.

The fifth spot was difficult. Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell, and Cade Cunningham all had strong cases. Mitchell has played more than the other two, but he’s not quite as good defensively on a night-to-night basis. Leonard has been a two-way monster, but he’s not nearly the playmaker that Cunningham is — and I’m demeriting him for his role in the Aspiration scandal.

All Cunningham has done is prop up a shooting-deficient offense to top-10 levels and lead Detroit to the apex of the East. The Pistons with Cunningham on the floor are an elite +11.0 team, compared to +8.6 for Leonard and +6.6 for Mitchell. And for as much as we like to talk about Doncic’s passing, Cunningham is averaging 30% more potential assists (17.5 per game, behind only Jokic). That’s a lot! Like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Cunningham’s strong defensive performances are both enabled and overshadowed by even better defenders around him. Still, he’s a key part of the league’s second-best unit on that end. He gets the nod.

Second Team All-NBA

Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers

Donovan Mitchell, Cleveland Cavaliers

Anthony Edwards, Minnesota Timberwolves

Jaylen Brown, Boston Celtics

Jamal Murray, Denver Nuggets

Leonard and Mitchell both made my MVP ballot, constrained though it was, so they’re locks here. Leonard’s having arguably the best offensive season of his illustrious career, and he’s bounced back to near-peak defensive form. It’s scary. Mitchell gets the prettiest buckets in the league and has steadied an up-and-down, injury-ravaged Cavs team all season.

IRL, Anthony Edwards is a casualty of the 65-game rule, but he’s been too dominant to ignore. The defense has waned a little more than it’s waxed this season, but he’s in the midst of his second straight year as one of the league’s absolute best three-point shooters, and he’s finally figured out how to leverage his prolific skills and athletic gifts into Martha Stewart craft at the rim (71%!):

There isn’t a player in the league with a bigger disconnect between their advanced numbers (which are still quite good, to be clear) and the eye test than Jaylen Brown, whose case is diminished by consistently poor on/off numbers, inattentive off-ball defense, and meh shooting efficiency.

But the Celtics still boast a +6.0 net rating with Brown on the floor, a mark on par with many other Second- and Third-Teamers, and there aren’t many offensive players who can physically enforce their will upon a game as dramatically. He’s having the best passing and best rebounding season of his career, and he and likely Coach of the Year Joe Mazzulla deserve a lot of credit for refusing to do anything other than win. Even the rosiest preseason projections expected the Celtics to be somewhere around the sixth seed; Brown’s ascendance has raised the team’s floor and its ceiling.

I wish I’d given Jamal Murray a little more love for Most Improved. It’s rare to see an already good player set career marks in everything (points, assists, rebounds, three-point percentage and attempts, free throws drawn, etc.) as a 28-year-old! The notoriously slow starter came into the season looking trim as a Christmas tree, and he never lost a step, even through Denver’s myriad absences. Most notably, the Nuggets finally — finally! — figured out how to score without Jokic. With Murray and without Jokic, the Nuggets still put up 116.5 points per 100 possessions, a slightly above-average mark. That’s a big reason they survived that Jokic-less stretch in the middle of the season.

Third Team All-NBA

Kevin Durant, Houston Rockets

Tyrese Maxey, Philadelphia 76ers

Jalen Johnson, Atlanta Hawks

Jalen Brunson, New York Knicks

Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder

Like Leonard, I’m penalizing Kevin Durant one Team for his absolutely atrocious interpersonal skills (leadership matters!), but the on-court production remains pristine. How is a 37-year-old whose shot diet consists entirely of corn-syrupy jumpers still averaging 25.9 points per game on 52/41/88 percent shooting splits? It scrabbles the mind. And while Durant isn’t the defender he once was, he still grades out positively and consistently nabs sneaky blocks.

I thought about including a GIF of Durant’s shotmaking, but it all looks the same. Pull-up jumper from the free-throw line or turnaround middie from the right shoulder. You can envision them. So can defenders; they just can’t stop them.

Is Tyrese Maxey the most likable superstar in the league? He’s all giggles and daggers, marrying newfound defensive playmaking (Maxey is one of just 15 players on Basketball Reference with a steal and a block rate greater than 2.0% this season!) with his blurring scoring. Sonic the Hedgehog plays Tyrese Maxey videogames.

Maxey has added some unusual finishes to his repertoire, including a scooping lefty cloud-grazer:

He’s also averaging a career-high assist rate. Although bouts of tunnel vision still pop up, it’s hard to blame a guy for the occasional mistake when he’s leading the league in minutes per game.

Jalen Brunson hasn’t been quite as efficient as last season, when he received a smattering of down-ballot MVP votes, but he’s still one of the best offensive engines in the game. He never turns it over and has shown a new willingness to simply be a part of the offense, rather than the center of it. That’s not about his usage, which is the same as last season. It’s about moving off the ball, setting the extra screen, throwing the easy pass rather than dribbling the ball into dust. My favorite Brunson stat: Last year, he averaged a snooze-inducing 6.04 dribbles per touch, most in the league. This year, it’s down to 4.86.

I’ve always loved Jalen Johnson’s all-around game. Most nights, there’s almost nothing he can’t do, as his 23/10/8 line on an above-average 1.17 points per shot indicates. The only thing keeping him from even loftier heights is stringing everything together a little more consistently, particularly on the defensive end, where he’s fallen some. But he’s still had a season great enough to convince an Executive of the Year candidate to reorient the entire team around him.

I had those 14 players well above the rest. My final spot came down to one of three people. I went with Chet Holmgren, the ultimate 3-and-Der. Holmgren finished second in my DPOY rankings. He’s a capable floor spacer averaging nearly 18 points per game. And he’s become a surprisingly stout rebounder (84th percentile for big men in defensive rebounding rate despite playing half his time as a power forward!). Add it all up, and he’s top-10 in many of the acronyms, like EPM and xRAPM.

James Harden is having yet another underrated, brutally efficient season, and Jalen Duren has blossomed on both ends, but neither quite brings the two-way ferocity that Holmgren does. If it makes Pistons fans feel better, I’m almost positive Duren will make an All-NBA team in real life.

Honorable Mentions: Jalen Duren, James Harden, Bam Adebayo, LaMelo Ball (whose on-court impact belies relatively pedestrian efficiency and box score stats), Deni Avdija, Devin Booker (awesome recently but got hot just a little too late), Scottie Barnes, Derrick White, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Evan Mobley, Pascal Siakam, Paolo Banchero, and your favorite non-listed player, whom I’m sure I innocently forgot

(Note: Victor Wembanyama’s bruised rib, incurred last night, could jeopardize his awards eligibility; he needs to play 20+ minutes in one of the Spurs’ remaining three games to qualify. For the purposes of this article, I’m assuming he will.)

Most Valuable Player

I usually don’t have a problem picking this award, but this season really put me through the wringer for all five spots. I said early in the year that picking between SGA and Jokic is choosing between the sea and the sky. That’s changed. Now, we’re choosing between the sea, the sky, and the soil. But a choice had to be made.

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First, an announcement: I’m officially a co-host of a RealGM Radio podcast! Every Thursday, I’m partnering with Wes Goldberg for Good Take, where we talk about the previous night’s games, debate a few things we think aren’t getting enough mainstream attention, and, of course, present our rock-solid, never-wrong NBA takes. You can even vote on YouTube for whose opinion is best! The winner, uh, gets more work and has to do another take the next time. I want that.

I’d consider it a personal favor if you check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RealGM’s new YouTube channel, or anywhere else. If you can get past the first minute, where I blank on the phrase “fait accompli” and my brain stops working, I think you’ll have a good time. Keep an eye out for more every Thursday.

RealGM also has a killer new lineup of pods. Wes has his classic RealGM Radio show on Tuesday with rotating guests, and Jared Dubin and Mo Dakhil (who you may know from their Double Dribble podcast or Dakhil’s frequent appearances on the Zach Lowe Show) are now every Monday and Wednesday. Subscribe to RealGM Radio to stay up to date. Thanks!

Alright, back to the written word. For now, let’s start with an award that definitely won’t make people mad.

Coach of the Year

1. Mitch Johnson, San Antonio Spurs

2. Joe Mazzula, Boston Celtics

3. JB Bickerstaff, Detroit Pistons

Generally, Coach of the Year goes to someone helming a team that either overperformed their perceived talent or landed at the top of the standings. It’s easy to pick this award when a single coach fulfills both criteria. It’s hard when three jefes do it!

Here’s the thing. COY is the award where expectations matter most. And expectations are a personal matter.

I was rather high on Boston’s playoff chances coming into this season, despite their summer talent exodus. I was too low on San Antonio, who I thought would be a middling play-in team.

Both squads will finish near the top of the standings, and the Spurs have an outside shot at the league's best record.

To be clear, Mazzulla has a very convincing COY argument! He’s led the Celtics to the two-seed despite an overhauled rotation and the absence of Jayson Tatum for most of the year. A coach famously confident in his basketball beliefs significantly altered his approach, leaning heavily into the midrange game and offensive rebounding to supplement an offense missing two of its three best passers (Tatum and the traded Jrue Holiday). They rarely foul (sixth in opposing free-throw rate) and have the second-lowest turnover rate in the league.

They are, to put it simply, extremely well-coached. I looked back at my previous years’ winners, and Mazzulla has a stronger case than many of them, if not all.

But Mitch Johnson still gets it for me.

Yes, he’s had Wemby for more of the season than Mazzulla has had Tatum (though it’s worth noting that the Spurs went 11-5 without their alien). But that’s an overly simplistic way to think about things. This Spurs roster is talented but wildly unconventional. It’s like someone hit a random number generator on every attribute from height to ballhandling to shooting 15 times.

The team’s three ballhandlers (Stephon Castle, De’Aaron Fox, and Dylan Harper) can’t hit a barn door with a shotgun, but make hay at the rim. The team’s forwards (Julian Champagnie, Harrison Barnes, and Keldon Johnson) are three of the team’s four best shooters, and Wembanyama is next in line. Their offense relies heavily upon their maximum-contract point guard setting off-ball screens and spacing the floor for a rookie and a second-year player. Their #2 overall pick happily comes off the bench.

Johnson has created an offense that’s top five in shots coming on off-ball screens and top five in transition despite his best player being a center averaging 3.0 assists per game. His defensive game plan is unique, befitting its star. No team in the league is as adept at communication and pre-switching to ensure their big man stays near the rim; it’s almost impossible to move Wembanyama out of the paint if he doesn’t want to be moved.

The Spurs’ defense is so good that they can even help off of the league’s best shooters without issue. Watch as Wemby blocks this shot at the rim; the real magic is in how quickly Devin Vassell (having a nice defensive season!) recognizes his rotation and sprints to Hauser in the corner. Vassell’s hustle didn’t even come close to mattering, but that’s the point:

Johnson has found the right mix of rolling and popping for Wembanyama and has generated space for his bevy of ballhandlers to sashay to the rim. The Spurs, miraculously, are fourth in halfcourt offense this year (better even than the Celtics!), which I simply could not have fathomed in the preseason. I looked at all these poor-shooting guards and limited forwards and foresaw an offensive disaster. Johnson saw a canvas.

There’s actually a heated battle for third place, too, but Bickerstaff deserves it. The Pistons have run away with the Eastern Conference virtually from the jump, haven’t missed a beat without Cade Cunningham (as I predicted), and have unleashed some of the most terrifying perimeter defenders I’ve seen since, well, last year’s Thunder. (But since a long time before that!)

Bickerstaff has fostered tremendous growth, both offensively and defensively, in his two best players, Cunningham and Jalen Duren (more on him below!). He’s even cobbled together a brutally efficient offense that relies upon Cunningham’s brilliance, free throws, and offensive rebounding. Most importantly, the team keeps winning, no matter what happens.

Veering back, Johnson won’t win the award in real life, and that’s fine. Nearly every media person with a vote I’ve seen or heard has already Sharpied in Mazzulla for the honors (although Bickerstaff is somehow the betting favorite, so maybe I’m reading/listening to the wrong guys). Mazzulla is phenomenal and, like I said at the top, more than deserving (even if he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want the award). Johnson also still needs to show what he’s made of in the playoffs, although I’m pretty confident he’ll be great.

Before we move on, I have a few honorable mentions. Jordan Ott’s ability to keep the Suns at the top of the play-in mix despite injuries and offseason departures has been inspiring, and I wish I could reward him further. Charles Lee has the sad-sack Hornets playing the league’s most exciting basketball. All Mark Daigneault did was lead the Thunder to the Association’s best record while missing his second-best player for most of the season. None of those guys quite crack the ballot for me, although I respect anyone who puts them on theirs.

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Defensive Player of the Year

1. Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

2. Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder

3. Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves

I talked about all these guys at length in my All-Defensive Teams, so check that out for meatier analysis.

There is absolutely no controversy at the top of this list. Victor Wembanyama will be the Defensive Player of the Year if he qualifies; the only drama remaining is seeing if he can do so as a unanimous choice.

The real question is who deserves to be second and third. Chet Holmgren and Rudy Gobert have very similar cases. Both are top-10 in the five all-in ones I looked at (EPM, LEBRON, DPM, Net Points, and XRAPM), and both are elite rim protectors.

While Gobert has decent defensive support, maximum-security jailers back up Holmgren. Gobert has the slightly worse on-only team defensive rating and much starker on/off splits to support that.

But Holmgren is denying everything at the rim — he’s the only qualifying player (yes, including Wemby) allowing less than 50% shooting at the rim. And while Gobert is a one-man army in the middle, Holmgren is nearly as good there while also dominating defensively as a power forward; I value that versatility.

It greatly pains me to leave off Ausar Thompson and Derrick White. Unfortunately, all else being equal, elite defensive bigs are more valuable than their counterparts on the perimeter (although White does have some major rim-protection chops). That shows up in the numbers and on tape.

But still, look at this effort from White. He throws the alley-oop, touches the opposing baseline, then flies back with supersonic speed to contest a Pelle Larsson finger-roll. Nobody else on Boston bothered to try; it was a 20-point game with 1.5 seconds left in the half. But White never lets up:

He’ll have to settle for a likely All-Defensive First Team nod.

Most Improved Player

1. Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Atlanta Hawks

2. Jalen Duren, Detroit Pistons

3. Ryan Rollins, Milwaukee Bucks

Thankfully, this season, I don’t need to go on my typical spiel about how high-profile second- and third-year players don’t deserve MIP. (I have no doubt I’ll be dusting that one off next season, when at least one of this year’s fabled rookie class will explode).

I can’t say enough about how fun Alexander-Walker’s evolution has been. A roller-coaster career seemed like it had stabilized at reasonably rarified air in Minnesota as a rock-solid 3-and-D-and-a-little-more wing. This season, he’s more than doubled his previous career scoring average of 8.5 points per game by dropping 20.6 points per night. He’s doing that on excellent 60.5% true shooting, too — the second highest of his career.

Alexander-Walker is bombing from deep (39.4% on eight attempts per game) and attacking the basket with a wide array of wiggly, jiggly moves:

That flair has carried over to his passing. Watch this Harden-esque self-nutmeg:

Basketball is more fun to watch when the players are having fun. Alexander-Walker is enjoying the time of his life.

NAW’s ascendance (he’s still very strong defensively, too) partially allowed the Hawks to change course midseason, and they’ve flourished with a Jalen Johnson- and NAW-centric attack. He’s the second-best player on a likely playoff team.

Like Alexander-Walker, Jalen Duren is scoring a whole lot more and in more complicated ways. His efficiency is technically down, but his 68.3% true shooting still leads the league, which is even more impressive when you consider that dunks dropped from 44% to 25% of his shot diet!

Still, Duren has always had plentiful offensive talent (which is shining like a lighthouse in Cunningham’s absence, by the way). His improvement on the other end is more surprising. He won’t be making my All-Defensive teams anytime soon, but he went from an abysmal defender to a solid one under Bickerstaff’s tutelage. (Advanced metrics actually love his defense, generally putting him in the 80th percentile or higher, but I think that’s giving him too much credit for Detroit’s success on that side.)

Finally, Ryan Rollins has been one of the few visible constellations during Milwaukee’s dark and stormy nights. He more than tripled his previous career scoring average. 17.1 points per game on exactly league-average true shooting (58.1%) and excellent long-range marksmanship (plus his typical solid defense) make a compelling case that Rollins isn’t just a fringe NBA player but a starter-quality one. That’s a monstrous stride from a guy who was clinging to his professional life a year ago.

Rookie of the Year

1. Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

2. Cooper Flagg, Dallas Mavericks

3. VJ Edgecombe, Philadelphia 76ers

This was tough. Knueppel is a better defender and Flagg a (slightly) worse one than expected, but the Mav is still significantly stronger on that end. He’s a more creative passer, too, although you can make a strong argument that Knueppel is a stouter positional rebounder.

Flagg also has survived an ecosystem that set him up for failure. He had to play point guard out of the gates because Nico Harrison forgot to sign one in the offseason. He had to deal with the relentless media hoopla surrounding Anthony Davis and the Luka Doncic trade (which eventually led to Harrison’s firing). He still has to elbow his way through defensive crowds because the roster has no spacing outside of a wind-eroded statue of Klay Thompson and Max Christie. He’s on a team that stopped trying to win games months ago.

While carrying all that, Flagg had to live up to the insane hype that’s followed him for years. He has!

But it hasn’t quite been good enough to surpass his former teammate.

Knueppel’s greatest strength is obviously the shooting, as we talked about in the All-Rookie Team selections. But it’s worth pointing out that while Flagg’s efficiency (understandably!) struggled under an immense burden, Knueppel was just as good to start the year, when the Hornets were injured and horrible, as he has been now.

Knueppel’s per-75 stats when the Hornets started 4-14? 20.3 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.0 assists on 65.4% true shooting. Since then, when the Hornets are 37-22? 22.0 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists on 63.9% true shooting. Knueppel has been playing winning basketball all season; it just took the rest of the team a while to catch up.

Should that matter? It seldom has before, but that’s partially because, as wrote this morning, rookies almost never play winning basketball for good teams. I struggle with whether I’m moving the goalposts on this one, but there are few historical precedents for a rookie this good playing such a big role on even reasonably successful teams. That ought to matter. Right?

Knueppel has also played 230 more minutes than Flagg, if you care.

Flagg, partially by dint of his size, is a more well-rounded player than Knueppel. His bountiful athletic gifts give him a higher ceiling. I’d begrudge nobody who wanted to give the award to him, and I feel bad that I can only pick one player. But the most important part of winning basketball is efficient scoring, and Knueppel has been better at that than all but the biggest names in the league (without significant drop-offs in other areas). The fact that he’s been either the best or second-best player on one of the Association’s hottest teams seals the deal.

Edgecombe barely holds off a surging Dylan Harper for the third spot. Both rookies play large two-way roles on successful teams (a wildly successful one, in San Antonio’s case). Advanced stats are generally pretty positive on each, too.

Fair or not, Edgecombe has had a bigger opportunity in Philly. While Harper is better at getting to the rack, Edgecombe’s relatively reliable three-point shooting makes him an easier fit in any lineup. And because he can be on the court next to anyone, Edgecombe has also been an absolute demon in crunch time. Almost nobody in the league, rookie or not, has as many highlights in the last few seconds of the game.

I talked about Edgecombe’s clutch threes already, but here’s another example. Against Golden State, down one with just eight seconds left, Edgecombe gets a steal on an inbounds play. Then, on the ensuing possession, he gets a tough go-ahead tip-in that’s followed by an insane Tyrese Maxey game-saving block. You should watch the whole sequence (skip to the 14:25 mark for the good stuff):

That said, there are an unusual number of high-ceiling/low-floor rookies (seemingly half of whom are on the Pelicans!). To me, there’s a pretty clear gap between the top seven rookies and everyone else, and heavily-flawed players fill the Second Team. That’s typically how it goes.

However, I’ve never had such a problem picking between traditional box-score-filler-uppers on bad teams and small-stats darlings contributing to winning basketball. We’ve seen a lot more of the latter than we typically do. How do you weigh potential versus present-day impact? An increasing number of rookies came in and were positive forces right away on good teams. They probably should be rewarded.

I am very unhappy with the balance I’ve struck.

Reminder: The NBA’s 65-game qualification rule does not apply to All-Rookie teams.

All-Rookie First Team

Cooper Flagg, Dallas Mavericks

The #1 pick wasn’t quite the promised defensive destroyer, but he made up for it with a far stronger scoring vocabulary than I expected.

The three-point shot waxed and waned, but he was a dominant bucket-getter anywhere around the basket. Off the dribble with either hand, silky fadeaways, brutish post play, tricksy footwork married to soft touch. Defenders had no idea what to do with Flagg when he was 18 years old and routinely shattering every age-related record LeBron James had set; how can they hope to stop him when he has a few seasons under his belt?

Generous rounding grants Flagg averages of 20/7/5 while shooting a hair under 70% at the rim. The fact that he isn’t the runaway ROY winner speaks to the shocking success of our next honoree.

Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

I’m not a college guy, so I’ll be honest: I was skeptical of Kon. Books, I shan’t judge thy covers e’er again.

It’s not just that his perceived weaknesses weren’t dealbreakers, although his surprisingly stout defense (particularly chasing guys around screens) does a lot to raise his floor. It’s that his strengths are so much stronger than he showed at Duke!

Knueppel is cracking 43.3% of his triples this season on 8.0 attempts per game. Of qualifying players, that’s the 10th-most tries in the league, and the best accuracy of anyone shooting even five per game. The craziest thing? He’s actually shooting a hair better on pull-up triples than catch-and-shoots. Creating a three off the dribble is superstar stuff, and very few players do it better than Knueppel.

He doesn’t get to the rim a ton, but he has some of the league’s best touch from the short midrange. Knueppel is a scorer, not a shooter, and that’s an important distinction. If the defense holds up in the playoffs (right now, teams prefer to go at LaMelo Ball, anyway), I’m not putting a cap on his potential.

VJ Edgecombe, Philadelphia 76ers

Edgecombe is putting up 16/6/4 while shooting 36% from beyond the arc on decent volume (he had a 7-for-15 game from deep the other day!). He’s developing an off-the-dribble game that utilizes his bursty athleticism, and he’s theater in transition.

He’s also a beast in the clutch! I had a bunch of lines in my notebook about Edgecombe’s hitting clutch jumper after clutch jumper, and lo and behold, his 12 clutch three-pointers are second-most in the league! On a team with Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and Joel Embiid (well, some of the time), it would be easy for him to defer in big moments. Instead, he jumps into the limelight:

Edgecombe is also a pretty good defender. He’s listed at 6’4”, 180 pounds, but he looks and plays much, much stronger than that weight would indicate.

There’s some pre-injury Victor Oladipo to Edgecombe’s game, but he might be an even better athlete than the former Slam Dunk Contest participant. Advanced stats, typically bearish on rookies, already think he’s an above-average player, and he’ll never be worse than this.

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Publicly available defensive metrics are useful but are far from bulletproof (particularly for perimeter defense, where they help assess total impact but don’t provide many whys). The eye test is essential. So is an understanding of what, exactly, a team is trying to do on defense.

That challenge is what makes it fun! More than any other part of the awards discourse, there’s plenty of room for reasonable disagreement. Little separates the league’s seventh-best defender from its 17th-best.

That’s why I pick three teams. Officially, the NBA selects only two, but that’s a holdover from the late ‘60s, when the league had a grand total of 14 franchises. The Association has more than doubled in size since then; really, I should probably be picking four teams. Maybe next year.

I also like getting my All-Defensive Teams out a few days earlier than everyone else. These last few games, many against tanking teams, won’t change my feelings much, and it’s rewarding to ink my thoughts before other people’s choices might influence me.

Methodology notes: I’ll be sticking with the NBA’s 65-game, 20-minute limit, which disqualifies several players deserving of consideration, such as Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Suggs, Alex Caruso, Zach Edey, Herb Jones, Derrick Jones Jr., and many more. Although a few of the players below are right on the border of qualifying, I’m assuming they’ll stretch for 65 games if they have a chance.

The selections are positionless, so there will be a small bias at the top towards rim protectors. I don’t care much for minutes or games played as long as someone qualifies, with the caveat that I give the benefit of the doubt to starters/closers who have to defend against higher-level competition than backups do.

When doing this exercise, I combine my game notes with a spreadsheet that includes dozens of stats of varying degrees of usefulness. That creates the initial list. I then do another round of film study to tighten everything up. It’s a long process; I love it, but I’m glad this week is over. Let’s use Miami’s Dru Smith to illustrate how I combine everything.

Smith tore his Achilles on December 23rd, 2024. He returned less than nine months later, playing in the Heat’s preseason game on October 4th, 2025 (two weeks faster even than Jayson Tatum’s incredible recovery). Smith doesn’t average 20 minutes per game; he won’t qualify for the awards.

But all he’s done is become the Heat’s best perimeter defender, hitting the top 20 in LEBRON, EPM, and XRAPM1. He leads the entire NBA in deflections per minute and Databallr’s stop percentage.2 Smith harasses guards up and down the court, helping Miami force its breakneck pace on the other team.

Smith’s hidden talent is switching onto the roll man without opening up a passing lane:

There isn’t a more unlikely defensive success story in the NBA, and he deserves his moment.

Now, let’s move to the main event. This is a doozy of an article, and it takes me a whole season to prepare. If you enjoy it, please don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe! And I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

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All-Defensive First Team

Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

Assuming Wembanyama finishes the year strong and hits the 65-game benchmark, he’ll likely be a unanimous Defensive Player of the Year. He’s first in LEBRON, EPM, and XRAPM (but a measly third in DPM — what’s going on there?), and there isn’t really a statistical case for anyone else.

Wemby’s paint protection numbers are out of this world. He leads the league in blocks per game, of course. Opponents almost never get to the rim when he’s on the court, and they make fewer than 60% of their shots the few times they do.

Every game, you’ll see ballhandlers scoot into the lane and panic when they realize Wembanyama is coming over. Even tried-and-true mechanisms for avoiding elite shotblockers, like using the rim to protect a reverse layup, falter next to Wemby’s greatness:

And despite living in the paint, Wembanyama is seldom in foul trouble.

Wembanyama boasts a stop percentage of 5.0%, just a hair behind Smith. Despite the presence of Luke Kornet, a very good defensive center in his own right, Wembanyama has the highest defensive on/off numbers in the league. The Spurs give up 13.5 points per 100 possessions fewer with him on the court than off.

Plus, I mean, c’mon:

He has a whole career left to play, but there’s a real chance Wembanyama will go down as the best defender in the history of the game.

Ausar Thompson, Detroit Pistons

When giving my DPOY to Amen Thompson last year, I mused that I might well be rewarding the worse twin. With a full year of health, Ausar has emerged as the most dominant perimeter disruptor in the league, marrying jailer one-on-one positional defense with freaky block, steal, and deflection rates. His arms are everywhere. I bet he gives great hugs.

Thompson is the rare player where the stats and the eye test both scream the same thing. Despite a propensity for picking up fouls, Thompson is third in LEBRON, second in EPM, and third in DPM. Outside of Wemby, he has by far the craziest defensive highlight reel you’ll see this season. Pairing generational athletic gifts with an impeccable eye for timing generates some fun results. Watch as he helps off of Kawhi Leonard to snuff out a James Harden layup:

People don’t usually feel comfortable helping off of MVP candidates. Harden still doesn’t know what hit him.

The wild part is that Thompson has plenty of rough edges to sand off. Going for blocks and steals that wouldn’t be possible for the rest of the league is part of his appeal, but he can easily cut out some of his worst fouls and be even better on that end. Health permitting, I suspect I’ll be including him on these lists for the next decade — if he qualifies. He’s had a bunch of games with fewer than 20 minutes played, and while he should make the 65-game rule, he doesn’t have much margin for error.

Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves

There are only so many ways to say that Gobert is an elite paint protector, but as Kevin Durant found out in the Rockets’ ghastly overtime loss to the Timberwolves, he’s pretty darn good on the perimeter in a pinch, too:

That’s sort of Gobert in a nutshell. It rarely looks pretty, he constantly seems on the verge of falling over, and yet it almost always ends with a stop.

Gobert started off the season looking like a DPOY contender before trailing off a bit as the Timberwolves’ general malaise caught up to everyone. But we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Gobert’s mere presence ensures an elite defense regardless of his infrastructure or supporting cast. Gobert is top-10 in all four of the all-in-one metrics I looked at. Even taking into account that there isn’t another real center on the roster, the on/off metrics are astonishing.

It sounds small, but nobody in the NBA is better about keeping their arms up on defense. When those arms can encircle the Earth, that’s meaningful.

There might only be one person I trust more to anchor a defense.

Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder

Holmgren and Gobert are vying for the title of the second-best rim protector in basketball. Gobert has the edge in one-on-one post defense, but Holmgren is a legitimate game-changer in aerial combat.

Out of players who have contested at least 300 attempts at the rim, Holmgren’s 48.0% FG% allowed is the lowest by far; Wembanyama is second, at 52.4%. He’s not quite the same level of rim deterrent as Gobert or Wembanyama, but he’s averaging more blocks than Gobert on a per-possession basis, and he has a little more versatility as a defender (often playing power forward next to Isaiah Hartenstein). He’s even rebounding at career-best levels.

Like Gobert, Holmgren is top-10 in LEBRON, EPM, DPM, and XRAPM; I haven’t made my DPOY ballot yet, but as his placement on this list indicates, he’ll be a strong contender for a spot.

Derrick White, Boston Celtics

What a bounce-back campaign for White. He slipped last season, missing my All-Defensive teams for the first time in years, but he’s been arguably better than ever this season. White is sixth in LEBRON, fifth in EPM, and fourth in XRAPM. He’s not perfectly airtight in one-on-one defense, but there isn’t a better help defender in the league. He’s a tremendous communicator, pointing and directing and yelling at teammates; Boston’s defensive IQ collectively rises a few points whenever he’s on the floor. Proof: The Celtics are 11 points stingier with White on the floor than off, a bigger number even than Neemias Queta (who is backed up by two of the worst defensive centers in the league, mind you).

There might not be a better shot-blocking guard ever, and they aren’t all of the helper-leaping-over-from-the-corner variety. Please and thank you, Kel’el Ware:

Somehow, at 31 years old and with his largest offensive role ever, White is averaging the most blocks and second-most steals per possession of his career. Usually, the more you do on offense, the less you can do on defense. Not so with White.

All-Defensive Second Team

Cason Wallace, Oklahoma City Thunder

Fun fact about snakes: Boa constrictors don’t squeeze the life out of their prey all at once. Instead, they tighten their coils bit by bit, adjusting based on their trapped prey’s breathing and heartbeat, until the heart beats no longer. It’s grim, but efficient.

Don’t know why I thought of that. In unrelated news, here’s Cason Wallace pacing, poking, prodding until the offense dies:

The Thunder generate a ton of turnovers by creating panic. Wallace’s role as the point-of-attack defender is where it all starts. He presses as soon as they cross halfcourt (if not earlier), forcing ballhandlers into desperate escape passes that gum up the offense. Sometimes, he doesn’t even give that much clemency:

Of qualifying players, only Ausar Thompson averages more steals and more deflections per possession. Wallace is top-five in LEBRON and EPM, and he’s far more versatile than he’s given credit for. It’s clear he picked up some tricks for defending bigger players from teammates Lu Dort and Alex Caruso.

In fact, he may have surpassed those two. Caruso can wear down. Dort gets into foul trouble. Meanwhile, Wallace is always squeezing, squeezing.

Bam Adebayo, Miami Heat

Adebayo’s strengths have never really popped in the individual statistics. He’s not a monster rim protector, and he doesn’t generate some absurd number of steals or blocks. But the Heat have had a top-10 defense in every one of his nine years. Adebayo’s ability to do anything on the court is the skeleton key that unlocks that success.

He might be the best one-on-one defender in the league, full stop. While teammate Kel’el Ware has plenty of individual defensive issues, one of the nice things about having him on the court is that it frees Adebayo to wreck guys on the perimeter. He’ll even play at the top of Miami’s unconventional zone defenses on occasion!

Adebayo’s most underrated skill is that he’s a voracious rebounder and an excellent box-outer. It’s unsexy, thankless work. The Heat are an elite defensive rebounding team thanks to his ability to conquer space when the ball is in the air. (I thought about including a box-out clip here, and decided that was too boring even for me.) Put another way, the Heat are a 94th-percentile rebounding unit with Bam, and an 11th-percentile rebounding team without him.

And finally, Bam never bails out the offense. He’s in the 99th percentile for foul avoidance. Adebayo is an exemplar of the youth-coach maxim to play defense with your feet, not your arms. There are no lazy reaches, no wild block attempts that end in a midair bodyslam. He’s in the right place at the right time, all the time.

Scottie Barnes, Toronto Raptors

Barnes is tied with Ausar Thompson for the second-most stocks (steals + blocks) per game at 2.9, and only he, ball magnet Paul Reed, and Mitchell Robinson average at least two steals and two blocks per 100 possessions. Those giant arms of his swing like trebuchets, pinning the ball against the backboard time and again. He makes an astonishing number of big plays in crunchtime, too, as he anchors the Raptors’ league-leading clutch defense.

Overall, the Raps’ defense is quite good when he’s on the floor and falls off pretty dramatically when he isn’t. The only thing holding him back from greater glory is weirdly anemic rim protection numbers, as Barnes consistently allows >60% at the rim, a meh mark even given his relatively undersized status.

Still, Barnes has routinely made his mark as a defender with game-saving plays, and he’s been at the center of the Raptors’ playoff push this season.

OG Anunoby, New York Knicks

Like White, Anunoby was another of my previous honorees who slipped a little last season only to bounce back this year.

95% of the time, when we talk about a defensive anchor holding down an entire unit, we’re talking about big men: Wembanyama, Holmgren, Gobert, etc. But Anunoby is right up there with those two, not merely steadying a defense that starts very weak links at point guard (Jalen Brunson) and center (Karl-Anthony Towns), but leading them to a best-in-class defensive rating for half the season so far. That’s right, the New York Knicks have had a top-five defense since January 8th, 36 games ago, and they’re ninth overall!

Sure, that’s an arbitrarily chosen cutoff point, but think about how little Anunoby and coach Mike Brown have to work with on this end — and there hasn’t even been much shooting luck. It’s a water-to-wine miracle, if we’re being honest.

It helps that Anunoby is one of the league’s premier wing stoppers and one of its most capable backline help defenders. He’ll put you in a box and ship you off like a belated birthday present, or he’ll jump out of the shadows like a C-list horror villain. There isn’t a more well-rounded defender in the league.

Kris Dunn, Los Angeles Clippers

Dunn was excluded from the NBA’s official teams last season due to the 20-minute rule. He had a staggering number of 19-minute appearances. This year, coach Ty Lue (to his belated credit) made sure his guy would qualify: 10 of Dunn’s games have come with between 20 and 22 minutes of playing time, versus just two below 20.

Truthfully, though, it’s not like Lue has had to stretch himself. Dunn’s been solid enough to justify the increased PT thanks to an uptick in shooting percentages all over the court. That just-good-enough offense has given Dunn free rein to spread terror. Watch as he scares the sh*t out of Kevin Durant, sprints back to recover onto Tari Eason, forces two changes of direction, and absorbs a shoulder from the much bigger Eason, allowing his teammates to get set:

That’s not a sexy highlight or an example of Dunn at his apex. But it is the kind of hard-hat effort that Dunn routinely brings, working to turn great shots into good shots and good shots into decent ones and decent ones into bad ones until the offense is all out of gas and nobody is quite sure why.

Dunn’s advanced numbers aren’t quite as sublime as they are for some other guys on this list (although they’re still very good), but I bet if you asked opposing coaches who they don’t want to deal with, Dunn’s name would be right near the top of the list.

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All-Defensive Third Team

Evan Mobley, Cleveland Cavaliers

There’s been a tangible aura of disappointment around Mobley’s offense this year, and I wonder how much that has impacted him on defense. This isn’t just a narrative thing, either; the all-in-one stats are significantly lower. He still anchors a strong Cavs group that has an above-average defensive rating with or without Jarrett Allen, even though there isn’t a ton of defensive talent in the lineups around him.

Few big men are as mobile on the perimeter, and even fewer are still blocking nearly two shots per game. Although Mobley’s strengths are prodigious, his lack of weaknesses is even more impressive.

Want him to corral a ballhandler? No problem. Show and recover? Your wish is his command. Defend the paint? Goes without saying. There are a ton of parallels between Mobley and Adebayo, but their defensive Swiss Army knifeness is the most obvious.

Hopefully, this year is just a temporary blip, and he’ll go back to competing for DPOY trophies next season. In the meanwhile, I hope this isn’t too faint praise — he’s still a beast!

Dyson Daniels, Atlanta Hawks

Daniels is penalized a bit because he’s sort of a one-trick pony who hasn’t been as great at the thing he’s great at, dropping from 3.0 steals per game last year to 1.9 this season in nearly identical playing time. That said, getting a steal is the best outcome of any possession, so it’s still a pretty good trick!

Daniels routinely faces the toughest matchups. He’s the best in the league at poking the ball out from behind a ballhandler, whether off the dribble or in the post. And he does it so contemptuously:

In a stunning turn of events, Daniels has now drawn three charges. That’s three more than all of last season!

I wonder sometimes what Daniels would look like if he could play like a perimeter Jaren Jackson Jr., guarding worse players while floating around and hunting for steals. There would be problems with that scheme from a team perspective, but it sure would be fun to watch.

Amen Thompson, Houston Rockets

Usually, I highlight the good things that players do when I grant them my majestic, made-up awards. Unfortunately, Thompson, my DPOY last season, has slightly disappointed me this year.

I noticed something was wrong when I went through my game notes. Last year, every Rockets match had multiple line items about Thompson’s freaky defense. This year? Mentions were much fewer and farther between.

The metrics heavily support this. EPM/LEBRON? Down. Block rate? Down. Defensive rebounds? Down. Steal rate? Down. Houston’s defensive rating when Thompson is on the floor? Up (which is Down, feelings-wise).

Thompson is playing a metric ton of minutes and handling a bigger offensive load. It’s taken a small toll on the other end. He’s still been awesome, just a tiny bit less awesome.

Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers

This won’t be a popular choice, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

Leonard isn’t quite the human straitjacket he was at his Klaw peak, but he’s still somehow averaging significantly more steals (2.0) than fouls (1.4). Nobody is more likely to take a baby’s candy3. The Clippers’ defense is a whopping 7.2 points per 100 possessions stingier when Leonard plays than when he doesn’t (and that mostly holds without the traded Ivica Zubac on the court, too).

Defense, particularly perimeter defense, is typically a young man’s game — just look at this list. So much about it requires the sort of quick-twitch movement that fades as players cross the Rubicon of 30. But Leonard’s preternatural instincts haven’t aged at all. For a player so often described as robotic, he brings a fluid economy of motion that’s almost unique.

The advanced metrics are unusually split on him. LEBRON and EPM think he’s merely been above-average, but DPM and XRAPM both put him as a top-10 qualifying defender in basketball. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle, but my eyeballs agree with the latter two.

Leonard doesn’t always take the toughest matchups anymore, but there isn’t a wing more tactically or mechanically sound. I hope guys like the Thompsons are taking notes.

Leonard won’t make the real teams; everyone acknowledges that he’s been great, but all the focus has been on his offense. He has a much better chance at All-NBA than at All-Defensive. But Leonard remains, if not as dangerous as ever, pretty goddamn dangerous.

Toumani Camara, Portland Trail Blazers

Per Synergy, Camara presses more than any other guard in the league, and boy, does that come through the TV screen. I hope Camara flosses; he’s breathing down his man's neck all game long.

All that pressure gets in guys’ heads. Camara is on pace to set a new tracking-era record for offensive fouls drawn (Lu Dort had 93 in 74 games back in 2022-23; Camara has 92 in 73 games this season). He doesn’t believe in personal space. The ropy guard is averaging more than one of these per game:

Even early-2020s Dort wasn’t chasing guys around for this many feet, however. Camara is the Association’s most annoying defender — and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

Honorable mentions: Stephon Castle (my toughest cut, but he’s one year away; the fouls can be sloppy), Marcus Smart (a strong statistical case that doesn’t quite match my personal eye test — YMMV), Lu Dort (advanced metrics hate him compared to everyone else on this list, and although I’ve defended his physical playstyle in the past, he’s slid under a few too many shooters’ feet for my tastes this season), Jaden McDaniels, Draymond Green (noticeably a step slower this year, although certain advanced metrics still love him), Trae Young (just making sure you’re paying attention!), Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (overrated defensively last season, underrated this season), Neemias Queta (maybe my favorite story of the season), Tari Eason, Javonte Green, Ron Holland, Anthony Black, a whole bunch of other guys who don’t or are highly unlikely to qualify

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ESPN projected them for 46 wins. DraftKings, 47.5. I don’t predict specific records, but I had them seventh in the conference. The preseason consensus was that the Lakers would be a slightly-above-average team. This wouldn’t be a gap year, necessarily, but it would be a season in which they could find their bearings, figure out what to do with Austin Reaves (set to decline a player option) and LeBron James, and begin the hard work of pivoting toward a Luka Doncic-centric roster.

And for the first 58 games, that’s more or less what happened! Just a few weeks ago, I wrote:

Much like LA’s defense, my thoughts on this team are incohesive. I suspect the Lakers are mediocre. I think they suspect they’re mediocre.

Watching the Lakers has been a slog for much of the season, and the team's general joylessness was exacerbated by endless media coverage of said joylessness. (Try having reporters ask you a dozen variations of the same three questions every night and see how chipper you are.)

After their dispiriting loss to the Devin Booker- and Dillon Brooks-less Phoenix Suns on February 26th, their third straight defeat, the Lakers seemed to be spiraling. Every day dawned a new crisis.

LeBron James missed a bunch of games with injury and was lost in the shuffle when healthy, fueling speculation about his Lakers future that overshadowed nearly everything else. Luka Doncic’s complaining was somehow louder than his league-leading bucket-getting, while Deandre Ayton thought playing like Clint Capela was worse than playing like Deandre Ayton (it’s not). The team’s supporting characters cycled between inconsistent, injured, or ineffectual on a daily basis like they were spinning some sort of cosmically cursed destiny wheel. They were winning more than they were losing, but it sure didn’t feel like it.

Somehow, things turned around overnight. Starting with a February 28th win at Golden State, the Los Angeles Lakers ignited into one of the hottest teams in the NBA, winning 12 of their last 13 (including nine straight) before falling to the Detroit Pistons in a sloppy but hard-fought game last night.

Unlike some other recently streaking teams like Atlanta, this hasn’t been done solely at the expense of the league’s marshmallow men. In March alone, the Lakers have beaten New York, Minnesota, Denver, Houston (twice!), Miami while on the second night of a back-to-back that saw them arrive in South Beach at 5:00 am, and Orlando.

Those Western Conference wins against standings peers were incredibly important. A few weeks ago, LA was flirting with the play-in. Now, they have two fewer losses than the Rockets, Nuggets, and Wolves in the race for the third seed.

As you might expect after a long string of success, the vibes are as sunny as the SoCal weather. Luka Doncic is putting up MVP-worthy numbers. Austin Reaves is healthy again. LeBron James and Deandre Ayton have found their roles. Marcus Smart is Marcus Smarting.

But all of that, while true, obscures an even bigger driver of recent success. I’ll allow ESPN’s Kevin Pelton to explain:

In other words, anytime a team has a surprising hot or cold streak, you might want to check three-point percentages before anything else.

Let’s look at a table with some relevant statistics, excluding last night’s loss:

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First, second, and third, I hope Cunningham is okay. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure lungs are important. A collapsed one sounds bad! Cade will reportedly miss “an extended period of time,” which is ominous, too. Let’s hope for the best. ESPN just added that he’ll be re-evaluated in two weeks, and that the collapsed lung is considered mild. Cade and the team are clearly still figuring things out on the fly, but it doesn’t sound that serious, all things considered.

We don’t know too much yet, but the fabulous Jeff Stotts and his comprehensive medical database made me feel a little better:

26 days lost on average. The Pistons currently have 25 days left in their regular season. The playoffs will begin approximately a week after that, so in about a month.

The good news: Detroit can survive without him for a while.

There is a misconception that the Pistons are entirely reliant upon Cunningham for wins. While the team is more than eight points better with Cunningham on the floor than off, they have actually outscored opponents by 2.7 points per 100 possessions when he rests, which is what you’d expect from a roughly 48-win team (that’s typically against backups, so take that with a shaker of salt).

In more tangible terms, they’ve gone 5-2 without him in the seven games he’s missed this year (6-2 if you include their win against Washington when he played just five minutes). I don’t expect them to win 75% of their remaining games, but they won’t go 3-11, either.

Poetry favorite Daniss Jenkins figures to step into a starting role, and while he is nowhere near the level of offensive creator that Cunningham is, 6.5 assists per 75 possessions ain’t half bad for a backup point guard. Plus, he serves them saucier than required:

Jenkins will help the team lean even further into its slavering defensive identity, too.

For more offense, the team will likely give much-derided Caris LeVert a shot at some secondary initiation — while he’s had a down year, a confident version of LeVert might be the best off-the-dribble guy the team has now. Tobias Harris will undoubtedly soak up some shots, and if anyone can get him the ball consistently, Jalen Duren will feast.

That said, the Pistons don’t have quite as much cushion as they’d like. They have a 3.5-game lead on the Celtics for the top seed, with only three games against clear tanking teams left (Washington, Milwaukee, and Indiana). Thankfully for Detroit, Boston faces just two, and the Celtics have a slightly harder remaining strength of schedule overall.

New York is five games back of Detroit. That’s not quite far enough away to entirely dismiss as a threat, but the Pistons would have to completely derail to fall behind the Knicks.

However, I do wonder if Cunningham won’t push to come back earlier than he should, thanks to the NBA’s 65-game rule. Right now, Cunningham has played in just 60 qualifying games. He’ll need a handful more to qualify for an All-NBA team (where he’ll be, at minimum, a Second Team selection) and MVP voting (where he has a strong chance to hit the bottom of the ballot).

Cunningham is already on his supermax contract thanks to an All-NBA team nod last year, so he doesn’t strictly need it from a monetary sense, but being so close to qualifying again would be tempting for anyone. I’m a little worried Cunningham could try too hard to return and risk some kind of re-injury. Of course, this isn’t a pulled hammy or sprained ankle; I’d hope there are brighter lines between “go” and “no-go” for the body’s premier breathing apparatus.

Regardless, while Cunningham’s injury doesn’t seem likely to derail him or the team from the playoffs, it does throw a wrench in the Pistons’ plans. They’ve struggled to score of late against quality opponents, and their chances of finding a rhythm before the postseason are essentially nil now. Will conditioning be an issue for a returned Cunningham?

And while earning the one- or two-seed in the East has traditionally meant taking a breather (no pun intended) in the first round against play-in cannon fodder, this year’s potential opponents could include red-hot teams like the Atlanta Hawks (winners of 11 straight!), Charlotte Hornets (who have the best starting lineup in the league, somehow), Orlando Magic, or Miami Heat. None of those matchups projects to be the sort of pastry trot we’ve seen in years past.

The Pistons have faced plenty of disrespect all season; many sportsbooks gave them just the fourth-best odds of winning the East even before the news broke this morning. We’ll check back in after a few weeks to see if this is merely a bump in the road or a catastrophe.

First, let’s count our pipping chicks before they fully hatch and congratulate NBA fans in Seattle and Las Vegas. I am very glad for all the beleaguered Sonics fans out there, who have suffered for a long time and will undoubtedly embrace their team with open arms.

The Vegas market is a little more uncertain. It’ll be interesting to see if crowds respond to a team that’s bad for a few years out of the gates, unlike the WNBA’s Aces and the NHL’s Golden Knights. Fans in the desert aren’t used to expansion teams behaving like expansion teams! And big sports teams have suddenly flooded the Vegas market; can it support the Aces and Golden Knights and MLB’s Athletics and NFL’s Raiders and NBA’s ____s? Being last to the party isn’t a good thing, even if the league has done its due diligence.

It’ll be fine. Presumably.

Second, the league will make oodles of money. More fans in new areas, bigger TV contracts, the potentially 11-figure expansion fees, etc. While I don’t care about the owners getting paid even more, it’s generally a good thing if the league is thriving financially (though this is worth a more nuanced conversation at some point).

With those thoughts out of the way, let’s discuss the impact of adding two new teams with a good old-fashioned pros and cons list.

Pro: The expansion draft will rule

Every website, blog, and podcast around (besides this one, which I’ll rectify eventually) has already run a mock expansion draft, which will likely allow the two teams to alternate picking 15 players, one from each team in the league. (There are explicit expansion rules spelled out in the current CBA, but there are opt-out clauses that could require a new CBA before the expansion draft, so nothing is set in stone.)

The messy transparency of existing teams having to pick and choose which players on their roster to protect (if things stick according to the past, they’ll have eight protection spots available) is delightful carnage. As a human, I feel bad for the players left to dangle in the wind, their futures thrown completely in doubt. But as a nasty fan of basketball drama and conflict? I love it.

In other sports, we’ve seen new teams get very clever with their leverage. Famously, the Golden Knights were basically a bunch of mafia insurance salesmen: “Nice Matt Dumba you got there, Minnesota. Be a shame if something were to happen to him.”

Those kinds of deals, in which an incumbent franchise gives up some concession to an expansion team to ensure a valuable but unprotected player isn’t picked, are well-established. But what if we see the opposite?

Hypothetically, what if the New Orleans Pelicans decided they wanted out of the Zion Williamson business? Perhaps they could incentivize Seattle or Las Vegas to take on his contract by sweetening the deal with draft compensation. I doubt something that seismic will happen, but there’s a lot of room for future executives all across the Association to get creative. Fun possibilities abound.

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I’m leaving off the obvious, All-NBA choices. We’d all love to mainline guys like Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, and Donovan Mitchell into our bloodstreams every night, but superstars aren’t the only eyeball magnets. I also typically don’t include rookies, since it’s natural to be curious about them (apologies to Boston’s Hugo Gonzalez and Washington’s Jamir Watkins, both of whom would have made it otherwise). And I try not to have guys I’ve put on previous lists, which excludes players like Naji Marshall.

This isn’t a list of great players; several aren’t even all that good. But for one reason or another, something about them always drew my attention. My type becomes pretty clear doing this exercise. I like highlight dunks, hard defense, scrappitude, attitude. If that sounds like the tagline for a millennial teenybopper toy brand, well, so be it.

Apparently, I skipped 2024, but here are my lists from 2025, 2023, and 2022, in case you’re curious.

Feel free to chime in with your favorite viewing experiences in the comments!

All-Poetry First Team

Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte Hornets

Made entirely out of scrap metal and springs, Moose makes opponents double-check that they’ve gotten their tetanus shot. He is one of the easiest guys to root for in the NBA.

Eric Collins and Dell Curry, the Hornets’ broadcast crew, love him. His teammates love him. The fans really love him. His goofy moose-antlers celebration is hilariously earnest and endearing.

Only person I can think of who doesn’t love Diabaté is Jalen Duren.

So many fans sitting at home like to think they would try harder than the average NBA player, despite the fact that they can’t keep a Duolingo streak going longer than a week. I find that train of thought insulting to NBA players generally, but Diabaté proves that maybe some dudes really do have an extra gear.

“All I do is crash into other people,” Diabaté once said, but that’s far too modest. Remember when we thought the Hornets’ center rotation would be a disaster? Diabaté has been an above-average starting center, per EPM (barely, but I’m pushing a narrative here). He’s also a major part of a Charlotte Hornets’ starting lineup that’s spanking everyone they face.

And it’s rare, but every once in a while, Diabaté will whip out a move so pretty you hope it’s insured:

Let’s go ahead and give Diabaté the captain’s “C” for this year.

Ron Holland, Detroit Pistons

Holland is a ravenous beast, a hellhound sent from the hot place to make ballhandlers’ lives miserable. Few players can combine his size (6’8”) with such skittery lateral movement. Holland doesn’t actually force the turnover here, but look at how he teleports to the side and knocks Devin Vassell’s dribble out of bounds:

The funny thing? He got the steal on the ensuing inbounds play, because of course he did.

(Side note: If you know someone in your life who complains that NBA teams “don’t play defense anymore,” I want you to force them, Clockwork Orange style, to watch Pistons/Spurs from February 23rd, 2026. That game had some of the greatest defensive plays you’ll ever see in one 48-minute package.)

Holland is still very limited offensively, but he has his fair share of highlight dunks in transition, too. And he’s a premier agitator, getting under opponents’ skin with physicality and ceaseless chatter. Whenever he’s on the hardwood, you know that something is going down.

Elijah Harkless, Utah Jazz

Harkless doesn’t get much burn (shooting 32% from the field might be a contributing factor), but by the basketball gods does he make the most of it. There isn’t a single player I’ve watched with a higher “Holy f***!”-to-minute ratio, and that includes all the superstars.

Harkless is 6’3” but strong as a creatine-addicted ox. He locks guys up and melts the key. Coach Will Hardy has put him on everyone from Reed Sheppard to Jaylen Brown to Nikola Jokic (whom he irritated with constant deflections). He doesn’t just enjoy the tough assignments; he revels in them. Thorn in the lion’s paw, thy name is Harkless.

Watch how he stops Derrick White’s fast break with a poke from behind, pulls the chair on a driving Jaylen Brown, and contests the Payton Pritchard miss — all on one possession. That chair pull, in particular, should be hung in the defensive Louvre:

Harkless, sadly, won’t play enough minutes to earn a spot on my imaginary All-Defensive Team ballot, but that has nothing to do with his ability. I dearly wish that Utah’s player development system can wring enough out of him offensively so that he can become their version of Kris Dunn.

Jordan Miller, Los Angeles Clippers

The third-year Clipper wing had been one of Summer League’s top performers two seasons in a row, so I’d been waiting for him to get his chance. He didn’t find it so much as rip it from coach Ty Lue’s grasping paws.

Injuries slowed his start to the year, but Miller permanently entered the rotation with a 21-point performance against the Nets in January. He’s averaged 11.6 points per game since on 53% shooting from the field while chipping in a steal per night.

Those numbers don’t do justice to the sheer coolness that Miller exudes. I had to watch this video like three times to understand what he did to Kyshawn George here:

Miller has serious vertical pop and a knack for a ‘90s-era brand of scoring. He doesn’t have the quickest first step, but he’s strong and technically gifted. He’ll reverse-pivot into leaning fadeaways that role players aren’t typically capable of making (or allowed to take in the first place), or slow-step his way through a crowded lane to squeak out a layup, or fling up these awkward-looking yet somehow effective catapult floaters.

Miller isn’t the biggest reason the Clippers have stayed hot since trading away Harden for Darius Garland, but he’s not the smallest reason, either.

Stephon Castle, San Antonio Spurs

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A few years ago, when Basketball Poetry was just a wee young blog, Donovan Mitchell scored 71 points in an overtime game, and the Internet lost its collective mind. Puerile demands for asterisks abounded. Mitchell had the temerity to shoot free throws when the other team couldn’t stop him! He took a few bad shots in overtime with the game in hand to try and get to 70! Egads, where are my pearls??

Most fans aren’t like that, no. But a quick scan of any social media timeline shows too many people who are. Folks, please, I beg you once again.

Stop caveating greatness.

An infinitesimally slim percentage of players have a chance to make history. The few who stumble upon one have a right, nay, a responsibility, to chase it.

For comparison, Wilt Chamberlain’s record-setting 100-point game was hardly “ethical,” whatever that means. His team won that match 169-147, and he scored 31 in the final frame while playing all 48 minutes. I find it highly unlikely that those 31 were necessary to run out the clock on a beaten opponent. It’s obvious that Wilt (who may as well have invented stat hunting) wanted to get to triple digits.

Who cares? As sports fans, we should be living for these moments. Chamberlain’s line is legendary. The famous 81-point Kobe Bryant game, now moved to third on the list, is an NBA all-timer. Adebayo’s game will be, too.

Were there some shenanigans down the stretch? Of course. With two minutes-ish left and Bam in the mid-70s, the Heat began fouling to get the ball back quicker. The Wizards, not enough people are noting, tried fouling other players to ensure that Bam couldn’t get his opportunity (perhaps the best coaching of Brian Keefe’s career!), and the Heat’s Keshad Johnson responded with a purposeful missed free throw (a very good one, actually, although Adebayo didn’t secure it). Erik Spoelstra used a hopeless challenge to overturn a charging call, which predictably failed.

The Wizards double- and triple-teamed Adebayo, forcing him into several airballed jumpers, but they simply couldn’t get out of their own way. More accurately, they couldn’t get out of Bam’s way, as they sent him to the free-throw line approximately a million times. Adebayo hit some clutch ones down the stretch, running on fumes and the kind of adrenaline that only the chance at unexpected glory can provide.

You’d think he’d have urinated on a Kobe mural in Los Angeles.

The free-throw complaints, in particular, are so frustrating to me as a fan and analyst. As I wrote about Mitchell back in the day:

Donovan earned those free-throw attempts because the Bulls, quite clearly, couldn’t stop him. What happens when a guy scores at will? The other team starts whaling on him in frustration and desperation. This is a natural outcome, especially for a guy like Mitchell, who was living in the paint all game.

Ditto that for Bam. He didn’t get all of his 43 attempts in the last two minutes of the game. The Wizards were as effective on defense as my old toy army men, set up to be stomped on by the remote control Godzilla I got for Christmas one year.

Anyone complaining about the whistle didn’t watch the match. He had 31 points after one quarter, 43 points, his career high, at halftime, and 62, the Heat franchise record, after three quarters. The tanking, hapless Wizards had no answer for Adebayo anytime he got the ball in motion. He was the Juggernaut, unstoppable once he gained the tiniest skosh of momentum.

It was awe-inspiring, if not as aesthetically beautiful as Bryant’s 81 or even Mitchell’s 71. It was a superior physically dominating an inferior to a degree we’ve literally only seen one other time in NBA history.

And it was awesome.

You don’t have to say this was a better game than Bryant’s. It wasn’t! But don’t diminish Adebayo’s incredible accomplishment as somehow lesser, for any reason.

(Ironically, the biggest beneficiary of Adebayo’s scoring outburst may well be his All-Defensive Team case. I haven’t been seeing him in nearly enough All-Defensive conversations, and I suspect that this publicity will be great for him in that regard.)

“NBA fans don’t like anything about the NBA,” tortured poet Kevin Durant once proclaimed, and while I don’t think that’s true, it sure feels that way sometimes. Comparison is the thief of joy, and all that. Most of us enjoy the fact that we just saw real basketball history made, the kind you can tell your grandkids about and have them actually care.

Kobe Bryant’s 81-point box score still hangs in my high school bedroom, framed in cheap, cracked wood. I wasn’t a Lakers fan; if anything, I was a hater. But even as a teenager, I knew what I had witnessed.

I don’t have a paper newspaper subscription anymore, something I’ve never regretted more than I do now. But you can bet your ass (probably on FanDuel or Kalshi) that I’m gonna drive out to a store tomorrow and find one.

The Heat

The Heat have won five in a row and eight of their last 10 despite missing All-Star Norman Powell for much of that stretch. You always need to check the schedule when a team gets hot in March, and sure, you might think it was the early 2010s with the number of cupcakes in South Beach. But the Heat have smashed the Rockets, the white-hot Hornets, and conference-leading Pistons during that time, suggesting it’s not all a fluke.

Zooming out a little further, the Heat are 10-5 since Feb 1st, but boast the fourth-best offense and the third-best defense in that stretch.

The Heat have some unusual statistical signifiers. For example, on the season, the team’s offense has been average and their defense fantastic (Bam Adebayo and Erik Spoelstra’s ability to create an elite defense out of Twinkie wrappers and chew toys ought to be studied in laboratories). But if we only look at their performance against top-10 teams, we see the opposite: The Heat’s offense has actually been really good, and their defense has been mediocre.

Could there be a hint of the recent vintage Indiana Pacers in here? The Heat’s offense is the fastest in the league by a metric mile and runs an unusual system more heavily predicated on isolations and quick drives to the basket than traditional hand-off and pick-and-roll play (although they’ve added back a little more of that with Tyler Herro’s return). Is it possible that their offense is better suited to the playoffs than the regular season?

Miami certainly doesn’t have a defense-proof superstar like Tyrese Haliburton, so I’m not trying to suggest that there’s a potential Eastern Conference champion here. But there’s also far more upside with this Heat team than we’ve seen in the last few years, and they look primed to make someone uncomfortable in Round 1 — if they can escape the play-in, anyway.

Reed Sheppard

Don’t look now, but Sheppard is finally looking like a third overall pick.

Coach Ime Udoka has fed Sheppard the steadiest minutes of his career since he notched 16 points while starting in a win over Oklahoma City back in early February. That was the first of 13 straight games with double-digits, during which time he’s averaged 18 points, five assists, and four rebounds (with generous rounding). That’s come on 48% shooting from the field, including 44% on a whopping 8.7 long-balls per game.

Sheppard isn’t an every-night starter, but he closes more often than he doesn’t. Udoka still doesn’t trust Sheppard defensively, but he’s at least beginning to appreciate the chaos that Sheppard’s viper-quick hands and semi-random gambles can create:

Anecdotally, it does feel like Sheppard is trying to meet Udoka halfway by reining in some of his worst manic moments, but like with Sheppard’s defense overall, we’ll see if that holds up over a larger sample.

Still, Rockets fans and league watchers at large have been clamoring for some consistency in Udoka’s approach with Sheppard all season. The second-year guard is making a strong case for a permanent featured role.

Aaron Gordon

You know Aaron Gordon is important to the Nuggets, but you might not know just how important.

Without Gordon, the Denver Nuggets allow 119.8 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions, just a hair better than the Brooklyn Nets’ 27th-ranked defense.

With Gordon, the Denver Nuggets allow 111.3 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions, just a hair worse than the San Antonio Spurs’ third-ranked defense.

In other words, the Nuggets are a bottom-five defense without Gordon and a top-five one with him. That’s the difference between a championship contender and a potential first-round flameout.

Gordon has just two games under his belt since a six-week absence due to a recurring hamstring injury, and to my eyes at least, he still isn’t moving quite right (an explosive first quarter against OKC last night almost made me rewrite this, but he struggled the rest of the way).

The Nuggets, who are 17-8 with Gordon and just 22-18 without him, can’t really afford to cocoon him in bubble wrap like a safety-obsessed spider. They are currently in sixth, just 1.5 games ahead of the play-in Suns and 1.5 games back of the third-seeded Timberwolves. The annual Western playoff crunch is getting real, folks.

Speaking of which…

The Lakers

I’ve spent all season trying and failing to develop a comprehensive thesis for this team. Every time I think I’ve figured them out, they prove me wrong, for good or for ill.

The team is 39-25 despite a paltry +1.1 net rating that reflects a barely-above-.500 team. They’ve weathered an enormous number of injuries. They’ve lost to almost every really good team they’ve played. They dominate in the clutch.

Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic have been fantastic together (on both ends!) since last year, as long as LeBron James isn’t on the floor. Per game, Doncic is leading the league in points, field goal attempts, three-point attempts, and free throw attempts (and if you ask him, he should have twice as many of the latter).

Marcus Smart is way, way too important. Deandre Ayton is a mess. Deandre Ayton is shooting 67% from the field. My initial distrust of Jake LaRavia has been proven right (so far). Remember Dalton Knecht? Me neither. Maxi Kleber shows up once a week, seemingly at random. Even if he isn’t shooting as many triples as you’d like, Rui Hachimura deserves credit for developing into a stone-cold sniper (>40% from deep for the third straight year).

I don’t know. Much like LA’s defense, my thoughts on this team are incohesive. I suspect the Lakers are mediocre. I think they suspect they’re mediocre, although I wouldn’t say that to Luka’s face. But the Lakers won’t be scared by a first-round matchup against anyone but the Thunder. Do Houston or Minnesota really want to face a fire-breathing Doncic while JJ Redick draws up a quadruple drag screen for Luke Kennard (who will inevitably pass up the shot, but still)? Doubtful.

Even if you, like me, have a healthy skepticism of this team’s playoff chances, there is still a lot to watch for. It will be a big summer for the Lakers, who have a new, much richer owner and a lot of guys with things to prove down the stretch. To start, Reaves is due a bag. Whether it’s BIG money or BIg money or merely Big money will largely be decided by his play in the spring. Ayton has a player option for next year, as does Smart. Rui Hachimura will be a free agent. This could be the end of James in purple and gold, which will open up a legend-sized hole in the rotation.

The Lakers have a whole lot to think about. The next few months can change everything in the City of Angels.

Jayson Tatum

This is the most predictable and boring answer on here, but that doesn’t make it less true.

Tatum has looked solid in his first two games back for Boston. The touch on the shot isn’t quite there (he’s gone 6-for-16 in both games), and he’s understandably still working on reacting to game speed. There was an awkward foul on Donovan Mitchell early in Boston’s win over Cleveland, where it looked like Tatum wasn’t sure what he wanted his body to do, and he came up well short on a dunk attempt after a nice move to the rim against Dallas:

But he’s at least looked confident enough to attempt dunks in a half-court setting, including a putback to get his first points of the 2025-26 season. He has already played 27 minutes in both games, more than I was expecting right out of the gate, and his defense has generally been pretty sound.

Boston isn’t locked into the two seed, but they have a three-game cushion on the third-seeded Knicks and are 2.5 games behind the suddenly struggling Pistons. There is a small margin for error as Tatum works his way back into prime form. Nobody was expecting him to dominate right out of the gates, but he’s already starting from a good spot.

The C’s have the hardest remaining schedule of any good team, with an important bout against the Knicks following two games against OKC and one against San Antonio tonight. Tatum will be thrust right into the thick of things. No time like the present.

Julius Randle

Randle, more than most, is prone to elongated highs and lows. Trade rumors linking the Wolves to Giannis Antetokounmpo sent Randle into a tailspin he has yet to pull out from.

Randle has been in a slump since the start of February, averaging 18 points on just 44% from the field and 21% from deep, down from 22 points on 49% from the field and 34% from deep previously. That downturn looks even sharper when you remove a recent 41-point outburst against Portland. His assists, steals, and impact metrics are all down, too. Randle’s always worn his heart on his sleeve, but right now, he might need to put it back in his chest. The effort level has been more of an effort floor:

The Timberwolves are 8-2 in their last ten games, so it hasn’t crushed them. Yet. But their remaining schedule is exceedingly difficult, with matchups (sometimes multiple) against pretty much every good team in the league.

I picked Minnesota to return to the Western Conference Finals this season, which means beating one of Oklahoma City or San Antonio. They will not be able to do it if Randle, who had an uneven but overall successful postseason stretch last spring, can’t bounce back to near his best. Heck, if he can’t, they might not even make the playoffs — the play-in monster is lurking, waiting hungrily to ruin some team’s season. It’s not picky.

An energized Randle is a solid defender and arguably the team’s best passer, two things he hasn’t been of late. He needs to find his joy with a quickness.

This year, there are some unexpected names near the top of the list. As of this writing, through games played on March 4th, 2026, 32 pairings had connected on at least 70 assists. Let’s peek at the top dozen, sorted by assists per game.

1) Tyrese Maxey → Joel Embiid, 2.90 assists/game (90 total)

Embiid was the play finisher for the top pairing when I did this exercise halfway through the 2022-2023 season, too, although that was with ol’ Jimmy Harden slinging the rock. That year, Harden led the league in assists, and he and Embiid connected a whopping 5.3 times per game. That’s bonkers! Maxey and Embiid are barely doing half of that!

We might not see a connection quite that strong ever again, as the league swings away from heliocentric pick-and-roll-dominant attacks in favor of more egalitarian drive-and-kick and motion-based offenses. We certainly don’t see it this year.

But I don’t want to discredit how surprisingly successful the Maxey/Embiid pairing has been. Maxey is setting career-highs in assist rate and assists per game, while Embiid’s physical issues haven’t hampered him much as a scorer inside the arc (at least, compared to how he’s struggled on defense). Lineups with both Maxey and Embiid have scored an astonishing 122.7 points per 100 possessions, in the 94th percentile.

What’s even more interesting is that PBP Stats pegs exactly half of these assists as being midrangers, the highest rate of any of the 12 groups we’ll be talking about today. Embiid’s midrange jumper has long been one of the league’s deadliest, and he’s relying upon it more frequently than ever (a career-high 28% of his shots are long middies). Watch this play:

Maxey puts so much pressure on teams with his speed that he frequently draws two defenders, opening up passing lanes to his partner. The Pacers actually defend this okay, forcing Maxey to pass a bit behind Embiid so that Tony Bradley has enough time to recover back to Embiid. The big man hits a ridiculous one-footed fadeaway anyway. (Watch teammate Kelly Oubre’s exasperated hand flip in the corner: I’m open, I’m open… ugh, fine, good shot, I guess).

Facing a tandem like Maxey and Embiid, defenses feel a similar resignation to their fate.

2) Jamal Murray → Nikola Jokic, 2.82 assists per game (127 total, most in the NBA)

8) Nikola Jokic → Jamal Murray, 2.24 assists per game (101 total)

You know it, you love it, you’ve seen it a million times. The Jamal Murray/Nikola Jokic two-man game has been the most unstoppable and versatile force in the Association for years now, and they snag two of the top eight spots. Jokic is perhaps the greatest passer in league history, while Murray and Jokic are both rugged screeners and difficult shot makers.

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(And in an act of reprehensible SEO self-sabotage, we won’t be discussing any iconic cultural institutions — although I did giggle when I saw that they were playing the Orlando Magic on Magic City Night. Naturally. The Hawks have always had a creative ops team.)

What’s gone right?

Jalen Johnson

Any discussion of Atlanta’s best moments this season starts with Jalen Johnson, the fifth-year point forward who supernova’d even before Trae Young was dealt (in just nine games with Young this season, Johnson had averaged 25 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists on 63% true shooting).

Although Johnson hasn’t quite maintained that scoring efficiency for the season, he stayed healthy and was a no-brainer All-Star thanks to his Hungry Hippo rebounding, slingshot passing, and a relentless downhill style that consistently earns layups and free throws. Few players have as many options on the fast break; even fewer use them better. There’s an ease to his athleticism. He doesn’t jump so much as glide:

Johnson’s three-pointer is still a question mark (he’s down to 34% from deep on slightly below-average volume), but it’s at least functional. And the other parts of his offensive game have blossomed.

Reminder: Johnson is on an absolute bargain of a contract that pays him a flat $30 million for four more years after this one. Health will always be a concern, but that little contract for this much talent is a major competitive advantage.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker

Johnson has been flanked by another of the year’s breakout players, Nickeil Alexander-Walker. NAW was an offseason steal, signing a four-year, $61 million deal that looked decent at the time but has since become one of the league’s best.

Performances that would’ve been outliers in previous seasons have become standard. To wit: Alexander-Walker had five 20+ point games last season for the Timberwolves. He matched that by his 13th bout in an Atlanta jersey, and he’s averaging 19.8 points on the season on above-average positional efficiency.

While the pull-up three-pointer remains a work in progress (just 29% on the year), Alexander-Walker has shown a startling amount of shifty self-creation inside the arc:

Both Johnson and NAW have allowed their defense to slip as their offensive production exploded, but that’s undoubtedly a trade the Hawks will accept for now.

Okongwu’s mask

Onyeka Okongwu has had his finest season as a pro by far. 16 points per game while shooting 39% from deep on 5.4 attempts per game is no joke, and while the box score numbers don’t show it, this is the first season I’ve really felt comfortable with his defense (after all, the defensive talent around him is largely lacking). I was a little skeptical of Okongwu despite a hot streak that started in the second half of last season. I was wrong.

But I’m not really here to talk about Okongwu the player, as nice a story as that is. Instead, I’m here to talk about The Mask.

No, not the Jim Carrey vehicle. I’m talking about this thing:

Okongwu got some chiclets knocked out thanks to a flagrant elbow from Jaylen Brown, and this demonic contraption is what the medical staff decided would be most protective post-dental surgery. It sure looks scary!

That mask will be in my nightmares long after I’ve forgotten the rest of this season, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Trades (Part I)

We’ve already discussed NAW’s impact as a sign-and-trade with the Timberwolves.

A more recent deal for Jonathan Kuminga was generally met with shrugs around the league, but I was a little higher on it than most and remain encouraged. Kuminga has only played three games for Atlanta, and he still looks reluctant to fire from deep. But he’s averaging 21/8/3 while playing confident, carefree ball and racking up monster plus/minuses (against bad teams, to be fair). I’ve seen him smile more in three games than I did in the last three years with Golden State.

Kuminga’s fit with another shaky shooter in Johnson remains to be seen (they’ve only shared the court for a handful of minutes), but they have completely different roles on offense. And with that infamous team option going into next year, the Hawks can spend the rest of the season evaluating Kuminga’s long-term place on the squad without needing to sweat too much.

At worst, the Kuminga bet is a worthy flier given that they were able to offload Kristaps Porzingis (don’t worry, KP is coming up in a different section). It hasn’t taken long for people to remember why Kuminga was such an exciting prospect in the first place:

And the team is yet to reap the dividends of its draft-day heist with the Pelicans that resulted in the team obtaining New Orleans’ unprotected 2026 first-round pick (or Milwaukee’s, depending on which is more advantageous to Atlanta) in exchange for moving down a few spots in the 2025 draft.

N’awlins spent most of the season in the basement. But as the sole terrible team still trying to win, they are, of course, hot right now — 6-4 in their last 10. They currently have the sixth-worst record in the league, but they only have five games left against tanking teams. They might be able to claw out six or seven more wins down the stretch, which would likely place them as the seventh- or eighth-worst team.

The Pelicans coming in eighth from the bottom would give the Hawks a ~26% chance at getting a top-four pick, and almost certainly a top-10 selection at worst (in addition to the more modest chances offered by Milwaukee’s potential pick). That could give Atlanta one more major building block to pair with the rest of its promising young core.

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What went wrong?

Trae Young

The Trae Young of it all is hard to pin down. Young had clearly lost all value around the league, and the team wasn’t excited to pay him a large extension in the offseason. Still, losing a longtime franchise pillar in exchange for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert can’t feel great (even if I just pegged CJ McCollum as my Sixth Man of the Quarter).

Young meant a lot to Atlanta Hawks fans. Now, he’s just a bittersweet memory. That’s a bummer.

Zaccharie Risacher

Of more immediate concern is the play of last year’s number-one pick, Zaccharie Risacher. His stats, both surface-level and advanced, are eerily similar to his rookie season, yet just-so-slightly worse in nearly every way. At his best, Risacher is a connective-tissue jack of all trades who can do virtually anything on a court. Unfortunately, we seldom see his best, and he’s recently been benched for McCollum to put more shooting and spacing on the wood and make things easier for Johnson and Kuminga.

I like Risacher, particularly as a versatile defender with solid help and playmaking instincts around the rim. A stint on the pine could be what he needs to find his footing and confidence, and at 20 years old, there’s still plenty of time for improvement. The expectations of being the number-one pick have never done him any favors.

But fair or not, he was the number-one pick. Even if he was selected to be a high-end 3-and-D guy, not a superstar, he hasn’t made meaningful strides toward that role yet.

Dyson Daniels

While Risacher has stagnated, Dyson Daniels has gotten significantly worse in important ways.

Daniels is still a premier perimeter defender, but much of his value comes from the swipes he generates, and his steal rate is a third lower than last season’s historic mark. I was a little lower on his defense than consensus last season (he “only” made my Second Team), and he hasn’t been as good this year by any measure.

That defensive slippage isn’t nearly as concerning as what’s happened on the other end. Like the Hawks as a whole, Daniels has, in some ways, dramatically improved: More than half of his shots now come at the rim, where he remains a solid finisher, and he’s become an even freakier offensive rebounder.

But all those fun things are overshadowed by his oozing, pulsating flaw: His three-pointer. Or rather, his lack of one.

Daniels has always been trigger-sad, but it’s gone well beyond that this season. He’s attempting just 1.5 threes per game (half of last season’s volume), and many times shoots none at all. The accuracy is even more ghastly: Somehow, he’s made only 11 triples on the season. He made 80 last year! He has more airballs than makes, and calling them airballs somehow doesn’t do them justice. These are anchorballs:

Daniels does his best to make up for that anti-gravity with constant motion: Frenetic cutting, frequent picks and slips and ghosts, and a general ethos that moving has to occupy at least some of the defense’s attention, right? Right?

To be fair, the advanced stats think he’s been a much better offensive player this year. Maybe that’s true, but it is also missing the point. Big men can get away with being non-shooters because most of their value comes from other things: Rebounding, paint-protecting, offensive rebounds, etc. Daniels is trying his best to replicate some of that, but he’s a slender wing. I don’t care what the regular-season stats say. History has shown over and over again that players like Daniels run into major playoff problems every. Single. Time.

That doesn’t really matter for Atlanta this year, given that they’re a play-in team unlikely to append “off” to that label. But given that they re-signed Daniels to a four-year, $100 million contract that doesn’t start until next season, they can’t be happy with what this means for the future. They didn’t pay that kind of money to have a rich man’s Matisse Thybulle. They need more from Daniels if they want to escape the Hawks Curse:

Trades (Part II)

You know what else would’ve helped escape the Curse? If Kristaps Porzingis had provided anything of value on the court this season.

Porzingis managed just 17 games for Atlanta while battling POTS (or perhaps some other illness, according to Steve Kerr? HIPAA sure hits different for athletes). Although the team acquired him for cheap, a price that reflected the risk built into the deal, the Hawks still expected Porzingis to be jet fuel for their rise this season. His inability to stay healthy or play big minutes even when available was arguably ATL’s single biggest disappointment of the season. Remember, people (yes, other people, certainly almost definitely not me) had pegged the Hawks for home-court advantage in the playoffs this year. Now, they might not have that for the play-in.

Still, the future is bright. With a potentially franchise-altering draft pick incoming, a talented young core with or without Kuminga, and a largely clean cap sheet going forward (give or take Daniels’ contract), the Hawks are set up for big success as soon as the coming season.

Then again, we’ve heard that story before in Atlanta, so many times. For once, I’d like to see it come to fruition.

It’s time for our last set of 2025-26 NBA quarterly awards!

For this batch, I’m only looking at games played from January 13th to February 27th. As always, these aren’t predictions of the real end-of-year winners; I’m only considering performance within these quarterly confines except for where additional context is necessary.

To qualify for the official awards, players have to play in 65 games, approximately 79.3% of the full 82-game season. I use the same threshold for quarterly awards for consistency.

Rookie of the Quarter

Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

Player I’m Talking About Instead

Dylan Harper, San Antonio Spurs

With Cooper Flagg not qualifying for quarterly awards, Knueppel is the easy choice (and he might’ve won anyway; the point is, I didn’t have to think about it!). But I’ve talked about Knueppel plenty recently, so I wanted instead to highlight a rookie I haven’t dug into yet: Dylan Harper.

Harper is in a unique position. He was the near-consensus choice as the number-two pick in this year’s draft behind Flagg, but he was drafted by a team in San Antonio that A) is really good, something not usually true of teams picking second, and B) already has a young guy with similar strengths and weaknesses in Stephon Castle.

Most number-two picks would be getting the ball constantly and encouraged to see what they can do. Harper, on the other hand, is a role player coming off the bench who is trying to find himself while fitting in. That’s a hard balance for any rookie to strike, much less one who turns 20 in a couple of days.

Harper’s role is further muddled by playing off the ball more than he ever has. His 3.8 assists per game won’t blow anyone away, but he’s doing that as the second or third ballhandling option at any given time.

The three-pointer is broken right now, although he’s at least willing to take it. But Harper is getting more than half of his shots at the rim. There are times he seems bored at the prospect of an easy layup and decides to put the game on hard mode instead. Watch his hands here as he surprises Max Christie:

Harper is already an advanced ballhandler and boasts NBA-ready pace and push. He’s patient but bursty. While Harper’s perimeter shot is horrific, his trademark might be the TJ McConnell-esque six-foot jump shot he uses instead of a floater. These sorts of pogo-stick jumpers are a dying breed in the NBA:

Defensively, Harper is making plenty of rookie mistakes, but he’s already a net positive on that end with a strong upward trajectory.

While his role coming off the bench for a good team constrains Harper’s raw counting stats, there’s a lot to like about what he’s been doing.

Most Improved Player of the Quarter

Jarrett Allen, Cleveland Cavaliers

As a reminder, my MIPotQ is strictly about how a player has improved from Q2 of this year to Q3; I’m not comparing them to their play last season. A lot of quarterly MIP candidates will pop thanks purely to shooting luck and/or increased opportunity, but I try to take that into account while looking for players who really do look like they have turned a new leaf in the last 20ish games.

So while there are plenty of players who have made bigger leaps in quarter-over-quarter scoring, I just keep coming back to the same guy: Jarrett Allen.

Allen had been looking dangerously creaky for a 27-year-old. It wasn’t just a decline in his numbers; he was a step slow on both ends, and his vertical juice was in short supply. (For what it’s worth, coach Kenny Atkinson blames Allen’s offseason wedding for a lack of early-season conditioning. Where’s the love, Kenny?)

But Allen found his groove, and it’s not just from High School Musical.

Much has been made of the James Harden/Allen connection, which has sparked immediately. Darius Garland is an elite pick-and-roll player; Harden is an all-time great.

In seven games with the new guy, Allen has averaged 20 points and 11 rebounds while shooting 77% from the floor. Harden’s presence, combined with a bigger opportunity when Evan Mobley missed a handful of games, clearly energized the big man.

And that offensive improvement bled over to his defense. Allen averaged twice as many blocks per game in Q3 (1.2) as in Q2 (0.6). He also allowed the third-lowest FG% at the rim in the entire league, a paltry 45.3%.

Lest you think that’s all thanks to Harden or Mobley’s absence, I’d remind you that Allen actually dropped 40 points against Portland a few days before the Bearded One joined the team, 27 in a Harden-less game a few days ago, and 25 last night without Harden and with Mobley.

No, he probably won’t average 18 points per game when the team is fully healthy, as he did this quarter. But he’s been so much better that he earned a new nickname. “Black History Month Jarrett Allen” helped carry the team through a weird February to arguably its best month yet. He has once again become a fundamental part of the team’s success on both sides.

Perimeter Defensive Player of the Quarter

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Since then, the offense, predictably, has sung — second in the NBA since that date. Guard-guard screens (sometimes even guard-guard-guard double-drag actions), incendiary three-point shooting, lots of on-ball creation between Ball, Miller, and resplendent rookie Kon Knueppel giving perimeter defenders absolutely nowhere to hide while center Moussa Diabate scratches for offensive rebounds and the execrable Miles Bridges scavenges for whatever shots he can find. There’s a lot going on, in a good way.

But basketball is a two-way sport, and it’s the defense that really caught my eye. On paper, Charlotte is not exactly weighed down with a load of straitjacket artists, yet in that same stretch, the Hornets have ranked eighth in defense. They’ve gone 21-15 since Miller’s return, a surprising success that could’ve been even better if they could string together stronger clutch performances. How are they doing it?

It starts schematically. Coach Charles Lee has instituted a few rules for his team that they rarely breach. One: no right angles. Charlotte leads the league in fewest corner threes allowed, and even in their worst days under Lee (read: the immediately preceding seasons), it’s been a clear focus.

Two: no second chances. The Hornets have the best defensive rebounding rate in the Association. They take gang rebounding to a whole new level, as Bridges is their best individual defensive rebounder with just 5.1 DRPG. 27 other teams have at least one player averaging more per game, and many have multiple.

The Hornets have size at nearly every spot on the floor, particularly on the perimeter. Every rotation player averaging at least 20 minutes per game is an above-median positional boarder except backup big man Ryan Kalkbrenner, who often does the dirty box-out work so guys like Ball and Knueppel can grab-and-go (rebounding is Ball’s most underrated skill).

I can’t prove it, and I have no idea if this is a coaching point of emphasis or just natural instinct, but I swear the Hornets lead the league in controlled tip-outs to teammates:

In a league that hasn’t valued the possession game this much in decades, the ability to own the glass on both sides (they’re also a top-five offensive rebounding team) is a major competitive advantage.

Lee has also brought over an emphasis shared by former bosses Mike Budenholzer and Joe Mazzulla on avoiding fouls. Even at their nadir over the last few seasons, the Hornets have generally played clean defense. They have a top-10 free-throw-avoidance rate during this stretch and top-five for the season (at the expense of turnovers: the Hornets virtually never force opponents into giveaways, largely preferring sound positioning and help to gambling for steals and risking putting the defense into rotation).

Lee loves to talk about the MIG, or “Most Important Guy,” on defense. In his view, that’s the on-ball defender charged with containing his man without fouling. When executed properly, he gets rather excited. Watch Lee’s reaction here, as Diabate switches out onto the perimeter and stonewalls Mikal Bridges during a preseason game:

Who couldn’t love a coach like that?

It helps that the Hornets have a flexible group. We’ll talk about Ball’s defense later, but he’s at least the height of a small forward, if not the weight. Knueppel is relatively short-armed but barrel-chested; same with fellow rookie Blue Devil Sion James and reserve forward Grant Williams. Miller and backup wing Josh Green have nearly seven-foot wingspans. They and the lanky Bridges will switch on-ball plenty — and, in Ball’s case, the team will do a whole lot of off-ball pre-switching to try and keep him out of the action.

In general, the communication has been markedly better this year across the board. Watch this excellent defensive possession against the Spurs:

The first thing we see is Diabate (#14) switch onto Spurs guard Steph Castle while Josh Green (#10) battles Wemby for position. GIFs don’t include audio, but in the broadcast, you can hear Grant Williams (#2) yelling at Green to scram-switch so that the bigger Williams can take Wemby. Brandon Miller (#24) sags off non-shooter Dylan Harper, and together with Williams, prevents the entry pass to Wembanyama.

While that’s happening, Ball is already talking with Green to make sure that Green takes big man Luke Kornet, who is about to set the screen for the ball-handling Castle (which leaves Ball to guard the corner shooter, safely out of the action).

As Castle runs the pick-and-roll, Diabate heroically breaks up the lob attempt. Despite the Hornets’ uncharacteristic failure to secure the rebound, Diabate maintains his balance and runs out on Julian Champagnie, preventing the three-point attempt. With Charlotte players rushing around to find their mark, Champagnie tries to rush a pass, but Ball has picked himself up off the floor and located the still-dangerous Kornet under the rim. He easily intercepts, forcing a 24-second violation.

That’s a lot of talking and activity! Normal coaches dream of possessions like this; Coach Lee must’ve needed medical deflating.

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If I were to pick the team’s defensive strength outside of rebounding, it may be attention to off-ball detail (particularly relative to past performance). Fred Katz at the Athletic recently wrote a bit about the Hornets’ “swarming” defense, and you see it in action every game. I hate to rely upon platitudes, but there’s no quit. Another example: Knueppel, in particular, has excelled at chasing guys around screens, an often-thankless task. Even when he does get chipped, the recovery motor catches players off guard:

Ball has dramatically improved, although that’s faint praise. He’s been benched by Coach Lee a few times in the past few seasons for inattention to detail, and the storyteller looking for causal relationships in me would love to say that the tough love has had an impact.

The worst driver in Charlotte is still too far upright while guarding the ball. Other teams have figured out going through Ball is easier than going around him. But now that the games matter, his bored-student attentiveness has tightened up, and he’s far more likely to help and recover with multiple efforts.

Of course, more likely certainly doesn’t mean always. Ball remains a well-below-average defender overall, one whose cardinal sin is getting caught in no man’s land while “helping”:

But going from catastrophic to below-average is still helpful! EPM rates Ball’s defensive impact in the 36th percentile, and D-DPM puts it in the 31st percentile. Of course, you’d like more, but that’s still a big tick up over his recent injury-riddled seasons.

Miller’s improvement is much easier to see, and he deserves a big share of the credit for Charlotte’s defensive turnaround. EPM pegged him as one of the worst defenders in the league as a rookie two seasons ago (something that never really matched the eye test, to be fair), but he’s well above the median now. While the rookie James is the team’s best individual defender, when he’s on the bench, Miller typically gets the big dog assignment. His top matchups are a diverse list of ballhandlers like Jalen Johnson, Darius Garland, and Kevin Durant. That famous wingspan allows him to get a finger on balls that shooters had assumed were safe, particularly on chasedown blocks:

Miller’s improvement as an on-ball guardsman without compromising his offensive production has been a huge part of Charlotte’s two-way success. He’s probably a little bit overtaxed as the number-one stopper, at least until he develops more strength (bigger forwards like Cooper Flagg plow right through him without trouble), but someone in the starting group has to be a point-of-attack defender. It’s encouraging that Miller has been capable enough in that position.

I do love Miller’s competitive attitude, and that’s something that flows down through the rest of the team. He’s not afraid to hold teammates accountable. Then again, with try-hards like Knueppel, James, Williams, Green, and Diabate running alongside him, effort is rarely the issue.

Still, despite the team’s impressive numbers, there are reasons to think the defense will come back to Earth. For one thing, the team has been remarkably healthy of late. Basketball gods know the Hornets deserve some fortunate injury luck for once, but it’s still worth noting that, with injuries up leaguewide, the sheer amount of uprightness they have in their rotation is helpful.

For another, there is a dose of shooting luck involved in their recent stretch. Since December 5th, opponents have hit just 34.7% from deep against them, the fourth-stingiest mark in the league, and they’ve been similarly poor from midrange. (Synergy says that opposing forces have hit just 38% on unguarded threes for the season, another low number.)

For what it’s worth, the league average is 36.1% on three-balls allowed during this timeframe. If the Hornets’ defense sported that number, their rating would rise roughly a half-point per 100 possessions, dropping them from 8th to 11th. That’s still pretty good!

I’m not sure the Hornets’ defense is playoff proof. They haven’t faced a murderer’s row of offenses, although they’ve mostly stymied the good ones they have faced. And even a focused Ball presents too alluring a target, to say nothing of Bridges’ disastrous defense at the four spot (he is the Hornets’ worst defender by virtually every metric, from EPM to D-DPM to on/off splits).

But Miller is quite good and improving, Knueppel can hold his own, and Diabate is a solid anchor in the middle. A fleet of defensive-minded wings and forwards provides some defensive oomph off the bench. It’s not hard to picture the Hornets upgrading at power forward over the offseason — the shooting from Ball/Miller/Knueppel means they aren’t as reliant upon finding an offensively-focused stretch-four as most teams — and eking closer toward a luckproof elite defense.

We know that a healthy Hornets team will put up points, and that should only improve with time and chemistry. Defense has always been the question mark. Charlotte has not had a top-15 defense in a decade. Now, a strong closing push could get them there for the year.

How the team plays in the postseason (if they make it; despite their hot stretch, they’re still just 10th in the East and closer to 11th than eighth) is almost beside the point. There’s a proof of concept here that the team has been searching for since 2021-22, when Ball’s ascendance during his second season (his lone All-Star campaign) led Charlotte to the play-in, and everything seemed on the up in Queen City.

The injury-riddled fallout from that year is a reminder that things can change in a heartbeat, but Hornets fans are familiar with heartbreak. It’s far more enjoyable to look at one of the league’s most promising young backcourts and imagine. With some luck and some middling roster upgrades, the Charlotte Hornets could enter next season as a threat to post a top-10 offense and a top-10 defense.

Dare to dream.