The NBA Is Back
It's basketball time! Here are some stories to watch as the new season arrives...
The NBA is back, officially kicking off preseason play when the Warriors took on the Wizards at an ungodly hour in Japan on Friday. I’ll admit I didn’t drag myself out of bed to watch it, but I did record it so that counts for something. 1
The start of a new season is always an exciting time as fanbases across the association are filled with optimism and hope. Every player on your team is going to hit their ceiling and stay injury-free, they have all put on 10-15 pounds of muscle, and your young players are all preparing to make THE leap to stardom.
Of course, that’s never the way it plays out. Injuries do happen, some players don’t fit, and others underperform. The teams that look deep on paper can become woefully thin just a few weeks into the season. It won’t quite be the basketball utopia that we envision now.
Thomas Paine wrote about this effect in “The American Crisis”, highlighting the presence of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, who were eager and optimistic at the outset of the American Revolution but faded when the British began to rack up wins. Paine alluded to the necessity of winter soldiers (hello Marvel), who would keep fighting even when the odds were against them.
The season may have turned to fall and the weather is getting cooler, but across NBA fandom, summer is still in effect and its soldiers are in full voice. It’s easy to be optimistic now, less so during the dog days of the season.
And that’s ok. The present is one of hope; it’s the honeymoon period of the NBA’s calendar, and the positive energy is a welcome respite from the fretting that comes when the games really matter. Enjoy this moment, while every team is undefeated.
We should try not to let that energy wane, even if it is an impossible task. Even though our sky-high expectations will almost certainly not be met, the game is beautiful, just the same. It’s the flaws that reveal character, after all.
The NBA has proven to be spectacular in its ability to produce compelling narratives. While the NFL still dominates TV ratings and revenue, the NBA is a Shaq-sized behemoth across social media. The league’s offseason has become a sport in and of itself as fans have become more attuned to the transaction game and savvier of the ins and outs of the NBA salary cap (credit to my buddy and Front Office Show partner Keith Smith for his role in fan education).
The play on the floor is a gorgeous ballet of athleticism and ferocity while the compelling narratives act as a glue that binds everything together into a wonderfully chaotic tale.
The 2022-2023 season is here, and the journey is about to begin with fresh storylines to monitor. With that in mind, here are just a few of my top stories to watch for in the 2022-2023 season:
What, exactly, are the Lakers?
My team, as we’ve covered at length for Lakers Nation, is a messy hodge-podge of current and former stars mixed with veteran minimum players. New coach Darvin Ham has brought energy and optimism to the club, but can his Bucks-style 4-out-1 in offense really work on a team that projects to be one of the worst in the NBA from behind the arc? And what version of Anthony Davis will take the floor this season, and for how long?
Kendrick Nunn has generated plenty of positive buzz out of training camp and appears to be the favorite to start alongside Russell Westbrook in the backcourt. Quite a leap from missing all of last season due to injury to starting, but the Lakers badly need floor spacing and Nunn, statistically, is the best shooter on the roster.
Damian Jones appears to be getting the first crack at the starting center position, and recent comments from Ham suggest the team will let him occasionally shoot threes. This could be a major development for Ham, whose offense in Milwaukee relied upon floor-spacing bigs like Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis Jr to open up the paint. Jones shot 35% from deep last season with the Kings, but on a small sample size of just 29 attempts. If that shooting proves sustainable it takes away Thomas Bryant’s biggest advantage over Jones in the battle for the starting center job, but perhaps more importantly, would allow both of LA’s true centers to pull opposing centers out of the paint.
Meanwhile, Russell Westbrook and his trade market still loom large. A move is clearly needed, but as GM Rob Pelinka noted, the Lakers are trying to be careful and find the right deal if they are going to sacrifice their only two tradable first-round picks. Can they tread water in the meantime while waiting for a trade to unlock their offense? The West is going to be unforgiving this season, so the club’s record in the opening stretch will go a long way towards determining just how soon they have to pull the trigger on a deal and restore balance to their roster.
Can the Nets make a big three of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Ben Simmons work? And what can Simmons do to increase awareness of mental health in a positive way?
The Nets have an extremely talented trio of players, one that could be particularly devastating when Simmons slots in at center in small lineups. Durant, Irving, Joe Harris, Patty Mills, Seth Curry, Royce O’Neale, and others should provide plenty of shooting to make up for Simmons’ timid trigger while allowing him to do what he does best: defend and pass.
Of course, that’s on paper. Whether it all comes together is another story, as we saw last season with a Nets team whose implosion was only rivaled by that of the Lakers.
Furthermore, Simmons’ assertion that mental health prevented him from taking the floor for the 76ers last season caused some to question the validity of his claims. After all, a knee injury can be seen on scans, but mental health is much harder to verify. As the subject has become more accepted in the sports world and we come to terms with the fact that near-superhuman athletes are, in fact, mortals with real problems, Simmons is uniquely positioned to champion the cause of mental health or do it real harm. With the NBA reportedly looking to include mental health as an injury designation in the next CBA, how Simmons shares his struggle will be something to monitor.
Should the Clippers be the favorites in the West?
Speaking of teams that look great on paper, this Clippers team is absolutely loaded and incredibly deep on the wing, which has become the most important position in the modern NBA (Rob Pelinka says it’s a guard’s league, it’s not). Just look at this depth chart:
You can quibble over who starts at point guard between Wall and Jackson and at power forward between Morris, Batum, and Covington, but that’s missing the point. They are so deep that the bench unit for this team is good enough to be a handful on most nights, with Wall/Powell/Kennard/Morris/Covington featuring tons of versatility, defense, and shooting.
Wall, while certainly not what he once was, provides some much-needed playmaking, and the roster is as structurally prepared to weather the storms of load management as it can be. A healthy Paul George and Kawhi Leonard should make LA’s other team an absolute force in the West.
Except…it’s the Clippers. Historically, they have been Gilligan on the NBA island, constantly finding ways to derail their own path to salvation. They have the richest owner in sports by a wide margin and a winning record every season for a decade now2, yet have never got it done on the big stage.
They have blown 3-1 series leads, had their stars in street clothes even more than Anthony Davis, and remained stuck in their status as nothing more than an annoyance to the residents of their own city. On paper, they may be the best team in the West, but can they overcome the name on the front of their jerseys?
How much more fun is basketball without take fouls?
I asked for it, you asked for it, and the NBA listened. Take fouls, or fouling a player on purpose specifically to stop a fast break, have been legislated out of the game.
Maybe.
It’s a noble effort, as take fouls turn basketball’s most exciting play (the fast break) into its least exciting (a sideline inbound pass). It robs teams of high-value scoring opportunities while fans and the NBA lose jaw-dropping highlights, which help fuel the league’s aforementioned social media dominance. It is, as the revered Michael Scott would say, a win-win-win situation.
This season, take fouls will result in the offensive team getting one free throw plus they will retain possession of the ball. If you’re the type who likes digging into point-per-possession stats, that essentially means that it’s mathematically no longer a winning proposition to commit the take foul, though in some situations we may still see it, say if a particularly bad free throw shooter is leading the break.
However, teams are crafty and are always looking for loopholes, and the NBA left a pretty big one in this rule. It states that a take foul is “a foul in which the defender does not make a play on the ball”. The spirit of the rule is that teams should no longer be able to stop transition opportunities by fouling, but teams may try to exploit the “play on the ball” wording.
For example, a hyper-aggressive effort to go for a steal should, in theory, disqualify the foul from being subjected to the take foul rule. We already see this play out on shots at the rim, where defenders ensure contact with a shooter’s arms to stop the shot while making a half-hearted play on the ball to avoid a flagrant foul.
The hope is, of course, that the NBA’s take foul rule works. Fast breaks are a blast, but sooner rather than later, teams will test the rule to see if they can still gain the advantage that a take foul gives to the defense, with the slight modification of feigning a play on the ball. Fingers crossed that the spirit of the rule prevails.
An update on the story posted here from Friday:
This is going to be something to watch develop and, as we discussed on this substack, has the potential to change the way the NFL operates.
Lastly, I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to the Lane’s Letters substack. It’s been such an enjoyable experience to get this going and I’m looking forward to a fantastic time of year on the sports calendar.
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Early player to keep an eye on: James Wiseman, who looked excellent in the Warrior’s first game, though he wasn’t as involved in their second matchup.
10 years of the Clippers being good is still difficult to believe, but here we are