I love doing quarterly awards. First-quarter awards are always the most enjoyable, too, since there’s usually some things that deserve acknowledgment but tend to fade over a full season (last year, I had Steph Curry as the first-quarter MVP!). There is so much basketball played during a year, and I enjoy taking a moment away from the deep analysis to honor what’s been a terrific six weeks. Basketball is fun, and it’s good to remember that. Reminder: this isn’t a prediction of year-end awards. It’s simply a celebration of the best stories from the season’s first quarter. So let’s go! Most Impro ..read more

Welcome back to The Weekly 4-Point Play, our new weekly column highlighting four of the biggest and most exciting stories in the association. In case you missed it, Volume 5 is HERE. I have to start this out by saying the IST is a massive success. I consider Haliburton to be too good for the concept of a future superstar (he’s a current superstar) but I’m glad people are starting to see how special he is. A team like the Pacers who I still don’t think have what it takes for a long postseason run, getting the spotlight on them for a week is why I am loving this In-Season Tournament.  Ther ..read more

Smart basketball people love to say that growth isn’t linear; that makes Devin Booker’s evolution as a player even more satisfying. It doesn’t necessarily show up in the box scores, but every season, Booker comes back with tangible improvements to his game. This summer, Booker put on his floppy hat and spent time in the garden nurturing his point-guard skills, and it’s clear that Chris Paul provided the fertilizer. For the first time since 2018-19, Booker is the point guard in both name and function, and he’s responded with a career-best 8.3 assists per game. His 38% assist rate is a smidge hi ..read more

The Kings were riding high after last season, which culminated in the team’s first playoff berth in a high school junior’s lifetime. They had a historically great offense that flowed through Domantas Sabonis’ high-post playmaking, a brilliant one-on-one scorer in De’Aaron Fox, a bevy of willing and capable shooters, and a clever offensive system that eschewed heavy doses of pick-and-roll for dribble handoffs, cuts, and off-ball movement. They likely would’ve beaten the Warriors (the inspiration for their offensive system) in the first round if Fox hadn’t broken his hand. They brought back the ..read more

Nearly 30 games into the 2023-24 NBA season, we can get a good feel for what teams are going to make the postseason. Of course, we have the usual suspects in Boston, Milwaukee, and Denver fighting as contenders. However, if you take a glance at the standings, you’ll catch quite a few surprises. There are plenty of overachievers thus far: 5. Houston Rockets The Rockets are 13-11, good for a spot in the NBA Play-In Tournament, and just two games back from a playoff spot. Over the summer, the team brought in Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks, causing questions to arise: why pay an immense amount of ..read more

Free Throws are the easiest points in the game- you stand right at the line with no defenders and *almost* all the time in the world. Despite only being worth one point, the free throw is a highly coveted shot, and rightfully so, especially considering the level of difficulty and frequency at which free throws are taken on a per-game and per-team basis in 2023. After all, the object of the game is to help put points on the board for your team as efficiently as possible…right? This is where the lines begin to blur. Being able to garner attention from the defense and, as a result, get fouled and ..read more

INDIANAPOLIS, IN–The Indiana Pacers beat the Boston Celtics 122-112 to advance to the semi-finals of the In-season tournament. The Pacers went on a 9-0 run in the 4th quarter to book their place at Las Vegas later this week.  The fairytale run is alive for the Pacers as they improve to an 11-8 record on the season. As Tyrese Haliburton said in his post-game interview, this young team is not going to Las Vegas to make up the numbers, they have intentions to win it all. A victory over the Celtics in a playoff-like atmosphere will only fill them with confidence moving forward. The Solution t ..read more

The Philadelphia 76ers are in the midst of one of their most exciting starts to a season in franchise history.  After trading James Harden just a few days into the 2023-2024 NBA season, the Philadelphia 76ers are now a team with a free flowing offense and a really creative defense all at the hands of NBA champion coach Nick Nurse.  Nurse has revolutionized the way this team hoops. It’s a system on both ends of the floor revolving around constant movement, intensity and hustle. This team now has the personnel and coaching to fully shift into a modern NBA team on both ends of the floor ..read more

Welcome back to The Weekly 4-Point Play, our new weekly column highlighting four of the biggest and most exciting stories in the association. In case you missed it, Volume 4 is HERE. I hope everyone that celebrates had a nice Thanksgiving and that they didn’t miss this post too much during the holiday. We are now into the month of December! Remember that on December 15th that most of the league will become eligible to be traded, we are getting closer and closer to the trade season but we don’t need to focus on that too much, for now at least. We have to go to Miami to check out a sharp shoote ..read more

Last night, the full-strength Clippers (sorry, Mason Plumlee!) lost to a Nuggets team missing its three best players playing on a road back-to-back, and it reinforced what I’ve been thinking all season: Paul George is the Clippers’ best player, and if that remains true, the Clippers are screwed. George is a fascinating character, as equally capable of thought-provoking musings and jaw-dropping dunks as foot-in-mouth gaffes and perplexing mistakes. And he’s spent a lot of time thinking — and talking! — about his ideal role on the Clippers. To ESPN, at the start of last season: “I’m the two. Kaw ..read more