Election Eve

As you might expect of someone writing a post with observations from 10 NBA games I viewed in one night, it is quite difficult to leave me wondering who is on the floor. It’s even harder for a team that won a title two seasons ago to put not one but two players I’ve never heard of in at the same time in the first quarter of a nationally televised game. Alas, the Thunder’s injury problems are so bad right now that I’ve been forcibly introduced to Josh Dix and Bennett Stirtz.

This just underlines that two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is in the trenches now. He is at once pulling a perpetual 60-win team with championship aspirations with Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain as his secondary and tertiary scoring options and raising Aday Mara as someone who can hold up in a hypothetical Wemby matchup in the postseason, all while facing more defensive attention than he ever has.

It wasn’t SGA’s prettiest 40-ball, but 43 points and eight assists to pick up a road win against Cleveland with its core four on the floor is vital work. Meleek Thomas got the start for the Cavs with Peyton Watson out and wasn’t shy, putting up 17 points on 16 shots. The second-round pick out of Arkansas is scoring more than Darryn Peterson so far this season, putting up 14 points per game on 49/48 shooting splits. Together with last season’s second-round pick Tyrese Proctor, the Cavs have a youthful backcourt pairing that should be able to lighten the load throughout the regular season on James Harden and Donovan Mitchell, two players who seemed out of gas against New York in the playoffs.

LeBron James twerked, he drank wine, he fed VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey on the break, he had attempts at the rim that wouldn’t look out of place in a Rudy Gobert meme comp (perhaps this is not unrelated to the impromptu alcohol consumption). He finished with 15-9-7 and was a +30 and Philly rolled the Bulls, who appear constructed for no other reason than to provide Caleb Wilson with the requisite four teammates and franchise rights required by league bylaws to allow him to participate in NBA games. It’s worth it, though, because Wilson is electric.

The Sixers are 7-1 despite Nick Nurse’s constant tinkering with his lineup, picking spots to rest his stars with a soft early schedule while smartly rotating the big names in and out for back-to-backs. For this reason, I am not panicking over Joel Embiid’s early-season condition. His minutes were capped at 25 in this game, and any trace of the defensive impact he had during his MVP season appears gone. But it’s November. If any team can nurse its stars through the regular season without an overly negative impact on its record, it’s Nick’s. If they wind up with a top-two seed anyway, that’s a nice bonus.

Ty Jerome is human. Yeah, he might have dropped 40/5/5 on 14-of-22 shooting (5-of-6 from deep), but he couldn’t get a shot off in the final seconds of overtime. He’s not going to win MVP with that kind of showing in the clutch. In all seriousness, Jerome’s herky-jerky game has helped give a surprisingly balanced Memphis squad a sharp point. No. 2 overall pick Cameron Boozer is able to play off a strong scoring guard and take his own turn initiating things without fear of upsetting the hierarchy.

But the night belonged to Zion Williamson, who scored nine of his 25 points in overtime. Zach Edey started the overtime period despite not closing the fourth quarter, possibly for the sole purpose of winning the jump ball. He lost it, and then didn’t offer much deterrence as Zion bent himself around the elbow and dashed to the rim. With Yves Missi out and Jamahl Mosley seemingly intent on keeping Derik Queen with the bench unit (even if he closes), Karlo Matkovic got the start and put up 25 points on 9-of-13 shooting (five triples among them).

The Pistons are beginning to master one of the most effective gimmicks when it comes to winning NBA games: Tryharding. That’s right, folks, Detroit is showing up every night, handling business, and moving on to the next. Cade Cunningham keeps things ticking (despite an oddly awful on-court net rating; guessing this will be early-season noise), their defense is the top-rated unit in the NBA and they lead the league in above-the-break 3-point percentage. The main reason for that is Duncan Robinson, who went 6-of-9 from deep in this game and is sitting at 45 percent on the season.

Speaking of professionalism, Charles Lee benched Naz Reid in the second half of last week’s Pistons-Hornets matchup, saying after the game that Reid “didn’t meet our standards in the first half.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but Reid has appeared to be a little out of it to start the season. It sucks for Reid to be in this situation after being so critical for the Wolves and sacrificing a payday to stay there. Perhaps this is a Boris Diaw situation where a veteran player loses his motivation on a bad Charlotte team before he winds up being a major bench piece for a contender after the trade deadline.

It’s not a criticism, but even for the reigning Finals MVP, Jalen Brunson is dribbling the heck out of the basketball. He leads the league in time of possession, yet his scoring efficiency (41/36/75 shooting splits) is down and assist numbers are at the lowest point in his Knicks career. There is a bit of championship hangover throughout the whole squad, which seems normal at this point in the season. The less said about Mikal Bridges’ start to the season, the better. How about Landry Shamet, though? He’s currently outscoring Bridges on the year and dropped a season-high 22 points against the Nets.

Even without Anthony Edwards, Minnesota remains must-watch TV, sometimes not for good reasons, particularly if the clip features Rudy Gobert. In this game, Gobert spiked a rebound into the ground like a volleyball — and right to an opponent. Remarkably, perhaps for the first time this season, he also had a highlight so unbelievable that it almost rivals his clutch shot against the Nuggets in ’24: a mid-air behind-the-head touch pass to Jaden McDaniels, who was so stunned he missed the layup and ruined the assist.

LaMelo Ball deserves credit for driving the Wolves in Edwards’ absence, even if he’s usually participating in some shenanigans himself. He dropped a season-high 34 on the hapless Bucks, and also picked up another four fouls. Ball, who fouled out in his last game against San Antonio, is averaging 4.2 fouls per game. A guard has not finished above four fouls per game since 1975.

In researching this fact, I’ve learned about Tom Gola, who is the GOAT of oft-reprimanded guards. He played 10 seasons between the Knicks and Philadelphia Warriors in the 1950s and ’60s, averaging four or more fouls per game in five of those seasons. In 1961-62, he averaged 4.5 fouls per game, still the NBA record for a perimeter player. He was a five-time All-Star, a champion on the ’56 Warriors and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with career averages of 11.3 points and 8 rebounds per game.

The Kings became the last team to win their first game, which I guess was a fact already decided before this contest took place given that Sacramento was the last winless team remaining. I suppose they could have avoided this distinction by going winless, and if you watch the Kings at the wrong times, it seems like they could achieve that. Last night, though, was one of the nights when seventh overall pick Darius Acuff Jr.’s points total exceeded his number of shot attempts, which threatens to be a close contest every night this season.

Acuff finished with 25 points, six assists and five rebounds and had help from Sacramento’s veteran wing scorers Zach LaVine (23 points) and Malik Monk (24 off the bench). Dallas has a couple of nice wins against Oklahoma City and Houston so far this season, but they usually look like a mess when Kyrie Irving isn’t on the floor. Sans a savvy operator, and with Cooper Flagg missing 16 of his 19 shot attempts, Dallas made it easy to see how Sacramento’s losing streak ended.

It isn’t surprising that Miami’s Giannis Antetokounmpo experiment isn’t working. How it is not working is interesting, though. The Miami Heat have the fifth-worst defense in the league, having conceded 131, 128, 115, 113, 117, 125 and 138 points so far this season, all while having an excellent defensive profile from a shot-diet perspective. The Heat have limited opposing attempts at the rim but are getting cooked from beyond the arc.

Luka Doncic continued his scorching start to the season, incinerating the Heat with 42 points, 13 assists and seven rebounds. That is possibly to be expected. The rest of the Lakers shooting 13-of-28 from deep, though? Even when factoring in shooting luck, that’s disastrous for the Heat, who counter with an exceptional amount of Davion Mitchell and Klay Thompson doing the basketball version of that old dog digging in the sand meme.

The Nuggets are more than three years removed from their title but it seems closer to a decade. The roster gets worse every season. First they traded Michael Porter Jr. for the worse and somehow even more injured Cam Johnson, next they let Peyton Watson walk. They fired their coach two years after winning it all and the replacement has shown nothing. Aaron Gordon has looked like a shell of himself since he tried to play through his hamstring injury in Game 7 against Oklahoma City in 2025. Mostly, they just look like a bored team.

There’s nothing wrong with coasting in the regular season, especially if you have a playing style as tried and true as Denver’s (there is little left to refine from the team’s primary approach to offense). Getting a top seed doesn’t guarantee much of anything anymore and health is the most important factor in any series. The question is whether they will be able to flip the switch when they need to or if they are simply burned out.

The Blazers, on the other hand, appear reborn with their bizarro point-guard-heavy experiment. Even with Ja Morant sidelined, Damian Lillard, Scoot Henderson and Jrue Holiday combine for a pretty unique backcourt alignment, particularly when the team’s best playmaker is Deni Avdija, who has become a mismatch nightmare for Jokic in the pick-and-roll. When dealing with a menacing post presence, it also helps when Donovan Clingan is on his game, and his 18 rebounds and four blocks played a big part in countering Denver’s dynamic duo, which poured in 61 combined points in the home defeat.

The Warriors are in a different place now. Draymond Green’s ejections once elicited Stephen Curry’s tears; now they feel like hockey fights. It helps when he picks the right opponent, and Dillon Brooks is perhaps the most appropriate person to tangle with in the NBA.

No matter, Curry’s heroics were enough to rescue Golden State from another deep first-quarter hole. After dropping 31 points and eight threes on the Lakers in their NBA Cup matchup on Friday, Steph put up 34 points, seven assists and six rebounds in a win against the Suns, who are still stuck on one win.

Similar to Green’s temperament, this is going to be an up-and-down season for the Warriors; they will go as Yaxel Lendeborg goes. On some nights Yaxel will look like he should have been the No. 1 pick, and on others (like this one) he will struggle to assert himself on both ends. The mere fact that he can offer a 30-plus-point masterpiece, which he’s already done twice this season, is a massive victory for the Warriors, who have been waiting on a major draft hit for almost a decade now. And it’s good to know that No. 30 can still carry the team on nights when Lendeborg struggles.