So … what shall we overreact to today?
With most NBA teams just five or six games into their campaigns, we’re at the dangerous point where we have enough of a sample to start jumping to conclusions but probably not enough to make any statements with real predictive value.
More realistically, however, we can start looking at teams where the early season has us … concerned, shall we say. One of the key barometers I use for that is asking, “If this stretch of games happened in the middle season, would we even notice?”
For the bulk of the league, the answer is no. However, two situations would stand out even if they happened in mid-January. With expensive rosters and hopes of contention in the Eastern Conference this year, the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers have struggled (to put things gently) out of the gate.
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It’s not just that the Bucks are 1-5 and the Sixers are 1-4 entering Monday — random acts of shooting can easily hand a team such a record even if it performs decently; it’s that these teams have been massively outscored and failed to win a single home game despite early schedules that seemed gentle and a lack of overwhelmingly bad shooting variance.
In each case, excuses are readily available. The Sixers, for instance, have been without their two best players in center Joel Embiid and wing Paul George. Milwaukee, meanwhile, hasn’t had Khris Middleton. All those situations could change soon, with George expected to make his Sixers debut on Monday. That certainly should improve results in Philly; remove the two best players from any other NBA team and see how they fare.
On the other hand, the premise behind most contending NBA teams is that they’re good enough to be halfway competitive even when one or two of the big guns are missing. The Sixers still had an All-Star on the court in Tyrese Maxey but lost to the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors and barely eked out their one win over the Indiana Pacers — needing an 85 percent career foul shooter to miss three crunchtime free throws to seal it.
The Sixers also lost to the Bucks by 15 points, and that might count as a bad loss, too, these days. Milwaukee hasn’t won since; losing to the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers is perhaps excusable, but the Bucks also fell to the Brooklyn Nets and Chicago Bulls and were run off the floor by the Memphis Grizzlies. The Cleveland game on Saturday was arguably the Bucks’ best of the season despite the loss, as they fell by one point against what looks like an elite team out of the gate.
Statistically, the Bucks’ and Sixers’ starts look just as bad as their records: The Bucks are 25th in net rating, and the Sixers are 29th. By Basketball-Reference’s SRS rating, the only teams that have been worse have been the Jazz (because they’re tanking) and Pistons (because they’re Detroit).
Our Eric Nehm enumerated some of the ways things went wrong for Milwaukee on Saturday, but the larger concern is that they’re getting beaten even though Giannis Antetokounmpo has been awesome. He’s played all six games, averaged 31.7 points on a 29.7. PER … and it hasn’t been enough.
Damian Lillard, the sidekick brought in to help him get back to the promised land, has largely been solid, too, aside from one brutal performance in Memphis. (Said a scout who was there: “He couldn’t get by anyone, and he couldn’t stay in front of anyone.”)
Instead, the Bucks’ story is one of a leaky defense and a deeply underwhelming supporting cast. With Middleton out, 36-year-old Brook Lopez showing his age and sixth man Bobby Portis not playing up to his usual level, it’s at times felt like the Bucks are playing two-on-five. A table says a thousand words here, so check it out:
Bucks rotational minutes: Age and PER
The eye test on Milwaukee says the team looks its age. I’ve already lost count of the times an opposing player has run past three concrete-bound Bucks to a loose ball or rebound. Ja Morant completing an alley-oop from the floor against them was the most embarrassing episode of that ilk but far from the only one.
Toughness and Sacrifice. 😤 pic.twitter.com/SXp4DVdKUZ
— Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) November 1, 2024
That’s notable because the youth cupboard in Milwaukee seems utterly bare. Seven of the top eight players will be 30 by February, the team can’t trade a first-round pick until 2031, and the Bucks are facing a stiff repeater tax penalty if they bring back Lopez and Middleton, who has a player option for 2025-26.
The next topic on the lips of any exec regarding the Bucks is whether Antetokounmpo wants to stick around if things go sideways. He’s signed for two years beyond this one before a player option in 2027, but that’s never stopped a star from forcing his way out before.
Yes, partly this is wishful thinking on the part of execs, and partly this is what you do in a front office — you plan out scenarios and battle plans for how you can get Giannis on the 0.1 percent chance you might be able to put them into action.
This likely becomes a moot point when the Bucks start playing better, at least until summer. But the Bucks shape up as an old, bad team without Antetokounmpo, and it’s not clear how good they can be with him. At some point, both sides in that player-team relationship may need to ask some hard questions.
As for the Sixers, they have more reason to blame injuries with two max-contract stars out of the mix, but they’re play illustrates the weak link in building around three mega contracts and a lot of filler. Minus two of the three stars, the rest of the team just isn’t good enough. The Sixers even shared the commonality with Milwaukee of getting run off the floor by the Grizzlies. (Memphis, we should note, was starting two rookies and played two converted two-ways major minutes off the bench in both games.)
GO DEEPER
Joel Embiid shoves columnist in 76ers locker room
While Philly isn’t quite as old or expensive as Milwaukee and has a bit more draft capital, the Sixers’ play to date has been even more dismal than the Bucks’. The two teams are also birds of a feather in terms of being all-in on their current rosters built around former MVPs. And unlike the Bucks’ superstar, Philly’s still isn’t suiting up for the games. That’s the thing: The Sixers have to be able to win without Joel Embiid, especially in the regular season, because he’s likely to miss many games going forward.
Without him, the supporting cast shows its warts. The Sixers are 27th in offense even with Maxey playing 41 minutes a game. Nobody else can create a shot; against Indiana, they opened the game with a post-up for Andre Drummond in the Year of our Lord 2024. Role player free agents such as Kelly Oubre, Caleb Martin and Eric Gordon haven’t given them much either. Again, vultures are circling, as rival front offices try to figure out what Philly would put at stake to try to stay afloat.
Fortunately for both teams, the East is a forgiving landscape. Somehow, eight teams from this conference will make the playoffs, and at least seven others besides the Bucks and Sixers have made strong cases for why it won’t be them.
Beyond that, the NBA season is an eternity, with all sorts of peaks and valleys. Sometimes five awful games are just five awful games, no matter how badly we went to overreact.
I’ll be watching the Bucks and Sixers more closely in the coming days, and I suspect a lot of league staffers and scouts will be too. Five games is often a fluke, but if it becomes 10 or 15 or 20, it’s a problem.
Stat geekery: Fouls and 3s update
Remember a week ago when I wrote about the runaway foul rate? Well, I have some good news: Things have calmed down substantially in the week since. If the trend line continues, we might be trending toward a very normal rest of the season on this front.
The league-wide free-throw rate is still up from a year ago, at .272 free-throw attempts per field goal attempt compared to .244 last season However, nearly all that difference came in the first five games of the season; we’ve gone from a 29 percent increase to just a 12 percent increase, which could only happen if things snapped back to the 2023-24 average in the seven days since I last reported on this.
This reporting comes with an asterisk, however, because the 3-point bonanza continues unabated. We’re still at 42 percent of teams’ attempts coming from 3, up from last season’s 39.5 percent.
I’ll point out again that 3s tend to produce very few free throws, so the fact the free-throw rate hasn’t declined in response remains newsworthy. Put another way, the foul rate should be lower than a year ago given all these 3s, and it’s not.
Cap geekery: More on options and extensions
Teams had a deadline of Wednesday to exercise or decline third- and fourth-year options for players drafted in the first round in 2022 and 2023. Normally, teams will pick up the option unless the player is a crushing disappointment or there is a very peculiar tax situation to manage.
In particular, it takes some stones to decline a third-year option, because it is admitting alarmingly early that the team made a mistake with the draft pick. On the other hand, teams probably don’t do this nearly enough because of the instant PR disaster it creates. It’s a lot easier to hide a guy in the G League for another year.
The Lakers made this hard decision with Jalen Hood-Schifino the 17th pick in 2023. I don’t think he should have been picked that high, but I also applaud the Lakers for not letting sunk costs drive their decision-making.
L.A. still could theoretically hang on to Hood-Schifino if he starts turning the corner. The Lakers are only limited to paying him a maximum of $4.06 million as a free agent this summer, as that’s what he would have made on his third-year option. More likely, they have turned his deal into an expiring contact that would factor into a larger deal at midseason.
A handful of fourth-year options were declined, and most were no surprise. Johnny Davis and Wendell Moore both fall under “clearly should have done this a year ago,” while decisions on Patrick Baldwin, MarJon Beauchamp and David Roddy were hardly shocking either.
However, one notable case was that of Memphis’ Jake LaRavia, the 19th pick in 2022. The Grizzlies passed on paying him $5.1 million next year even though he’s been getting minutes and has been at least a halfway decent contributor. The Grizzlies, however, already have 12 players under contract for next season and will add two draft picks in June as things stand now. The emerging Santi Aldama also is a free agent, and the team has some optionality below the tax line to get funky if it sees a bigger move.
Thus, LaRavia threatened to crowd both their cap and roster while playing Memphis’ deepest position (Jaren Jackson Jr., Aldama and GG Jackson are already there). There are highly realistic scenarios where he could have complicated Memphis’ use of the nontaxpayer midlevel exception without really offering anything it didn’t already have.
The only drawback for Memphis is that the Grizzlies are blocked from offering LaRavia more than $5.1 million this summer if he has a breakout year. But again, they’re probably more set at this position than anywhere else on the roster.
• One note on a contract extension. Two weeks ago, Golden State inked guard Moses Moody to a three-year, $39 million pact that includes an average of $500,000 a year in unlikely incentives. (It starts at $362,093 in 2025-26 and increases the maximally allowed 8 percent a year.)
Per league sources, The Athletic has learned how the incentive pays out. Moody gets it if he achieves all three of the following markers: playing at least 1,600 minutes, attempting at least nine 3-pointers per 100 possessions and achieving at least 60 percent true shooting. Thus far, Moody is trending to clear the bar in both true shooting percentage and 3-point attempts but finish with just 1,503 minutes.
Remember, however, Moody’s incentives don’t pay out until next season; the only impact his making it this year would have is on whether it’s considered “likely” or “unlikely” for the purposes of his 2025-26 cap number. If the answer is the former, his cap hit goes from $11,574,075 to $12,037,038.
Regardless of whether or not Moody hits the incentive, it counts against Golden State’s calculation for the collective bargaining agreement’s first and second apron. Since the Warriors won’t be a cap room team next summer and historically haven’t sweat the luxury tax line, that’s probably the most relevant potential impact of this incentive money.
Rookie of the Week: Kyshawn George, SF/PF, Washington
(This section won’t necessarily profile the best rookie of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
It was one of the best weird moments of the opening week: Washington rookie Kyshawn George was whistled for an illegal defense technical foul late in the first half of last Monday’s 121-119 Wizards win in Atlanta … and the entire Washington bench immediately got up and began clapping and cheering.
This wasn’t the tanking Wizards clapping because they were giving up a free point (or not: Trae Young missed the technical foul shot). Instead, the bench was ecstatic about what the violation symbolized: George, who was the low man in the weakside corner, had stationed himself in great help defense position. For a rookie from Switzerland drafted after one year of college and playing his third NBA game, it was a symbolic achievement.
“We wan to take care of the paint.” Wizards coach Brian Keefe said. “I don’t want to give it away, but … we want to make the paint look crowed. That’s where we can turn people over.
“We’re just trying to guard the paint; that’s our motto,” George said. “We said we want to lead the league in defensive three seconds.”
For George, being in the right spot (“Low many early!”) wasn’t a random one-off; he’s actually been a problem, and not just by ignoring shaky shooters to hover in the paint on the weak side. Entering Monday, the 6-foot-7 forward has blocked eight shots in 127 NBA minutes, several of which have come on jump shots. Watch here, for instance, as he shocked Donovan Mitchell by getting a piece of his stepback.
Lest you think that was a fluke, Terry Rozier met a similar fate in Mexico City a few nights later. George didn’t have to fly out of control on his contest to do it, letting his length do the work instead. “I just try to be active and use my physical attributes,” George told me last week.
George’s offensive game remains more of a work in progress; he’s an extremely willing 3-point shooter but has only made 2 of 22 thus far. On the ball, he’s had some flashes but profiles mostly as a straight-line driver at this point. Without great burst, he’ll likely always be an off-ball player.
Defensively, however, he’s shown enough to start two games and play big chunks of all five Wizards contests. That’s partly because Washington is rebuilding, yes, but his defense can also be what keeps him on the court long enough to build his offensive game. For a player selected 24th in what was considered a weak draft, it’s a promising start. Including his first illegal defense call.
Prospect of the Week: Ben Saraf, PG, Ratiopharm Ulm
(This section won’t necessarily profile the best rookie of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
College basketball season starts Monday, and man, do we have some prospects in the NCAA ranks this year.
GO DEEPER
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But before we start losing our minds over the college class, I need to point out that this year’s international group seems pretty special too. Scouts had already noted a strong overseas class going back at least a year, but if anything, the momentum has only increased. Based on recent chatter I’ve heard, we could end up with eight or nine first-rounders when all is said and done.
A good example is Safar, a left-handed Israeli point guard who stands 6-5. He didn’t really zoom up draft boards until this summer when he won MVP of the European U-18 Championship.
Scouts got an early treat in preseason when his team visited Portland for a preseason game against the Trail Blazers; nearly the entire NBA sent at least one rep to watch Saraf and teammate Noa Essengue.
While his club lost, Saraf scored 16 points and generally held his own on defense. Notably, he also made three catch-and-shoot 3-pointers, something that’s been seen as a swing skill for him after he made only 24.5 percent a year ago (to go with 66.3 percent from the line) in Israel.
All of Ben Saraf’s threes last night against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Saraf went 3-for-5 from deep, which is a personal best with Ulm so far this season. The shooting will be a swing skill, so nice to see him show flashes in an NBA setting.#NBADraft pic.twitter.com/8YscnmXHu7
— Blake (@blakesilverman) October 17, 2024
Thus far, his shooting has held up better in German League play, where his feel and size at point guard have made him very effective even as an 18-year-old. Saraf’s athleticism doesn’t stand out, and the shooting will have to remain credible, but he’s always racked up steals and in-game dunks despite lacking overwhelming physical tools. He’s also very left-handed at this point; he whips one-handed cross-court lasers from the port side but needs to be able to play right-handed when opponents force him that way.
Players who succeed in good overseas leagues as teenagers have a very high rate of NBA success. If Saraf continues along his early-season path, we can add him to the impossibly large list of lottery-caliber talent for next June.
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(Photo of Tyrese Maxey and Damian Lillard: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
