Really Early Season NBA Quick Thoughts

We are a little more than a week and a half into a 24 week NBA season, so what better time to overreact and dissect what we have seen so far from the league. Some things in the association have looked a lot different through the first 6 games or so of the year like James Harden actually playing some defense (take that 11 minute long YouTube video), the Pelicans not getting scoring off their bench after ranking 8th in the category last season, LeBron James struggling to finish in the paint, and Deron Williams looking much quicker off the bounce after his off-season ankle surgeries. A lot of things, however, have remained the same in the NBA through the opening slate of games like Derrick Rose missing time with injuries, Kobe Bryant shooting on seemingly every other offensive possession, J.R. Smith getting suspended, James Harden using the euro-step on every fast-break opportunity (we seriously need a Harden-Ginobilli euro-step battle), DeMarcus Cousins just beating up on people inside, Kyle Lowry showing he is one of the best eight point guards in the league (the guys I would rank ahead of him would be Paul, Westbrook, Curry, Parker, Kyrie, and Lillard with Dragic right there with him), and the Philadelphia 76ers putting out a team that has maybe three NBA caliber rotation guys because of the NBA system that empowers teams to bottom out to get top draft picks (apologizes to Brandon Davies, Alexey Shved, J.J. McDaniels, Hollis Thompson, Henry Sims, and Chris Johnson in Philly, but not even Chip Kelly and his offensive genius could turn the 76ers into a winning team).

I certainly recognize that the NBA season is a very long marathon and not a sprint, unless you are like David Rudisha and everything in life is like a sprint. The Wizards, for example, started last season 16-19 and still finished with the 5 seed in the East and made the Eastern Conference Semifinals, which was partly due to the 2013-2014 East being the one of the worst single conferences in NBA history, but also because the season is so long that you can stumble for portions of the year and recover very easily. On the other end of the spectrum, the Golden State Warriors started the 2007-2008 season 32-20 and didn't even end up making the playoffs out in the West that year (granted the West was stacked that season, but they still finished the campaign just 18-14). With that being said, the beginning of the season can set the tone for a team for the entirety of the year and it can still be quite an uphill battle when trying to overcome a difficult start. Of course, looking at teams a little more than a week and a half into the season is much, much different than after two months when they have played a quarter of their regular season games, but we can still tell a lot about teams from early on in the year. Take the biggest surprise from the NBA last season, the Phoenix Suns. The Suns clearly had one of the best backcourts in the league with Dragic and Eric Bledsoe (the only other backcourts I would take before them would be Curry and Thompson in Golden State and Wall and Beal in Washington with Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan and whoever plays alongside Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul right with them), but if Phoenix didn't gain the confidence that it needed early in the season from winning 9 of its 12 of games in December, it may have never won 48 games, its most in 4 years.

So, here are some quick thoughts on the very, very, very early NBA season (never too early though for analysis):

Kobe Bryant is back, and he is shooting a ton, almost as if he is trying to make up for all the jump shots he wasn't able to jack up last season because of his Achilles injury and left knee problem. Kobe took 17 shots against the Rockets, a total of 25 versus the Suns, 15 against the Clippers, 29 versus Golden State, and a whopping 37 against Phoenix on Tuesday. Even for Kobe 37 field goal attempts is a ridiculous amount in one game, which he has only eclipsed once in the last 5 years of his career in a single game (he took 41 shots in December of 2012 against the Warriors). In Kobe's defense, the Lakers are terrible on both ends of the floor, have an incompetent coach with Byron Scott who doesn't value the three ball, which is absurd in today's NBA with the statistical analysis we have that supports layups and threes, and have very little to go to on offense outside of his isolations from the elbow or down in the post. With Julius Randle out for the entire season after breaking his right leg in the opener against Houston, the Lakers have had to turn to 32-year old Carlos Boozer to be their secondary scoring option on offense, which always spells major, major problems. Although Ed Davis has started out the season putting in some quality minutes off the bench as the only positive out of LA, this could be the worst Lakers team since they were still back in Minneapolis. Kobe is going to keep on shooting at unfathomably rates because LA just doesn't have that much else to go to on offense, especially if they want to get some wins and not fall completely out of the playoff race before December even comes around (they are currently 0-5 and with road games left against Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and home games against the Spurs and Warriors before November 22nd - all playoff teams from a year ago except the Pelicans, who have Anthony Davis - they better beat the Hornets on Sunday night or they may start the season something like 1-13 or 2-12). At age 36, I wouldn't put it past Kobe to become the oldest scoring champion in NBA history (Jordan currently holds the mark when he won it at age 35 in 1997-1998), but it might come at the peril of the Lakers with him taking somewhere around 23 to 25 shots per game. (A dream scenario of mine would be to stick Kobe, Carmelo, and Chris Copeland on the floor together at one time to see how the shots would be distributed between them and the number of passes to one another, which is how you know I'm a basketball nerd). The ultra competitiveness that has defined Kobe's entire career will certainly make it very difficult for him to cope with that fact that the Lakers are going to struggle so much that they will finish with their worst record with a healthy Kobe since 2004-2005, which will only mean more field goal attempts from the Black Mamba. Also, don't buy the Kobe trade rumors, unless he demands one very adamantly, because the Lakers want him to finish his career in LA and they couldn't get a significant enough return for a player with his massive, and I do mean massive, salary to make dealing him worth it for the franchise at this point. Kobe is going to try to shoot the Lakers to some victories on his own, he is going to have to shoot a ton because of LA's limited offensive options, and he is going to continue to keep on shooting and shooting.

The most impressive team though the opening couple of games of the NBA season has been the Houston Rockets, who have started the season with six consecutive double-digit victories against the Lakers, Jazz, Celtics, 76ers, Heat, and defending champion Spurs (the only other team to start a season in such a fashion was the 1985-1986 Denver Nuggets with Alex English and Fat Lever). Coming into the season, I was pegging the Rockets as a team that would have a slight regression from 2013-2014 in a brutal Western Conference. The always forward thinking Daryl Morey declined Chandler Parsons' fourth-year option at under a merger one million dollars so that he had the ability to match any offers on the small forward going forward, but more importantly, go after a big name free agent like Chris Bosh, which everybody thought would be a successful play after LeBron left for Cleveland, but didn't turn out to work of course. Morey let Parsons go to the Mavericks as a restricted free agent when the team decided not to match the Mavs 3-year, 46 million dollar offer sheet because it would hamper their flexibility going forward to bring in another big named player, even despite the new NBA TV deal probably increasing the salary cap significantly next year. Morey then brought in Trevor Ariza, a player that is not as good as Parsons and only seems to play well in his contract years when he wants to get paid (2009 playoffs with the Lakers and last year with the Wizards as examples). Then there was the whole James Harden and Dwight Howard don't eat with the rest of the team talk (never trust Lithuanian media Donatas Montiejunas) and the whole James Harden doesn't think his teammates matter thing when he said, "Dwight and I are the cornerstones to the Rockets. The rest of the guys are role players or pieces that complete our team. We've lost some pieces [Parsons, Asik, and Lin] and added some pieces [Ariza and Jason Terry]. I think we'll be fine." So, the Rockets off-season included a perceived downgrade at the small forward position, missing out on all their big name free agent targets, and an apparent team divide. Nonetheless, the Rockets have looked so great early on this season, which has a lot to do with Dwight Howard asserting himself in the post every night, which he failed to do in his adjustment to the Rockets last year. Dwight is such a physical specimen that he when he is demanding the ball down low and staying active on offense, he can take over a game like few other big men in the NBA. James Harden, who is a player that can always dominate a game on his own, has also been playing much better on the defensive end of the floor (a sentence no human thought they would ever write), which the team has needed with Patrick Beverley out with a hamstring problem. Even Trevor Ariza has been exceedingly efficient, and in a non-contract year nonetheless.

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS? In the words of LeBron James, who took the words of Aaron Rodgers (how meta is that), everybody needs to seriously relax because we are just four games into a very long season. The Cavs, however, have shown some real worrying signs early on in the year that need to be addressed. First, it is hard to put your exact finger on it, but LeBron has not looked like himself in the Cavaliers 1-3 start. For one thing, he seems to be less powerful when going to the bucket and is getting his shot blocked at the rim a little more often than normal through four games. LBJ, though, is the best player in the world, and I don't think that has suddenly changed over one summer, so LeBron himself is not the main concern as much as the Cavaliers team dynamic. The Cavs have played a lot of individual rather than team basketball early on, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise because anybody who watched the Cavs last year knows that Kyrie and Dion Waiters love, and I do mean love, to dribble the basketball. In 45 minutes against the Utah Jazz, Kyrie took 23 shots and had 0 assists. Meanwhile, Dion Waiters, who has been dropped to the bench for Shawn Marion and has been passed over in late game situations in favor of Matthew Dellavedova, passed the ball a total of 5 times in 28 minutes against the Trail Blazers (Kobe is nodding in approval somewhere). Also, Kevin Love, who got a good amount of touches in the post in Cleveland's first game against the Knicks, has mainly been playing around the three-point line on offense since the opener. While Love is stroking it from deep and shooting 40 percent from behind the arc, he needs to get his touches inside so that the Cavs can have an interior scoring threat. With all that being said, the Cavs were always going to have some growing pains and difficulties coming together as a team (remember that the Heat started 9-8 in 2010-2011), so lets hold off on any talk of this team not being good enough to make it out of an already weak an Eastern Conference. As much as it is surprising that a team with the offensive potential of the Cavs is struggling on that side of the ball very early on the season, they are an entirely new unit with a new head coach. Cleveland just needs some time to adjust to working together, and most importantly, playing as a team with better ball movement, but don't think for a second with their offensive firepower they are going to struggle all season long.

So those thoughts weren't exactly quick. So here are some real, short quick thoughts.

The Pacers are in big trouble (as well as he played against the Wizards and John Wall, Donald Sloan is their go to guy so enough said). The Thunder are also in trouble (Serge Ibaka is a great complimentary piece to a star player or two and the Thunder missed his rim protection so much against the Spurs in the playoffs last year, but he can't take over a game without Westbrook and Durant). The Toronto Raptors are my sleeper pick for a surprise playoff run because I love the Lowry-DeRozan combination. This could be the first time since 2005-2006 that the Kings finally get to the 40-win plateau and the first time since 2006-2007 that the Atlanta Hawks don't make the playoffs and then subsequently get bounced in the first round. Klay Thompson got a 4-year, 70 million dollar max contract from the Warriors and has looked fantastic in the early going, as has Stephen Curry of course. Finally, my NBA Finals prediction that will be wrong in June: Cleveland Cavaliers vs Los Angeles Clippers. Let the fun continue.