The Ringer: All Posts by Rob Mahoney2024-03-24T18:14:25-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/rob-mahoney/rss2024-03-24T18:14:25-04:002024-03-24T18:14:25-04:00Mailbag: First-Team All-NBA, Improving Stars, Pop Vs. Phil Jackson, and More
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<figcaption>Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>It’s time to open up the mailbag! Rob and Wos are here to answer all your questions!</p> <div id="v5vtqp"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/37XVziLjrM8lPWdinSp3ce?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="7vrNTB"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/37XVziLjrM8lPWdinSp3ce?si=UjaSDOl0RE2n4-wXAG84GA">Justin is out, so Rob and Wos open up the listener mailbag to answer your questions</a> about who’s on the All-NBA first team, what subtle improvements star players are making, who the greatest coach of all time is, and much more!</p>
<p id="7Egv4N">Hosts: Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre<br>Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Tucker Tashjian<br>Additional Production Supervision: Ben Cruz</p>
<p id="Ot4R47"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5jUeKBONOmKJivqrRoIDJn?si=vpc_P_zDRjq-4772y0DSmg">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-ringer-nba-show%2Fid1109271715%3Fmt%3D2&xcust=xid:fr1571261047952jai%7Cxid:fr1571399819617jgd%7Cxid:fr1571701693383gbg%7Cxid:fr1572293865613jec%7Cxid:fr1572377891966ejg">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/ringer-nba-show">Stitcher</a> / <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ringernbashow">RSS</a></p>
<aside id="Z6vLAl"><div data-anthem-component="actionbox" data-anthem-component-data='{"title":"<a class=\"ql-link\" href=\"https://nbarankings.theringer.com/?_ga=2.155381304.2089292175.1698062250-2023644046.1682014580\" target=\"_blank\">The NBA, Ranked</a>","description":"<em>The Ringer</em> is ranking the best and flashiest players, rookies, and more of the 2023-24 NBA season. Check back here to see where your favorite players fall as the season unfolds.","label":"Check out the Guide","url":"https://nbarankings.theringer.com/rankings"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/24/24110885/mailbag-first-team-all-nba-improving-stars-pop-vs-phil-jacksonRob MahoneyWosny Lambre2024-03-10T17:57:50-04:002024-03-10T17:57:50-04:00Late-Season Panic Meter
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<figcaption>Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Taking a look at the Western Conference</p> <div id="NTzTve"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/79xZbXKLGtR4f39h6r0APf?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="3ClpAN"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/79xZbXKLGtR4f39h6r0APf?si=HvzdZduyTIakFNlxPBXUrw&nd=1&dlsi=ccd9a8dc99bc42bf">Justin, Rob, and Wos take a look at five Western Conference teams</a> and decide where they land on the panic meter.</p>
<p id="iOshbd">(3:40) Timberwolves</p>
<p id="BxQ3lo">(14:39) Clippers</p>
<p id="YxG6Zz">(24:08) Kings</p>
<p id="VfXZsh">(32:50) Mavericks</p>
<p id="EiBVUA">(47:28) Warriors</p>
<p id="TcvzNd">Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre<br>Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Tucker Tashjian<br>Additional Production Supervision: Ben Cruz</p>
<p id="epvcAM"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5jUeKBONOmKJivqrRoIDJn?si=vpc_P_zDRjq-4772y0DSmg">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-ringer-nba-show%2Fid1109271715%3Fmt%3D2&xcust=xid:fr1571261047952jai%7Cxid:fr1571399819617jgd%7Cxid:fr1571701693383gbg%7Cxid:fr1572293865613jec%7Cxid:fr1572377891966ejg">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/ringer-nba-show">Stitcher</a> / <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ringernbashow">RSS</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/10/24096678/late-season-panic-meter-group-chatRob MahoneyWosny LambreJustin Verrier2024-02-06T06:30:00-05:002024-02-06T06:30:00-05:00How Do You Build Around a Playmaking Genius Like Luka Doncic?
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://guzmanbarone.com/" target="_blank">Alonso Guzmán Barone</a></figcaption>
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<p>Last year’s trade for Kyrie Irving was just the start of a massive, ongoing project to reimagine the Mavs. “We knew at that time that we didn’t have the right players surrounding those guys,” general manager Nico Harrison says. Which raises the franchise-defining question: Who are the ideal partners for a playmaking genius?</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="yK73q9">When one of the Dallas Mavericks’ crunch-time sets came up empty against the best defense in the NBA back in January, Luka Doncic retreated to the huddle, took his seat on the bench, and offered a solution: Run it again. He wanted the same preamble into the same high pick-and-roll, knowing full well he was walking into the same trap. Minnesota had jumped Doncic the last time around to force the ball out of his hands—an understandable defensive mechanism when dealing with one of the most dangerous scorers in the world. Yet, in their determination not to let Doncic beat them, the Timberwolves afforded him another way in which he could. All Luka had to do this time was find Derrick Jones Jr. wide open, again, at the top of the key.</p>
<p id="cRbMWa">“He trusted Derrick with the ball because he knew he was gonna get double-teamed,” Mavs head coach Jason Kidd said. “And Derrick delivered with the dunk.”</p>
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<p id="2sdrhB">Doncic might not have made the same call in the clutch a year ago, largely because none of his teammates were equipped to beat Rudy Gobert to the rim, much less finish with that kind of authority. Dallas took one of the biggest swings in franchise history by trading for Kyrie Irving last February, but that was only the start of what would become a massive, ongoing project to reimagine how to best support a playmaking genius. “We knew at that time that we didn’t have the right players surrounding those guys,” general manager Nico Harrison says. The demoralizing end to the Mavs’ 2022-23 season—in which they not only missed the playoffs, but the play-<em>in</em>—only confirmed it. </p>
<p id="YjKMsI">Building around Luka over these past six seasons has been a process of trial and error. Of resource management. Doncic is so astonishingly effective that it can be challenging to get an exact read on what his team needs. Does he need more help, or does he just need more space? Are his running mates coming into their own, or does Luka just have them playing over their heads? Those might seem like simple questions until the very structure of the roster depends on them. It’s hard to be precise when Luka’s playmaking mastery blurs the picture. Understanding where his team stands requires more art than science; it takes an impressionistic read to figure out how a squad that went to the Western Conference finals one year could miss the playoffs entirely the next. </p>
<p id="A9XBSS">There wasn’t anything explicitly wrong with that group. The core of the conference finals team had simply reached its limit, revealing an overspecialized roster that didn’t have much room to grow. The goal of the Irving trade was to change that dynamic—to raise the ceiling of the team first, so that, over time, the front office could figure out how to best furnish it.</p>
<p id="NLLnCn">“We wanted to get more athletic,” Harrison says. “We wanted to get longer. And we wanted to get better defensively.” The Mavs wanted, in effect, a roster that looked and played a bit more like Jones. </p>
<p id="a8hkI9">Without any real cap space or all that much draft capital at their disposal last summer, the Mavs went about making that vision a reality. Entrenched role players were shipped out, cut loose, or simply replaced. To fill their spots, Dallas signed Jones to the veteran minimum, picked up Dante Exum (on a comeback bid to the NBA after playing two seasons in Europe) and Seth Curry on modest deals using cap exceptions, added Grant Williams in a sign-and-trade from Boston, and stole Dereck Lively II with the 12th pick in the draft.</p>
<p id="Wdl79j">Those additions have allowed the Mavericks to scrap their way to a 27-23 record, despite a near-constant string of injuries. In context, that’s a positive outcome. Yet it’s easy to dwell on what Dallas doesn’t have, particularly when those deficits are thrown into stark relief against playoff-caliber opponents. This roster doesn’t feel complete. It has, however, proved to be more dynamic than other recent iterations of the Mavs—if also more confounding. “I feel like every time we take our foot off the gas pedal and we start hip-and-hooraying and celebrating wins like this, then next game we drop a dud,” Irving said after a triumphant January outing against the Pelicans. Dallas went on to lose its next game by 17 points. </p>
<p id="mRKcrr">Steady teams are all alike, but every inconsistent team wobbles in its own way. Some waver in their efforts. Some rely heavily on 3-point shooting and have to ride out the baked-in variance. Some have players in roles they’ve never filled before, or talent that is stretched to a degree that’s difficult to maintain. The Mavs have been all of the above at various points in these first 50 games, which makes sense for a reworked team pushing through so many absences.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="vQhoxz"><q>“I think half the stuff that Luka does and Kyrie does, if any other person tried to do it, they would trip over themselves.” —Josh Green</q></aside></div>
<p id="MckDWY">With those injuries, however, has come the potential for discovery. Jones would have played a vital defensive role in any Mavs lineup, but longer minutes and more varied contexts allowed him to build out his contributions on the offensive end, rolling and driving and setting a new career mark for 3s made in a season by December 23. Exum—who wasn’t really in the rotation at all before Irving was sidelined by a heel injury—seized his opportunity so convincingly that Kidd assured him a starting spot before Irving even returned. The idea of not making time for a player as resourceful as Exum now seems unthinkable. “You never know what happens when you have somebody down,” Harrison says. “Dante, he really was able to show what he could do because Kyrie was out. And that’s what you hope for—you hope that you build a roster where guys can come in when it’s their opportunity and step up.”</p>
<p id="azBHaT">For maybe the first time in the Luka Doncic era, the Mavericks have that. Dallas has tried responsible veterans, overmatched strivers, dedicated specialists, and oft-injured costars around Luka in recent years. This is the first season the Mavs have gone into most games with an actual athletic edge. More often than not, they’re the team with options—the party that can decide when the game goes small and how to dictate terms through matchups. With that, however, comes the work of sifting through all the possibilities, and the challenge of making all the best options fit together.</p>
<p id="nyFZme">“Just because everybody’s back doesn’t mean everything is gonna go right,” says Maxi Kleber, who was still shaking off the rust from a foot injury when he broke his nose last week. “So we’ve still gotta focus on our work. Everybody’s gotta focus on their role and what they have to do.” The Mavericks identified what they needed in a supporting cast, and did well to reshape the team in that image with limited offseason resources. And that revamped roster is getting healthier, gradually returning all of its key contributors to the lineup. Some of the most promising combinations have barely had a chance to see the floor together. Now, with the hope of a fuller roster and the trade deadline looming, the Mavericks just have to figure out what kind of team they really are.</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="4Yq0yY">There is a tension in every NBA locker room between order and belief. Basketball teams need hierarchy; even the most democratic offenses are shaped by the fact that, at any moment in time, one player has the ball while four others don’t, and five players are on the floor while about a dozen others watch. Some, inevitably, believe that they can do more—that they should play more or shoot more or be trusted with more. The Mavs are no exception, though even as players feel out what they can be, there is a certainty in what they are <em>not</em>.</p>
<p id="BxByBM">“I think half the stuff that Luka does and Kyrie does, if any other person tried to do it, they would trip over themselves,” Josh Green says. In Dallas, there’s the perennial MVP candidate who just dropped 73 points in a game; there’s the revered, championship-minted scorer with moves for days; and then there’s everyone else. “I think it makes it easy because there’s no jostling for position,” Harrison says. “<em>Where do I rank?</em> Well, you’re behind these two.”</p>
<p id="DKuqCp">Constructing a team to complement Doncic is exceedingly simple in some respects, but there’s a fine line between making the most of his creativity and overburdening it. A costar like Irving—whose scoring is not only easily accessible, but easily <em>scalable</em>—helps to mediate that balance in real time. </p>
<aside id="ADBUbi"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Which NBA Star Is Most Likely to Break Wilt’s 100-Point Record?","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/1/29/24054058/wilt-chamberlain-record-100-points-nba-scoring-surge"},{"title":"Kevin Durant and the Wake of a Failed Superteam","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/2/2/24058808/kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets-phoenix-suns"},{"title":"You’re Missing One of the Wildest Shooting Seasons in NBA History","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/1/26/24050272/sam-merrill-cleveland-cavaliers-3-point-shooting"}]}'></div></aside><p id="amqQ1p">Everything else is up for negotiation. In the nearly three years since Harrison and Kidd stepped into leadership roles, the Mavericks have almost completely turned over the rest of the supporting cast. Green, now in his fourth year, is one of the longest-tenured Mavs. Kleber has stuck around, too, as has Tim Hardaway Jr., who currently leads the league in bench scoring. Dwight Powell has shifted from every-night starter to occasional fill-in—a helpful veteran presence, but also a vestige of a team that’s moved beyond him. Every other role player is gone, as are some of their initial replacements. And now that Dallas has another ace to manufacture offense and attack mismatches, the pursuit of other shot creators seems to be a much lower priority.</p>
<p id="sW7ulm">For a team with Doncic and Irving, a connector like Exum is much more valuable than a bucket getter like Spencer Dinwiddie. Jones offers something more vital than a spot shooter like Reggie Bullock Jr. could and has a wider defensive range than even Dorian Finney-Smith. The lower-scoring Lively is worlds more useful for this group than Christian Wood, and might even be a better stylistic fit than the version of Kristaps Porzingis that played for the Mavs. Players who can actually augment and protect the team’s stars reinforce the structure of everything Dallas is trying to accomplish.</p>
<p id="uuGkm5">The Mavericks offense doesn’t start with a system so much as a premise: Give the ball to Doncic (or sometimes Irving) to create an opening and let a possession go where the desperation of the defense takes it. “They cause the problem—advantage basketball—and we believe the next guy is gonna make the play,” Kidd says. If the double comes, so does the outlet. As help inches over, the ball finds the man left unguarded. And if a defense dares to switch, a targeted, vulnerable defender has to hold up against one of the most lethal one-on-one scorers in the sport.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="5ZrcGY"><q>“Luka kind of sets you up where you don’t have to do much—just eat a bag of popcorn, knock down some open shots, and move on.” —Grant Williams</q></aside></div>
<p id="l8tXJc">“We try to do as much as we can to get a mismatch on ’em, and get somebody that we know can’t guard ’em at all,” Jones says. “That has <em>no chance</em>.” With Doncic, especially, that’s a wider range of defenders than you might think. Luka’s game is filled with the kind of static that disrupts an opponent’s best basketball instincts, layering so many fakes and deceptions that trying to preempt what he might do becomes a defender’s undoing. You couldn’t engineer an easier shooting form to pass out of; the balance and leverage of Luka’s motion make it almost impossible to distinguish whether he’s shooting or dishing until the moment the ball leaves his hand, and by then it’s too late. Teammates like Jones, Green, or Williams are already making their next move, with as much space as they’ve ever had.</p>
<p id="iwERFj">“Luka kind of sets you up where you don’t have to do much—just eat a bag of popcorn, knock down some open shots, and move on,” Williams says. The looks are clean and easy, but the reality of playing with a visionary creator who leads the league in time of possession is that your touches can be impossible to predict. A pass from Luka could come at any time from any angle. The only way to be ready for something like this …</p>
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<p id="fYQ38Y">… is to prepare like this:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Dante Exum working on catch-and-shoot jumpers on Luka-like passes. <a href="https://t.co/vR8sjoKadH">pic.twitter.com/vR8sjoKadH</a></p>— Grant Afseth (@GrantAfseth) <a href="https://twitter.com/GrantAfseth/status/1750923130711703581?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2024</a>
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<p id="EfDwPC">And because of the way Doncic searches for and seizes advantages, the supporting Mavs never really know how involved they’ll be. “Some games, you’ll get 10 shots,” Green says. “Other games, you get two.” Not everyone is built for that, and some NBA players lose their bearings after long stretches without touching the ball. Operating on the periphery is a test of focus, but more than that, it requires a player to generate their own energy because the momentum of play won’t always be there to carry them.</p>
<p id="InIpFy">It’s not a coincidence that so many of the bright spots of this Mavericks season are self-starters. Lively chases down rebounds well out of his zone. Exum is one of the most active and intuitive cutters Doncic has ever played with. Jones can go from standing in place on the wing to soaring for a tip dunk in an instant. “There’s a lot of amazing scorers in the league, and they need the ball in their hands,” Harrison says. “But they’re not better than Luka. So now we need guys that can complement that. If you watch Luka, he’s gonna give you shots that are so wide open that you almost don’t know what to do. You have <em>so much</em> time. So we need guys that can actually feed off that.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="UEmVLw"><q>“There’s a lot of amazing scorers in the league and they need the ball in their hands. But they’re not better than Luka.” —Mavs GM Nico Harrison</q></aside></div>
<p id="QSetag">The complication in that design is that it doesn’t really work without Irving, and the Mavs have had to make do without him for almost 40 percent of their games this season. When Kyrie plays—and particularly, when Luka and Kyrie play <em>together</em>—the offense feels layered and more fully realized. When he doesn’t, the entire structure teeters on its edge. So many games have been decided by whether Dallas, a roughly league-average team from long range, can convert the open 3s that Luka creates for the players around him. When the Mavs have made more 3s than their opponent this season, they’re 21-9. When they haven’t, they’re 6-14. Moving past that dependency means finding other ways to win, and finding other ways to win means building on the very qualities that Harrison targeted last summer: athleticism, length, and defense. But doing so on a budget required the Mavericks to roll the dice in other areas—namely, in betting that borderline shooters could, by development and the playmaking grace of Doncic, hit above their career marks.</p>
<p id="upKzwK">Many of them have, though opposing defenses still dare them to shoot. Being guarded that way can flatten a good player into a specialist, reducing their game to whether their open shots fall. Exum knows that struggle. It was part of what cost the former no. 5 pick a job in the NBA back in 2021, sending his career spiraling through Barcelona and Belgrade as he tried to prove that he could knock down shots and stay healthy. Once he did, he had to come back to the league and prove it all over again—most notably in a December game when Lakers defenders barely acknowledged his existence. </p>
<p id="yXVQeQ">“When they started sagging off me, I knew: <em>This isn’t gonna be my season</em>,” Exum says. He went on to hit seven of nine attempts from beyond the arc that night, torching the scouting report right there in the American Airlines Center. These days, Exum is actually working on <em>speeding up</em> his release—to beat the closeouts his shooting now deserves.</p>
<p id="xa73eH">For as well as Exum has hit from 3 this season, his shot is often beside the point; there are so many possessions when the 28-year-old guard swings a pass to break the defense, rotates over at the perfect time in coverage, or revs Dallas up to get easy points in transition. “I just try to do whatever the team needs,” Exum says. “I knew coming back into the NBA, that was gonna be one of the biggest things: just trying not to pigeon-hole myself into one position and one role. If I was able to show that I was able to do multiple things and kind of excel at that, that would give me more opportunity. And that’s where it’s led me.”</p>
<p id="8UZOlR">Dallas has come to rely on that sort of cross-functional play. It’s telling that a designated shooter like Curry, who was essential to the Mavs when he was last with the team in 2020, isn’t even a rotation regular anymore. The entire lineup skews longer and less specialized. What this version of the roster aspires to—and achieves on its better, healthier days—is the versatility to work around whatever problems opponents present. As with Exum, it doesn’t always have to be about shooting for Jones, who has taken on the responsibility of guarding opposing stars and given cover to Doncic and Irving in the process. “Having him on the perimeter as a defender <em>and also</em> a cutter <em>and also</em> someone that can knock down at least one to two or even three 3s a game—it helps our offense and defense to have an identity,” Irving says.</p>
<p id="vwmCmL">Those two are among the best value signings made by any team this season—legitimate starters found by reimagining what a bit player on the Bulls bench could be, and by seeing a former lottery pick for his do-it-all skill set rather than his previous flaws. They’re also—due to all the complications of the nightly injury report—carrying a bit more responsibility than they probably should. </p>
<p id="ejSR2y">“We have role players who <em>have</em> to play at a high level,” Kidd told reporters after a January loss to the Suns. “That’s just the nature of our roster.”</p>
<p id="3t6YXy">Players like Jones and Exum not only contribute on the floor, but also reveal truths in the team around them. They thrive on energy and flexibility—and Dallas has needed both this season more than anyone could have anticipated. Given all the Mavs’ ups and downs, you can take that as evidence of something that works, or as a plea to take what works and keep going. Every franchise fortunate enough to land a superstar like Doncic faces a constant burden of proof—to give a playmaker of his caliber a team and an outlook he can work with. To alter the nature of its roster, or evolve beyond it.</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ZEPKtM">The first lesson of this Mavericks team came before the season even started, when every lineup in their late-summer scrimmages seemed to make more sense with Lively involved. He backed up smart defense with soaring rim protection. He flanked drives with quick cuts down the baseline. So many of the team’s go-to actions were supercharged by the 19-year-old center, who—given his size—brought entirely new dimensions to what the Mavs were already running. </p>
<p id="kROWNL">“We knew, ultimately, that he was going to be good,” Harrison says. “You just don’t know how long it takes.” Lively turned out to be so good so quickly that there was no turning back. And, maybe even more critically: He found a rhythm working the pick-and-roll with Doncic almost immediately.</p>
<p id="Oji2RA">“I think Luka, he’s especially good in just playing slow,” Exum told reporters on media day. “Once he gets in the paint, he’s playing slow, using his size, and it’s a slow-step layup or it’s a slow step to the corner or to the big. Him and Lively have just been eating it up with his ability to get in the paint and kinda confuse the big.”</p>
<p id="MMovtn">Some of that is pure instinct, and some of it came from the fact that Lively reported to Dallas early, and spent his time nailing down screening technique with Mavs assistant Sean Sweeney. Together, they hammered out different styles of screen for different styles of coverage. “You’ve gotta know who’s going under, who are they going under on, who are they fighting over, who are they gonna double,” Lively says. He was locked into the details from the jump. From the Mavs’ very first preseason game in Abu Dhabi, Lively was the starter by default.</p>
<p id="XDtGgz">Starting a rookie center in a high-stakes season was a leap of faith, but also an expression of understanding in what this team needed. The previous version of the Mavs had run into complications by playing undersized on the back line. So Dallas strove for something different. Something more <em>explosive</em>. The front office took the success Doncic had in playing the pick-and-roll with Powell and tried to extrapolate it through a prospect who was big enough and springy enough to move the team forward. There is a lesson in every roster, whether in fit or limitation or even just the strange alchemy of bringing a team together. So much of the work of running a team is listening when a group tells you what it needs.</p>
<p id="jI0ktW">“I think one thing was: The locker room matters,” Harrison says. “Having a really good locker room—and that means the character of people—matters. You want guys to enjoy each other’s company. You don’t want a bunch of assholes. And that <em>matters</em>. It doesn’t mean you don’t have conflict. It doesn’t mean they’re not gonna argue and fight. But at the end of the day, you want good people that want to win who are about the team.”</p>
<p id="HIm2Xz">The newest Mavericks weren’t targeted only for what they could do with a basketball. Jones, Williams, Exum, and Curry are hard workers with strong professional reputations. The intel on Lively has borne out in his play, as a rookie who wants to be coached and understands his role in something bigger. All of those players show up and they do their jobs. And, just as relevant for a Mavs team with more options than opportunities, they can accept that being part of a team means not always getting the role you want. “Everybody’s capable of helping us get there,” says Williams, whose playing time has slipped over the course of the season. “The competitive edge is gonna keep you motivated to be on the court no matter what happens. But you have to be mindful that there’s gonna be a night that you don’t have it, and there’s gonna be a night that someone else does.”</p>
<p id="17vV0x">As the Mavs get healthier, the rotation decisions only get harder. Luka and Kyrie are spoken for, in role and in prominence. Lively should be, too. If Exum eventually joins those three in the starting lineup—and Kidd went out of his way to insist that he would—that could result in a steep drop in minutes for Green, who has been essential to some of the Mavs’ biggest wins of late. It would also leave Jones, Williams, and Kleber to battle for minutes, despite their radically different functions. Somewhere in there, Kidd will also have to make room for Hardaway, who trails only Luka and Kyrie among Mavs in minutes per game and has been a vital source of supplemental scoring all season. </p>
<p id="LSae2t">You can start to feel the crunch, and that’s before accounting for the fact that Exum and Lively deserve to play more than they already do, or for the way Luka’s and Kyrie’s minutes might stretch in more competitive games. “When I started off the season, it was hard to get over that hump, as they say,” Irving told reporters. Kyrie would play a few games at a time, and then have to sit a few out. He would get in a few weeks’ work, and then be sidelined for almost a month. “There’s being in shape, and then being in great shape when you can impact the game for 40 minutes, 46 minutes, whatever your team needs you to be.” </p>
<p id="eAjx1x">Dallas has trotted out 29 different starting lineups this season, more than any other team in the league. None of those lineups have appeared in more than 10 games so far. But Jones, individually, has started more games than anyone else on the roster. Exum was a big reason the Mavs were able to tread water during the 12-game stretch Irving missed in December. Players like that aren’t just complements, then, but lifelines. One of the quirks of enduring so many injuries is that the best version of the team will require good players to do less than they’re used to.</p>
<p id="ZtYzRS">“I don’t think you can prepare guys for that reality,” Harrison says. “But the goal is for us to be playing well. And if we’re playing well and we’re winning, then guys can accept not getting the shots that they want. Now, if we’re losing, then it becomes an issue.” This is why every game matters for Dallas, even in the dog days of the regular season. Depth runs on vibes. If those vibes start to turn, then the strength of the team can, too.</p>
<p id="E3b41f">For now, there’s the empirical fact of what the Mavericks have been (a winning team with essentially a break-even point differential), and then there’s the fuzzy outline of what they could be. Yet even with more than half the season in the books and the trade deadline around the corner, it’s hard to take stock of a provisional team that’s been taped together with veteran minimums.</p>
<p id="CIze6U">“When you think of what it is that you need—some of it we don’t know, because we haven’t seen it yet,” Harrison says.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="M16M0o"><q>“[Luka] gives you a chance every night. He’s that good. But then because he’s that good, you need to make sure that he has the opportunity every night.” —Harrison</q></aside></div>
<p id="T9fo5K">Some of it, admittedly, we do. Dallas has been a miserable defensive rebounding team all season, in a way that’s made some of their first efforts on that end look much worse than they actually are; another big to work the glass could go a long way. This group is at its best when forcing turnovers and running the floor, but some lineups still don’t have the personnel to play the lanes that aggressively. Length and athleticism are additive qualities; a little bit helps, but a little bit <em>more </em>can be transformational. Dallas has a better sense of what kind of team it wants to be, but it needs to be <em>more of it</em>. Even rangier. More explosive. More versatile. The best additions to the Mavs this season are just a demo.</p>
<p id="yDQfBb">Dallas could play the market for a third star, but honestly, it might not have to. One of the benefits of having Doncic in the lineup is the way he frees you from the conventions of team building. Luka’s capacity for generating offense—and not just any offense, but <em>transcendent, problem-solving offense</em>—allows the Mavs to dedicate what resources they do have toward players who excel in other areas. Back-line defenders. Pick-and-roll facilitators. Veterans who profile less as stars, and more as high-level contributors. The Mavs’ registered interest in Kyle Kuzma (as <a href="https://marcstein.substack.com/p/the-latest-from-nba-trade-season-616">reported by Marc Stein</a>) feels instructive. A move like that could be manageable for a Mavericks team that will likely have to swing another trade to meaningfully improve its roster. You can’t always count on scrounging up starters for the minimum.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="hRSIQQ">So the overhaul continues, as it should. When you have a generational talent who can roll into Atlanta and drop 73 points on a lark, the work doesn’t stop. “[Luka] gives you a chance every night,” Harrison says. “He’s that good. But then because he’s that good, you need to make sure that he has the opportunity every night.” It’s a different kind of responsibility, with a different kind of pressure. Yet because of that, any player who can keep up with Luka becomes a player of consequence. That’s what happens when your franchise cornerstone sees the whole floor: He makes all the pieces matter.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/2/6/24062464/dallas-mavericks-luka-doncic-role-playersRob Mahoney2024-01-09T13:34:24-05:002024-01-09T13:34:24-05:00Ja Morant’s Injury Plunges the Grizzlies Further Into Misery
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<p>Memphis is all too familiar with the realities of playing without Ja, which makes his season-ending shoulder surgery a particularly devastating blow. Will the idling Grizzlies be able to recover from a season that’s already lost?</p> <p id="ay5xU9">The Memphis Grizzlies’ season lasted three weeks. Or at least the pertinent portion of it did—the fleeting moment between Ja Morant’s bounding return from a 25-game suspension and the season-ending shoulder injury that stopped the whole franchise in its tracks. Morant has a torn labrum, a fickle ailment that tends to require surgery and nearly half a year of rehabilitation. The good news is that, according to the Grizzlies, Morant is expected to make a “full recovery” in time for the 2024-25 season. But pages don’t turn quite so easily; Morant has a long, painful road back, and the team that has spent the bulk of its season waiting for him will again have to occupy itself as the losses mount.</p>
<p id="nCxqW8">There was hope, for a moment, in the way Morant jumped straight back into thrill-a-minute superstardom, with each incredible feat bending the long odds of a potential playoff push. The Grizzlies went 6-3 with their star point guard back in the lineup. There was real momentum building, and there were real gains made in the standings. Those playoff dreams are gone now. Memphis can peel off occasional wins (as it did Sunday against Phoenix, a game Ja surprisingly warmed up for to gauge his availability), but this team looked utterly and consistently outmatched during the long haul of Morant’s suspension. Losing as much as the Grizzlies are about to lose will be draining in and of itself. Even more draining, however, is the understanding of how little there is to learn or accomplish from a situation this exact group of players has already slogged through this season.</p>
<p id="gT6YMy">Desmond Bane has tried his hand at being a first-option scorer. He acquitted himself admirably and grew a bit as a creator, but his limitations in that role are pretty well defined at this stage. Everyone involved has seen enough to know that Jaren Jackson Jr.’s scoring efficiency craters without Morant, in part due to the natural synergy of their games and in part because Morant pushes Jackson into a role that better suits him. When Morant isn’t available, too many Grizzlies have to be something they’re not, from Bane and Jackson to Marcus Smart and Luke Kennard to Ziaire Williams and Santi Aldama. They’ve lived it, we’ve seen it, and now the languishing begins again under even more depressing basketball circumstances. The rest of the Grizzlies aren’t biding their time, waiting for their best player to jump-start their season. They’re playing out the string on a season that’s already lost.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="lJLdO1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The NBA, Ranked","url":"https://nbarankings.theringer.com/?_ga=2.108861954.1458961612.1704717552-1131790066.1600170181"},{"title":"The Five Least Improved Players in the NBA This Season","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/1/8/24029156/nba-least-improved-players-zion-williamson-jordan-poole"},{"title":"The Golden State Warriors Are Falling Apart ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/1/5/24026439/golden-state-warriors-steve-kerr-steph-curry-nikola-jokic"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="i5q46p">If there were surprises to be found, they probably would have been found already. The Grizz unearthed a useful role player in Vince Williams and bolstered their injury-depleted front line by adding Bismack Biyombo in the fall. Otherwise, there are no stones left unturned for Memphis. David Roddy got so many chances that he played his way out of the rotation. Five-foot-eight point guard Jacob Gilyard has seen some real run for a team absolutely desperate for ballhandling. Aldama is letting it fly more than he ever has, with usage on par with Michael Porter Jr. and Buddy Hield. There’s always a chance that a longer runway could lead to more development, but 25 games of oversized roles and increased responsibility across the roster haven’t left much room for mystery. Another 46 games of it, then, feels like overkill.</p>
<p id="WbQPNj">If there’s some good to be found in the Grizzlies’ circumstances, it’s that losing so much this season could help to punch up the rotation in ways it clearly needs. So much of the depth Memphis had over the past few years has been lost or consolidated. This roster isn’t loaded with young supporting talent anymore; Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins has spent most of this season scraping together viable minutes from any healthy players he can find, searching up and down for contributors who could simply hold their spot. A top-five pick (or the bounty that comes from trading it) could be a real boon for a team whose rotation has been laid this bare. There are bigger deficits than what Morant can recontextualize away or the eventual returns of Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke could shore up. It has never been more apparent that the Grizzlies need <em>more</em>. </p>
<p id="7yqYXC">But it’s one thing to know that on a logical level, and another to experience the kind of season that makes a high draft pick possible. And for Memphis specifically: It’s brutal to think that you might be able to save this season after all, only to be snapped back into the practical drudgery of getting through months of games without Morant.</p>
<p id="if4K4V">The Grizzlies are idling, without much to play for or to prove this season. The trouble is that the NBA doesn’t really do inertia; even when a team is going nowhere, the people who make up that team keep moving and keep playing, even as their frustrations collide. A Grizzlies player might understand how important Morant is to the whole organization, but that doesn’t preclude them from boiling over from the irritations caused by his absence. Memphis has spent years building toward a breakthrough by tapping into the pride and ambitions of its up-and-coming core. Now those same young stars will have to wait their turn, <em>again</em>, while their rivals define the Western Conference. Knowing where things are headed doesn’t really change the pain points of a situation that no one signed up for. And Morant being out of the lineup, it should be noted, doesn’t stop him from potentially getting involved in some other baffling episode, seeing as his last suspension came from behavior far away from the court. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="uQSc8Z">A season like this tests players in ways they don’t expect. Morant has worked through long-term injuries before, but a season-ending surgery is a different kind of crucible, particularly when it derails a season that, for Ja, was just getting started. Morant’s debut following his suspension was a tour de force—a one-of-a-kind point guard erupting into the moment, delivering 34 points and a game-winning bucket. There wasn’t a fleck of rust in his game that night; if anything, it felt like Morant had been waiting, all his explosive power bottled up as he watched from the sideline for almost two months. He supercharged the Grizzlies the moment he stepped on the floor. Now, both Morant and the Grizz will need to figure out what to do with all that energy, and everything they poured into a season that was supposed to turn for the better.</p>
<aside id="3klroT"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/1/9/24031745/ja-morant-shoulder-injury-surgery-memphis-grizzliesRob Mahoney2023-12-18T10:04:23-05:002023-12-18T10:04:23-05:00Is the Dame-Giannis Pick-and-Roll a Work in Progress or Just an Afterthought?
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<figcaption>Getty Images/AP Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The two-man game between Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo seems like an easy path to face-melting offense, yet the Bucks have been oddly reluctant to turn to it. Will the two superstars be able to find a rhythm? </p> <p id="1NQxG7">It can be hard to grapple with the feeling of absence—with the way it nags and follows, a constant reminder of something you can’t quite place. But watch the Milwaukee Bucks play, and that feeling will probably find you. Milwaukee is a clear-cut championship contender reeling off wins behind the recent union of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, two of the very best basketball players in the world. Most superstar partnerships in the NBA begin the same way: buzzing with eagerness, as competitors who have wanted and waited and anticipated having that level of teammate finally get the chance to play out the dream. Two months in, that tension hasn’t really dissipated for the Bucks. They’re in second place in the East, and still, it’s as if they have yet to arrive. </p>
<p id="9fP2Fb">There hasn’t been much real friction in Milwaukee—perhaps because the Bucks have largely avoided putting the on-court collaboration of their best players to the test. For two perfectly paired stars, Lillard and Antetokounmpo do a shocking amount of their work siloed apart, attacking in so many other ways as to make their lack of pick-and-roll reps together one of this season’s most fascinating subplots. What <em>isn’t</em> happening has become a core part of the Bucks experience. Eric Nehm of <em>The Athletic</em> <a href="https://theathletic.com/5100682/2023/12/07/giannis-dame-bucks-pick-and-roll/">deftly reported</a> on why that’s been the case, with Giannis, Dame, and Bucks coach Adrian Griffin speaking candidly to the growing pains involved. A learning curve is understandable. “But the go-to is definitely going to be the pick-and-rolls,” Griffin told Nehm. “When we need a basket, you’re going to put those two in action.”</p>
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<p id="J9aNDy">The only catch: Milwaukee hasn’t really done that. In big moments, the Bucks veer into pick-and-rolls for Dame with Brook Lopez, for Khris Middleton with Giannis, and for Giannis with Bobby Portis. They go to an array of handoffs and isolations and other actions, often with Lillard and Antetokounmpo a skip pass away from each other. The two Bucks headliners run more direct action together now than they did at the start of the season, but almost never in succession—there might be a random pick-and-roll between them in the middle of the first quarter, then a scripted one toward the end of the second, and a one-off revisit in the thick of the fourth. Milwaukee’s offense is less predictable than it used to be, but in a way that has actively prevented its two best players from creating any real momentum in the work they do together. Their collaboration has been a bit more abstract.</p>
<p id="vRWC4u">So far, that’s more of a quirk than an actual problem. The Bucks have lost role players to injury and managed a minutes limit for Middleton and still rate as one of the most productive offenses in NBA history. They’ve absolutely demolished teams in the half-court and—living up to Lillard’s reputation—they’ve been aces in crunch time. This may be the best scoring season we’ve ever seen from Antetokounmpo, whose blunt-force dominance in the paint has veered into absurdity. The career-high 64 points that he dropped on the Pacers last week turned out to be a performance that launched a thousand memes, but all the commotion over the game ball distracted from the most unstoppable shot distribution you’ll see all season:</p>
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<p id="R1p9av">What’s more: The Bucks have been one of the most efficient teams in scoring out of the pick-and-roll this season, according to data from Synergy Sports. They’ve just been oddly reluctant to maximize that action with their two best players or, frankly, to even try. The games when Giannis and Dame work the pick-and-roll with any kind of consistency—like <a href="https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202312050MIL.html">their tournament win over the Knicks</a>—feel like a vision from another universe. All of Milwaukee’s primary stakeholders refer to the Dame-Giannis two-man game as a work in progress, but that framing implies a practiced regularity far beyond what the Bucks have been willing to do. It’s not a work in progress if you don’t work at it on a consistent basis; it’s just an afterthought.</p>
<p id="bvPwEJ">Maybe that’s OK. Maybe dwelling so much on the pick-and-roll is thinking too small—reducing some of the most dynamic players in the league to their most obvious applications, like wondering why a supercomputer isn’t optimized to send emails. It took Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant years to fully flesh out their pick-and-roll game in Golden State, and even when they did, it was more of a fail-safe than a way of life. Joel Embiid and James Harden, on the other hand, rode the league’s most prolific pick-and-roll connection all of last season, up until the moment their offense ran aground in the playoffs. There’s no one way to championship solvency. Yet at this point, you can at least see the intention behind Milwaukee’s decision to deliberately work around the threat that all of us—Giannis and Dame included—have been anticipating.</p>
<aside id="LZfojS"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Seven NBA Observations on Trade Chatter, Luka Doncic’s Ceiling, and More ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/18/24006001/nba-trade-rumors-oklahoma-city-thunder-lauri-markkanen"},{"title":"What Should the Lakers Do Between Now and the Trade Deadline? ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/15/24002115/los-angeles-lakers-trades-options"},{"title":"After Years of Emboldening Draymond Green, the NBA Just Suspended Him Indefinitely ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/14/24001671/draymond-green-indefinite-suspension-golden-state-warriors"}]}'></div></aside><p id="SFtuER">In their current form, the pick-and-rolls between Milwaukee’s two stars can be a literal stretch, with Antetokounmpo reaching or lunging to field passes he wasn’t quite expecting. This is his first time playing with a guard of Dame’s caliber, and it’s clear that Giannis is still getting up to speed with all the practical realities involved. The fact that Lillard gets trapped as often as he does means that the ball comes to Antetokounmpo earlier and higher on the floor than he’s used to, a world apart from the slow-played lobs he’s used to converting from Middleton. You can also see Lillard adjusting to the way Antetokounmpo screens in real time. Lillard’s instinct, as he approaches a ball screen, is to linger—to hesitate behind the screen just long enough to terrify a defender with the thought that he might pull up for the kind of long 3 that has become his signature. That’s easy to do with a brick-wall screener like Lopez, who sets his feet, makes contact with the defender, and holds his position for a beat before going anywhere. It’s <em>less</em> intuitive with a teammate like Antetokounmpo, who will often sprint into a screen and then dive straight to the rim before Lillard can fully tease out an advantage.</p>
<p id="An2h0i">One of the game’s most lethal long-range shooters banking a turn around one of the most undeniable finishers in NBA history seems like it should be an easy path to face-melting offense—if not the evolutionary end point of the modern pick-and-roll. For now, it’s effective in a way that underscores how much room there is to grow. When the Bucks finally do run a pick-and-roll with their cocaptains, the two look like dance partners in search of a rhythm rather than counterparts in lockstep. </p>
<p id="XXlunu">What Dame and Giannis can offer each other in any two-man action will ultimately depend on their mutual understanding. Antetokounmpo has to know what’s coming for Lillard on the other side of every screen. Dame has to see beyond the pressure in front of him to read the defense in front of Giannis. These things take time, which is why Lillard emphasized to <em>The Athletic</em> that the Bucks need to run more pick-and-rolls—not to win more games in December, but to establish the kind of connection that can be tapped into when it’s needed most. The partnership between Harden and Embiid didn’t end well, but the reason they hammered those basic actions over and over was because they needed to. Those two stars had no real context for how to play with each other. They also had their own timing issue, like Milwaukee’s in converse: Embiid was accustomed to getting the ball early, around the top of the key, and Harden had his greatest success driving hard to lob passes up late. The only way to synchronize their internal watches was to put them through their paces.</p>
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<p id="onIUDX"><br>There has to be some kind of middle ground between that sort of league-leading pick-and-roll frequency and the outright reluctance the Bucks have shown thus far—a means for Dame and Giannis to develop a feel for what it means to play together without co-opting the entire offense. The pick-and-roll, at its best, isn’t just a two-man action. Opponents will force the ball out of Dame’s hands, they’ll reconstruct the same old walls in front of Giannis, and they’ll guide possessions toward Milwaukee’s cast of trial-balloon role players. The Bucks are getting mixed results from the likes of MarJon Beauchamp and Andre Jackson Jr., but in terms of process, Antetokounmpo—despite the heavy rationing of his reps—is already getting a better read on how to collect a pass from Lillard and quickly parse the spacing of Griffin’s system to find his teammates. The more Dame and Giannis can optimize their pick-and-roll game, the more defenses will wind up serving the diversity of offense the Bucks have been patiently trying to build. When you’re facing down two stars who can wreck a defense all by themselves, what else can you really do?</p>
<p id="5N3lNe">The beauty in having these specific superstars is that Milwaukee doesn’t have to pick and choose. Giannis and Dame can do it all. Griffin can choreograph all sorts of preludes and setups and misdirections and still have room for twice as many star-to-star pick-and-rolls as the Bucks run now. He could even invert those pick-and-rolls to take advantage of Antetokounmpo’s momentum and Lillard’s gravity in a different way. Milwaukee hasn’t really explored that option yet, even as Giannis runs plenty of those actions with other partners. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="saoJCZ">Whatever the Bucks run, however, leads to the same natural end point. Griffin laid it out himself: <em>“When we need a basket, you’re going to put those two in action.” </em>And when that time comes in May or June, the two leaders of the Bucks will fall back either on something they know or into something they’ve long waited for.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/12/18/24006086/damian-lillard-giannis-antetokounmpo-pick-and-roll-milwaukee-bucksRob Mahoney2023-11-13T09:00:58-05:002023-11-13T09:00:58-05:00“With Tyrese Haliburton, All Things Are Possible”
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.artstation.com/jack_c_gregory" target="_blank">Jack C. Gregory</a></figcaption>
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<p>The NBA’s assists leader is transforming Indiana’s style, culture, and future—one hit-ahead outlet pass at a time. Is it enough to attract other stars to the small-market Pacers? “They know that I can help bring people here,” Haliburton says, “not only with who I am as a basketball player, but who I am as a person.”</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="UAhcNL">When Tyrese Haliburton arrived in Indianapolis in February 2022, he joined a veteran team plodding its way through a losing streak. It had been a particularly bleak season for the Pacers—one of the worst in franchise history by wins and losses, spoiled somewhat by injury but more so by joylessness. The core of a team will usually tell you when its time is through, and that version of the Pacers spoke through its gear-grinding futility, as possession after possession seemed to go nowhere at all. The front office listened, and with the trade deadline approaching, sent Domantas Sabonis, the only All-Star on the roster, to Sacramento as part of a six-player deal to land Haliburton. </p>
<p id="CDF2pB">It took all of two practices for Haliburton to completely change the way the Pacers played basketball. Outlet passes fired off faster. Threes went up earlier. The ball flew around the court—whether from Haliburton slinging dimes to refreshingly open shooters, or a hodgepodge of role players suddenly taking after him. “I feel like when I got here, it was kind of about finding our offensive DNA,” Haliburton says. In a way, it had already been found. Haliburton took off running, and the remaining Pacers discovered what so many of the point guard’s teammates have: He plays in a way that makes you want to follow him.</p>
<p id="RvW3yy">Myles Turner, who had been out for weeks with a foot injury, had to stop himself from sprinting back out onto the court once he saw how easy Haliburton made the game for everyone else. “We were playing at the time with some of our G League centers and some guys trying to earn minutes and stuff like that,” Turner says. “And <em>they</em> were finishing with 20 and 10.” The makeshift Pacers sometimes veered into each other’s lanes out on the break, but it didn’t really matter; Haliburton’s passes cut right through the traffic.</p>
<p id="LrYs97">Even the production crew for the Pacers’ local broadcast had to figure out how to keep up. There was no time anymore for “hero shots” of an opposing scorer after a made basket; Haliburton was grabbing the ball out of the referee’s hands to fire passes upcourt, and his teammates were launching shots faster than the broadcast could cut back to the action. So many Pacers were sprinting up the floor and off the screen that the camera operators had to change the way they framed the break—starting wider and then easing in closer, as if they were shooting the start of a down at the Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium. </p>
<p id="Py2wpy">For Haliburton, it was just the way he had always played. His father, John, had raised him on a steady diet of Magic Johnson highlights, marveling about the speed, the connection, the power of the pass. When Tyrese was old enough to go to his first basketball camps, Frank Schade, a legendary coach in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, sent him off to the races in the same full-court drills he’s run local kids through for decades. It had never really occurred to Haliburton to slow down. He was taught that the game is an open floor, and he learned to read it with the help of a PlayStation.</p>
<p id="SbT56w">“Honestly, a lot of my hoop knowledge in knowing how to play comes from video games,” he says. “When you’re playing <em>2K</em> and you’re on that camera angle where you can see everything ahead of you, that’s how I think sometimes.”</p>
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<p id="ncucSi">The more Indiana trusted in that vision, the more became possible. The immediate takeoff was a revelation, and proof of concept for what Pacers management hoped their roster could be. “The initial team that we had that year, we were last in the league in dunks,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle says. “I don’t know where we were in pace, but it had to be the lower half of the league. And then Tyrese walked in the door. It was just a burst of change.” </p>
<p id="7g9peG">And it was only the beginning. The Pacers have played faster and faster with Haliburton at the wheel, and their offense has only grown more explosive. So far this season, Indiana is scoring a league-leading 122 points per 100 possessions—a small sampling that, if it holds, would register as the most productive offense in NBA history. Firepower like that can turn style into substance, and has given the Pacers—who are tied for the third-best record in the East—an inside track to the team’s first playoff berth since 2020.</p>
<p id="5uRlYf">Most players in the NBA are brought in to fill a role, and some to address a team’s specific weakness. The Pacers brought in Haliburton to change everything. The style. The culture. The future. “We had a very businesslike group before,” general manager Chad Buchanan says. “There wasn’t a lot of personality. They came in, they worked, but there wasn’t a lot of spark.” </p>
<p id="pVeVvJ">That’s where the 23-year-old point guard with the megawatt smile comes in, eager to turn every teammate who runs with him into a living, breathing highlight. Indiana has never had a player like Haliburton, which is why Pacers management targeted him in the first place—and a big reason why this summer they signed him to a five-year max extension worth as much as $260 million. Veteran players and their agents around the league have already started viewing Indiana as a different kind of destination: a place where you go to have a career year, and have a ball while you’re doing it.</p>
<p id="hdXwNp">“I play a style of basketball that people want to play,” Haliburton says. “I think that’s part of the reason why they signed me to the deal they signed me to. I’ve got long-term stability here because they know that I can help bring people here—not only with who I am as a basketball player, but who I am as a person.”</p>
<p id="YLNsdp">That’s the 260-million-dollar idea. Haliburton is intended to be the start of something: a star hand-picked to bring in other stars. An outlet pass just waiting for its breakaway finisher. The small-market Pacers have churned out solid team after solid team over the years, but struggled to attract the kind of elite talent that could take them even further. So a team in the heart of the Midwest decided to bank its future on something else: the notion that some forces in the basketball world are impossible to deny. Now, Indiana will see whether Haliburton is one of them.</p>
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<img alt="Indiana Pacers v Dallas Mavericks" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G_K47lJ5DMjn2XGEwbAfjAPINOo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25080475/1470549897.jpg">
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="h3uvtI">Buddy Hield was baffled. Sacramento had used the 12th pick in the 2020 draft to select another guard for a roster that already had too many, and the one they chose didn’t really look the part of a lottery pick. When Hield saw Haliburton getting shots up beneath the giant windows at the far end of the Kings’ practice facility, he saw the same thing many scouts had: a skinny kid who didn’t seem particularly athletic, launching up 3s with a bizarre release.</p>
<p id="thEW1P">“I was like: They drafted <em>this</em> guy?” Hield remembers.</p>
<p id="sC4UAS">Yet as those same scouts will attest: Haliburton grows on you. You might miss what makes him special if you reduce his game to a package of clips, and you definitely won’t see it when he shoots alone in an otherwise empty gym. It might not even come through in practice, where Haliburton is “awful” by his own admission. But if you watch him in the full, organic context of a game, you start to notice all the ways he shapes the action. You feel the accumulation of smart play after smart play after smart play. Watch enough of those games, and his stardom becomes not only clear, but obvious. Even though Haliburton fell to the 12th pick, he had true believers in virtually every draft room around the league. Carlisle—then the head coach of the Mavericks—was one of them. </p>
<p id="isFRMo">“We tried desperately to move up to get him,” says Carlisle, whose team held the 18th pick. “Our analytics people thought that he was the best player in the draft, and we just couldn’t manage to do it.” (Mavericks governor Mark Cuban echoed as much on a<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3afsKvl1xkZ3PfL0EqdH5h"> podcast</a> with intrepid reporter Patrick Beverley.) So Haliburton went to Sacramento, and once he started playing, he made a true believer out of Hield, too. “I started to see his charisma,” Hield says. “I started to see why everybody loved him so much: He would actually pass the ball and make everybody better. That’s a guy I want to play with.”</p>
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<p id="BSl1OX">One of the virtues of Haliburton’s game is that he genuinely wants to throw the ball ahead, to empower his teammates as creators. One of the virtues of Hield’s game is that he wants, maybe more than anything in the world, to get buckets—and he’s not about to let his conscience get in the way of an open look just because it’s a little early in the shot clock. The two were a perfect match. Haliburton and Hield found their rhythm quickly in Sacramento, and when they were traded together to Indiana, their on-court collaboration—fast, reactive, and free-flowing—basically set the template for the entire Pacers offense. Indiana made more transition 3s than any team in the league last season in part because Hield made more transition 3s than any other player. And Hield was in position to do so primarily because his point guard was looking for every opportunity to give the ball up early.</p>
<p id="1kY8Nd">“That’s something that Tyrese realizes and a lot of guys don’t,” Carlisle says. “They like having the ball and like controlling things. But he sees the connection with lightning-fast ball movement, teammate engagement, and the positive impact of getting the ball back <em>live</em>.” </p>
<p id="28ZQ8Y">Basketball, after all, isn’t a game of inches. It’s 94 feet of freedom, and any point guard walking the ball up is surrendering half their permit. For Haliburton, the push begins before he even has the ball. “Before I get the outlet pass,” he says, “I always glance forward.” It takes only a fraction of a second for him to map out the court and everyone on it—to see who’s running and, most crucially, who’s not. Opponents are almost always behind the curve because Indiana <em>practices</em> pace. On the days between games, they drill a continuous five-man weave—sprinting and passing up the floor over and over and over, aiming to get the ball across half-court within three seconds. “It’s hard, man,” Turner says. “As fast as we play, we practice 10 times faster.” Other teams, of course, know what the Pacers are after. But it’s one thing to read about fast breaks in a scouting report, and another to feel your entire margin for error dissolve. To realize that if you so much as drive to the basket or crash the offensive glass, you might as well be watching from the stands as the Pacers streak to the other end.</p>
<p id="jMbQqg">Obi Toppin, leak-out artist extraordinaire, has predictably become one of Haliburton’s favorite targets. The former Knick had been eyeing the Pacers for more than a year, and strategizing with his agent about how he might be able to get to Indiana. A trade granted his wish. It was a perfect opportunity for the Pacers to supercharge their frontcourt with one of the league’s most sensational open-floor talents. “It’d be hard for me to imagine that you couldn’t take a guy like Obi Toppin and turn him into a world-class track athlete,” Carlisle says. “Or triple jump? Can you even imagine?” Lately, he’s been auditioning for the 100-meter:</p>
<div id="eGInV8"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Au8aiFC_PA?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Gliwag">When there’s a pass to be made over the top, Haliburton sends it. When there’s not, he shoots the ball up the sideline instead, giving runners like Hield, Bennedict Mathurin, and Bruce Brown license to see what they can find for themselves. “You’ve gotta put good energy in the ball,” Haliburton says. “Put good energy into the game, and the basketball gods will reward you. I feel like most times, if I kick ahead and give my teammate a chance to get downhill, it’ll come back to me.” And when it does, the offense is almost always better for it, with momentum to ride or a mismatch to work. Carlisle and his staff call this <em>pace after</em>—when a fast break bleeds straight into Indiana’s offense. If you don’t stop attacking, the break never really ends.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="uUxkH7"><q>“You’ve gotta put good energy in the ball. Put good energy into the game, and the basketball gods will reward you.” —Tyrese Haliburton</q></aside></div>
<p id="sKpUqA">An initial drive-and-kick feeds into another drive, which reroutes into a dribble handoff, which leads into a pick-and-roll. “It’s harder to guard when the other team doesn’t know what’s about to happen,” Carlisle says. “It’s also harder to guard when <em>your</em> guys don’t know what’s about to happen, either.” In a random, reactive offense like Indiana’s, there are no decoys. There’s no misdirection. Every player is a live threat. “It’s always a different option every time,” Hield says. “It’s very rare that I get back-to-back 3-pointers, or rare that Tyrese gets back-to-back layups. You’re picking your poison, and we’re playing out of that.” </p>
<p id="QX4gXQ">Indiana was a transition terror last season but stalled out in the half-court as its schedule wore on. Switching defenses threw off the continuity. Injuries and shooting slumps made it difficult to sustain momentum. Some teams even started going under screens for Haliburton and denying his teammates, picking their poison by daring the pass-first point guard to beat them as a scorer. Even when Haliburton rose to the occasion, you could sense a reluctance in his pull-up jumpers. </p>
<p id="1y6fMI">“The biggest challenge for me is finding that balance,” Haliburton says. “There’s probably a world out there where I could realistically average 15 assists. There’s a world out there where I could average 25 points. Well, I’m trying to find a mixture of doing both.”</p>
<p id="UbQC7V">The ongoing tension between when to score and when to pass is something Haliburton talks about with Pacers assistant Jenny Boucek, who saw Sue Bird walk the same line when she coached the WNBA’s Seattle Storm. It’s something Haliburton goes over on film with his trainer, Drew Hanlen, who makes it a point to call out every single moment in which he could have attempted a shot. “He yells at me every game,” Haliburton says. And that’s what he wants: to be pushed. Haliburton knows that his trajectory as a player ultimately depends on his ability to shift into scoring mode. That’s what moves a defense, though sometimes it requires a committed passer to stomach the sort of quick, aggressive shots that make him a bit queasy. </p>
<p id="f0A0zV">The Haliburton of last season wouldn’t have dropped 25 points in a single quarter like he did against Charlotte earlier this month—though in being true to himself, Haliburton still managed to squeeze six assists into the frame, too. That seems like a pretty healthy balance, if the kind that no one in the NBA’s play-by-play era had ever managed before. The clearest marker of Haliburton’s progress, however, lies in the fact that the Pacers don’t just have the top overall offense in the NBA this season. They have the second-most efficient half-court offense in the league, too.</p>
<p id="B7ijGF">The best version of the Pacers is drawn by five players making instantaneous decisions, attacking in so many ways so quickly that the defense never has a chance to recover. “When you’re in the mix, you feel like you’re involved,” Toppin says. “It feels like they need you out there offensively and defensively—you’re not just sitting there in the corner, waiting for a shot.” This sort of basketball, even more than regimented systems, relies on trust. When you don’t have a script for how a possession is supposed to develop, you have to believe that every teammate who touches the ball has the best of intentions. That’s why the hit-ahead pass matters. “It’s a small thing,” backup point guard T.J. McConnell says, “but a big thing.” It’s why it means something more when Haliburton points out an open teammate who needs the ball, or swings it without hesitation and yells, “THAT’S CASH!” before a shot even goes up. “That type of stuff is huge for me,” Turner says.</p>
<p id="lujvm4">For the first time in almost a decade, there is perfect clarity in how Indiana is going to play. The Pacers run because Haliburton runs. They share the ball because he shares the ball. His tendencies became the team’s house style, and because of that, there is perfect clarity in how Indiana is building its roster, too. “Ty has really kind of set the table for what our approach as a franchise is going forward, from a personnel standpoint,” Carlisle says. The roster has almost completely turned over since Haliburton’s arrival, and the additions the Pacers made this summer—namely Brown, Toppin, and rookie Jarace Walker—are all born to run. </p>
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<p id="EiDves">“It’s easy to spot guys that I think can succeed with Ty,” Buchanan says. It’s a little more difficult, however, to find players who can keep pace with Haliburton while defending and rebounding at the level Indiana needs. Playing fast and defending hard often come from very different player profiles—with a few exceptions. “Bruce does both,” Buchanan says. “And we’re trying to get Obi there.” Toppin is almost a defensive project—an explosive, kinetic player who hasn’t dominated the glass or played air-tight defense consistently, but <em>could</em>. He’s exactly the sort of talent the Pacers have come to understand in a different way.</p>
<p id="d7YLQJ">Over the past few years, Indiana’s front office has reconsidered the way it looks at—and values—athleticism. “We knew we had to sort of retune our thoughts,” team president Kevin Pritchard says. The speed of the NBA game had reached a point where some teams were getting left behind. Even those that didn’t play small had to be able to play fast. The Pacers, historically, have rarely been that. Many of the best teams in franchise history operated at a steady trot or, at best, a canter. Indiana pushed the speed limit for a few years in the late 2000s with rosters led by Danny Granger, Troy Murphy, and Mike Dunleavy Jr., which kind of tells you everything you need to know about the organization’s athletic history.</p>
<p id="2vGk4k">Carlisle noted that his team had ranked last in dunks before trading for Haliburton in 2022, but over the past decade, the Pacers have wound up near the bottom of the league in dunks almost every season. Back in 2019, an otherwise solid Indiana team went an entire regular season without completing a single lob dunk. This time around, with Haliburton running the show and a remade roster ready to keep up, the Pacers are dunking at a rate uncharacteristically above league average. Toppin has barely worn the blue and gold and already popped off what might be<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHfA70aXWRE"> the first between-the-legs dunk</a> in franchise history. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvfzM486P3M">Non-Dunk-Contest Division</a>.) </p>
<p id="ZvKnVS">“Something little like that is normal to me,” Toppin says. “But everybody else is telling me that’s crazy. That’s the energy being built up in the arena.” It’s also the pure, psychedelic thrill of a fan base accustomed to a more grounded basketball experience. “Sabonis is an elite big man in the league,” Haliburton says. “But post moves aren’t exciting. You know what I mean? Even [Nikola] Jokic, he’s probably the best player in the world right now. But post moves aren’t that exciting. That’s just how basketball works.” It’s impossible to extricate the buzz around the Pacers contending for the playoffs from the electricity that comes from their style of play.</p>
<p id="B3SXQ6">“Most of the positive and important things that happen in a basketball game happen on the ground,” Carlisle says. “Now, that said: This is a game of speed. Our greatly increased dunk quotient, more than anything, speaks to the level of team speed that we have now. I don’t care if we dunk the ball or not. That’s not important to me. But this game needs to be a fun game. It needs to be fun for the players. When the players are having fun, the fans are having fun. And when the fans are having fun, the arena is full, and the environment is <em>awesome</em>.”</p>
<p id="IbJV1m">The Pacers were built for this. Haliburton is dishing no-look jump passes. Mathurin is bulldozing his way through traffic and trying to tear down the rim whenever he can. “My coaches always said that I carried myself like I was Dwayne Johnson,” Mathurin notes. “But I really think I am—and I haven’t really been proven otherwise.” Hield, who has been<a href="https://www.nba.com/stats/players/speed-distance?CF=MIN*GE*20&dir=D&sort=AVG_SPEED_OFF"> the fastest player in the league</a> on offense this season, is flying around the floor just waiting for a defender to make a mistake. Aaron Nesmith has already caught a few bodies. Springy reserve center Isaiah Jackson—a test case in the Pacers’ new athletic priorities—is one of the exceptional few to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpy3RWIzHzA">swat the living hell</a> out of 7-foot-4 rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama. Toppin is out in front running the break, popping off a perfectly casual between-the-legs dunk in the middle of a competitive game. The speed is the point—and the Pacers are quickly delivering wins and record-setting performances and a new understanding of what Indiana basketball can be.</p>
<p id="9ZBihV">“Those Pacers teams that I remember,” Haliburton says, ”David West, Roy Hibbert—speaking for the rest of America, it was like: [Paul George] is young and talented and Lance [Stephenson] is fun, but these guys are kinda boring. I tell P that all the time. I didn’t wanna watch the Pacers.” Haliburton wanted to watch the Heat—to see a team that would not only win, but one that would turn a fast break against his hometown Bucks into<a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nba/bucks/2019/03/22/iconic-image-dwyane-wade-against-bucks-live-forever/3243870002/"> something unforgettable</a>. “We all wanna get the job done,” he says. “But there’s a mixture of it. I think this style of basketball is exciting for people and makes it more fun for everybody involved.”</p>
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<img alt="Indiana Pacers v Brooklyn Nets" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PWqfeJcYxv8ORFRddTKoOlOShNM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25080479/1390725559.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images</cite>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="5jtVZ2">At the end of every season, Pritchard and Buchanan sit down with every player on the Pacers roster to talk about the way things went—a standard practice in the NBA world. One question they always ask is: </p>
<p id="ZrBWod"><em>What more can we do, as management, to help the team?</em> </p>
<p id="aqr31r">Some players might have notes about communication or travel policies. Others might have a few quibbles about the team facility. But an exit interview with Haliburton has a way of turning into a think tank. How can we help out the equipment manager? Does the strength coach get paid extra to come work guys out on off days? And why, when the team goes on the road, do we offer meals for players after shootaround but not for the rest of the support staff?</p>
<p id="cF0NDK">“He just sees the whole picture,” Buchanan says. “He’s not siloed into just him and his best friend on the team or whatever. He sees the whole group and how it impacts the pulse and mood of the team, which is a really unique quality based on my experience in the NBA.” The impact of every star is felt differently. Some of the league’s most incredible players clock in and clock out, and that works for them. Haliburton doesn’t really operate that way. When the Pacers have a team outing, he organizes it and books cars for everyone. If he and some teammates are going out for dinner after a game, there are no cliques. The whole team is invited—and Haliburton is paying. </p>
<p id="n83DDf">“Of course, when you get a big-ass contract, it’s all good,” Hield jokes. “But he’s serving us in a way where we can’t repay him back.”</p>
<p id="sPq8HQ">The newest Pacers are still getting used to that dynamic. Before the season, Brown—a country music devotee—was shocked to learn that Haliburton had never visited Nashville, and suggested a trip. Haliburton turned the idea into a full-blown, teamwide mini-camp. The Pacers worked out and scrimmaged during the day and went barhopping at night. Brown, one of only <a href="https://blog.stetson.com/cowboys-of-the-court/">two NBA players</a> to have an endorsement deal with Stetson, wore a cowboy hat—“Every. Single. Night,” Haliburton says. Brown has been traveling with his hat by packing it away in a suitcase, carefully encircled by clothes. But the two-year, $45 million contract he signed with the Pacers this summer allows for a few splurges.</p>
<p id="o3EAAz">“Now that I’ve gotten paid a little bit,” Brown says, “I’m actually getting a hat box from Boot Barn.”</p>
<p id="Gfnir0">Haliburton’s teammates rave about how many things like the mini-camp are simply taken care of, right on time and down to the smallest detail. They get FaceTimes from him out of the blue, sometimes to catch up and sometimes just to talk a little shit. Haliburton knows their parents, their siblings, their friends. He never misses a birthday. He planned the Pacers’ Halloween party this year; he went as Miles Morales, and his girlfriend, Jade, went as Gwen Stacy—complete with an<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CzFA3_GOCW7/?hl=en"> <em>Across the Spider-Verse–</em>themed photoshoot</a><em>. </em>(Brown, ever the cowboy, dressed as Woody.)<em> </em>Haliburton cares about details, but more than anything, he cares about people. You would think that his superpower lies in throwing the kinds of passes that almost no one else in the world can. But then you’ll see a young boy walk up to him, too shy and nervous to even speak, and within a minute that boy is smiling and laughing in an extended debate with Tyrese over the best flavor of Baby Bottle Pop.</p>
<p id="zv1Xw5">“It doesn’t matter if you’re a player, a coach, a ball boy, a GM—he’s gonna treat everyone the same,” says Pacers assistant Isaac Yacob, who has worked with Haliburton since he was a video coordinator with the Kings. When Yacob and Haliburton would sit together on team flights to go over game film together, Tyrese never wanted to watch clips of just his own possessions. He wanted to go through the entire game, piece by piece—to see the full board.</p>
<p id="h89MAZ">“We’ll watch the whole game,” Yacob says, “and we’ll just talk through: What did you see here? We talk about what other players are doing, right or wrong. What can he do to help them?”</p>
<p id="yVjavi">Point guard, the way Haliburton plays it, is a position of empathy. Sometimes the job is about understanding who might be feeling insecure about their contract situation and making them feel valued. Other times, it’s about seeing what a younger teammate has been working on in practice and helping them showcase that skill in a game. Every roster is a balancing act of 15 or so players, each with their own goals, their own incentives, their own anxieties. “My job is to make sure everybody eats,” Haliburton says. “If dudes make sacrifices for me, I’ve gotta be able to give ‘em a bone here and there. If Myles is setting 10 ball screens in a row, I’m gonna get him a touch. If I see Benn hasn’t touched it in a little bit, I’m gonna run a set for him, get him involved.” </p>
<p id="jFnPCv">Haliburton’s father often reminds him that in this role, he’s responsible for the livelihood of everyone around him. Part of seeing the bigger picture is understanding the costs of people depending on you. What qualifies Haliburton for that kind of responsibility, beyond being one of the premiere point guards in the league, is that he cares enough to know as much as he can. “He knows everything about every guy,” Buchanan says. “Where they’re from, what AAU team they played for, what NBA teams they played for, their contract, who their agent is. He knows <em>all</em> that shit. So he’s already invested. He can put himself in their shoes.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="etVYo9"><q>“In a small market, you need a player or players that other guys say, ‘I wanna play with him.’ I don’t care where he’s at. ‘That guy, I’d like to play with him.’ We didn’t feel like we had one of those guys at that time.” —Chad Buchanan, Pacers GM</q></aside></div>
<p id="gzN8tG">“Let’s just say Obi, for example,” Haliburton explains. “His contract’s up after the year. And me and Obi are really close—we’ve been close since predraft. We have the same marketing agent—we’re cool. I’m trying to boost his career. I want to help him right now. How can I help him eat?”</p>
<p id="oMd8Bt">Haliburton wants to do for Toppin what he did for Turner, Hield, Nesmith, and others: help him play the best basketball of his life. When Turner saw Haliburton in action for the first time as a Pacer, he saw the opportunity of his career. <em>Finally</em>,<em> a chance to play with a pass-first guy</em>, Turner remembers thinking. The Pacers as we know them are now built around that very draw. </p>
<p id="iElW4c">“In a small market, you need a player or players that other guys say, ‘I wanna play with him,’” Buchanan says. “I don’t care where he’s at. ‘That guy, I’d like to play with him.’ We didn’t feel like we had one of those guys at that time.” </p>
<p id="zX0sug">By playing style alone, Haliburton is unlike any star the Pacers have ever had. Last season, he became the first player in franchise history to average double-digit assists. The last Pacer to average even eight assists was Jamaal Tinsley, some 15 years ago. But moreover, Turner was right: Not only has the veteran center looked like the best, most realized version of himself playing with Haliburton, but the two of them have made for the most prolific assist combination in the entire league this season. </p>
<p id="lm1sn4">“Ty is a very capable scorer, but I think he gets off more getting guys involved and pushing that pace,” Turner says. “He’s just a savant with the stuff he does out there.” </p>
<p id="abBGCa">The rest of the basketball world has taken notice. Haliburton spent his summer jet-setting around the South Pacific with Team USA, a bright spot in what was ultimately a losing bid for the Americans in the FIBA World Cup. Early in group play, one of New Zealand’s coaches could be heard<a href="https://twitter.com/C2_Cooper/status/1695423533327741033"> on the broadcast</a> warning his team that Haliburton was coming into the game. “Haliburton’s in!” the coach yelled. “No passes over the top!” The scouting report had gone international.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="HEPewG"><q>“Ty is a very capable scorer, but I think he gets off more getting guys involved and pushing that pace. He’s just a savant with the stuff he does out there.” —Myles Turner</q></aside></div>
<p id="TQSpVk">But within Team USA, some of the NBA’s best young players took part in the time-honored tradition of recruiting each other. USA Basketball has been the launchpad for more than a few superteams over the years, or at the very least, to the germ of the idea behind them. You don’t just forget how exhilarating it is to play alongside a talent like Anthony Edwards—or, for that matter, like Haliburton. And so the stars of Team USA tend to alternate between hard-selling each other on what it would be like to team up together in the league, and playfully talking shit about how they’d rather beat one another instead. When I ask Haliburton which players on this year’s team had been the most shameless on the recruiting trail, he thinks for a moment, smiles, and says: “Maybe me.”</p>
<p id="MRdKsR">This, Haliburton tells me, is part of his job now.</p>
<p id="7aqsWI">“Obviously, that’s what the NBA is,” he says. “It’s been that forever. So that’s our job as the top guys in the league is to make it appealing to other guys to want to come play with you. Because the more talent you have around you, the more fun it’ll be and the better chance you have of winning.”</p>
<p id="JnE0D8">This summer was the first time that Brown actually got to choose his NBA home. The veteran guard had been a free agent before, including in 2022—but wound up signing with Denver by default when no other offers materialized. <a href="https://cdn.nba.com/manage/2023/06/brown.jpg">It worked out pretty well for him</a>. This time around, Brown and his agent set a full slate of meetings to enjoy the process and see what a championship pedigree is worth. He had conversations with the Nuggets about the $7.8 million they could offer—the best they could do through his Bird rights—and considered a return. He got some interest from the Knicks and thought about what that might look like. Then he heard from the Pacers and immediately canceled the rest of his meetings. Why would Brown close the door on a process he had been waiting for his whole career?</p>
<p id="mtcG13">“Obviously, I mean, <em>shit</em>—getting paid a great bag,” he says. “And then Tyrese.” Haliburton and Brown didn’t really know each other, but the Pacers star called him to make his case. He told Brown about the fit. The speed. All the opportunities he’d have to take the ball and run with it. “When someone calls you and recruits you to a team,” Brown says, “it’s a different feeling.” </p>
<p id="ck3XkR">Brown is an excellent role player—a winner any team would be lucky to have. But next time around, the Pacers have their sights set even higher. “We can go after some big players in the summer,” Pritchard says. “We can look at some big trades.” This season will tell the Pacers<em> </em>just <em>how </em>big. Indiana plays a lot of undersized lineups that get worked over inside, resulting in one of the most foul-prone defenses in the league. So long as that’s the case, a big, physical forward clearly rates as Indiana’s most pressing need. There’s hope that Walker can eventually fit that bill, but for now the no. 8 draft pick is a bit raw for even rotation minutes. A game-ready, All-Star-level version of that player could vault Indiana into a pretty select class in the East.</p>
<p id="ty6ris">Management has been careful not to let this group get ahead of itself. Haliburton, who hasn’t been on a winning team since his freshman year at Iowa State, is desperate to make the playoffs. First, the Pacers have to earn the right—by running straight through their hot start and into everyday continuity. If these Pacers prove to be a solid playoff team this season with promising internal development (particularly for players like Haliburton, Mathurin, and Andrew Nembhard), it could be a signal to accelerate their competitive timeline. </p>
<p id="ycuUzf">“We can take small jumps here and there, hitting singles,” Buchanan says. “But eventually, we’ve gotta swing for the fences.”</p>
<p id="gdCWmy">Indiana could create <em>a ton</em> of cap space if it chooses to cut bait on various options, with a free agent class that could include almost-Pacer Kawhi Leonard, former Pacer Paul George, oft-rumored Pacers target Pascal Siakam, and former Hoosier OG Anunoby. Any number of other stars could potentially be available via trade—<em>if </em>those stars are swayed by the pitch Haliburton and the Pacers have so carefully crafted. Haliburton has heard the rebuttals—that you can’t get a star to come play in Indianapolis, just like you couldn’t get a star to come play in Sacramento.</p>
<p id="GYt12u">“But I’m from Wisconsin,” he says. “And growing up, it was like: <em>You’re never gonna get anybody to go to Milwaukee.</em> Well, you get Giannis Antetokounmpo, and now people take a pay cut to go play for the Bucks. I’ve seen it firsthand. In my life, I’ve seen it. So I think I play the right brand of basketball that makes people wanna play with me, and that’s not just me, but that’s how this team is coached and the style of basketball we play.”</p>
<p id="q8j5Wt">“With Tyrese Haliburton,” Carlisle says, “all things are possible.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="KSchOy"><q>“With Tyrese Haliburton, all things are possible.” —Rick Carlisle, Pacers coach</q></aside></div>
<p id="wg7znn">Indiana’s coach sees greatness in Haliburton, but more than that, he sees shades of a number of all-time greats. The passion of Reggie Miller, “the quintessential greatest Pacer of all time.” The showmanship of Magic, like Tyrese’s father always wanted. There’s some Jason Kidd in the way Haliburton can manipulate the game, Carlisle says, and certainly in the jump passes. Yet in terms of the way Tyrese moves through the world, Carlisle sees a lot of Steve Nash. </p>
<p id="eWDmL5">“Steve was a guy that whenever he approached one of his teammates, he would put his hand up and make contact and it was just another way to connect,” Carlisle says. “It was almost like there was an electric current going from him to a teammate.”</p>
<p id="ba4srR">Haliburton might not have quite the same style of outreach (a bummer for the<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwVwT3Fx_W0"> MBA wannabe-TED Talk</a> industrial complex), but there’s a similar charge in the way he connects. It’s not only reaching out and checking in and making plans. Haliburton, at just 23 years old, is incredibly attuned to the human experience of the game. “He has this feel of when his teammates need something,” Buchanan says. It’s a sense that goes beyond shots and touches, and transcends the tactical balance of how to break down the coverage. The biggest threat to a talented team is always itself. There’s something tugging at the seams of even the best-constructed rosters: hurt feelings, hard negotiations, unsatisfied ambition. One way that Nash made his teams better was by bringing them to an emotional equilibrium.</p>
<p id="41sOl9">“There’s responsibility there—responsibility outside of wins and losses, about keeping the team psyche balanced,” Nash says. “Whether that’s taking responsibility for losses, whether that’s keeping the guys light, loose, or calm. Sometimes it’s showing that there’s a passion to win, that the level is not acceptable right now. That’s kind of a part of it, too. You’re the one who’s gonna have to talk. You’re the one who’s gonna have to talk to the press, and take responsibility in that way as well. You have to make sure the moment’s not too big, or that you recognize the energy’s not high enough, or whatever it is. That’s more intense when you are the face of the franchise.”</p>
<p id="83OKl5">The trade to the Pacers was a chance for Haliburton to be exactly that: the face of an entire organization. Yet when he initially found out about the deal, he cried. Haliburton was a second-year player who had made himself a part of something—who had built the same kinds of relationships in Sacramento that he’s building now in Indiana. “He put his heart and his mind in it so much that he forgot it was a business,” his father says. “It snuck up on him. And it bit him.”</p>
<p id="1zFAGR">Hield, who has basically been in the rumor mill since birth, tried to warn him. “New Orleans told me they loved me, too,” he says. “They told me to get a house, so I bought a house. They said I was gonna be there for a long time.” Hield didn’t even get to finish out his rookie season in that house; the Pelicans traded him just a few months in. There were some I-told-you-so’s after Haliburton suffered a similar fate in just his second year, but Hield saw something that a wounded Haliburton couldn’t just yet. <em>This was everything Tyrese wanted</em>. The chance to lead a team. The opportunity to play his natural position. The full confidence of an organization that Haliburton thought he had—but didn’t.</p>
<p id="Afpa0i">“It’s not the way you wanted it to happen,” Hield remembers telling him, “but now you’re in a situation you can control. You’re not playing where someone else has the ball all the time, or where you have to defer to anybody. Everybody’s deferring to you. So you’ve just gotta grow up fast.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="FG7HCm">The new face of the Indiana Pacers gave himself 48 hours to process that fact. Then he laced up his shoes, fired the ball up the floor, and never looked back.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/11/13/23958254/tyrese-haliburton-indiana-pacersRob Mahoney2023-11-01T18:47:40-04:002023-11-01T18:47:40-04:00The Next Questions After the James Harden Trade
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<figcaption>Photo by Carmen Mandato/USSF/Getty Images for USSF</figcaption>
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<p>How does the polarizing superstar fit in with the star-studded Clippers?</p> <div id="v8Mq4Y"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/4YhTduvMMXqBJSIa1tT1hi?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Ki8H98"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4YhTduvMMXqBJSIa1tT1hi?si=NxAJDX8qQxWFKMNuAjpGcQ&nd=1">Justin, Rob, and Wos answer some next questions for all the parties involved in the James Harden trade.</a> They discuss Harden’s fit on the Clippers, the next move for the Sixers, and more. Then they check in on a couple of young bigs in Victor Wembanyama and Evan Mobley and discuss their starts to the season (54:14).</p>
<p id="KFklum"><em>The Ringer </em>is committed to responsible gaming, please check out <a href="https://www.theringer.com/pages/responsiblegaming">theringer.com/RG</a> to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details.</p>
<p id="HYxLrc">Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre<br>Producer: Isaiah Blakely<br>Additional Production Supervision: Benjamin Cruz</p>
<p id="aGrlvX"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5jUeKBONOmKJivqrRoIDJn?si=vpc_P_zDRjq-4772y0DSmg">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-ringer-nba-show%2Fid1109271715%3Fmt%3D2&xcust=xid:fr1571261047952jai%7Cxid:fr1571399819617jgd%7Cxid:fr1571701693383gbg%7Cxid:fr1572293865613jec%7Cxid:fr1572377891966ejg">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/ringer-nba-show">Stitcher</a> / <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ringernbashow">RSS</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2023/11/1/23942706/the-next-questions-after-the-james-harden-trade-group-chatRob MahoneyJustin VerrierWosny Lambre2023-10-10T08:34:24-04:002023-10-10T08:34:24-04:00Five Teams That Will Define the 2023-24 NBA Season
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The defending champs, an up-and-comer, and three more teams that could have a say in the title race before it’s all said and done</p> <p id="QL0wxd"><em>The NBA preseason is upon us, which means the real thing is right around the corner. Which players, teams, and story lines will drive the title race—and news cycle—over the next six months? This week, </em>The Ringer<em> is doing its best to provide an answer in Five Columns That Will Define the ’23-24 NBA Season. </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/9/23908944/nba-season-preview-2023-24-five-defining-players-zion-williamson"><em>Yesterday, it was the players</em></a><em>. Today, it’s the teams.</em></p>
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<p id="szfjYs">Throughout this week, our staff here at <em>The Ringer</em> is wrestling with the question of what, or who, defines an NBA season—there are many ways to make a mark and subtly nudge the course of basketball history. Some of those methods can be obvious; you can sure as hell define a season by winning the whole thing, or even just by eliminating enough rivals that aspire to do so. But you can also define it by setting in motion a chain of events that changes everything. A butterfly flaps its wings, and a play-in team topples a contender. A turn of an ankle can prevent a proper challenger from ever fully getting its legs under it. There’s a case for a good many teams to define the 2023-24 season in their own ways, but these are the five teams best positioned to do that—by wins, by moves, or by changing the way we think about the league or merely the way we tell the story of the season.</p>
<h3 id="yRzrwU">Denver Nuggets</h3>
<p id="cYr3IS">Where else could we possibly begin? The Nuggets aren’t just the defending champions, but also the favorites until further notice, anchored by the world’s best basketball player and a perfectly calibrated starting lineup without a single member past their prime. Their title win was the culmination of both the larger Nuggets project, to be sure, and the seven seasons that Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and Michael Malone have spent together, in particular. But it was also the start of something—a run at the top of the Western Conference without a challenger quite on their level.</p>
<p id="YzPBAL">The Suns, Lakers, and Warriors will all make their cases, but that’s just it: The burden of proof rests with <em>them</em>. We know who the Nuggets are. We know what they can do and how dominant they can be. And, frankly, the Lakers and Suns know this better than most, having tried and failed to stop Jokic, contain Murray, or find any exploitable point of weakness in Denver at all. </p>
<aside id="pdy3Hu"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Five Players Who Will Define the 2023-24 NBA Season ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/9/23908944/nba-season-preview-2023-24-five-defining-players-zion-williamson"},{"title":"2023-24 NBA Preseason Power Rankings ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/4/23902499/nba-power-rankings-preview-offseason-trades"},{"title":"Behind the Scenes of James Harden and Daryl Morey’s Ugly Standoff ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/5/23904012/james-harden-daryl-morey-philadelphia-76ers-trade-rumors"}]}'></div></aside><p id="ZOvMcH">Against that backdrop, it’s fascinating that the West’s class of challengers did so little this offseason to better match up with the Nuggets. After getting swept by Denver, the Lakers added the sorts of lean, lanky bigs that Jokic (who already averaged a 28-15-12 triple-double against the best defenders L.A. had to offer) can easily throw over his shoulder. Phoenix has one vaguely starting-level center on its roster (Jusuf Nurkic), and he’s been available for fewer than half of his team’s games over the past four seasons. Golden State might be as small as it’s ever been in the Steph Curry era—which won’t be a problem against a lot of teams but just might be when Jokic is walking his way into any basket he wants.</p>
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<p id="wmNIKh">Maybe the only way to really contend with the Nuggets is to resign yourself to the fact that no matter what you do with your roster, Jokic will get the shots he wants. But will no one sign an extra backup big just in case? Will there be no real effort to challenge the Nuggets at the core of what they do best? Denver has a few quirks in its rotation to sort out after losing Bruce Brown in free agency, but the fact that Christian Braun, Reggie Jackson, and Peyton Watson are figures of league-altering intrigue speaks to the Nuggets’ defining power in the league landscape. We live in a world where Denver is the front-runner for the NBA title from the opening day of the season. Soon, we’ll see how the entire league—including a Nuggets team new to the psychology of setting the pace—reckons with that fact.</p>
<h3 id="CQAZRl">Memphis Grizzlies</h3>
<p id="CFWOTK">The Grizzlies have been one of the most dependable regular-season performers in recent years despite the prolonged absences of some of their best players, and they’re the only team in the West to finish with a top-two seed in each of the past two seasons. The 2023-24 campaign will be quite a challenge to that premise—seeing as Ja Morant’s 25-game suspension will put a hard cap on how often we’ll see the best version of the Grizzlies.</p>
<p id="cwnkeG">It seems like we’re headed one of two ways with Memphis: Either the Grizzlies will endure Ja’s absence, as they often have, and hold on to one of the top seeds in the West, displacing another would-be contender in the process, or they’ll slip enough to allow another team to claim home-court advantage, shaking up the standings and complicating their own path to a breakthrough season. The former would probably be more significant, mostly for what it would tell us about the Grizz. If things are going well in Memphis by the time Morant gets back, it would suggest a season of expansion for Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane, a clean fit for newcomer Marcus Smart, and maybe even the healthy return of Steven Adams. In all, it could announce a version of the Grizzlies that would have to be taken seriously.</p>
<p id="KlWwS0">Maybe this is the season Memphis will finally grow into its aspirations. It’s fun to be the brash upstart challenging the established order of the conference, but the Grizzlies have been running headfirst into their own limitations for years now. During that time, Bane has improved dramatically—but Memphis needs more. Jackson leveled up his defense to win the top individual honor on that end of the floor—but Memphis needs more. That’s a lot to ask, but competing at the highest levels of the sport always requires something extra. The Grizzlies are too young and too talented for this to be a make-or-break season, but it’ll certainly be a telling one for a core with a lot to prove, a younger flank that hasn’t really stabilized, and an organization that may have to face some hard questions sooner rather than later.</p>
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<h3 id="6Cdyuh">
<br>Milwaukee Bucks</h3>
<p id="7Z6tM9">Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard are as seamless a conceptual fit as you’ll find in two superstars. That should be thrilling in its own right—a fascinating riff on the partnership between Steph Curry and Kevin Durant that resulted in two titles, with similar dimensions but far less angst and virtually no assembly required. Neither star will have to be anything other than what they are or do anything other than what they’re best at. A single ball screen from Giannis for Dame is basically as good as an open shot. The only real variable is how opponents will try to contend with the play—an impossible task that could turn the entire regular season into a 29-team think tank.</p>
<p id="N1kXsV">Boston traded for Jrue Holiday as a direct response to Milwaukee’s landing of Lillard, but in a way, the arms race is only getting started. Most of the accepted strategies for contending with Antetokounmpo or Lillard individually are no longer valid; good luck building a wall against Giannis when you have one of the best long-range shooters hoisting shots over the top of it, and Godspeed in executing your cute little traps against Lillard when the most dominant downhill player in the NBA will be going four-on-three with a full head of steam as a result. Opposing defenses will have to get really creative to have any chance of slowing the Bucks down, and opposing front offices will too. </p>
<p id="kuF0bC">If a successful outline for countering the Giannis-Dame two-man game even exists, it probably hasn’t been found yet. That positions Milwaukee as a compelling force in the marketplace—a challenge that can actually change the way rivals think about their teams and maybe even force them to change their rosters. Even Boston, which has as stout a top six as you’ll find anywhere, doesn’t have all the answers. You can quibble with Milwaukee’s depth and wonder about how age and injury could hamper the supporting cast. But simply putting Dame and Giannis in the same uniform has seismic potential, with implications that could go beyond who wins the title.</p>
<h3 id="sHEm9k">Oklahoma City Thunder</h3>
<p id="XXFY8y">The most exciting young team is also the biggest wild card in the trade market—a combination that sets up the Thunder, who were already plenty competitive last season, for dramatic growth. OKC could improve by leaps and bounds at virtually any time. The organic version of that would be compelling enough, as Jalen Williams and Josh Giddey hit their stride in line with the All-NBA-minted Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Yet if a player who could move the team forward without compromising its future became available, the Thunder could jump to the front of the line given all their stockpiled draft capital. They hold the trump card in any trade sweepstakes. It’s just a matter of waiting for the right player.</p>
<p id="Jhy3an">And, for that matter, waiting for the right time. There’s no explicit need for Oklahoma City to take any big swings just yet, but the fact that it <em>could</em> means the Thunder are always looming at the edges of the frame, being factored into trade negotiations they aren’t even really a part of. A trade will come eventually; it <em>has</em> to, for the simple fact that the Thunder couldn’t possibly roster as many players as they have future picks. But in the meantime, the stakeholders in the team get to better understand what they have. Where will Giddey’s game go from here, and what is his best means of contributing to a team that already has Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams? Where is Chet Holmgren in his first year as a pro, and what does he project to contribute down the line? Can Cason Wallace fit what the Thunder need, or will he break the mold entirely? </p>
<p id="QlUBpH">The basketball world is waiting for OKC to make its big, franchise-altering move, but the uncertainty of this moment is part of the fun. Anything seems possible. OKC isn’t just twiddling its thumbs until a deal comes along; there’s so much to play for and to wait for, particularly for a team that could quickly leap up the standings if even a few factors break its way.</p>
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<h3 id="t54B9r">
<br>Miami Heat</h3>
<p id="sVPfcj">We should really know better by now than to pencil in matchups for the Eastern Conference finals, given that the Heat are sitting <em>right there.</em> Miami just bides its time, waiting to ruin some well-stocked contender’s year. Forget the regular-season precedent. Forget the matchup logic. The Heat just break teams down and find a way, making them the ultimate spoiler in a conference that feels heavily weighted toward the new-and-improved Bucks and Celtics. It’s hard to blame anyone for believing in those sorts of on-paper powerhouses, but the building of consensus seems to just make the Heat stronger. Gloss over them at your own risk; one way or another, Miami will have its say in deciding this season.</p>
<p id="FiV4P8">Maybe that will manifest as it did in the 2023 playoffs, when the Heat took advantage of a Giannis injury to bounce the Bucks straight out of the first round. Or maybe Miami’s presence will be felt most in attrition—by wearing down the Celtics and, even if they can’t upset them, taking enough of a toll on them to ensure that Boston doesn’t beat anyone else. No one wants to see Miami in a seven-game series because it is the kind of matchup you can never really win. You can advance only at a cost, or you can fail to and pay an even deeper, existential one. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="AD8iIr">Superteams rise and fall. Players come and go from Miami’s roster. The world around the Heat changes, and yet they always manage to turn up just the kind of roster that can challenge what we <em>think</em> we know about the competitive order of the NBA. This is just the way of things. If you choose not to accept that, then you too will watch, bewildered, as Cole Swider sends some contender packing next May, wondering how it all came to this.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/10/23910916/2023-nba-season-preview-five-defining-teams-denver-nuggets-milwaukee-bucks-oklahoma-city-thunderRob Mahoney2023-09-14T08:19:18-04:002023-09-14T08:19:18-04:00Will the LeBron Effect Work on Christian Wood?
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<p>The Los Angeles Lakers’ newest signee is no sure bet, but like so many other redemption projects handed to LeBron James, the best-case result could have championship-level implications</p> <p id="4U2f9N">There are no small conversations about LeBron James. What begins as an honest assessment of how a 38-year-old LeBron played on a given night can quickly spin out into a discussion of his mystique as a living legend competing against players who grew up idolizing him, and plummet from there into a full-blown litigation of his legacy. Pretty much every other player in the league gets to have their All-NBA credentials judged on their actual play; LeBron’s case always expands, for better or for worse, into his impact as a leader or as a spokesperson or as a de facto GM.</p>
<p id="oRvTfD">And <em>honestly</em>? It makes sense. Every star player informs their team’s plans to some extent, but James actively drives them. He lobbies for particular moves in ways other stars won’t. He makes options that wouldn’t work for most organizations somehow feasible. The Cavs, the Heat, and now the Lakers have brought in players specifically on the grounds that LeBron would redefine their game. Think about that: For every Dwyane Wade, there’s a handful of J.R. Smiths and Lance Stephensons. For every Anthony Davis, there’s a whole roster of Chris Andersens and Larry Sanderses and Eddy Currys. Now, there’s a Christian Wood—a clearly talented and productive big who hasn’t been able to make it work with any of the seven teams he’s played for to date. Great players have always had a responsibility to find ways to make their teammates better. James, specifically, is often expected to salvage their careers. </p>
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<p id="sOPrSL">It’s the LeBron Effect. Sometimes it works and sometimes the bottom falls out completely, but James has been such a powerful and versatile force throughout his career that his team could talk itself into all sorts of red flags, the kinds of players that other franchises have wanted to trust but couldn’t. Still, the Lakers are right to try in this instance—not because Wood is a sure bet in Los Angeles, but because like so many other redemption projects handed to LeBron, the best-case results can have championship-level implications. </p>
<p id="0seZT1">The key is understanding which of those projects are worth taking a flier on at this stage in Bron’s career. There was a point in time when James, as a do-everything anomaly, could elevate extremely limited specialists into playing the best basketball of their careers—or, in some cases, all but giving them a career in the first place. That’s a tougher ask for LeBron in Year 21, which is why the Lakers really came together last season when they cleared some one-note contributors out of the rotation to make space for an improviser like Austin Reaves. LeBron, as ever, <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18542324/lebron-james-sounds-cleveland-cavaliers-loss"><em>needs a fucking playmaker</em></a>—not least of all because part of the bargain with James these days means reckoning with the fact that he’s likely to miss 25 games or so, during which a pure specialist can turn into dead weight. That won’t be a problem with Wood. Like D’Angelo Russell, he leaves a lot to be desired in the harsh lights of a high-stakes playoff game. Yet both have a role to play in getting the Lakers through the season and making those high-stakes playoff games a reality in the first place.</p>
<p id="81q8y6">The sorts of aging stars that previously found their way onto LeBron’s teams are a bit of a doomed proposition these days, if only because LeBron isn’t quite the reality-bending athlete he used to be. There was once a reasonable gamble to be made in whatever team LeBron played for grabbing a 37-year-old Shaq, a 34-year-old Dwight Howard, or even a 32-year-old Deron Williams when they came available—expecting that James could not only wring out the best basketball they had left, but also push through whatever fit issues arose along the way. Those days ended, unceremoniously, with Carmelo Anthony and a losing Lakers season in 2021-22. LeBron is still one of the best players in the world, but the range of his influence is shrinking. He can’t turn back the clock for yesterday’s stars, and he has a hard time plugging every hole in a roster the way he has often been asked to. The first real test of the LeBron Effect, after all, was to save a Cavs team horrible enough to draft him in the first place. And he did. He eventually made players of Sasha Pavlovic and Daniel Gibson and Damon Jones and Anderson Varejao. He made a real go of it with past-their-primes Shaq and Ben Wallace and Antawn Jamison. That was a version of LeBron that could drag around four other players and still soar to the top of the league. Today’s LeBron is wiser, more skilled, more subtle, and altogether more resourceful—but he isn’t <em>that</em>. </p>
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<p id="GeRYKK"><br>The Lakers are doing their best to adjust accordingly, flanking James and Davis with role players who can benefit from their presence without being completely reliant on it. Even the Russell Westbrook trade was a gesture in that direction. But you don’t have to make a play for a ball-dominant former MVP to get LeBron some help. You can plug in Gabe Vincent, expect the customary bump in efficiency that comes in playing alongside James, and keep it moving. You can add a wing like Taurean Prince and trust in the fact that the offense won’t self-destruct when he’s asked to put the ball on the floor.</p>
<p id="YSqmuy">It’s an easier balance to strike when James is still so good at helping wayward talents to course correct. LeBron has played with his share of knuckleheads and screwups, in some cases vouching for their talent himself. He’s had multiple spins now with Smith, Michael Beasley, and Dion Waiters. He’s tried to cool down hotheads and rev up the sorts of unmotivated former lottery picks who, despite all their talents, typically wash out of the league. He’s helped space cadets find their focus and loose cannons take aim. It’s baked into the Lakers’ team-building strategy at this point; L.A. didn’t trade for Rui Hachimura for him to be the same underachieving forward he always had been, but to find new clarity alongside one of the best to ever play. It worked, to such an extent that the team brought Hachimura back on a rich three-year deal. </p>
<p id="UFPe7S">All of which is to say, the Lakers could do worse in a spirit guide for their latest free agent addition, whose disregard for scheme and poor attention to detail have cost him real roles on winning teams and untold millions. The aim is to bring talents like Hachimura and Wood (and even Jaxson Hayes, if you’re so inclined) into the sort of intentional professional environment where they can unlock something in themselves—where James, over two decades in, doesn’t have to dominate in a way that solves for his supporting cast’s every weakness. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="0ep993">Wood just happens to be the perfect test case to see what LeBron has left. We know what James is still capable of on the floor, down to his dropping 40 points on a near triple-double while logging all 48 minutes in an elimination game against the Nuggets in last season’s Western Conference finals. His reach is evident in the way he still dictates matchups and manipulates the floor. We’ve even seen that he can still hold the complete attention of the basketball world, as the vaguest threat of retirement turned all eyes on him. This, however, is a test of James as a galvanizing force. As the kind of voice that ironed out priorities and brought a workable peace to the competing motivations of so many locker rooms. Christian Wood needs that LeBron—and at this point in James’s career, there’s no use in pretending that he doesn’t need Wood, too.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/9/14/23872907/lebron-james-effect-los-angeles-lakers-christian-woodRob Mahoney2023-08-31T15:43:01-04:002023-08-31T15:43:01-04:00Will Giannis Sign a Contract Extension? Plus, the 2023 FIBA World Cup and James Harden’s Beef With Daryl Morey.
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<figcaption>Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Rob and Wos discuss Giannis’s statements in The New York Times about his contract extension, James Harden’s ongoing beef with Daryl Morey, and the 2023 FIBA World Cup</p> <div id="ykNKBx"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/41WWW3RSnIvp0dFMsTmFp0?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="Wf4t7b"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/41WWW3RSnIvp0dFMsTmFp0">Rob and Wos discuss Giannis Antetokounmpo’s statements</a> in <em>The New York Times</em> regarding the status of a potential contract extension with the Milwaukee Bucks and what it means for his future with the franchise (1:40). Next, they react to James Harden’s ongoing beef with Daryl Morey, the president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, and the NBA’s subsequent decision to fine Harden $100K (15:38). Last, the guys check in on the 2023 FIBA World Cup and give some of their biggest takeaways from the global tournament (35:30).</p>
<p id="AsBjoH">Hosts: Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre<br>Producer: Kai Grady and Isaiah Blakely<br>Additional Production Supervision: Benjamin Cruz</p>
<p id="NQ2Uya"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5jUeKBONOmKJivqrRoIDJn">Spotify</a></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2023/8/31/23854316/giannis-antetokounmpo-contract-milwaukee-bucks-james-harden-daryl-morey-2023-fiba-world-cupRob MahoneyWosny Lambre