Bricks n’ Dunks: Week 1 – Sixers suck, Spurs don’t, the Warriors’ have a golden future
Bricks n’ Dunks is a regular column from The Hoops Nerd Huw Hopkins for the 2022-23 men’s NBA season, covering the good (Dunks) and the bad (Bricks)
Dunk: James Harden is back
He lost a bunch of weight – maybe not 100lbs, but still. He’s shooting 37.5% from three, his best since 2014-15 season. His crossover and stepback is looking more deadly than ever – apparently, Marcus Smart is still sliding along the I-95. And he’s averaging nearly 27 points per game. The James Harden we’ve been wanting for the past five seasons is here and ready to kick ass again.
Brick: James Harden is back
The only problem with James Harden playing like peak James Harden, is that we might end up ruining peak Joel Embiid.
Harden is averaging 97.9 touches per game, good for second in the league. It’s not unusual for a point guard to handle the ball more than most players on the team, but when you have a superstar and an MVP candidate on the roster, they should be leading it, regardless of position.
The likes of Pascal Siakam, LeBron James, Luka Dončić and Jayson Tatum are all in the top 20 when it comes to touches, and they are leading their respective teams, despite not technically being point guards. The only guy in the NBA touching the ball more than Harden is Nikola Jokić.
Embiid finished second in MVP voting last season. He is the reason this Philadelphia 76ers team will win a championship, if they do. He currently touches the ball 68.5 times per game, which is 37th in the league. for reference, Ben Simmons and Jakob Pöltl are 38 and 39th, respectively.
The system – or rather, Harden – is treating Embiid like a second option, and as such, they have won just a single game – against the Indiana Pacers.
Harden has proven to be someone who can’t lead a team to a championship. Unless they start treating him like a second banana, the 76ers will suffer the same fate.
Dunk: the future is Golden
The world went crazy for a moment in 2018, when Deontay Wilder caught Tyson Fury so hard, it looked like might have to retire then and there. But that was nothing compared to the moments after a video leaked from the Golden State Warriors, showing Draymond Green’s right hand popping with power at Jordan Poole, who fell back against the wall as players and coaches dragged Green back.
Just like Fury rose from that horizontal state, Poole came out swinging to start the NBA season.
With the Warriors at full strength, unlike last season, Poole is getting fewer minutes, though I’m sure he won’t mind after getting a big contract extension. And he’s still managing to be productive and aggressive in 27 minutes per game. He is averaging 14 points and 6 assists, and getting to the free throw line more than he has in his entire career. All this is good, but it is bound to change dramatically as the season is just a week old.
What’s more positive is how he and James Wiseman are playing together, as the latter is averaging 11 points and 6 rebounds.
Head coach Steve Kerr is clearly making these two the offensive options, as two of the most used line-ups so far see them sharing the court with a combination of JaMychal Green (who has been excellent btw), Jonathan Kuminga, Dante DiVincenzo and Moses Moody.
The numbers aren’t kind to them so far, a big part of that is because they are the second unit to the second best men’s basketball playing trio of all time in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green – when the four-time champion starters step off, opponents can catch up a little but. But the Player Impact Estimate of the five man unit featuring them, JaMychal, DiVincenzo and Moody is 58.5, better than all others that have managed more than four minutes together, apart from the line-up of Curry, Thompson, Draymond, Andrew Wiggins and Kevon Looney.
More importantly, these years will be integral to ensuring Poole and Wiseman, as well as Kuminga and Moody, are taught the right way. They might not hold on to all of them, but the Warriors will remain a problem when Curry and Thompson are past their peak, and wherever Draymond ends up being after this season.
Brick: NBA ID
It’s always nice to receive a direct and personal letter from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver at the start of each season. But when he describes League Pass as the “new and improved NBA App”, I have to admit, I did have a little chuckle.
When I logged back in, the user experience indeed looked different, and I tried to log in to the NBA ID system, only to find that they were going to auto-renew my subscription, but that it had indeed gone up. I then received an email saying that I should sign up for League Pass, for less than a third of the cost that the auto-renew was threatening. A few emails later this was sorted, but a headache nonetheless.
It got sorted just in time to see the Scoot Henderson-Victor Wenbanyama clash, which was great to see on LP, but that’s when you started noticing the in
Dunk: The Spurs are too good?
Ever since they drafted Jeremy Sochan and he became the youngest ever starter in franchise history, this season’s supposed team of the weak might just be the team of the week.
If we’re honest, they were probably going to be 3-1 after four games. When you play the Charlotte Hornets, Indiana Pacers and the Minnesota Timberwolves in quick succession, you expect the possibility of three wins, fans just didn’t think the Spurs would lose to the Hornets and beat the championship contenders Philadelphia 76ers (see above).
Before the season, head coach Gregg Popovich said: “Nobody here should go to Vegas and bet on this team to win a championship.”
Right now, bettors who ignored Pop are cursing his name, but that is set to change.
L-W for VW was the thinking. Lose at all costs, in the hope that they would be in a position to draft Victor Wenbanyama or Scoot Henderson. Winning 75% of their games is not going to help this. That’s the problem with a team that defends, is well organised and moves the ball, a good system will hide the lack of talent.
The next few weeks should help: after two more games against the Minnesota Timberwolves, then the Chicago Bulls, the Spurs will face the Toronto Raptors, LA Clippers, Denver Nuggets twice, the Memphis Grizzlies and the Milwaukee Bucks. They should get back to losing ways, but as always with the Spurs, they are doing it the right way.