Bricks n’ Dunks: Week 2 – the NBA’s long term WINbanyama
Plus, the Nets permacrisis and a Bol Bol ball-out
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: Wembanyama on League Pass
Even the researchers at CERN must have been excited this week when the NBA announced you could watch the birth of a star on League Pass (LP). Victor Wembanyama’s French club Metropolitans 92 will be on full display for basketball nerds this season, as they have signed a deal with the NBA’s app.
While LP maligned in recent weeks, even on this very newsletter, the new-look app is clearly built for expansion. The league is peaking like never before – the main reason is everything you see on the court, but there is also so much good NBA content.
It is signing with external partners, such as Jellysmack’s House of Bounce; working with long term broadcasters such as TNT to keep Inside The NBA the best basketball program on TV; expanding its international coverage with the likes of Sky Sports in the UK. But more importantly, the league is creating its own form of sports entertainment.
If that phrase is familiar, you are probably a pro wrestling fan. Actually, scratch that, you are probably a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fan.
In 2001, the WWE acquired World Championship Wrestling (WCW), its major rival. Around the same time, it also took over Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) – a distant third in viewers, but with passionate cult following. WWE was the only show in town, and while ratings boomed for a period, the promotion had to create its own competition to keep things interesting. It became boring for a while, but the one thing the WWE had was an unrivaled library of content after buying up its competitors’ back catalogs.
It’s paying off today. The amount of video series, highlights packages and throwback content the WWE can release is endless. This attracts subscribers, which brings in money to create original programming, such as shows hosted by current and legendary personalities, documentaries. All of this is on top of live content, which helps continue the cycle.
Because it was the only show in town for so long, the WWE was able to sell itself as a streaming platform for small, independent promotions. Raw and Smackdown are the heritage TV shows, and NXT has become the third brand, but the WWE Universe also offers content from Progress Wrestling, ICW, wXw, Evolve and other independent wrestling promotions.
At present, the NBA is an investor in additional promotions, such as the G League or the Basketball Africa League. But by going after the broadcast rights to smaller overseas leagues, such as the British Basketball League, or maybe even League Nationale de Basket that sees Metropolitans 92 and Victor Wembanyama, the NBA could solidify itself as the ultimate basketball streaming platform.
Imagine how the league would have benefitted from streaming Lithuania’s league when the Ball family played on a team before. Not only would the NBA have the live content archive, the potential for documentaries and original content as the three Ball brothers make their way through their basketball careers would have been cheap, well-viewed content for years to come.
Being able to see Wembanyama this season will be of interest to basketball nerds. It will hardly create NBA Finals ratings, but the league will be on the pulse of VW’s best games, and they will be able to use the footage to create great content in the build up to his draft, his first NBA game, and his journey to become one of the greatest ever – hopefully.
Even if Wembanyama falls short, the league will get more content for cheap to offer fans in France, which leads to more international subscribers and a greater long term projection for more sports entertainment.
Brick: Kyle Lowry
Kyle Lowry had a tough year in 2021-22. Not only was he dealing with injuries, he also faced personal issues that derailed the season for him.
He’s not quite back to his peak, when he was winning a championship with the Toronto Raptors, and maybe he’s entering a period of new beyond-his-best normal as a 36-year-old veteran of 17 seasons in the league. His scoring is the worst its been since first joining the heavy point guard rotation during his first season in Canada.
There have been moments of the old Lowry craftiness. During a big win over the then-undefeated Portland Trail Blazers, the point guard scored 17 points, was a pest on the defensive end against Damian Lillard – before he suffered an injury – and Anfernee Simons, while dishing out six assists and shooting an excellent 5 of 7 from three-point territory. It was lovely to see.
If the Heat are going to get anywhere this season, it will be because of Jimmy Butler. But if they want to threaten for a championship, Lowry needs to be like this more often. Hopefully the injury woes and personal issues that plagued last season are slowly being put behind him, because so far, it looks like he’s hit a point of no return.
Dunk: Bol Bol be ballin’
“Put me in, coach!” Every basketball player has said it at some point in their career. I’m not sure how many times Bol Bol thought it during his time on the Denver Nuggets, but there were moments when it was painful to see him sitting on the bench.
That’s not to say head coach Michael Malone was in the wrong. He has a two-time MVP in Nikola Jokić playing the same position as Bol, along with other serviceable veteran big guys who are more useful for a team chasing a championship than a young lanky kid still learning the game.
There have been some exciting moments, especially in the Florida bubble, when he made up an all-big starting line-up that included Jokić, Mason Plumlee, Paul Millsap and Jerami Grant – not a guard under 6’7 to be seen.
The 7’2 Bol has ridiculous length, can handle the ball and shoot. His wiry frame will always cause concern while defending more one dimensional bruising bigs in the paint – but how many of them exist in the league these days?
Now, with the Orlando Magic, Bol is getting minutes – not many, but coach Jamahl Mosley is putting him in. Averaging 20 minutes across seven games so far, he is averaging 10 points, nearly seven rebounds, 2.4 blocks and is leading the league in two-point shooting percentage.
He has a long way to go, but there’s a reason he has just wanted an opportunity to play, and it’s on display this early into the season.
Brick: The wrong type of NBA drama
The Collins English Dictionary named “permacrisis” as its word of the year. It’s mainly in reference to the omnishambles that has been the British political system in 2022, but it might as well be comment on the 2022-23 NBA season so far.
During the pre-season, revelations around then Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka came to light that suggested misconduct with female employees. This was all made worse by Twitter sleuths, who decided to highlight as many women on the Celtics payroll as possible problematic women. It sucked. It was the ugliest light for NBA fandom.
Then we have the Brooklyn Nets drama that has been a torrent of news throughout the summer. Kyrie Irving wanted out at one stage, a few months after James Harden split, then Kevin Durant said he wanted to be traded if the team didn’t get rid of head coach Steve Nash. They all ended up starting the season together, alongside Ben Simmons, who joined the team in the Harden trade and hadn’t played in a year and a half.
So far, Simmons does everything he can to avoid shooting the ball; Kyrie can’t get through a press conference without arguing with journalists about antisemitic content he has shared on his platform, to the point that pressure might need to start being applied to Nike if the sneaker giant doesn’t want a Kanye West-Adidas issue on their hands; Durant is playing well but the team can’t turn it into winning; and now Steve Nash is out of a job, being replaced by, who else? Ime Udoka. I wonder how women employed by the Nets will feel about that?
Speaking of making women uncomfortable. Let’s talk about the young and talented Josh Primo, a lottery pick in the 2021 draft. In recent weeks, the San Antonio Spurs were keen on picking up his $8m-plus salary through to 2023-24, but he is alleged to have exposed himself to women, and the team has since waived him.
Women should be able to feel safe in the workplace, wherever that is. People of all races and genders should not be discriminated against. There are jokes about the NBA being better than any drama HBO could put together, and that’s a fine point to make when it comes to on-court action. But when the drama has little to do with basketball and is impacting real lives who have nothing to do with the game, it starts to look like a crisis for the league, especially the Nets. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become a permanent fixture for the rest of the season. The NBA will become a lot less fun if it does nothing but reward millionaires who don’t learn from racist and sexual behaviour.