The 5: Lessons, joy, and small victories from the NBA’s Opening Week
By Wes Goldberg
When I walked through the door and into my living room Tuesday, I couldn’t help it. The ear-to-ear grin, I mean, as I turned on the TV. Real, meaningful basketball was here. Even after the Olympics and covering summer league and the preseason, there isn’t anything quite like 82 regular season games. And there isn’t anything quite like the first one of the season. Maybe I care a bit too much about this, but there is only one word to describe how I felt this week.
Joy.
Absolute, unabashed joy.
I freaking love basketball!
Maybe it’s an emotional overreaction to these first games of the season, but it’s okay to overreact emotionally. It’s important (in the relative form of “important.” It really doesn’t matter at all what you or I think), however, not to overreact objectively.
Teams that screwed up have 81 games to make it up for it and figure things out. Underdogs that won won’t get into the playoffs on the merit of this week alone. The unbeatable Golden State Warriors lost by 29 points against the post-Duncan San Antonio Spurs. Then the Spurs struggled against the Sacramento Kings two nights later, winning by just six points. Weird stuff happens this first week, when players trying to get into mid-season form have to both mentally and physically shake off months of not playing meaningful NBA basketball.
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Not that the first week is meaningless. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ continuity will clearly be an advantage for them this season, while the Spurs (2-0) will chug right along even without Tim Duncan. And make no mistake about it, the Warriors will have to deal with their lack of rim protection. These are real things worth really talking about.
But there’s plenty of time for that. Six months for video breakdowns and number crunching and superlatives and conclusions.
For now, just let the joy wash over you. Basketball is back. Bask in it.
Wake Up, Warriors
“It felt like, not that we were going to show up and win, but if we just show up and play semi-hard, we’re going to win,” Klay Thompson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s not the case in the NBA. … It was a good wake-up call for us.”
After phones buzzing with headlines all summer, it’s strange that the Warriors needed a wake-up call.
It’s also not the problem.
You don’t beat the Spurs — not even the Warriors, not even the Duncan-less Spurs — by trying hard. Sure, that’s part of it. But the Warriors also missed plenty of wide-open three-pointers and, most importantly, didn’t have an answer to San Antonio’s size. LaMarcus Aldridge especially exploited it, finishing with 26 points and 14 rebounds including eight offensive boards. It wasn’t that the Warriors needed to box out better, Aldridge is just bigger and stronger than what Golden State has underneath the rim.
In signing Kevin Durant, the Warriors also had to jettison Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli and Marreese Speights. They were replaced by the likes of Zaza Pachulia, David West and Anderson Varejao, veterans on the last legs on their respective careers willing to sign on the cheap.
Between these veterans and the experienced stars, the Warriors don’t need to “wake up” to play the game, but they may need to wake up to the realization that a fault that already existed before Durant has only grown more treacherous.
Wow now, Big Brow
Speaking of wake-up calls, we may have all been sleeping on Anthony Davis.
It was just a year ago that 86 percent of NBA general managers picked Davis as the player they would most want to build a team around. But a season derailed by injuries — including Davis’ knee surgery that sidelined him since March — led to an underwhelming 30-win season.
Davis in his 2016-17 season debut finished with 50 points, 16 rebounds, five assists, seven steals and four blocks. It’s a box score that literally no one else can claim in the history of the NBA.
Before the season, more GMs said they would rather build a team around Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns than Davis. KAT got 48 percent of the vote, while Durant and LeBron James also received more votes than Davis. Did Davis really get that much worse in a year? Of course not. Injuries remain a concern, but no one in the league — well, other than LeBron — can fill up a box score like Davis. He’s only 23 years old, and after a season in which everything that could go wrong did, there is only one way to go from here.
The Pelicans still lost. And they’ll probably lose a lot. But make no mistake, Davis is very good. We may just have had to wait a year longer for the breakout season we expected in 2015.
Three
After months of think pieces about how Dwyane Wade, Rajon Rondo and Jimmy Butler were going to play together — pieces that basically extrapolated on “hey, all these dudes like to hold the ball for a lot of time, this is going to be weird” — Wade reminded us all that maybe sometimes we overthink this stuff.
Just like he has his entire career.
Wade, who made just seven three’s all of last season, made four in his debut as a Chicago Bull. And because I promised not to overreact: He won’t do that every game. But he won’t not do that, either.
The Heat last season didn’t make a ton of sense. It was a team that was probably less than the sum of its parts, but those individual parts were good enough that it sort of worked. There weren’t many floor spacers on that team, Goran Dragic’s wings were clipped in a slower system, and the team still won 48 games and made it to the playoffs. Then Wade made 12 of 24 three-pointers from Game 6 (including two in Game 6 to help send the series against the Hornets to Game 7) on through Game 7 of the second round.
Those Heat teams found ways to win games in large part due to Wade. It may not always be three-pointers that the Bulls need, and Wade at 34 may not always be able to deliver like he has throughout his Hall-of-Fame career, but if the Bulls can keep games close they’ll have a chance.
The team still has plenty of holes and doesn’t make a ton of sense. It’s not like the Bulls are going to be super good. They’ll be fine. They won’t be pretty. But an analytical nightmare doesn’t exactly equal a train wreck.
Highs and lows of Philadelphia 76ers fans
After three years of losing (on purpose) and, before that, a decade of losing (by accident), I could understand why 76ers fans are feeling a little emotional. But come on, man.
I thought we all agreed to love Russell Westbrook this summer!
Nah, couldn’t be.
But anyway, that fan was soon kicked out of the game. And rightfully so. Did he pay for those near-courtside seats? Probably. Does he have a right to exist there? Sure, let’s go with that. But sometimes you can fly too close to the sun and, when you do, you get burned. Or sometimes you get Really, this guy?’d.
But the great fans of Philadelphia made up for it!
They chanted “trust the process” in what goes down as one of the best sports mantras of the last decade.
After years of learning about draft lottery odds, scouting college players and learning parts of the CBA thanks to Basketball-Nerd Jesus Sam Hinkie, 76ers fans are some of the smartest, most mature fans in the NBA. Well, except this guy. Of course they chanted trust the process instead of bouncing up and down to Sandstorm.
And they didn’t even win! They are smart enough to know that even in another loss, they looked better. They looked like they were trying. More importantly, Joel Embiid was finally healthy and put up 20 points, seven rebounds and two blocks. The hypothetical hope of the last three years is finally coalescing into something more material.
So a tip of the cap to Sixers fans (and a flick of the bird to that one guy) for reminding us on this opening week that it isn’t just about winning and losing, it’s about having something to cheer for.