Barnstorming: The crackpots and these rookies
By Ian Levy
These rookies were supposed to be good. There was depth and heft to the talent in last year’s draft. If your team needed a big man you could choose offense, defense, versatility, or transcendence. Ditto for the wing where potential was stacked a mile high in all manner of physical forms. Shooting, speed, wingspan, polish, vision, work ethic, strength, instincts–it was all there just waiting to be plucked and molded. We are just nearing the end of the regular season’s first quarter and this group of young talent is already making good on their promises.
The Kristaps Porzingis slobber fest has been going on for weeks and he deserves every bit of euphoric drool he’s coaxed from slack-jawed New York Knicks fans. His touch is soft and his defense is strong. Porzingis, in addition to being eminently likable, looks very much like a franchise savior. The kind of player a city can rally around, physically and emotionally, for a decade or more. However, a rising tide of Dirk Nowitzki comparisons are threatening to drown him in hyperbole. The danger here is mostly that the comparison is limiting and largely misses the point. Porzingis may, at times, conjure images of Nowitzki’s balletic grace but he’s a dramatically different player. His rebounding and rim protection already stand up to Dirk’s peak seasons and there is every reason to think there is room for growth there. Porzingis is really good at basketball, and that goodness doesn’t necessarily need to be crammed into familiar boxes to be understood.
No one is even trying to push Karl-Anthony Towns into a template. The best you can hope for is cutting and pasting a few different ones together–he defends the rim like Ibaka, hits jumpers like Aldridge, rebounds like Cousins, and hits free throws like Westbrook. Towns cares not for your frame of reference, leaving you floating untethered in a roiling sea of, “did this dude just did this?”
Everywhere you look there is not just brilliant rookie play, but contributions that defy our restrictive imaginations. To watch Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (get well soon!), Justise Winslow, and Stanley Johnson is to watch positions and patterns fall away. Power forwards melting into shooting guards, point forwards sliding into wing stoppers. Willie Cauley-Stein, before his injury (also get well soon!), was showing off all the defensive dynamism his college career implied, forcing steals, blocking shots, and shutting down everyone but the popcorn vendors. Nemanja Bjelica is, as you would expect from a 27-year old rookie who also happens to be a Euroleague MVP, drilling threes and generally looking polished as hell. Richaun Holmes and T.J. McConnell look like actual rotation players for the Philadelphia 76ers. All the things Frank Kaminsky did in college, the stuff he wasn’t supposed to be able to do against NBA athletes, works just fine.
It has felt, for a good long while, like NBA careers were defined by what a player couldn’t do. Everyone was just as good as their most obvious weakness and players without an obvious flaw ruled with an iron fist. The modern landscape is changing right under our feet. The presumptive MVP is a three-point shooting specialist. He leads the best team in the league (and maybe the best team ever) with a small ball lineup that would have made even Don Nelson blush. The league has devolved from a collection of copycats and traditionalists to an army of mad scientists focused on experimentation. At this moment, the NBA belongs to the crackpots and I mean that as an absolute compliment.
This rookie class, as a resource and raw material, represents an electric infusion of possibility. Porzingis and Towns down have to play solely with their backs to the basket, or even picking-and-popping at the elbows. D’Angelo Russell will someday get a chance to regularly play basketball and when he does, it won’t matter if he’s a point guard or a shooting guard. Just as it doesn’t matter whether Winslow, Johnson, and Hollis-Jefferson are the burliest shooting guards of the fastest power forwards on their teams. Jahlil Okafor looks like much more than the low-post boulder he was billed as (just please, disentangle him from Nerlens Noel), and Emmanuel Mudiay’s development begins, not ends, when he cuts his turnovers and starts finishing. We are flush with talent and malleability, and we have this group to thank for it.
Today’s NBA is about creativity, and this group is a beautiful array of hues for our crackpot artists to work with. If the Steve Kerrs, Erik Spoelstras, Stan Van Gundys, Alvin Gentrys, and Mike Malones can dream it, then this group can do it. Fantasies come to life.
The league is adapting and evolving right before our eyes. Talent is being unlocked, skills emphasized, production maximized, all in forms new and fluid. This year’s rookie class is everything we hoped for, and a little bit more, and they’re to take the NBA into its next epoch.