The Whiteboard: Buying and selling five early NBA trends

Early season NBA games still count, but that doesn’t mean all of the trends emerging now will make it until the end of the regular season.

Every NBA team has played just a handful of games this season. While it’s very true that these first four to five contests count just as much in the standings as the last ones in the season do, it’s less accurate to say that everything NBA watchers are observing right now will hold up throughout the whole year. To that end, we’re going to either buy or sell five early-season trends as if they were stocks.

The Celtics at .500 — Sell sell sell!

This almost feels like cheating, but it is factually true that the Boston Celtics are 2-2 through their first four games so we’re going with it. It’s been easy, and honestly, super fun, to poke fun at Boston’s tepid start to the season.

Unfortunately for the non-Celtics teams, the reason it’s fun is that this is pretty obviously just a slight reprieve from Boston being really good. With one of the best coaches in the NBA and a deep core of effective players headlined by names like Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Al Horford and Jayson Tatum, the Celtics won’t be floundering for long. There’s just too much talent here.

Kemba Walker being a human flamethrower — Buy it all

Kemba Walker might not hold up his average of 33 points per game thus far this season, but there are two good reasons to suspect he will continue to score at high rates. The first is that Kemba, like many players and teams across the NBA, is shooting way more 3s than ever before.

Before this young season, Kemba’s career high was 7.9 attempted 3s per 36 minutes, a mark he hit in each of his last two campaigns. Through four games this year, Kemba is taking 11.7 3s per game, and making a whole lot of them. His 46.7 percentage from 3-point territory probably won’t hold, but those increased attempts will lead to more points regardless of any presumed regression.

The second reason Kemba Walker is going to continue tearing up the league can be summarized in two words: contract year. With his deal set to expire after the season, Kemba has conveniently picked a good time to play his best ball.

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The Lakers struggling — Buy it, carefully

It would be surprising if the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t make the postseason, for reasons longtime Whiteboard subscribers should already be familiar with. That doesn’t mean Los Angeles will have a pretty path to getting there, or that the Lakers will get any sort of a high seed.

LeBron James’ new operation is on an 0-82 path thus far. The Lakers won’t end up losing all of their games, but they will lose quite a few more if they can’t figure out some credible defense and a way to get this roster making some shots from deep. Without defense or 3-point shooting, it’s tough if not impossible to win games in the modern NBA. And LeBron thought last year was trying!

DeMar DeRozan being a DeFacto point guard — Sure, let’s buy it

DeMar DeRozan does not have a terrific history as a passer in the NBA. His assists per game in full seasons topped off last year at 5.2, which is definitely good but not incredible for a guard. Thus far this season DeRozan is dishing 9.0 dimes each game in the absence of Dejounte Murray, Lonnie Walker and Derrick White.

One thing DeRozan does have a history of doing is adding a new aspect to his toolbox each and every season. His new facet last year was becoming at least a credible threat from 3-point range. This time around, DeRozan seems to have added some extra passing acumen to his game.

Without an All-Star next to him in Kyle Lowry, it makes sense that DeRozan would pick up more of the ball-handling responsibilities. He may not maintain nine assists per game with basically as many turnovers as he averaged last season (2.3 and 2.2, respectively), but DeRozan will probably handle a lot of passing for San Antonio for the duration of this season.

The Bulls and Cavaliers losing a lot — Big time buy

The two winless teams in the Western Conference, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Lakers, have hit rough patches and/or tough bits of their schedules. The two teams with no wins in the East, on the other hand, are just plain bad.

Neither the Chicago Bulls nor the Cleveland Cavaliers have any business trying to be playoff teams, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but whew are they bad. I still give Chicago the edge as the worst team in the NBA, but the Cavs’ epic meltdown against Atlanta had me looking like Vince McMahon.