A fresh NBA season feels good. You go into the year feeling optimistic for your team regardless of what happened last year. Expectations have been recalibrated and you’ve been yet to be let down.
For players, it feels just as good. They’ve spent the offseason working on their game and conditioning and are ready to put it to the test in training camp, preseason, and the regular season.
For players who had a rough 2022-23, it’s a chance to start the journey on a resurgent year and write a better chapter in the book that is their NBA career. While it’s a team game, the NBA community gets fixated on individual performance and accolades. And with only five players on the floor at any given time, these individual performances matter to the team, too.
Some players that had rough 2021-22 seasons need to bounce back more than other. Here are four in particular.
NBA players in need of a 2022-23 comeback: Kemba Walker
- 2021-22 WAR: 1.2
- FiveThirtyEight WAR projection: 2.8
For the most part, I looked past long-standing veterans when compiling this list when their (lack of) performance last year seems to be indicative of a career slowing and not necessarily a recoverable temporary dip (i.e.: Danny Green). That said, Kemba Walker is a big exception, because as fans, I think we need him to bounce back and go out on a high note.
The Kemba Walker of recent history is not how fans want to remember him. Walker, going into his 12th NBA season, is a four-time All-Star and should be known for his (overall) above-average career play, not the stain of a performance we got from him in New York last season.
The Knicks storyline felt really great in the moment, but in retrospect, it should have been clear it wouldn’t work. Walker is a New Yorker himself and his most iconic basketball moment that earned him the nickname Cardiac Kemba happened at Madison Square Garden while he was at UCONN.
The fit, though, just wasn’t there.
Speaking on his struggles, Walker admitted he wasn’t used to the backseat role the Knicks asked of him, and it was taking a lot to adjust to what was needed from him:
"“It’s pretty difficult,’’ Walker said. “It’s just so different. It’s a different time in my career. I’m in a whole different position and role. But yeah, that’s on me to learn how to play with guys and learn when to get my shots and it’s just taking more time than what I’d like to expect.’’"
Walker was traded to the Detroit Pistons this offseason, and as a rebuilding team, it’s unclear exactly what they’ll expect his role to be, or if they may look to trade him again to secure more assets.
While the Pistons will likely shop Walker around to competitors, it’s unlikely that any of them will want to spend assets to acquire Walker when he’s a possible buyout candidate later in the season.
In that regard, maybe Detroit is a good spot. He can spend the early months there mentoring young players like Cade Cunningham and Killian Hayes while getting low-pressure minutes in as a rotation player, getting comfortable being out of the driver’s seat. Then, at the deadline, he may get traded or bought out, or maybe he settles in with Detroit for the year.
Whatever the case may be, just about every basketball fan wants to see Kemba rise a bit before he hangs it up on his solid career.
NBA players in need of a 2022-23 comeback: Davis Bertans
- 2021-22 WAR: 0.7
- FiveThirtyEight WAR projection: 1.5
Davis Bertans had a rough season for most of 2022-23 that has made his contract (5 years, $80 million) look disgusting, so bad that it finds itself as one of the five worst in the league.
Of 450 players with 500 or more minutes last year, he was one of just 11 who got worse compared to the previous season in all 7 of these categories compared to the previous season:
- PER
- TS%
- 3PR
- FTR
- Win shares/48 minutes
- BPM
- Points
His per-36 minutes scoring went from over 16 points to 13.9, and he went from three 3-pointers per game to 1.4. Bertans is known as the Latvian Laser thanks to his shooting abilities, so without that, it begs the question: What does he bring to the table? His defense has always been suboptimal and, despite being 6-foot-10, he’s not a threat around the rim, attempting fewer than 10 percent of his career field goals within two feet of the rim.
To add some context to his struggles, Bertans was with the Wizards up until the trade deadline when the Mavericks acquired him in a trade deadline deal. According to Bertans, the environment in D.C. was not conducive to getting players in a groove and there were major struggles with chemistry:
Davis Bertans on what went wrong for the Wizards 😬
— Hoop District (@Hoop_District) February 12, 2022
"It's tough to have team chemistry when every single day, the team is basically fighting with each other about 'I want to get more minutes' and 'I want a bigger role.'" pic.twitter.com/KCHOALRpIw
In fairness to Bertans, he started to make a comeback after he was moved at the deadline last year with his primary skill, 3-point shooting, hitting 36% with the Mavericks in the regular season and converting on 37.3% in the postseason.
Prior to last year, though, Bertans sunk over 40 percent of his career threes.
Bertans’ shooting ability should complement Doncic’s ability to thread the needle with passes quite well, so the more those two continue to grow together and get in sync, the greater the likelihood that Bertans makes a comeback next year.
NBA players in need of a 2022-23 comeback: Tim Hardaway Jr.
- 2021-22 WAR: 2.0
- FiveThirtyEight WAR projection: 3.1
Let’s keep with the Mavs, shall we?
Tim Hardaway Jr. took a step back last year, largely due to a fractured foot he sustained midway through the season. He only appeared in 42 games, starting in about half of them. In those games, he averaged 3.8 fewer points than he did in 2021 per 36 minutes. His field goal and 3-point percentages dropped 5.3% and 5.5%, respectively.
Hardaway hasn’t played with this new-look Mavs team which now rosters Spencer Dinwiddie and the aforementioned Bertans, both acquired at the deadline after Hardaway’s injury last year. That means his role is up for definition and could be fluid going into next year, something he seems ready for.
It also could mean that Hardaway could be a trade piece for the Mavs.
All that to say Hardaway will need to be ready for just about anything this season will throw at him if he hopes to have a bounceback year.
It’s important not to single Hardaway out in the dip of performance last year. The team was 19th in 3-point percentage and fared particularly poorly in December (fourth-worst team 3-point percentage that month, 32.3%), one of the only full months that Hardaway played in.
The Mavs had a new coach in Jason Kidd and for most of Hardaway’s games, they were still finding their rhythm. Coming into a season where he’s had health and recovery on his side for the summer, he could get back to the reliable THJ we’ve all come to know.
NBA players in need of a 2022-23 comeback: Julius Randle
- 2021-22 WAR: -0.7
- FiveThirtyEight WAR projection: 1.7
The Julius Randle experience is a roller coaster. It’s fitting for Knicks fans to have to endure it, honestly. After far exceeding expectations in 2021 and making the Knicks look like geniuses, he fell right back to earth in 2022.
Was the 2021 All-Star season a fluke? Or can Randle recapture the magic that got him to that level in 2023? After a remarkable 3.8 BPM season in 2021, he dropped to 0.2 in 2022, a decline of 87%. Randle dropped 4 points off his per-game average and fell starkly in shooting efficiency: 41.1% in 2021, 30.8% in 2022. Randle exerted a lot more of his energy at the rim, attempting 25.4% of his shots within three feet of the rim (compared to 16.2% the prior season) but failed to convert at a respectable level. Looking at post-up opportunities, his points-per-post-up dropped from 0.93 in 2021 to 0.72 in 2022.
Don’t fear, Knicks fans, Randle is putting in the work, at least according to his Instagram. We know better than to take very much from a self-posted workout video, but Randle’s mindset being oriented toward improvement is definitely a good thing.
While New York fans desparately hope that the truth about Randle is closer to his 2022 season with the team rather than his 2020 campaign, the reality is probably somewhere in the middle, which is exactly what last year is.
We’re certainly rooting for Randle, and the narrative is positioned in such a way that he has an underdog story in front of him for bouncing back this year, but we’re far enough into his career that we know what he is.
The optimistic perspective is available, though, even looking at things objectively: FiveThirtyEight predicts Randle will have a bounceback year going from a -0.7 WAR to a 1.7 this year. Still, that’s a far cry from his 8.0 in his All-Star season.