Every team has already played one game, but all anyone cares about is LeBron’s first game as a Laker last night. And by anyone, of course, I mean anyone on TV or radio. They lost to Portland.
Also notable, Houston lost pretty badly to New Orleans.
Expectation is that the West will come down to GS, Houston or possibly LAL. The East is somewhat open, but I’ll be surprised if Boston doesn’t make the Finals.
Given that the Cavs will suck this year and they are the “local” team in my area, I’m not sure how much NBA I’ll watch.
The Nuggets are my team and they did win game #1, but I expect a low seed playoff appearance at best.
The Lakers-Blazers game was a good one, and close all the way. Standout shooting by second team shooting guard Stauskas and shot blocking by Zach Collins really saved the day. It was way too easy for LA to penetrate Portland’s defense, though. They’re really going to regret trading Ed Davis away.
I didn’t really watch the LAL game. Firstly because I had to get up early and I live in the good timezone (Eastern) and secondly because they won’t really be fully formed as a team for at least a month and there are lots of teams to watch.
I’m especially excited for this season over others, because this is the first time in a long time where the second and third best teams in the NBA are in the Eastern conference (namely Toronto and Boston). The less exciting part for me is that unless Utah trades for Jimmy Butler, I don’t really see any competition for Golden State in the west. Houston took a step back and I just don’t see a world where LAL competes unless Brandon Ingram takes a massive step forward (I suppose he might). Even still, they seem massively out gunned. I suspect they are a better supporting cast than Cleveland was last year, but that’s a pretty low bar.
The other thing I’m excited about this year is that the finals might be competitive. I freely admit that Golden State will and should be the favourite against anyone, but I feel like both Boston and Toronto - but especially Boston - are uniquely qualified to defend the Warriors. Boston has so much length and all of their length has speed. I can really see their wings giving the Warriors trouble. I’ve long felt that you beat Golden State with defence, not by trying to become of lesser version of them.
Lots of other story lines, but this is my favourite.
Unless LA can magically do something about their dismal 3-point shooting, playoffs are probably a dream for this year. Maybe they can pick up somebody during trade season, but right now they are strictly a fast-break layup team.
This was shaping up to be a wildly entertaining season for the Bulls, and then Lauri Legend went and hyper-extended his elbow, probably gave out due to the overwhelming mass of his guns.
The Bulls may have the worst defense in the league. With Lauri, they were a threat to score 120 every game and give up 130. Now, I suspect we’ll end up with a terrible start, maybe 5-20 before Lauri gets back.
Still, people are fired up with how great Wendell Carter looks and Zach Levine could be a classic, huge points on a terrible team guy. And things could go fantastically bad for Jabari if he doesn’t get his fat ass in shape before Thanksgiving.
Decent chance we end up tanking for a second straight year, and we will probably win just too many games to be in the top 3. But that’s what everyone said the last 2 seasons, and those picks worked out amazing.
Woot! Denver Nuggets hand GS their first loss. I only saw highlights, but what a game. The Nuggs did it with a lot of defense, held GS to only 98 points. It’s early, but Denver might be better than I thought. If they can stay healthy they might be able to compete for a top 4 seed.
Meanwhile, the Cavs got blown out at home by the dismal Hawks, which as far as I’m concerned cements the fact that the Cavs will be one of the NBA’s worst teams this year. I felt they would be terrible, but Cavs fans tried to say they’ll still be a playoff team.
Portland handled SA quite easily the other night. They double-teamed Aldridge as much as possible, which is a good ploy with him. He’s never been much of a ball handler, and gets easily flustered when his standard move is thwarted. Lillard and McCollum fired up about half the points scored. Maybe they’ll do better this year than I thought.
Since the Bulls at 0-3 are already out of contention, my sole interest in the NBA is that LeBron James never win another title in his career. He’ll at least make the conference semi-finals, of course, but it will probably be Golden State for the umpteenth time vs Boston.
Gee, the NBA is exciting cause it is just SO competitive. :dubious:
I’ve reached the conclusion that 80% of the fans who actually pay to attend games do so only to see great players play and not because they actually believe that their team has even a ghost of a chance to even make the Finals. That’s why I consider the NBA to be more like the WWE than a real competitive sport.
You have maybe 5 REALLY good teams out of 32, and the rest are the Washington Generals. It should be the NBE, National Basketball Entertainment.
Fans absolutely pay to see players. Even if the Cavs were decent this year, I guarantee tickets would still be easier to come by just because LeBron is gone.
There might be a couple teams surprise you this year. The Nuggets just knocked off Golden State. The Pelicans are scoring like a million points a game. LeBron is winless. Milwaukee is 3-0. I don’t have much doubt the Finals will be GS vs. Boston, but who knows?
They didn’t need him to beat Portland, who managed to revert to bad old habits of fumbling the ball away, dribbling until you want to shoot someone, and allowing the Wiz to own the 3-point line. McCollum had a shit night, not showing up until the end of the game. It was only the Blazer’s fourth quarter effort that kept it from being a blowout.
I expect you are probably right, mid summer I was convinced they were missing the playoffs given the west has few if any easy games in conference but I’m just allowing for the possibility that Ingram and Ball make a step forward.
Last night’s 76ers-Bucks game highlighted two of my takeaways from the young season: Giannis (and the Bucks in general) are making a huge leap under Mike Budenholzer’s modern coaching, and Markelle Fultz is barely an NBA-level player, let alone a star. What a nightmare of a trade that turned out to be.
The Bucks appear to be a sleeper in the East.
The Markelle Fultz experience in Philly has been a weird one. He’s definitely not a star yet, but he might at least be a contributor.
More worrying for Sixers fans is this one, about how quickly (a ten game sample) a top-10 draft pick can be reliably categorized as a bust. They’ll have to hope that Fultz’s somehow unlearning how to shoot the ball from one season to the next is sufficiently unprecedented as to defy the odds. Not what you want from the #1 pick you traded for.
ETA: When I watch the Sixers, what jumps out to me is just how little Fultz does. He barely impacts the game at all, or even attempts to, like the Sixers are playing 4 on 5.
LeBron finally gets a home win…and it’s against my Nuggets. LA finally hit some 3’s and it made all the difference. For Denver, it seems Paul Milsap has regressed quite a bit. They’ve go so much young talent they can overcome that, but too bad a guy they thought was going to be a big part of the offense is just not producing.
Damian Lillard lit things up in the second half for a win over Orlando. In the post-game interview, he said he was being heckled mercilessly by some crazy guy behind the Magic’s bench in the first half, and the only way to shut someone like that up is to punish the other team. I’d say 41 points is appropriate punishment.
