2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

Sounds like a Miami move. Maybe they can use the spare parts and create one healthy NBA player between him and Lowry.

 

Reaves and Walker will be "reevaluated" in 2 weeks, out who knows how long

Looks like we will be working the hell out those 10 day contracts.

 

70 games season with an extra week off during the ASG. But $ are more important than a good product.

 

I had seen Shams tweet about the Lakers “progressing towards a 10 day contract with Sterling Brown”, but the wording on that didn’t seem definitive.

So I hadn’t realized that it’s already been made official.



Hopefully he’s ready to go tonight, we might actually need him just to have another healthy body

 

You can't make this s*** up if you tried... here's why we have Russ and not Buddy

Pincus usually isn't one to pull BS out of thin air in his reporting either.

 

They were close to finalizing the Hield trade, but then at the last minute the Westbrook opportunity emerged and they pounced on it.

Sorry I don’t really see what new info is in this blurb that we’re supposed to get upset at the FO about? The fact that it was Harrel having to finalize his opt-in that extended the window and gave more time for the Westbrook trade to come together? That doesn’t really change anything about the situation in my view.

It sucked then and it sucks now, but it’s still the same water under the bridge.

 

Wasn't mad at the FO, just can't believe how technology has been a thorn in the side of this team in recent years... whether it's on the player, the team or dumb luck. Dwight and that the call back didn't come soon enough so he signed with Philly. Trezz not having an esignature and that dragging out enough for a time void to be filled with the Russ fiasco. I think that's new info that it was at the stage of waiting on his paperwork and had that been a more streamlined process, the deal would've happened before Russ was on the table.

 

Gotcha, my bad. I must have been on edge and primed to think of everything as overreactionary FO critique because I had just been on Reddit arguing with some people acting like the signing of Sterling Brown was some disastrous incompetence

 

That's... something. That's how bad Jones is... yikes! Not sure why they hate Huff. And I'd rather have Boogie over Zeller.

 

Latest from Woj on SportsCenter just now: more buyers than sellers. Teams haven't decided their path yet (CHI, WAS, TOR). Leaguewide asking price is really high right now. Jazz and Hawks are sellers, but you have to really believe in the move because of the current ask.

It was a Lakers segment but nothing new directly relating to us.

 

On another note...this is an interesting read....

NBA teams have never been better at scoring points than they are right now. This statement has been uttered many times in the past decade as the league has upped the ante on 3-point attempts year after year after year.

But we really mean it this time.

Really.

This is true on both a team and individual level. The average NBA team is scoring at a rate of nearly 114 points per 100 possessions thus far in 2022-23, according to Cleaning The Glass, the highest such mark in league history and a point and a half better than last season’s 112.3 mark – which itself was higher than any pre-COVID-19 seasons.

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Meanwhile, individual scoring explosions are becoming the norm league-wide. We’ve already seen 14 50-point games by 12 different players before the halfway mark of the season. And while Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point night in 1962 and Kobe Bryant’s 81-point performance in 2006 have yet to be eclipsed, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine a player going on a similar heater before the end of the year. After all, Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell did recently get to 71 points in an overtime win over the Bulls.

As this trend continues to take shape, we convened a panel of experts — Joe Vardon, Mike Vorkunov, Josh Robbins and Mike Prada — to begin making sense of it.

What the heck is going on out there?
Joe Vardon: It’s the refs! Take Mitchell’s 71-pointer the other night, which I was fortunate to be in the building for. If the refs (the refs!) had whistled Donovan for a lane violation on that otherwise ridiculous, game-tying, history-saving put back with 3 seconds left against the Bulls that sent the game to overtime, the Cavs lose in regulation and Mitchell never makes it to 71 (a measly 56 points and not-even a franchise single-game scoring record). Never mind that NBA officials are actually calling fewer fouls per game (20.5) than in 2018-19 or 2019-20. It’s. The. Refs.


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Donovan Mitchell's 71-point night: How it felt in the building as history was made

I actually think that, while there are a number of factors paving the way for such prolific scoring, like freedom of movement, 3-point proliferation, more possessions, the bottom line is we are in a halcyon era for talent.

Of the 90 player games this season of at least 40 points, 75 of them were accomplished by someone with at least one All-Star Game to his name. All 14 of the 50-point games came from All-Stars. That is a large pool of players with the skills to be able to put up those kinds of numbers.

So, in an era when the teams get more chances and more room to score, and more often go for the shot that is worth more points, the Lukas, Giannises, Embiids, Bookers, and yes, Spidas of the world are good enough to take premium advantage. (To emphasize the point, Mitchell, who is having a career year in scoring, plays for the slowest team in the league, pace-wise, in Cleveland, and shares the court with two All-Stars. The talent in the NBA cannot be understated in this discussion.)

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Mike Vorkunov: Hear me out: the players are better.

I know this makes me sound like some kind of millennial talking down to previous generations but I swear I’m not looking at Alex English with an ‘OK, Boomer’ face right now.


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A historic coincidence: Donovan Mitchell's 71 points and Kobe's 81 both called by Chuck Swirsky

Players these days are unbelievably skilled. LeBron James and Kevin Durant showed a bevy of big, rangy people that it’s OK to be an on-ball player with guard skills and not be typecast by being taller than 6-8. Steph Curry showed basketball players everywhere that you can stretch the court as far horizontally as you want and there is no upper limit to what is an acceptable amount of 3s.

James Harden showed everyone that you can basically hold the ball as long as you want and start making up incredibly difficult shots, too, like the stepback 3 and take them a bunch if you’re good enough. And not only did this sink in for NBA players, but also it has started becoming the model for younger and younger players too. It’s like so many different trends and exogenous factors converging all at once that Malcolm Gladwell is gonna write his next book of junk science about it. The 10,000 Player Rule, coming to a Barnes and Noble near you!

And, of course, we can’t ignore that the jump in individual player skill has come at the same time that teams keep maximizing offensive efficiency, though I don’t think it’s as simple as just taking more 3s. The league-wide offensive rating is up 1.5 points from last season (as of Friday, according to Basketball Reference) but teams are averaging roughly one fewer 3-per-game. But free throw attempts are up to their highest since 2010-11 (so Joe might be right that it’s the refs!), which is kind of impressive since teams were shooting 16 fewer 3s-per-game back then.

The 2017-18 season brought us the great flippening — when the league-wide average for percentage of shots taken from the short midrange (within 14 feet) overtook the amount of long midrange jumpers. Guess what? Shots closer to the basket are good! In 2015-16, the NBA took 19.7 percent of its shots as long midrange jumpers, according to Cleaning The Glass, while this year it’s been 9.5 percent. The shooting percentages have ticked up, likely because that area of the court is now left to the best shooters like Durant.

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NBA players are shooting 43.3 percent on short midrange Js and 41.8 percent on long ones, and take more than twice as many short midrange jumpers to long ones as opposed to a 1:1 ratio in 2016-17. NBA players are also now much more efficient at scoring at the rim. This season, they’re hitting 66.5 percent of their shots at the rim (again from Cleaning The Glass as of Friday). Last season, they hit them at a 65.3 percent rate. In 2015-16, it was 60.3 percent.

So you add that all up with one last thing: we just see so much more of an offense centered around one particular guy. I believe the smart people call it heliocentrism. This year there are 16 qualifying players with a usage rate above 30 percent, tied with the 2020-21 season for the most since the 3-point line came into play in 1979. In 1981-82 and 1982-83 there was one each; there were also four 50+ point scorers in each season.

It’s not a coincidence that seven of the eight highest seasons in that span in total combined 50+ point games have come since 2016-17 (the 2006-07 season when Kobe Bryant went off is the lone outlier). That’s also when we’ve seen the highest number of guys with 30+ percent usage rates each season. Skill plus efficiency plus maximum opportunity is giving us what we’re getting.

Josh Robbins: This growth in offense stems a combination of many factors, but it is part of a larger leaguewide trend in favor of offense. During the 2018-19 season, according to Basketball Reference, teams scored, on average leaguewide, 110.4 points per 100 possessions. Through Friday, the league-average offensive rating was 113.5 points scored per 100 possessions.

Why the growth in offense leaguewide? Part of it is, as my colleagues have said, the accumulation of rule changes favoring offense over the years. The 3-point shot continues to exert a larger and larger influence on the game, which, in turn, creates space. And yes, players of all heights are more skilled; in other words, it’s not just the wings and the guards who are shooting 3s anymore.

But let me posit an additional theory: It’s getting tougher and tougher for coaches to hold players accountable, and as a result, it’s more difficult for coaches to coax the strong defensive efforts so many basketball fans grew accustomed to in prior decades. Defense is laborious, tough work. Of course, I cannot scientifically quantify any of this. And, to be super clear, I’m not saying that this is the most influential factor or even the second-, third- or fourth-most factor, but I do think it’s a contributing factor.

Mike Prada: I hear there’s a book that just came out that could shed some light on this question…

Zooming in to the very recent present, I think the league is finally understanding the most important lesson of the 3-point revolution: it’s about the effect of taking all those 3s, not the 3s themselves. The whole point of launching 40 3s a game is to present the threat to defenses so they stretch themselves too thin and thus open up more space for easier layups, driving lanes, dunks and, yes, midrange shots.

There’s a twofold corollary to that point that is playing out this year in the gargantuan superstar scoring numbers. The players who are best operating with the ball in their hands – the superstars, if you will – have more room to get easier versions of the shots they were always getting, while everyone else is in their most optimal position to get easier versions of the shots they have now learned to optimize their games to get. The two have a symbiotic relationship that allows for stars to gobble up more of the offense and role players to still score more points.



To illustrate the point more clearly, consider the rise in two-point shooting specifically. In 2019-20, the league shot 63.6 percent at the rim, 40 percent on short midrange shots (4-14 feet) and 40.7 percent on long midrange shots (16-23 feet). This year, those numbers are at 66.4 percent, 43.4 percent, and 41.7 percent, respectively. That’s the factor driving the most recent surge in scoring. Shooting all these 3s is making the 2s that much easier – for stars and role players alike.

Can this offensive explosion be sustained?
Vardon: It will remain as long as the NBA wants it to, and the NBA does want it to stay. As we have so very thoroughly laid out, there is a depth of talent in the league right now perhaps never before seen, and most of the top players can count on two (or more) hands the number of years they have left. The league would have to change the conditions, such as, what is a foul and what isn’t, or how close the 3-point line is to the hoop, or fiddle with the ball itself, to stop the momentum. I’m writing this after personally witnessing the Suns and Cavs throw up brick after brick in a 90-88 decision on Wednesday, the same night neither the Bucks nor Raptors could hit the ocean if they jumped off the Titanic. There will be cold shooting nights for everyone, but the 3-point shot is here to stay, there is nothing defenses can do to take away that shot, and the players shooting them are more numerous and talented than ever before.


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Robbins: There’s no doubt that the current scoring output can be sustained during the regular season, before defenses really tighten during the playoffs. I agree with my man Vardon that we won’t see a substantial decrease in offense leaguewide until the league legislates rule changes or rule-emphasis changes.

Vorkunov: Show me the professional sports league that is trying to limit offense right now? This also assumes this might be peak scoring, which I’m not sure it is. Did you see Bucks-Raptors the other night? You’re telling me that can’t be sustained?



Prada: Of course. Offensive rating historically increases as seasons progress, more teams pack it in and the unrelenting schedule begins to set in. It’ll tighten up in the playoffs for a bunch of reasons: teams try harder; playoff teams are better, and better teams tend to be better defensively; everyone’s able to zero in on one opponent’s tendencies instead of having to play 29; etc. But I suspect offense will be up when compared to past postseasons as well.

Long term, I doubt anything short of a drastic rule change will turn this trend sharply in the other direction, though I suspect it might level off.

What can defenses do going forward?
Vardon: I will be interested to see what happens to scoring averages and game scores come playoff time. Traditionally the postseason features a physical, grinding, plodding pace, where the games are played in the halfcourt and there seems to be far-less space for offenses to operate. Coaches have several days to prepare guarding principles and strategies, and their focus is the same opponent, over and over again.

If those factors are enough to mitigate the current conditions that have led to the proliferation of triple-digit scores, perhaps something can be gleaned from the experience and applied to next regular season. But I doubt it. Through the course of a long, tedious, 82-game schedule, there simply won’t be enough attention to detail and specialization at that end of the floor, and I highly doubt the league is going to change any rules. Chicks dig the long ball, as they say. The teams that “win with defense” will be disciplined, physical where it is allowed, and slow the pace of play in the last five minutes of fourth quarters to try to shrink the floor.


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Mr. Everything: How Sixers star Joel Embiid made NBA history

Robbins: In theory, coaches could structure their rotations to allot more time to defensive specialists. But in this day and age, that’s an option that is less available to coaches.

Indeed, one aspect that we haven’t discussed yet is the decline of the defensive “specialist,” someone on the floor solely for his defense and nothing else, except, perhaps, moving the ball. There are always exceptions, but these days, even strong defenders are expected to bring some offense to the table, as the profusion of 3-and-D specialists indicates. And when players devote more energy to the offensive end, it takes away from their energy on defense.

Prada: Get better. Y’all had it easy for 60-plus years when you only had to cover a surface area of 20×50 feet on every half-court possession. Offenses are merely presenting a threat in more of the space that was already available to them. Stop complaining about referees, hand checking, foul baiting, palming, traveling and all that stuff. No amount of reversion to 1990s-level enforcement of those provisions changes the simple math that it’s harder for five players to cover a surface area of 40 by 50 feet than 20 by 50 feet.

Zooming in, one of the interesting trends that was occurring over the past couple years is an ongoing merging between man and zone defensive schemes. Teams are playing more zone, but that’s because their zones increasingly weren’t that different from their normal pick-and-roll schemes. No matter how a team normally covers the pick-and-roll – switch, drop, trap, etc. – defenders off the ball were increasingly leaving their assignments early to shut off certain spaces on the court, then rushing out hard on 3-point shooters. They responded to the spacing revolution by flooding off-ball defenders to certain spaces higher up the floor.

This year, offenses have responded by being more intentional in how they time their forays to the basket. Cuts have been more precise. Kickout passes to open shooters have come sooner. Well-timed lobs, slips and duck-ins have been quicker and more accurate to beat switches on ball before the off-ball defenders have time to sink and recover. Offensive rebounding is back to being a weapon teams use to punish spread-out defenses.

Amid all this, it’s possible that defenses have actually overcorrected and are trying to cover too much space at once. Just because offenses are using more of the court doesn’t mean defenses have to always meet them there. I’m curious to see if more teams become more proactive to take away certain players, spaces or high-leverage shots at all costs, even if it means yielding others. Will they trap more superstars to get the ball out of their hands? Will they be even more daring leaving non-shooters? Will more teams employ full-court presses? Will we begin to see a version of the NFL’s quarterback spy defense where one player is wholly responsible for bugging a single superstar? May as well try. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.

Vorkunov: Bring back the hand check.


Tyrese Maxey celebrates with Joel Embiid after Embiid scored 59 points, grabbed 11 boards, dished eight assists and blocked seven shots against the Jazz on Nov. 13. (Bill Streicher / USA Today)
Can anyone surpass Kobe’s 81? How about —gasp! — Wilt’s 100?
Vardon: I have typed, and retyped, half-baked answers to try to say, no, the most points anyone is going to get to is somewhere in the 70s.

Screw that. Why not 82? Why not 101? If someone hits 20 3s, another 20 foul shots, and the game gets into an overtime or two, yeah, a Luka or a Steph could get there. I think Giannis, for as incredible of a talent as he is, can’t shoot the 3 well enough – and therefore doesn’t shoot them enough – to do it in the modern game.

Robbins: Yes, at some point over the next five to eight years, someone will get 82. Maybe it’ll be an overtime game. Or maybe a team will face an opponent that has only eight available players. Or maybe someone with a multifaceted offensive game – someone like Donovan Mitchell or Kevin Durant or Luka Dončić – will get red-hot from 3-point range and then have skills to diversify his scoring approach.

What we will not see is someone breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s record. Aside from how impossible it would be on an individual level, the coaching fraternity has become so much more collegial in recent years that no coach would ever let one of his players embarrass an opponent by letting a player hunt for shots to the extent required to score 100.

Vorkunov: I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. I feel like it takes not only atypical skill, a hot shooting hand, perfect game conditions, and also the right amount of lack of shame to do that. It really takes the right amount of chutzpah to score 82.

Nobody is scoring 101 because that is crazy.

Prada: As the old adage goes, all records are made to be broken. I’ll go ahead and predict that a player exceeds Kobe’s 81 sometime in the 2023 calendar year, and I bet 101 will happen within the next decade.


Utah’s Lauri Markkanen turned in the NBA’s 90th 40-point game of the season on Jan. 5 against the Rockets. (Thomas Shea / USA Today)
All this scoring is fun, but is it good for the league/sport?
Vardon: I have a group of four close buddies who all grew up together in suburban Akron, and they’re obsessed with hoops. I posed this same basic question today before our overbearing editor ordered up this exercise, with a slight twist: Is it good for the league if there is no such thing as a “safe” 20-point lead? The answer, for the most part, was “yes.” Just like the Play-In has been good for the NBA – more teams have something to play for throughout the regular season – the idea that no lead is safe is a good thing for fans also. Your team is down 22 in the second quarter? Make a few 3s and buckle up, you’re back in it. And chances are there are one or two or three players on the trailing side capable of starting and sustaining such a hot streak. Because we see it each and every night now.

Vorkunov: I don’t know how to answer this question. The NBA seems to think so as it tries to increase freedom of movement and a free-flowing game at a time when the sport bends towards offense. Attributing good or bad depends too much on personal preference. If you grew up watching ‘90s basketball, perhaps you’d complain about the lack of physicality and misconstrue high-scoring games for a paucity of defense when it’s actually a result of the increasing complexity of the game and the withering toll of what a more kinetic kind of defense can put on a body over 48 minutes. If you grew up playing NBA 2K or other video games, maybe this is closer to something you’ve always known and been comfortable with.

Personally, I like points. Points are good. Watching people who are elite at their job score lots of points is cool. It’s not like teams aren’t defending or trying to defend, it’s just that offenses are winning more often.

Robbins: It will be good for the sport as long as regular-season games continue to have defenses playing with legitimate effort. I covered Giannis Antetokounmpo’s career-high 55-point outburst Tuesday against the Washington Wizards, and although the Wizards’ defense wasn’t effective, the Wizards at least played with effort. Giannis was simply much better.

If the league ever gets to the point where regular-season games start to look like an NBA All-Star Game – with no defensive effort for the majority of the game – then the league will have a serious problem.

Prada: The proof is in the ratings, though it’s hard to accurately compare TV ratings in a cord-cutting, streaming world to the monoculture of the ’90s and earlier. But I believe that all of this is good as long as those of us who cover and/or market the sport are able to get over our preconceived notions of the past and properly illustrate what’s happening now.

(Top photo of Donovan Mitchell and Luka Dončić by Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)

 

Latest on the trade front from Buha

So maybe a deal at or around the deadline. Possibly. Until then it's 10 day mercenaries to fill in for the injured roster. I'm sure Bron will find all of those out of the league players very helpful.

Woj said prices are high, I get that regarding Utah or Detroit. But for NY or ORL, I just don't think fringe for fringe is a high price. I don't think all 5 teams in the Wembanyama mix are waiting another 5 weeks to deal. I just refuse to buy that narrative. It's too risky you accidentally win a game here and there.

 

that's a good read, imo. i've thought a lot about these issues. i'm fine with free-flowing and all, but i'd like to see ball and player movement be prioritized. this is why i loved gs's style and hated harden in houston. they both shot a ton of threes, but it's the way it happened that interests me as a fan. i'd never watch the harden rockets; it was an abomination, and the fact that they didn't win a title was really important to me as a basketball fan. as in: i'd literally have quit being a fan of any team or the game.

i don't like the mild disrespect for kobe (consensus that 82 is happening soon and the grounds upon which that is founded). as one guy states, mitchell's 71 came in OT after he had 56 in regulation or something. booker's came on clear, flagrant, embarrassing stat-padding, imo. kobe's came in a tightly contested game, in regulation, that required his scoring effort for his team to compete. show some respect.

it's not. the bottom 5 odds for wemby are pretty flat, and those teams have pretty much established themselves already. i think other sellers will emerge, but the deadline is always what drives the deals, anyway.

i'm more concerned to hear that AD's situation is as painted here (not sure i trust the nebulous "sources" on that, though).

i believe that prices are high, though, which is what i've been saying to the "why haven't we made a trade" crowd for weeks now. our purchasing power just isn't that strong. i wish it was, but it's not. maybe that changes, hopefully. still think deals are there with charlotte, orlando, SA, and ny. something should happen before the deadline, and i'll want some answers if nothing does.

 

agree. cousins has actually been ok in his last few stops, imo, but huff deserves a shot, and we've raised him, dammit. let's see if he can do it.