NBA Weekly Recap 4: ‘Close Shaves’
Recapping the biggest stories from the fourth week of the NBA regular season
I’ll be honest, I still have no clue what the actual purpose is of the NBA in-season tournament. For all intents and purposes, it comes off as nothing more than a participation trophy and a prize pool that when compared to the gargantuan salaries most players in the league make, appears to be insignificant. Thankfully, several of the games that have come out of this tournament have been excellent. With that said, let’s recap three key stories from the last week of Basketball.
Rockets-Lakers Goes Down to the Wire
In a previous life on a different team, Dillon Brooks made a statement about LeBron James that has since gone on to be immortalized in infamy. At the time Brooks spoke openly about not respecting LeBron, or any player for that matter, who couldn’t ‘give him 40.’ Amidst the memes and ridicule, Brooks found himself moving from a team marked as a genuine contender in Memphis to Houston, a team that has no such ambitions.
However, after November 19th, maybe Houston should start toying with the idea of aiming a bit higher than ‘lottery team.’ Because in a matchup against LeBron and the Los Angeles Lakers, the Houston Rockets came up just one point short by the time the final buzzer sounded. While Brooks’ 24 point outing was not enough to stop LeBron’s 37, the rest of the Rockets would not go down without a fight. Ultimately, a three pointer from Austin Reaves with just 24 seconds left would be the dagger. Despite a two point conversion from Alperen Sengun with 17 seconds remaining wouldn’t be enough. Despite both Reaves and James missing late game free throws, the one point differential would allow the Lakers to eke out a win over the Rockets. While they would come up short, I think the Rockets should take some solace in the fact that they managed to hang in there with the Lakers on a night when both LeBron James and Anthony Davis had solid games. For two teams that should be leagues apart (no pun intended), the fact this game went down to the wire is something that the Rockets can build upon going forward.
Praise aside, I do have my criticisms. The most notable one being that the game was a sloppy affair for both teams as evident by the near-forty turnovers that occurred during the course of the game. Some of these could be chalked up to defensive disruptions, while others wouldn’t have looked out of place at a pickup basketball game where all the players were blindfolded. Errors like these can cripple any team, and as such both the Lakers and the Rockets should work to ensure these sorts of mistakes are minimized in future games.
Call it old fashioned, but the phrase ‘defense wins championships’ has survived this long for a reason.
Pacers Surprise Philly nov 14
If I told you that in a game against the Indiana Pacers, the Philadelphia 76ers would make half of their shots, eleven more freethrows than their opponent, have Joel Embiid record 39 points along with 12 rebounds, Tyrese Maxey drop 27 points, De’Anthony Melton scoring 30, and Tobias harris scoring 22 points, you would be reasonable to assume they won this game in dominant fashion.
And that is why I always say ‘stats don’t tell the whole story.’ Numbers may not lie, but they definitely can be misleading. In reality, the Indiana Pacers came out on top in this game, avenging their previous loss to the 76ers earlier this season. Initially when going over this game I struggled to come up with a specific rationale for how the Pacers managed to not only win this game but maintain a lead for large portions of it. But after digging a bit deeper I have found a few key points.
First, the roleplayers all chipped in. While Philadelphia had some standout performances, it also had several players who did little to nothing of note. Of the 76ers roster that played in the game on November 14th, seven of the eleven players scored 2 points or zero. And for anyone who may argue that these players could have helped in other areas of the game while the players mentioned earlier carried the scoring load for Philly, think again. Of these seven players, the most rebounds were taken by Patrick Beverly who had five, all of them had one assist or none, and as a team Philadelphia only had 3 blocks and 5 steals.
By contrast, the Indiana Pacers got much more meaningful contributions from its roleplayers in addition to Tyrese Haliburton’s 33 points and 15 assists, as well as Obi Toppin’s 27 points. Also, it’s important to note that the Pacers made 7 more threes than the 76ers. The shooting charts also show that Indiana had a much more balanced approach from the floor in terms of how it got its points, whereas Philadelphia got the vast majority of its buckets in the paint.
While I certainly emplore teams to focus on their strengths, games like these highlight how important it is to have multiple avenues to victory.
Grizzlies left grimacing after 2-point loss to Celtics
Christmas is arguably the most anticipated day around the world. A time for joy, gift giving and receiving, and merriment. But for the Memphis Grizzlies, I bet that they’re waiting for December 19th to arrive even more feverishly. Because that is the day that superstar Ja Morant will be allowed to return to the hardwood.
In his continued absence, the Grizzlies found themselves pitted against the Boston Celtics, who have thus far stood out as one of the clear contenders for the NBA’s ultimate prize. Had Morant been with his team in that game, you could have made an argument that they would have fun. For one thing, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown did not have good games, with Tatum scoring 20 while Brown was only able to muster up 12. Had it not been for the performances of Kristaps Porziņģis, who dropped 26 points along with pulling down 8 rebounds, and roleplayers making key contributions. On the other side, Desmond Bane and Santi Aldama shouldered much of the offensive load, scoring nearly 60 points between them. Aldama also picked up 12 rebounds to record a double-double. Unfortunately though they were unable to lift the Grizzlies over the Celtics in this one.
Looking at the stats, a key takeaway from this game was the inefficiency of Memphis who shot about 38 percent fro the field. The fact that they had close to 20 more shot attempts than Boston and still came out on the losing end is a problem. This is made worse by the fact that Boston had 17 turnovers this game. With so many opportunities handed to them, it must be immensely frustrating for Memphis that they did not win this one. Even Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla voiced his displeasure in the play of his team in the aftermath of the game.
It’s jarring to see how far the Grizzlies have fallen in just one year. From being a top seed in the Western Conference last year, to being one of the worst teams in the entire league this year, it has been made painfully clear that this team needs Ja Morant. For as much as people talk about depth and having solid all-around teams, the fact is that the NBA is a league largely affected by star players. Compared to football where there are 11 players on each side, the NBA is a five-on-five affair. With so few bodies on the floor at any given time, the impact of a player head-and-shoulders above the others can be monstrous. Similarly, when the star plays poorly or not at all, the entire team suffers incredibly.
Is this the end for Memphis? Absolutely not. There is still plenty of the season to go. We’ve seen teams recover from slow starts before. But even so, I feel confident in saying that for the Memphis Grizzlies, December can’t come soon enough.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
And that concludes the weekly recap for the fourth week of NBA action. What stories did I miss? Do you have different viewpoints on the ones I did? Share all your thoughts in the comments. If you enjoyed this piece, follow me on Medium and subscribe to my email list so you get notified every time I post. Also if you would like to support the independent work I do here and get some extra reading material, consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/HMShaikh . Thank you, and stay blessed!
