🔥Which early season NBA overreactions should you believe?
We buy and sell our favorite hot takes. Plus, charts and graphs, our favorite GIF and more.
OPENING TIP
We have a confession. Although we masquerade as Mentat-like creatures of pure reason, making decisions and predictions without consideration for bias or emotion, we love a good hot take.
So for this week, indulge us as we channel our inner Stephen A. Smith and consider some early-season overreactions. Are the Hawks doomed? Will the Knicks actually not fuck up for once? Is Russ as bad as Zach Lowe says?
Before we dive into the teams, it’s worth revisiting last season briefly to set the context. Overall, a team’s winning percentage after the first 105 league games last year ended up only explaining 22% of the variance in its full-season winning percentage.
The average absolute difference in winning percentage was 12.8%, but there were some, uh, outliers. Orlando, Cleveland, and Houston fell apart, while Memphis, Denver, and Washington got off the deck.
Okay, it’s early. But while Seth Partnow’s statistical model may demand more data, we have two arguments for why we might be ready to pass judgment. One: you can watch the games. They will tell you things, cognitive biases and all. Two: the people telling you that it’s too soon to know anything yet are the same kind of people who went around loudly insisting that the millennium didn’t actually start until 2001. Quiet. No one likes you.
So which hot takes are we buying? Let’s get to it.
Is Russ really as bad for the Lakers as every analytics person said?
Going into the season, analytics types spoke out of both sides of their mouths: they hated the Westbrook trade, but picked the Lakers as a consensus top 2 team in the West.
Surely it made no sense to take the ball out of the hands of LeBron, one of the best players on the ball in history, and give it to Russ? But how could Russ, a non-shooter who effectively played center in the Rockets offense after the Capela trade, fit with the Lakers and their super-big lineup?
The bear case for Westbrook is already looking thoroughly validated. Frank Vogel is trying to keep Westbrook and LeBron’s minutes staggered as much as possible and hasn’t been able to produce an offense that functions when they aren’t. Overall, the team has a 108 offensive rating, right around league average. When LeBron is on the court, that shoots up to almost 111. But when LeBron sits and Russ gets the keys, the team is below average on defense AND offense.
Vegas is not off the Laker bandwagon yet, and we can see why. The city is not packed with the penthouses of people who got rich betting against LBJ. There are still things to be tried (Westbrook at the 5?), and if they don’t work, perhaps there are trades to be made.
So are we shorting the Lakers? Yeah, we are. Something that seemed unlikely to work unequivocally hasn’t worked. Even if the Lakers find something, their off-season moves have left the team perilously thin and even more reliant on Lebron and AD staying healthy. The version of the team we’re watching right now is not going to be dangerous in the playoffs. It isn’t.
Do we have to stop making fun of the Knicks?
The case against the Knicks was obvious. Julius Randle went from Bust-Adjacent to All-NBA. Teams shot unusually poorly from three against them. Thibs plays his guys hilarious numbers of minutes.
But all that overlooked a fairly important point. The Knicks won a lot of games last year. Then they added a lot of talent to the lineup. Kemba Walker may be breaking down, but he is a HUGE upgrade over Elfrid Payton. Likewise, Evan Fournier—who can both dribble and shoot off of movement—is an improvement over Reggie Bullock (who can do neither).
At times last year, it was painful watching this team try to grind out points with a total non-shooting offense. When Randle cooled off against the Hawks, the Atlanta defense at times looked totally baffled, trying to execute a game plan against a team where no player on the opposing team needed to be closed out on. What do you do when no one is a threat to score?
Those days may be over. Fournier is a good passer, and Kemba’s shooting means that even if Randle regresses from his ridiculous stats on isolation jumpers, the regression is balanced by the fact that the floor isn’t always tilted toward him. The Knicks have the third best offense in the NBA. That means there are only two better offenses!
That will correct some, but their defense hasn’t hit its stride yet either. So do we have to stop making fun of the Knicks? Yes! We think the Knicks are legit! We don’t know what’s happening either!
Are the Hawks a flash in the pan?
Coming into the season, expectations for the Hawks were high. But they’ve underperformed. What gives?
Fears of Nate McMillan’s old-school approach to coaching may have been well-founded. The Hawks are 1st in long twos and 27th in three point attempts. They are 4th-worst against the spread. It’s already getting tough to find enough minutes for all their players.
While it’s true that McMillan’s offenses in Indiana were not breathtakingly progressive, it’s worth pumping the brakes on this narrative a bit. It’s possible that Nate McMillan, fresh off his only conference finals appearance, during which the Hawks ran a perfectly modern offense, decided “F*!$ all that, we’re running it back with only 20-foot jumpers!” But we kinda doubt it.
A few things are in play. First, for all its success, this team played very little with the lineups we’re seeing now. Cam Reddish and De’Andre Hunter both missed most of last season. Gorgui Dieng and Delon Wright are brand new. Rotations are still not set. And there is untapped defensive upside.
Second, Young is struggling. He’s not the only one. Many other stars who relied on foul-drawing for their scoring are having a rough opening to the season. But Young should right the ship before many others. For one, he is one of the very best passers in the NBA, a skill that doesn’t really go through slumps. For another, the Hawks’ offense has been excellent with him on the court despite its inefficient shot diet, scoring in the 86th percentile.
Third, when Trae is off the court, the offense suffers. Off-season acquisition Delon Wright has looked good in spots, but incumbent backup Lou Williams has struggled. When Lemon Pepper Lou helms the second unit, the Hawks generate just 83 points per 100 possessions, worst in the NBA. The answer may be as simple as giving Wright all the backup point guard minutes.
All of the Hawks’ problems feel fixable. We suspect that Nate is smart enough to figure it out and turn the ship around.
Are the Hornets actually good?
Vegas pegged the Hornets for 38.5 wins, a mild upgrade from last year’s pace. And it was easy to see why. The “upgrades” to the roster were Miles Plumlee and Kelly Oubre. They traded Devonte Graham, perhaps their best three point shooter. But they came out of the gates like a house afire, opening up 5-2 including a win over the Nets and an overtime loss to the supposedly superior Celtics.
And what had people excited wasn’t just that the Hornets were winning, it was how they were winning. LaMelo Ball, moving into the starting lineup, is averaging 19/6/6, nabbing 2 steals a game, and is shooting 40% from 3. Miles Bridges, who couldn’t come to terms with the team on a contract extension before the season, already has more 30 point games this season (4) than he had in his career prior to this year (3). He’s scoring 24 points a game and will likely cause Hornets announcer Eric Collins to have a coronary before the season is up.
So are they a team of destiny? Not so fast, my friends! The Hornets have the point differential of a 43-win team—better than preseason expectations but far from world-beaters. Their offense has been good but relies on abnormally good three point shooting: 41% above the break thus far, 2nd in the league. And they aren’t deep. In 104 possessions with LaMelo and Gordon Hayward on the bench, the Hornets can’t score and can’t stop anyone, featuring a -23 net rating despite Miles Bridges being on the court almost half that time.
Do we buy the new hype? Sorry Charlotte, your time isn’t quite here yet.
Can anyone beat the Heat?
Much to our chagrin, we must discuss the Heat. They’ve galloped to the league’s best net rating and a 6-1 record at press time. And they’re doing everything well: per Cleaning the Glass, they boast the league’s best offense AND best defense per possession, with a +16.8 net rating.
Not only have they surprised and impressed the league’s commentariat, they’ve impressed Vegas too, outperforming the spread by 13.6 points per game, tops in the league. But we’ve been reading about #heatculture and Big Face Coffee for years at this point, so why the surprise?
Everyone expected the Heat defense to be good. Everyone expected Kyle Lowry to help. But how on earth do they have the best offense in the league?
They’re still getting to the line. Jimmy Butler sneers at James Harden and Trae Young’s FT-drawing struggles (while he bludgeons his way into anyone he can find near the rim).
They’re controlling the glass. The Heat have the league’s best offensive AND defensive rebound rate. We don’t think this is an accident.
Tyler Herro stopped sucking. Okay, he wasn’t THAT bad last year, but so far so good in 2021-22; Herro has served as the backup point guard and kickstarted the offense to a scorching 119.5 offensive rating while on the court. Just don’t ask him to stop anyone.
So can they keep this up? Kind of! There are a few things that stand out as fluky. They’re allowing a ton of threes but (as the Knicks did last year) using voodoo to keep them from going in; when this reverts to the mean, it will hurt their defensive efficiency. And their heavy diet of midrange jumpers is likely to catch up to them when their lucky above the break shooting calms down. But overall, this roster has the potential to have a top 10 offense and defense, which historically is reserved for a top 3 seed; they just need to stay healthy.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Empty arenas lead to more threes. We saw it in the Bubble, and as Rob Moore demonstrates below, we saw it last year as well. So we fans are good for something!
AT THE BUZZER
Seth Partnow nerds out on why offense is down (worse 3pt shooting and fewer fouls) (Athletic, $)
Ben Simmons leverages HIPAA to get paid while not doing anything (ESPN)
Jordan NFTs are coming, maybe. (Hypebeast)
Kobe’s estate gets $400M richer as Coke buys BodyArmor (WSJ, $)
The Robert Sarver piece is here. We have thoughts, but not for this week (ESPN)