This post was originally published on this site.
Every Monday, we catch you up on the happenings in the NBA. This week, the Ja Morant situation has taken a potentially confusing turn. Or maybe it’s just smoke and mirrors to increase the trade value even more? Also, the All-Star starters will be announced. What’s next with everything in another new All-Star format?
The Big Story: The Ja Morant dance continues
The Trae Young trade return for Atlanta has to worry Memphis. Young was the franchise player for the Hawks for years, and at just 27 years old, he was traded to Washington for a potentially embarrassing return: CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert. That’s it. No picks. The Hawks could never have envisioned that Young would be moved for such a low price tag, no matter what you think of his game. We’ve seen lesser players go for a lot of picks in return, and the league basically saying, “thanks but no thanks” on interest in Young as their current or future star point guard. It also sounds like interest in getting him a big contract in free agency this summer doesn’t exist. Maybe he’s able to turn the threat of walking or picking up his nearly $50 million option for next season into a short extension with the Wizards.
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Regardless, the flawed point guard market is not yielding big returns. That’s where the Grizzlies find themselves in the next 2.5 weeks leading up to the Feb. 5 trade deadline. And things just got a lot more interesting with their trip overseas to participate in the global games in Berlin and London against the Orlando Magic. Ja Morant did not play during the Berlin game. That game was his sixth straight missed game with a calf contusion (not a strain). It sounded like Morant wasn’t going to play in these two games, and many around the league were wondering if he had played his final game for the Grizzlies.
Then on Sunday, he played in London. And he played extremely well. He had 24 points and 13 assists to go with five rebounds and just two turnovers in 28 minutes of play. It was probably his second-best game of the season, which has been a campaign full of injuries, frustration with coaches, a rejection of their offensive system and even a small suspension by the team for being vocal about the coaches and the system. Once the Grizzlies let it be known they were willing to take calls about trading Morant, the writing appeared to be on the wall that he was out of there. But there aren’t a lot of easy landing spots for him, despite having two more years under contract.
After the Sunday win in London, he was asked about the potential for moving on.
“If anybody in here knows me, I’m a very loyal guy,” Morant said after Sunday’s game. “I got a logo on my back, so that should tell you exactly where I want to be.”
It’s important to remember that Morant has not asked for a trade, as far as we know. The situation in Memphis has been tenuous lately, and the franchise appears ready to move on. There are some loose similarities to what Atlanta decided with Young and his future on the team. Except Morant’s team isn’t a lot better without him on the floor this year. They’re merely getting by and Sunday was a good reminder of how good the 26-year-old Morant and the Grizzlies can be with him on the floor.
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That puts them in a tough situation when deciding what’s next. They don’t have to trade him just to trade him before the deadline. That appears to be something they’re willing to do or are more motivated to do. And Morant has not played up to his standards this season, so it would behoove the Grizzlies to increase his trade value with more reminders like Sunday. At the same time, he’s an oft-injured player and putting him on the court more could lead to an injury that then tanks any trade possibilities for Memphis. So what do the Grizzlies do? What does Morant do?
Is he back on the court for good? Is the team or his team pushing for him to play as a trade showcase? Or is this all going to be water under the bridge in a couple weeks and he’ll be leading this team as he’s done since 2019? I guess we’ll know by 3 p.m. ET on Feb. 5.
NBA Stock Report Extended
📈 Denver Nuggets (29-14). I’m not too worried about them having a flat game against Charlotte on Sunday. The Nuggets still mostly play with one of their starters right now. That loss still has them at 4-1 over the last week. And this team is doing a great job of surviving without Nikola Jokić as they duct tape together a rotation under David Adelman and all of these injuries. He’s coaching well and the team is finding confidence in the cliché but necessary “next man up” mentality. They’ve won six of their last eight games, and considering all of their injuries, I’m not sure you can point to a weak schedule this week to try to discount their success.
Denver is 7-4 in this stretch without Jokić. Jamal Murray has missed three of those games. Aaron Gordon has missed four of those games. Jonas Valančiūnas has only played in one of those games because he immediately got injured after Jokić went down. All the while, they’ve held strong in the West at third. They still have a two-game cushion on the Wolves and they’re right behind San Antonio by a half game. The Nuggets have been remarkably resilient.
📉 Milwaukee Bucks (17-24). The Bucks have had a brutal schedule the last week and a half with games against the Warriors, Lakers, Nuggets, Wolves and Spurs. So it’s not a huge surprise that they’ve only gone 1-4 in those games. The loss to the Nuggets came with Denver missing all of their starters not named Aaron Gordon. And then the Wolves and Spurs smoked them in their respective games. This Bucks team just isn’t very good and it’s happening at the worst time possible with the trade deadline a couple of weeks away. With each loss, people start wondering aloud more and more about how much Giannis Antetokounmpo is willing to take.
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Bobby Portis spoke recently about how Antetokounmpo coming out and saying he’ll never ask for a trade eases up some of the pressure for the guys in the locker room. And I believe that. Except Antetokounmpo has also played the semantics game in so many of his recent comments, and there are not a lot of people outside of Milwaukee who believe he’s willing to take much more of this roster and situation. Milwaukee will try to improve before they make any drastic moves in concert with Antetokounmpo. But also, this offense stinks and this defense stinks.
📈 Sacramento Kings (12-31). Even with the loss to Portland at home Sunday, the Kings have been good lately. I made a joking observation last week that they’d won consecutive games for just the second time all season. But then they won a third consecutive game and then a fourth consecutive game. While I never believed the Kings would be good this season, I’m not sure anybody would’ve picked them to be this bad on the floor. But injuries and bad play have plagued them all season long. Injuries are still a problem with Domantas Sabonis still missing time, but the offense has picked up a lot over the last week.
It’s been led by three things: DeMar DeRozan, Russell Westbrook and 3-point shooting. DeRozan has been putting up 24 points per game with roughly a 4.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio during this stretch. Westbrook has been shooting a ton of 3-pointers (for him) with seven attempts per game. And he’s making them! One of the worst 3-point shooters in the history of the game has made over 51 percent of those attempts this week. The team, overall, is shooting lights out from deep. They’ve hit 44 percent of their 3-pointers this week. Maybe the Kings are a team to take seriously now?
📉 Philadelphia 76ers (22-17). Over the last four games, the 76ers have played the Raptors and the Cavaliers twice. They’re 1-3 in those games. Two of those losses were really close, by a combined three points. And the good news is, Joel Embiid is playing good basketball. However, the Sixers struggle against good teams and they struggle in tight game situations. In games decided by three points or less, the Sixers are 5-7. In games against .500 or better teams, the Sixers are just 9-13. In games that are one possession with two minutes or less left, the Sixers are just 8-10.
They really struggle to score the ball consistently, despite having so much talent in that department. They’re a league-average half-court offense, in general. So when things bog down in the tighter games, they don’t have a lot to draw on for consistency on offense. You’d like to see them get Tyrese Maxey the ball moving toward the hoop. We know he can make a play. He’s been good in the clutch, as has rookie VJ Edgecombe. But the ball gets funneled to Embiid or Quentin Grimes a lot in these situations and they just haven’t connected. These weeks add up and that’s the difference between the Sixers being fourth and the Sixers sitting at sixth, fighting off Orlando.
📈 Golden State Warriors (23-19). Are the Warriors back? They’ve won five of their last six games and they’ve been dominating their opponents during this stretch. The loss to the Hawks was frustrating and disappointing, but the rest of the games were great. Their last five wins have come by a total of 96 points. Yes, that was helped by a 34-point win over Sacramento, but even if you take that out, it’s hard not to like what they’re doing. The Warriors have found an offensive groove that has eluded them for quite some time. They’re hitting shots at an incredible rate with an effective field goal of 61.6 percent and a true shooting of 64.0 percent of their last six games. That leads the league during that stretch.
During those six games, five of their six top scorers all made 50 percent of their shots or better. And the one straggler in that group is Draymond Green. He’s making 48 percent of his shots. They’re shooting lights out from three (39.2 percent), and that’s without Steph Curry really helping. He’s just 35.1 percent. Golden State has also stopped turning the ball over so much. If they can keep playing offense near this level, maybe they’ll be able to make some noise in the West.
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📉 Brooklyn Nets (12-28). Remember when the Nets were no longer atrocious and they’d won seven of 10 games a couple of weeks ago? Well, so much for that. They’ve won just two of their last 11 games, and they continued that stretch this week. There was a viral moment with a Nets fan commenting that Michael Porter Jr. was ruining their chances of getting a good pick because he was playing so well after they beat Chicago. He responded with “my bad.” He doesn’t need to apologize because the Nets are still terrible. Before Chicago got their revenge Sunday, most of these games had been close. The good news for the Nets fans who want tanking is that Brooklyn spends seven of its next 10 games on the road.
It’ll be interesting to see how much “rest” MPJ gets for Brooklyn. Or maybe they’ll decide to move him before the deadline. His play this season has been very good, but also very individualistic because of the nature of his game and the team’s quality. Brooklyn should be able to get some draft compensation out of a team for him. Maybe a team like Detroit would want to roll the dice?
📈 Dallas Mavericks (16-26). The Mavericks still haven’t figured out which way they want to go with the rest of this season. They could trade the injured Anthony Davis before the deadline and focus on shaping everything around Cooper Flagg immediately. It would also help them try to secure their own draft pick with good lottery odds. The problem with that is weeks like this one. They went 3-1 as they took down the Nets and Jazz (twice). It’s what they should do, so it’s not much of a surprise. However, the Mavs still have to reconsider what’s best for their future. Maybe that’s competing for the Play-In Tournament and seeing where the chips fall. But you can’t let pride get in the way of buildingthe best team possible around Flagg.
📉 Atlanta Hawks (20-23). Three straight losses with the new look Hawks in a post-Trae Young era, finding some hardships with their schedule and on-court results. They got smoked by the Lakers. They got handled by the Blazers. And they got smoked by Boston. The Hawks lost those three games by a combined 67 points. Yikes! Their defense has been terrible in this stretch. You know what they say. You can take Trae Young away from the roster, but you can’t take the roster away from the Trae Young. Wait, that’s not right.
The Week Ahead: All-Star Game coming into focus
On Monday, we’re going to receive the All-Star starters in the Eastern and Western Conferences. That’s when the confusion with the new All-Star format will show itself in the selection and discussion process. First, let’s try to guess who those starters will be. In the most recent fan voting returns, these were your top-10 vote getters in each conference. Remember, these things are now completely positionless, so nothing but the votes will matter. And the starter voting boils down to the fans (50 percent), the players (25 percent) and the media (25 percent). We’re doing the top-seven just to see how close the fan voting is, but only five get selected.
• East: Giannis Antetokounmpo (2,092,284), Jalen Brunson (1,916,497), Tyrese Maxey (1,908,978), Cade Cunningham (1,752,801), Donovan Mitchell (1,530,237), Jaylen Brown (1,514,259), Karl-Anthony Towns (898,038), Jalen Johnson (525,789), Michael Porter Jr. (304,316), Pascal Siakam (298,761)
• West: Luka Dončić (2,229,811), Nikola Jokić (1,998,560), Steph Curry (1,844,903), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (1,554,468), Victor Wembanyama (1,321,985), Anthony Edwards (1,246,423), Deni Avdija (1,224,109), LeBron James (1,059,855), Kevin Durant (997,386), Alperen Şengün (871,952)
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In terms of the fan voting, Mitchell and Brown are mostly competing in the Eastern Conference for the fifth spot. Edwards and maybe Avdija are within a short distance of Wemby in the West, but they’d have to make up big ground in the final returns. Now let’s check out some media voting. We don’t know who everybody voted for, but we can try to project off a small sample size from this post about media voting, in which I participated. The three ballots used here had the following:
• East: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Maxey, Cade Cunningham, Jaylen Brown (all five players were on the three ballots).
• West: Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Anthony Edwards (all five players were on the three ballots).
I have no idea how the players will vote, but let’s just say the crossover of the fan and media vote is indicative of where the All-Star starters will land. That means we have Antetokounmpo, Brunson, Maxey, Cunningham and Brown in the East and Dončić, Jokić, SGA, Wembanyama and Edwards in the West. But filling in the other 14 reserve spots won’t be so easy. Hopefully, the NBA can provide some clarity Monday night during NBC’s big production of the announcement of the starters.
Remember, we will have three teams of eight in this round-robin tournament. But two of the teams will be made up of USA-born players and the other will be made up of international players. Those starters above would give us five of the eight international spots selected. When the coaches vote for the reserves, they’ll have to make sure they give us three international guys. The other 11 players will have to be USA-born players.
The biggest international options left would be Avdija, Şengün, Jamal Murray and Lauri Markkanen in the West. We have Siakam, Embiid and Giddey in the East. Do we still have the seven and seven split on reserves for each conference? Will international players like Avdija, Murray or Giddey get squeezed here because we only have room for three more? I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but the NBA and NBC really need to nail this format in order for the first All-Star Game outside of TNT for decades to be a success.