Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress; Diego Velazquez; 1659

Scores

Celtics 122, Wizards 102 — For a brief, beautiful moment in this game, Jordan Poole appeared to join the MVP Longlist. Seventeen points in the first seven minutes against the reigning champs.

For the remainder of the game, though, he had nine points on 3/9. Alas. It was too beautiful for this world.

Boston waited until the third to really break this open, having hit only nine threes in the first half. They finished with 17; the Wizards hit a single three in the entire second half.

MVP Watch: Jayson Tatum finished with 25-11-6 but went just 3/11 from deep. (Yes, I’m sick.) This is a baptism of fire for rookie Alex Sarr in Game 1 of his NBA career … but I kinda feel good about how Sarr defended that! (I do not feel good about the rest of Sarr’s performance, for the record. Please don’t look at that part of the boxscore, for the sake of you, the sake of Alex Sarr and the sake of all humanity.)

If you’re curious, Boston’s averaged scoring margin last season was 11.3. It’s currently 21.5 this season.

Spurs 109, Mavericks 120 — Let’s put the rough Victor Wembanyama game aside for a moment. Just a perfect start to the Klay Thompson experience for Dallas. Unsurprisingly, it did not take Luka Doncic long to figure out how to best use him.

Yes, Luka assisted on four of those six Klay triples, with one more coming on a P.J. Washington drive-and-kick and another on a rebound tip-out. Luka assisting on 80% of Klay’s made threes this season? Seems right.

Luka looks fantastic, by the way. Dereck Lively II looked great, though he’s coming off of the bench behind Daniel Gafford again. Six assists for Lively.

I hope Warriors fans find joy in Klay’s joy in Dallas, until the teams meet.

Timberwolves 117, Kings 115 — Incredible game that I wish I did not have a rooting interest in. The Kings had a slight edge most of the game, with Julius Randle just persistently hitting shots you do not expect Julius Randle to hit and with Anthony Edwards getting loose down the stretch, including drawing the game-winning foul and hitting the game-winning free throws.

But still: really fantastic game between two good teams.

The Kings’ offense didn’t consistently look super clean. It had a wonderful stretch late in the first and through a good chunk of the third, and it’s important to remember that Minnesota has one of the best defenses in the league. There were some tough De’Aaron Fox and DeMar DeRozan jumpers in the fourth. I trust Fox drive-and-kick or Malik Monk-Domantas Sabonis pick-and-roll much more in the halfcourt than perimeter isolation work. Work in progress.

The math problem is real for the Kings (29 3PAs to Minnesota’s 50) … but their foul-drawing advantage might erase it if Fox continues to draw contact consistently.

Shout out to Keegan Murray for guarding Edwards most of the night and doing as well as can be expected while also being the Kings’ most reliable bucket (except on the well-defended final play).

Great win for Minnesota given how clear it is they are still figuring out the offense with Randle’s much different playstyle.

Share Good Morning It's Basketball

Thunder 102, Nuggets 87 — Beating a recent champ who features the Best Player Alive in their place at elevation on opening night by 15 is mighty impressive.

Chet Holmgren: 25 points on 11/18 shooting, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 4 blocks in 36 minutes. Matched up against the Best Player Alive. SHEESH.

Look at this. Ignore for a second the beautiful leading bounce pass from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (that’s some luxury brand casual elegance stuff) and watch Nikola Jokic and Holmgren run the floor.

Chet blocked Jokic, Jokic wants the whistle and slowly turns to get back on defense. Chet, admiring his work a bit (he’ll do that) and waiting for the space to clear, transitions to offense a little slowly.

They both cross midcourt at the same time, by which point Jokic is refocused on the play.

And Chet sees the MVP out of position and takes one long stride in before Jokic can react …

… and the Nuggets are dead in the water.

That assist is one of many spectacular Shai plays. This is a helluva duo.

Jamal Murray Watch 2024 is back, and it’s still not looking awesome. He shot 4/13 from the floor, and had four assists and three turnovers.

The teams combined to shoot 15/74 from three. There should be laws against stuff like this.

Russell Westbrook’s lackluster performance is getting a good bit of attention. If the Nuggets are relying on Russell Westbrook to be an advantage player for them, I have some real questions about the rest of the rotation outside of Jokic.

OKC vibe check: immaculate.

The Klaws Come Out

ESPN reports a former Clippers strength coach has sued the team over wrongful termination related to claims he raised red flags about improper medical treatment by the team for Kawhi Leonard. In the suit, the coach also alleges that the Clippers were tampering with Kawhi for years before landing him in free agency.

Read the story to get the full details. Here’s my take:

• You can’t always trust the story told in a lawsuit from a party clearly seeking publicity for said lawsuit.

• You definitely can’t always trust what a team claims.

• I remain skeptical about the crux of the claim, which is that the Clippers did weird medical stuff to Kawhi. Of all the players to not accept the team’s diagnosis and treatment plan, Kawhi would be in the top tier.

• Tampering is a bulls—t charge, the NBA should temper its enforcement of it and fans should care less about it.

• Swim with sharks and you might become lunch. This strength coach (allegedly) leveraged his relationship with Kawhi and information about Kawhi’s status to get a job with the Clippers, which ended up being unsatisfying. The Clippers (allegedly) used this dude to tamper with Kawhi and are now getting sued when it all went sour. On the surface it looks like no one is being particularly saint-like here. What a shock when it turns out poorly.

Links

My man Scott Hines notes that if it did not already exist, we would never create Halloween now.

Kelly Dwyer season previews in that invariably Kelly Dwyer style! Pacific Division, Atlantic Division, Northwest Division, Southeast Division, Southwest Division.

John Schuhmann’s indispensable Power Rankings.

Portland scorekeepers robbed the Warriors of a point the other night. Imagine that game was closer than 30 points!

Very interesting piece from Platonic Love on Substack’s jealousy problem. I used to look at the Substack sports leaderboard regularly. Now I have to Google to figure out where it is, and almost never check. I don’t really feel jealousy looking at it. I do feel lots and lots of happiness to notice SB Nation alums at Split Zone Duo doing so extraordinarily well.

Charles Barkley is the Washington Wizards of “Who He Play For?”

Mike D. Sykes, II on what each party needs out of the new uniform deal between Nike, the NBA and the WNBA.

Marc Stein writes about his experience inside a new “shared reality” dome for communal sports viewing in Dallas. Seems pretty cool but expensive and also can I have the remote so I can rewind and run that SLOB play back?

Caitlin Cooper on the Pacers learning how to win ugly.

Rafael Barlowe on under-the-radar lob threats in the 2025 NBA Draft.

Jason Kirk is a blessing.

Fun facts from NBA rosters. The youngest player on an NBA roster this season (Ulrich Comche, he’s a Raptor) was born December 30, 2005. He was born after the debut Paramore album came out. In another genre, Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” had just finished its run atop the Billboard Hot 100 when Comche was born. This dude was born post-"Gold Digger."

The NBA Cup court designs have been released. I’m going to need to see these in action before assessing.

Schedule

The first weekend of the regular season is always a little hectic. It’s fine, there are only 25 games. It’s fine. All times Eastern.

FRIDAY
Nets at Magic, 7
Sixers at Raptors, 7
Hornets at Hawks, 7:30
Pistons at Cavaliers, 7:30
Pacers at Knicks, 7:30, ESPN
Grizzlies at Rockets, 8
Bulls at Bucks, 8
Warriors at Jazz, 9:30
Suns at Lakers, 10, ESPN
Pelicans at Blazers, 10

SATURDAY
Clippers at Nuggets, 5, NBA TV
Heat at Hornets, 7
Celtics at Pistons, 7
Cavaliers at Wizards, 7
Thunder at Bulls, 8
Magic at Grizzlies, 8, NBA TV
Raptors at Timberwolves, 8
Rockets at Spurs, 8:30
Mavericks at Suns, 10
Kings at Lakers, 10:30, NBA TV

SUNDAY
Sixers at Pacers, 3:30
Bucks at Nets, 6
Pelicans at Blazers, 6
Hawks at Thunder, 7
Clippers at Warriors, 8:30

Alright, what a week! If you’re a free subscriber or a new subscriber, I hope you’d enjoyed the newsletter during FREE WEEK, which is now over. Free subscribers will continue to receive occasional full newsletter and occasional preview posts. Paid subscribers get five full newsletters a week during the season.

You can become a paid subscriber right now for $5/month or $50/year. That price will be locked in for you so long as you maintain an active subscription. If you wait a week, you’ll miss next week’s content and the new price will be $7/month or $70/year.

If you like what you’ve received and you have a couple bucks to invest in independent, non-gambling, non-slop NBA analysis, you should subscribe!

Be excellent to each other.