The Opening Tip

• Steph Curry is on one of the best runs of his career. 
• Dallas stopped playing the national anthem and it took 13 games for anyone to notice. 
• Kemba Walker’s early returns are eye-openingly bad.

1. 🎲 Grip vs. the house: The Bucks are about to win (and cover) a bunch of games

We don’t take many victory laps around here, because we’re often quite wrong about things, but here’s what we wrote about the Bucks on Jan. 29:
 

Well! They responded by immediately losing two in a row.

But! They’ve since rattled off wins in their last five by margins of 28, 20, 18, 25 and 13. (Two were against Cleveland; the other three were against playoff teams in Portland, Indiana and Denver on the road.)

The Bucks are now 16-8 (1.5 games behind the 76ers for the No. 1 seed in the East) with a net-rating of plus-10.1, best in the league by a sizable 1.4 points. That 10.1 mark is even better than last year’s net-rating (9.4) when Milwaukee finished the regular season 56-17. 

• Over the course of the five-game winning streak, the Bucks have the best offensive rating in the league (123.5), the second best defensive rating (103.9) and their shooting has been lights out (48.6 overall: first; 43.5 from 3: second). 

Plus, they’ve covered their last five games easily.

What we’re saying: Milwaukee plays the Suns tonight on ESPN at 10 p.m. EST. It will win and cover the minus-four spread. It’s our one guarantee.*

**Our guarantees are not guaranteed to be guaranteed.

2. Daily GIF: He can do the highlight layups, too

Steph Curry, owner of the layup above from last night's win over the Spurs, is on a 13-12 team whose second highest scorer is Andrew Wiggins. Klay Thompson is in injury limbo, Draymond Green, still a defensive and passing wizard, is cosplaying the worse version of Nick Young on offense.

Curry is still Curry, though.

His stats over his last five games, which include a 57-point output: 

• 37.4 PPG, 31 3s made, 12.8 3s attempted per game. 

He’s averaging 29.5 a game for the season, and is shooting 51.3 percent from deep over his last 10 games.

Still great. Still doing those lame dances.

3. Trivia time

On this day four years ago, Draymond Green recorded a triple-double while only scoring four points.

His line: 

• Four points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, 10 steals. 

He missed a quadruple-double by three buckets.

Overall, there have been four recorded quadruple-doubles by four different players.

How many of the four players can you name?

Answers at the bottom.

4. The Mavs stopped playing the national anthem at the beginning of the season, and no one noticed until this week

(Update: Right before we sent this newsletter out, the NBA announced “all teams will play the national anthem in keeping with longstanding league policy.”)

The Mavericks have hosted 13 preseason and regular season games this season, and none have begun with the national anthem.

Not a soul noticed until The Athletic’s Tim Kato reported (observed?) its absence on Monday night. Mavs owner Mark Cuban confirmed the decision to Kato, but chose not to further elaborate. (On Twitter, The Dallas Morning News’ Brad Townsend pointed out the Mavs didn’t even play the national anthem at their games for their first 16 years of existence.)

This morning, The Athletic’s Shams Charania tweeted this:
 

Since Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel in 2016, the trivial genesis of the playing of the national anthem at sporting events has been covered ad nauseam. The routine is second-nature at this point, but it’s objectively fair to wonder why it must continue. It’s the same thing as showing up at your 9-5 office job and standing for the minutes-long song before sitting at your desk. Wouldn’t that be strange? Wouldn’t everyone (except the super patriotic dude who wears a shirt that says ‘America: Back-to-back World Champs’ on casual Friday) kind of think it was a drag? Why is it different at sporting events? Because there is a competition? Must we celebrate America before every basketball game? Why not just at the NBA Finals? Why doesn’t everyone who criticizes Dallas start their work day with the national anthem? Doesn’t that make them unpatriotic?

What, you didn’t think bad faith arguments can go both ways?

5. By the numbers

34.8 percent

Through nine games, Kemba Walker is averaging 9.9 drives per game. Off those 9.9 drives, he’s averaging 4.6 field goal attempts, on which he’s shooting 34.8 percent. He’s shooting 35.7 percent overall, and has boiled his game down to two moves: Missing from 3, and getting his shot blocked into the third row in the paint.

6.6 screen assists

Rudy Gobert leads the league with 6.6 “screen assists,” which are defined as “screens for a teammate that directly lead to a made field goal by that teammate.”

61.6 percent

Giannis is shooting only 61.6 percent from the free throw line this season, a career low. He’s gone from 77 percent in 2016-17 to 76 percent to 72.9 percent to 63.3 percent to 61.6 percent this year.

1-3

After a listless loss to the 6-18 Pistons last night, Brooklyn is now 1-3 in games with James Harden and Kyrie Irving but not Kevin Durant.

Most worrisome, though, is that Irving is back on his soliloquy game:
 

(When you can only name two of the odds, you probably aren’t battling an abnormal amount of odds.)

6.  Quick hits

• The Jazz beat the Celtics last night, but this stutter move by Jayson Tatum to get past Rudy Gobert was something. 
• Here is the most egregious of all the 3-point shooting fouls. (It was overturned.)
• James Harden (11.8 assists since joining the Nets) has more than double the amount of assists per game of Kyrie Irving (5.7). 
• The Knicks traded for Derrick Rose over the weekend for some slightly puzzling reason. He scored 14 points in 20 minutes in his re-debut last night. 
• The Pistons’ six wins include victories over the Lakers, Celtics, Nets and 76ers. 
• Julius Randle let out a ‘Sheed-worthy BALL DON’T F****** LIE! last night.

7.  Off the press

• Marv Albert knows his storied NBA career is ‘winding down’ [The New York Post]
• The Clippers are surging, thanks to new blood and an offensive shift [The Ringer]
• Myles Turner’s game has evolved. The box score doesn’t know it yet. [FiveThirtyEight]

Trivia answers: Nate Thurmond, Alvin Robertson, Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson. Here are the box scores.