Run it back(-to-back)

PLUS: Anthony Davis makes Rudy Gobert look like Johan Petro.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Long Road — Argilla Road, Ipswich; Arthur Wesley Dow; 1898

I wrote Tuesday that for all of the Boston Celtics’ incredible success in the 2023-24 season, regular and post, they can’t bring a single one of those victories with them to the 2024-25 season.

The Celtics appear to be just fine with that arrangement. They’ll just do exactly what they did last year all over again. On Tuesday’s ring night, hosting the theoretically rival New York Knicks, who added two high-profile starters in the offseason, Boston hit 29 threes and never led by less than 15 after the first quarter. It was a total and complete beatdown.

The Celtics punked the Knicks. They punked Karl-Anthony Towns in his Knicks regular season debut (12-7-3 and -18 in 24 minutes). They punked Mikal Bridges in his Knicks regular season debut (16 points and -33 in 35 minutes, and the victim of many, many Jayson Tatum buckets). They punked Jalen Brunson, darling of the East Coast, who had an efficient offensive night (22 points on 14 FGAs) but had four turnovers (two of which led directly to fast break dunks) and was bullied on defense.

All of the Knicks were bullied on defense. The Celtics will do that. When they’re hitting like this, they’ll do that to everyone. There are some duplicate highlights here, but sheesh. Jayson Tatum … is a bully now?

The playstyle is very similar to past Tatum play: there are a good bit of isolation threes, there’s some movement action, a little post work. (That backdown to the turnaround on Bridges in the third was so clean.) Tatum isn’t really making faster decisions here. But the shot looks so good and the confidence looks so high that when he’s on it feels … a little unstoppable? That’s not really something folks have said about Tatum in the past. But with his length and release point, you can’t challenge the shot without giving up the lane … and he’ll take the lane if it’s there.

There was also a good bit of pulling Brunson’s mark (often Derrick White) or Towns’ mark (Al Horford) into high screen-roll, and that was absolute death for the Knicks. Tom Thibodeau will figure out some strategies to cope with that. It may never work against the Celtics, who have too many weapons. The question I’m more interested in is whether other teams — especially in the East — will be able to abuse the Knicks in similar if less deadly ways.

We should note also that the non-Tatum Celtics starters shot an absurd 18/30 from deep, and the Knicks’ offense actually looked fine considering the competition and how quickly the game became uncompetitive. New York shot quite well in the lane, which is a concern for Boston until Kristaps Porzingis returns. New York just has to figure out something defensively. The Celtics had the most efficient offense of all-time last season, and this game might have been better than all 82 regular season performances last year. If Tatum is this much better and the other Celtics are playing at this level … it might be impossible to figure anything out against them.

For any team.

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Scores

Knicks 109, Celtics 132

Timberwolves 103, Lakers 110 — Two big things about this game other than the obvious big thing about the game that I cover below.

First: Anthony Davis is really, really mad and/or serious about this Defensive Player of the Year award thing. He made a point to dominate Rudy Gobert on both ends. This block is pretty spectacular.

He’s played enough games against Gobert to know how to meet him at the rim. He read the pass from Donte DiVincenzo, cocked back and rejected that shot. Beautiful. AD played beautifully all night.

LOL at the NBA official highlight video including a dejected Gobert in the thumbnail image. But seriously: this was New Orleans level AD. If the Lakers have a top-5 player in the NBA plus LeBron, that changes the calculus on their place in the pecking order of the Western Conference.

The second thing about this game is the Wolves’ excellent defense held the Lakers to 5/30 shooting from deep … but couldn’t generate any offense via turnovers (only seven for L.A., just four steals for Minnesota) and didn’t protect the glass, giving up 15 offensive rebounds in 50 opportunities (30% opponent offensive rebounding rate). All that combined with Minnesota’s offense being a work-in-progress with Julius Randle in place of Karl-Anthony Towns added up to L.A. getting the edge. The Wolves had the No. 17 offense last season. If it’s much worse than that, it could be a big problem.

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Bronny Time

The Lakers let the James family make some cool-as-hell history in Game 1 as the LeBrons Senior and Junior checked in together with four minutes left in the first half and L.A. up big.

Bronny played 2 minutes, 41 seconds, all in that stint. He had a putback attempt blocked by Rudy Gobert and missed a wing three set up by his dad. No word on whether he’ll play again for the Lakers any time soon. Two Lakers expected to get burn (Christian Wood and Jarred Vanderbilt) are injured. Three other Lakers that are probably better than Bronny — Cam Reddish, Jalen Hood-Schifino and maybe Max Lewis — had DNP-CDs. None of the team’s three two-way players were active.

The Lakers can still assign Bronny to the South Bay Lakers since he has less than three years of service. The G League season doesn’t begin until November 8, though. The G League draft is Saturday; training camps open Monday. One presumes Bronny will get the assignment sometime in the next few weeks … unless the family and team decide getting occasional burn and being around his dad and the team for practices, shootarounds and film study is more important to his development.

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We Both Go Down Together

(Word up to The Decemberists, purveyor of some absolutely wild song plots.)

This is another topic to put a pin in and re-visit when the basketball calms down a touch: the Timberwolves extended Rudy Gobert for $110 million over three years. The important piece of it is that Gobert declined his $46 million player option for 2025-26 as a part of the negotiation. So instead of being on the books for $46 million next season, he’ll be on the books for closer to $30 million, which will significantly help the Wolves re-sign Randle or a replacement for Randle or a replacement for Mike Conley without going deep into the tax. Following the cost-saving Towns trade, it’s a pretty incredible turn of events for the Wolves.

Again, more later. It’s a topic that deserves analysis outside the fog of just having watched Anthony Davis make Gobert look like Johan Petro.

In possibly unrelated but tangential news, from ESPN’s Shams Charania:

Minority owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have $940 million in a bank account ready to wire immediately to majority owner Glen Taylor and the NBA for outright control of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA's Lynx should they receive approval, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

This sounds like a great set-up for Ocean’s 14. There’s an arbitration hearing on November 4. Things could move quickly after that. And by “move quickly” I mean that Glen Taylor could be out of the NBA by Christmas. Not a moment too soon.

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I Believe That

Anthony Edwards is a natural showman, and Adidas is absolutely shredding with the AE campaign. This ad is incredible.

Just from an artistic perspective, the shot angles and tactile sounds are so good. Even without Ant Man, it’s an immensely pleasing ad. (Or maybe I’ve just been conditioned by a life in a capitalist society to think so.)

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Schedule

This is Opening Night For Real Sickos. All times Eastern. Get that League Pass subscription locked in.

Pacers at Pistons, 7
Nets at Hawks, 7:30
Magic at Heat, 7:30
Bucks at Sixers, 7:30, ESPN — no Embiid or PG!
Cavaliers at Raptors, 7:30
Hornets at Rockets, 8
Bulls at Pelicans, 8
Grizzlies at Jazz, 9
Suns at Clippers, 10, ESPN
Warriors at Blazers, 10

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Alright! Opening morning is in the books. Be excellent to each other.