What the NBA Cup showed us

A potential antidote for Tyrese Haliburton, a reminder of the Lakers' extra gear and LeBron's complete record.

Good morning. Special Sunday edition! Let’s basketball.

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The Girl With the Wine Glass; Johannes Vermeer; 1659

The Los Angeles Lakers are your inaugural NBA Cup champions. I’m so glad sports fans in Southern California finally have a reason for joy. I’m so glad long-suffering Lakers fans, in particular, get to see some success.

Sarcasm aside, the presence of LeBron James and the Lakers in the championship game lends itself a certain baseline of success for the event as just that: an event. It’s become more clear over the course of the Cup that it was created as a T.V. opportunity that I suspect a new member of the NBA broadcast media team will grab ahold of in the next contract. The marketing copy writes itself: “Tuesdays and Fridays in November, plus the first week of December: tournament games on [insert streaming service].” It’s a great way to soak a streaming company for some cash, and a great way to introduce NBA basketball on another broadcast partner.

Based on Adam Silver’s comments before the game, it doesn’t sound like major changes are afoot for the 2024 edition: he seems to like the elements some others have bristled at, including the point differential issue. I wonder if he’ll consider whether Vegas as a hub for only three games worked. How would that Saturday game have looked if the Pelicans would have beaten the Lakers on Thursday? The bubble taught us that you need a home crowd to make the NBA feel like the NBA. I doubt Silver would do it, but I’d ditch Vegas as the destination here — you’re going to have to do it when they get an expansion anyway — and play it on the top seed’s court. Imagine that game in Indianapolis or Los Angeles? (I mean, we kind of did get to imagine it in Los Angeles anyways.)

And now to actual basketball. Darvin Ham and the Lakers had a brilliant gameplan to attack Indiana’s soft defense and own the paint. This is one of the best games Anthony Davis has ever played in the pros. 41 points, 20 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks in a game-high 41 minutes. He put consistent pressure on Myles Turner and Isaiah Jackson inside, he touched so many balls on the offensive glass and his defensive intimidation allowed the Lakers to be hyperaggressive doubling Tyrese Haliburton. AD was everywhere.

Cam Reddish played some stellar defense as well, getting the main Haliburton assignment with lots of help through the game.

On Haliburton, this tournament certainly built his star across the fandom. In the knockout round he managed to register his first career TNT game … and his first career ABC primetime game. Those wins against the Celtics and Bucks are the stuff of legend, just perfect lore early in a superstar’s career. That the Lakers respected his ability enough to build a gameplan specifically to take him out of the game as much as possible is a real testament to his standing.

At the same time, you wonder if such a high-stakes game coming this early in the overall NBA season might lead other opponents to repeat the gameplan sooner than they would have if it didn’t debut until, say, the playoffs. In other words, did the league discover Hali’s god status and his Achilles’ heel the same week?

Probably not: the Lakers’ defensive potential is enormous, and Indiana’s own mediocre defense is built especially poorly to deal with players like AD and a rampaging LeBron. It didn’t help that the officials called an extremely tight game for stretches with 58 total fouls. (The average in all NBA games this season: just under 40.) Even LeBron picked up five fouls, three in the first half!

The Pacers are a serious team that needs another star to be any sort of championship contender. That’ll be a trade target eventually. They have the assets and, more importantly, they have time to be selective.

The Lakers, meanwhile, proved to us something they already believed, which is that they will have a major role to play as the 2023-24 NBA Championship is decided. We joke about the Lakers’ “most competitive sweep in NBA playoffs history” at the hands of the Nuggets last spring. But you know what? The Nuggets have looked plenty mortal this season. If Jamal Murray isn’t right, the Nuggets aren’t a hegemon. The Suns are a walking infirmary. The Warriors are in crisis. The Thunder and Wolves are light on high-stakes experience. The Mavericks’ defense is a catastrophe; the Kings are just a little off. The Clippers are building the plane in the air.

The West is available to the Lakers, and this storm they brought to the NBA Cup is a good reminder of what a top-level defensive team led by LeBron and anchored by AD can do. This game didn’t count in the standings, regrettably. But the Lakers are effectively tied for No. 3 in the West. They are absolutely in the mix for the title.

And that comes back to LeBron.

Two decades after his impossible hype ship landed on these shores, he’s still unloading the cargo. This has always been the blueprint: he’d carry the Lakers as far as he could for as long as he could while AD developed into the team’s best player. Because LeBron almost never falls short of expectations, it felt inevitable that it’d work. It’s been erratic because AD is not LeBron. No one is. But it looks like the blueprint might be realized again this season. If it does, this is a helluva finishing move on LeBron’s legacy.

(Unless it’s not yet the finishing move …)

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All Tournament Team

The NBA announced LeBron as the tournament MVP on Saturday night. The All Tournament team will be announced on Monday. These three players are absolute locks:

• LeBron

• AD

• Haliburton

The other two spots are a little more fuzzy. I think Giannis Antetokounmpo gets one. The Bucks went 5-1 in the tournament and Giannis averaged 29-9-6 with efficient shooting. He had a good game in the semifinals loss to Indiana.

The league could go with the next best performers from the finals teams: Austin Reaves or Myles Turner. Kevin Durant is a candidate, except the Suns were 2-2 in NBA Cup games he played. De’Aaron Fox has a similar statistical case with a 3-1 record, but he played in just four of the Kings’ five games and had a tough night in the knockouts. It’s a similar case for Devin Booker. Damian Lillard had a great tournament with the exception of much of the semifinals game; is it weird to have two Bucks on there and just one Pacer? If you want to reward the other semifinalist, Brandon Ingram is your best option, but he didn’t perform as statistically well as the others.

Interesting problem here. I would go with De’Aaron Fox because I am a homer.

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Friday Scores

Hawks 114, Sixers 125 — Joel Embiid: No. 1 scorer, No. 5 in rebounding. 38 and 14, and that’s barely over his averages (33 and 12). He’s a beast. Talk about narrative trophies and consolations and whatever the hell else you want. He’s one of the greatest players in the world and could end one of the best bigs ever. He earned that damn award.

Pistons 91, Magic 123 — The Pistons are down incredibly bad. That’s 19 straight losses. The NBA record is 26. What a mess. Detroit’s next seven games: Pacers, Sixers, Sixers, Bucks, Hawks, Jazz, Nets. That eighth game — with a potential record on the line — is against the Nets at home, the day after Christmas.

Raptors 116, Hornets 119 — Toronto stormed back from 20 down to take a brief fourth quarter lead, but falling behind to a Charlotte team without LaMelo Ball is the problem here. Scottie Barnes with a 31-10-10 performance. Five Raptors took at least three three-pointers … and missed them all. Barnes and Precious Achiuwa went 6/10 from deep. The rest of the team went 0/22.

Knicks 123, Celtics 133 — These are always a treat: Jaylen Brown picks up a seemingly soft technical for arguing a call during a dead ball, goes to the bench, apparently keeps talking, and gets hit with his second tech from all the way across the court. First career ejection.

Bench ejections, aka the Joey Crawford Special. After the game, Brown got some more choice words in:

“To be honest, I’m not sure. But I wish I would have gotten my money’s worth. I always thought my first career ejection would be something a little more exciting. Maybe a tussle with some, you know, guys get folded up, go to the ground. Not some overemotional ref who had a bad day.”

Damn. That stings.

Wizards 97, Nets 124 — The Washington Wizards are 1.5 games ahead of the Detroit Pistons in the standings. Mea culpa. Obviously the Wizards were not going to be “good” coming into this season. But I did not think this team would be a masterpiece of dogs—t.

I also did not think the Nets would have a top-10 offense! No. 7 in the league to date. Top-10 three-point frequency and No. 1 three-point percentage are helping a lot. Really low turnovers (all the high-usage guys protect the ball), really high offensive rebounds (both Day’ron Sharpe and Nic Claxton are killing on the o-glass). They just don’t generate free throws. We’ll see how the three-point shooting holds up, though no one has seemed unsustainably hot except Lonnie Walker IV (who’s out for a few weeks).

Warriors 136, Thunder 138 (OT) — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander slayed the Warriors again (38 on 15/30 shooting with no threes, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 steals, no turnovers. We’ll get to that. Stephen Curry just about matched him: 34-6-3 on 50% shooting.

But let’s talk about Draymond Green trying to foul Chet Holmgren up three … and fouling him in the shooting motion. Oops.

Fast forward to the end of overtime. Warriors down three. Steph hits a tough shot — this is what 30 does, he keeps his team in games, he wins games for his team — and OKC gets a lay-up off of an … isolation drive by Chet, who dishes it inside to Lu Dort when the help comes.

And then the Warriors put up some of the worst endgame shots I’ve ever seen for a team that has Stephen Curry on the roster.

Great win for the Thunder. It might be time to have a conversation about whether Josh Giddey would be better off somewhere else. Shai’s got this.

Timberwolves 127, Grizzlies 103 — Anthony Edwards left four minutes in with a hip pointer injury. Troy Brown (!) came in and handled business with 20 points on 8/10 shooting. This team is absolutely rolling. 16-2 over their last 18. Only losses were in Phoenix on a back-to-back and against Sacramento in the tournament group stage.

Cavaliers 111, Heat 99 — Resilient win for Cleveland after going down 16 early, despite being without Evan Mobley. (The Heat were without Bam Adebayo.) The Cavs backcourt did its job just enough on offense (an efficient 45 points, 12 assists … Donovan Mitchell helped on the boards, too). Jimmy Butler (5/15) and Duncan Robinson (0/7) were ice cold.

Bulls 121, Spurs 112 — San Antonio has now lost 16 straight itself, and has a worse net rating than Detroit thanks to a few big blowouts. But hey! Here’s a reel of Victor Wembanyama putting up 21 points, 20 rebounds and 4 blocks. Enjoy!

Bulls? Bulls!

Kings 114, Suns 106 — Keegan Murray shot better than 40% from three last season. He’s under 30% this season and has been a little banged up. (He’s also put on muscle and been given tougher defensive assignments.) The Kings’ offense is languishing a bit, especially in comparison to last season. Murray’s shooting is a huge part of that. He was 1/7 from deep in this one. Your estimation of how high the Kings’ offense will finish depends a lot on whether you think Murray’s rookie season was a fluke or not.

In any case, that the Kings are piling up road wins against good teams (albeit good teams missing great players like Kevin Durant) is a good sign. And this one happened because of some great defense in the third quarter (holding the Suns to 12 points (with Drew Eubanks earning half of those points) and because De’Aaron Fox is a bad, bad dude. 23 points on 82% True Shooting … in the fourth quarter.

The Suns are below the Kings in the standings, but I want to put this fact somewhere: Sacramento is 6-0 against the five teams above them in the West standings right now. They have a combined five (f—king) losses to the Rockets and Pelicans combined.

Rockets 114, Nuggets 106 — The Rockets, who had been 0-8 away from Houston, finally get a road win … in Denver … where the reigning champion Nuggets had not lost (9-0) this season! (In fact, the Nuggets had lost a single game that counted in Denver since last March: Game 2 of the NBA Finals. That’s it. No other home playoff losses.)

Back-to-back inefficient games from Nikola Jokic. In this one, against Alperen Sengun, he shot 9/26 from the floor with five assists and three turnovers. He still finished with 23-16 and was a +3 in his 34 minutes. But a down night is a down night. They rely on him.

What a way to get a first road win of the season! Houston wins the season series 3-1.

Mavericks 125, Blazers 112 — Dallas went up 19 early, but Kyrie Irving left with a nasty leg injury (his own teammate Dwight Powell fell on it; obviously I will not be sharing the video) and Portland fought back, getting within one in the fourth. But the Mavericks persevered. We’ll see if they can continue to persevere, I assume without Kyrie for a period of time.

Dante Exum might be the long lost fifth starter? He came in for Grant Williams and performed well. You wonder if he might replace Derrick Jones Jr. once Grant’s back.

Scoot Henderson is having a pretty rough rookie season.

Clippers 117, Jazz 103 — Just want to state for the record that while I think Walker Kessler is going to be a good NBA player, he is not currently better than Rudy Gobert. Retract all that.

Very solid win for Los Angeles. Kawhi Leonard with a cool 41, and a cooler shot.

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Enjoy your Sunday. We’re back on Monday. Be excellent to each other.