This week, we examine a changing Draymond Green legacy, one in-season tournament play the entire league should bookmark, a new(!) moment of genius from LeBron and ... oof, the Wizards.
Jump to Lowe's Things:
Draymond's legacy | The IST play to bookmark
The genius of LeBron | Jaquez is #HeatCulture
The Wizards D is bad | Hawks stuck in the mud
New Spurs court | Strawther, defensive playmaker?
1. Draymond Green and basketball mortality
It was the resignation that hit hardest -- that threw into stark relief what Green has lost, and the disarray these proud NBA champions find themselves in as they attempt to salvage a Golden State season that began with such promise.
When Green's flailing arm slammed Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic in front of the Warriors' bench Tuesday night, there was almost no reaction from any of the coaches or players watching from feet away. There was no protest as referees reviewed the play, no disagreement when they announced Green's ejection. Green jogged off with a blank stare. The game went on.
The team struck the same tone afterward, with coach Steve Kerr giving a terse answer about the Warriors needing Green before switching topics to his benching of Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins late.
Golden State officials used to mount vigorous defenses of Green when the league fined or suspended him. They no longer have it in them. How could they?
They were angry at the league for suspending Green in Game 5 of the 2016 Finals, even though the inciting incident marked the culmination in a parade of scuffles and flagrant foul points.
The Warriors lost those Finals, but in defeat, the door to signing Kevin Durant creaked open. Two titles and three Finals appearances followed. The splintering between Durant and the team spilled into public view early in that third season, when Green screamed at Durant on the bench during a game against the Clippers. Durant left that offseason, although that choice went far beyond Green.
The pandemic and injuries to Thompson and Stephen Curry wiped away the next two seasons, but the Warriors roared back to a fourth championship in 2022; Green then dubbed the playoffs the "Warriors invitational."
Somehow, for Green, it always worked out.
That streak expired a year ago, when Green coldcocked Jordan Poole at practice -- the tape leaking to the public. Green lost standing in the organization that day. It is hard to get it back when he keeps removing himself from game play.
Golden State is 10-14 and 4-12 since a 6-2 start that feels like it happened in some alternate reality. Kerr is uncertain whom to play and when.
Without Green, they lose their best defender -- probably the best defender of the past 15 years, the keystone to their revolutionary small-ball lineups. Green quarterbacks the Warriors' ballet of off-ball movement; in his absence, do they run a more traditional offense?
Curry is playing near peak levels as the team wobbles all around him. Improving via trade will be tricky. Green has four years left on his contract. The whole league has watched the unraveling. Skeptics have long wondered what Green would look like outside the Warriors ecosystem. They now have the same question about Wiggins, who has four years left on his deal too. (Kerr shifted Wiggins to a reserve role Thursday.) Cobbling Kevon Looney's $7.5 million salary together with other players gets cumbersome.
Thompson is a franchise legend on a $43 million expiring contract, and he has mostly struggled this season. Any pathway to a major trade involves attaching an asset to some big contract, with Chris Paul's deal -- non-guaranteed for next season -- being the easiest fit in terms of financial and emotional. (The Warriors also need Paul's pick-and-roll orchestration now more than ever.) The Warriors battled without Green on Thursday in a loss to the Clippers but look more today like a team that needs to be thinking well beyond this season anyway.
This isn't quite the end for Green, but it mars what should be one of the league's all-time happy stories -- a second-round pick developing into a four-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA player and Defensive Player of the Year.
The Warriors called him their soul. He became an archetype for a new era of basketball. Rivals asked: Where can we find our Draymond Green?
The chokeholds and arm swings and suspensions don't define Green, but they are intertwined with his basketball brilliance. They share the first paragraph of his career write-up.
That's sad, and you can tell the Warriors feel that sadness -- and a new uncertainty.
2. The Tyrese Haliburton in-season tournament play the Indiana Pacers should bookmark
Amid all the highlights from Indiana's run to the in-season tournament finals -- the no-look slingshots, reverse alley-oops, step-back 3s, smiles and shouts -- the Pacers should bookmark this:
Buddy Hield lunges toward Brook Lopez, leaving Haliburton to box out (gulp) Giannis Freaking Antetokounmpo, a locomotive who pursues offensive rebounds with almost the same furor as game balls and ladders.
Haliburton does not back down. He hits Antetokounmpo with a clean boxout and does enough to disrupt the rebound; Antetokounmpo deflects it out of bounds.
The Pacers' explosive offense can win lots of games on its own -- and maybe even one playoff round. It is a carnival.
The NBA carnival stops in the postseason, or at least in the second round. The competition is bigger, stronger, meaner. Rotations are shorter, scouting reports more targeted. One-way teams wilt. To win at that level, even score-first teams need a certain nastiness, grit and defense. They need stars to show the way with plays like this.
The Pacers indeed showed that play to the team in a film session ahead of the championship game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Rick Carlisle, their head coach, told ESPN.
"It's a winning play that gets no statistical love," Carlisle said, pointing out that it was recorded as a team rebound.
"Stephen Curry was a guy people used to pick on," Carlisle added. "He kept getting better, and he got to the point where he held his own. That is where Tyrese's growth is continuing. He is trending in that same direction."
Considering the competition, the Pacers' elimination round wins over the Boston Celtics and Bucks were their best defensive performances of the season. They still made mistakes; they are small and cannot rotate out of double-teams without bumping into each other.
But they raised their intensity. They navigated more screens cleanly, closed out hard on the right shooters, nailed more rotations. The way they used the in-season tournament as a springboard -- an opportunity to prove to themselves they were capable of bigger things -- reminded me of how the young Phoenix Suns approached the bubble in the COVID-19 pandemic-truncated 2020 season.
Those Suns emerged from Orlando a transformed team -- sure of themselves, with knowledge of what it took to beat good teams. We will learn over the next months whether Las Vegas had a similar catalytic effect on Indiana.
3. LeBron James unnoticed moments of genius
What James is doing as he approaches his 39th birthday is beyond unprecedented. It is astonishing, a once-every-century comet worthy of the night-to-night gushing from announcers who wish they could find new words to describe it.
Doc Rivers hit upon a semi-new tack during the in-season tournament, highlighting LeBron's IQ -- comparing his play now to a worldly adult returning to high school armed with decades of accumulated knowledge.
LeBron is one of the smartest processors of spatial dynamics the game has ever seen. Add 20 years of experience and you get something like a learned genius: a player who has quite literally seen everything that can happen within a possession -- every pattern of movement.
We tend to associate basketball IQ with passing -- LeBron manipulating defenses from three steps ahead, and whipping the finishing-move pass a second before they expect it. That second is the difference between a defender leaning the wrong way and that same defender executing an effective closeout. Rivers highlighted LeBron's cutting -- another form of anticipatory pattern recognition.
Here are two more non-passing examples from the Lakers' championship victory over the Pacers:
LeBron has played every part in every pick-and-roll coverage against every type of ball handler. He has the book on every opposing player -- who is where, their strengths and weaknesses.
Anthony Davis blitzing Haliburton requires an aggressive rotation from one help defender -- to bump Myles Turner. With Haliburton going left, that job would normally fall to Cam Reddish on the right side. Reddish makes his rotation.
But Reddish is guarding the superior shooter -- Bruce Brown. LeBron is on Obi Toppin; the Lakers are less worried about Toppin launching 3s. LeBron understands that with Haliburton in the middle -- far from the rim -- there is not much of a distinction between "strong side" and "weak side." He wagers Haliburton, backpedaling away from Davis, might not get much oomph on his pass. LeBron goes. It's not gambling. It's counting cards.
That's a subtle thing LeBron (and some others) do. The Pacers have Aaron Nesmith guarding LeBron, but Nesmith chases Brown's miss into the left corner -- far from LeBron. LeBron notices and calls for the ball. When Jarred Vanderbilt pings it to Davis instead, LeBron revs past Isaiah Jackson, leaving only undersized Pacers between him and the basket.
In this vein, you sometimes see LeBron cut diagonally across the court as one of his teammates snares a rebound -- a clever way of engineering the same kind of matchup confusion.
4. Jaime Jaquez Jr., doing the little things #HeatCulture
Jaquez is such a perfect Miami Heat player, it's almost irritating. He's a rugged defender and high-IQ gap-filler who can do a little bit of everything on offense, including score one-on-one in a pinch.
Jaquez has a refined bully-ball game. He likes backing down smaller defenders -- and even ones his size -- with half-spins and power dribbles until he's in his comfort zone, and he has a nice touch on floaters.
The Heat have scored 1.13 points when Jaquez shoots out of an isolation or dishes to a teammate who fires -- 35th among 159 players who have recorded at least 20 such plays, per Second Spectrum research.
Miami is averaging 1.61 points directly out of Jaquez Jr. post-ups -- second in the entire stinking league among 58 guys with at least 20 post touches, per Second Spectrum data. (Jaquez is barely over that threshold.) Jaquez's manufactured buckets are oxygen for a team that can sputter in the half court. He sprints the floor, a floppy-haired target for whooshing Kevin Love and Kyle Lowry outlets.
The Heat subsist on cuts, handoffs, and short-range touch passes -- improvised connector plays that spin magic within cramped spacing. That is where Jaquez sings. He is a whir of extra passes and random screens and is already one of the league's smartest cutters:
Look where Jaquez initiates that cut -- almost out of bounds!
That is a "something from nothing" cut. Jimmy Butler's pick-and-roll does not bend the defense. But Jaquez understands starting from the fringes gives him a runway.
Another Heat-y little thing Jaquez does diligently: gang rebounding.
Jaquez is always lingering near the paint or crashing inside to make sure the Heat finish possessions.
Jaquez is shooting 51% overall and 39.5% on 3s, and his long-range shooting will be a major swing factor. In lots of lineups -- and especially when Butler and Bam Adebayo run pick-and-roll -- defenses will designate Jaquez as the guy to leave open.
Jaquez has logged only 73 minutes alongside Butler and Adebayo. I'm interested to see more. The Jaquez/Caleb Martin forward duo is intriguing. At full strength, the Heat are deep and tough. Their offense will determine whether they can pull another deep playoff run.
Jaquez is another huge Miami draft-day win -- a no-brainer first-team All-Rookie pick.
5. Two things about the Washington Wizards' league-worst defense
Remember the chatter about Jordan Poole averaging 30 points as the No. 1 guy in Washington? Welp. Poole's scoring is down! He's shooting 40% overall and 29% on 3s.
But for teammates and franchise higher-ups, this might be more dispiriting:
I'm not sure I've seen any rotation player get beaten backdoor as often as teams exploit Poole's inattention. This is in the scouting report: If Poole is guarding you, cut!
The Wizards are last in defensive efficiency: 122 points allowed per 100 possessions. That figure balloons to an impossible 126.6 with Poole on the floor.
The Wizards' issues go far beyond Poole. On high pick-and-rolls, they bring unusually urgent help from shooters on the strong side:
Look how far Deni Avdija strays from Gordon Hayward one easy pass away. There is a canyon between Avdija and Poole in the right corner; Hayward saunters through it:
Poole stunts up from the corner, but it doesn't deter Hayward. (It also exposes a backdoor cut for Poole's man -- Brandon Miller, having a nice rookie season.) The Charlotte Hornets have lifted the other three players, making it harder for any defender to challenge Hayward at the basket.
The point of this wrinkle is to wall off the paint and coax above-the-break 3s. It isn't working, in part because the Wiz deploy it indiscriminately:
The same gap is there for Franz Wagner, but he waits a beat because he knows Kyle Kuzma is storming up from the corner -- leaving Paolo Banchero unguarded.
Also, that's Anthony Black with the ball! You don't need to swarm Black! Just duck the screen, dare him to shoot and stay home elsewhere
The Wiz likely want to drill this scheme until everyone has it down -- and only then make personnel-specific adjustments. Their defense would be bad regardless of scheme.
But the Wiz are shooting themselves in the foot. They have allowed 1.12 points per possession out of opponent drives -- worst among defenses, per Second Spectrum data. Opponents are getting to the rim a ton and hitting 71% on shots in the restricted area -- second-worst. Inviting drives doesn't work without rim protection.
The lottery is in five months.
6. The Atlanta Hawks are stuck in the mud
This is the league's most disappointing team. The Hawks are going nowhere, with a dispiriting night-to-night sameness. They would likely blame it on the injury to Jalen Johnson, a sizzle of energy and rebounding and defense who was Atlanta's second- or third-best player through 15 games. De'Andre Hunter has also missed time recently, forcing the Hawks to play either super-small (with all three of Trae Young, Dejounte Murray and Sixth Man of the Year candidate Bogdan Bogdanovic) or super-big with both Clint Capela and Onyeka Okongwu.
Every team deals with injuries. The Hawks have flatlined at 9-14.
Their offense looks fine on paper -- fifth in efficiency! Hooray! But so many possessions are your-turn, my-turn exercises in boredom:
Capela shrugs three times before the Hawks trigger any action. Once Murray gets the ball, Young turns into a statue; he spends almost the entire possession standing atop the "E" and then the "R" in the "arena" wordmark. Neither star Hawks guard has much juice off the ball. They still take a ton of midrange shots; Quin Snyder, in his first full year as head coach, has coaxed only small stylistic tweaks.
Playing in such a predictable system where two players do almost everything has to suck some spirit from the rest of the team -- spirit and fight you need to build a competitive defense. That effect might be larger when one of those two players is also the worst defender on the team -- someone others must cover for every possession. (Young's 3-pointer has stabilized, and his pick-and-roll passing is as brilliant as ever.)
In related news, the Hawks are 27th in points allowed per possession -- more than undoing their production on offense. They don't rebound. Only two teams allow more corner 3s as a portion of opponent shots. Only the Pacers yield more attempts at the rim.
Atlanta traded a bundle of first-round picks to pair Murray and Young, and the experiment has not paid off. The team has been mediocre since the 2021 conference finals -- one game under .500 combined over two-plus subsequent seasons, with three total playoff wins. If the Hawks reach Jan. 15 in this state, everything should be on the table going into the trade deadline.
7. The San Antonio Spurs city edition court (and those white-shadow spurs!)
This thing should absolutely not work:
There are eight distinct colors there, not counting little splashes around the stylized "Viva Spurs" wordmark. Did you ever think you'd want a court centered around orange and dark brown, with three different wood stains and what the team describes as a "succulent green" bordering the whole enterprise?
The contrast between the orange-painted area and the dark brown half-circle above it really works. That brown is rare in NBA art, and it comes off as bold and deep.
The Tower of the Americas, built for the 1968 World's Fair in San Antonio, gets center stage. The browns, oranges, and soft pink (pink!) are "inspired by the earth-toned fashion trends of the late 1960s," according to the team.
Maybe my favorite flourish: the spurs etched into the corners. The court needed some referent to the team -- a reminder this is a Spurs court. Several teams have used shaded accents, but most of them are rendered in gray against a traditional wood stain -- shadow-like. The way these are carved into the darker wood really pops.
Intentional or not, the font along the baselines evokes Old West saloon signs.
Four years ago, the Spurs were maybe the league's dullest art team: silver, black and the annual camouflage alternates. Silver and black is a classic base, but no team was in more dire need of some fun.
Between this court and the return of the fiesta colors, the Spurs have spiced things up without losing touch with their roots.
8. Julian Strawther, defensive playmaker?
The Nuggets are still figuring out life when Nikola Jokic is on the bench (or ejected in egregious referee overreaching.) They are plus-11.2 per 100 possessions with Jokic on the floor and minus-8.7 when he sits, a 20-point gap that will be one data point in a tight early MVP race.
The Nuggets replaced last season's bench veterans with rookies and untested second-year guys. We knew it might be rocky.
But the Nuggets should cobble a workable non-Jokic rotation when it matters. Jamal Murray has long propped up bench units in high-stakes games, and he has missed half the season. Denver has tried Michael Porter Jr. in that role, and it has the Aaron Gordon-at-center small-ball card in its back pocket.
Christian Braun is reliable. Reggie Jackson is thriving. And the Nuggets have something in Strawther -- an ace shooter who always buzzes around, making things happen.
Strawther is 6-foot-7 with a 6-9 wingspan, fast and alert, something of a playmaker on defense:
That is textbook verticality against a bigger player.
Whoa, baby. Strawther appears hopelessly behind after toggling from Bogdanovic onto Young, but closes fast. Young hears footsteps. Strawther flies by Young to deter the first shot, but that's the (relatively) easy part. Stopping his momentum and pivoting back to dissuade the second shot (with help from a nice Kentavious Caldwell-Pope stunt) -- that's basketball art. The steal is the coup de grâce.
Peyton Watson is the ideal in-house solution to round out Denver's rotation with size and versatility, leaving Zeke Nnaji and DeAndre Jordan sopping up backup center minutes. Watson is ready on defense, but just 6-of-24 on 3s. The Nuggets could be active in the buyout market. But don't be shocked if their non-Jokic numbers trend up.