Basketball Insiders Week in Review 12/4

Cavaliers Quest For Repeat

By Moke Hamilton

He stood in disbelief. With tears in his eyes and the weight of the world off his shoulders, now, a three-time champion, the all-time great had never experienced this type of glee.

“Cleveland… This is for you!” LeBron James said.

It took the squandering of two 3-1 series leads and quite a few injuries for this dream to come to fruition, but at this moment in time, James had somehow further ascended. With the championship delivered to the City of Cleveland, he was now universally revered as a Top 10 player in NBA history.

Now, the question that everyone has about him and his Cavaliers is whether they can repeat.

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Giannis Antetokounmpo in Rare Air

By Cody Taylor

Milwaukee Bucks head coach Jason Kidd stood in front of reporters Sunday night in Orlando and didn’t seem to have an answer when asked why one of his players isn’t getting more recognition from around the league.

Giannis Antetokounmpo is perhaps one of the NBA’s most exciting players to watch these days, but he isn’t mentioned very often alongside the other top up-and-coming players in the league.

While the fourth-year player out of Greece is officially listed as a small forward, the Bucks have used Antetokounmpo at virtually every position this season. Take a quick glance at any given box score and it’ll show that he can impact from all over the floor.

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The Chris Bosh Problem

By Steve Kyler

The Miami HEAT currently sit at 5-12 on the season and roughly three games out of the playoff picture. The HEAT are competitive, which is something you expect from Miami, but they are not going to be much more than a borderline playoff team on their best day. That means, at some point in the not-so-distant future, they are going to have to make some tough choices.

By now, you have likely heard all about HEAT forward Chris Bosh and his medical status. He suffered a second blood-clot-related issues last February and has been taking blood thinning medication to keep that very serious condition under control. His hope was that he could find a balance in when in the day he took medication and how much, so he could play again.

The problem with Bosh’s situation is it’s not a physical one. He is not nursing a sore knee that won’t get better or a problematic bone that won’t heal. For all purposes, Bosh feels great and is ready to play. His issue is internal, something he does not feel every day, which makes hanging it up tough – especially for a player who has spent his life getting to this point.

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Billy Donovan Starting To Believe In Anthony Morrow?

By Susan Bible

It’s rather fitting that Anthony Morrow was named North Carolina’s “Mr. Basketball” as a high school senior in 2004. The term suits Morrow, because he represents everything good about the game of basketball. Morrow – also known by the nickname “A-Mo” – is notoriously kind, all about team and happens to shoot the ball exceptionally well. Currently ranked fourth among active NBA players in three-point field goal percentage (42.4 percent), along with career averages of 47.2 percent on two-point field goals and 87.6 percent on free throws, it’s hard to believe the four-year Georgia Tech product went undrafted in 2008.*

Even with his “elite shooter” status, it’s been quite the challenging NBA journey for 31-year-old Morrow, who has played for six different teams since the 2008-09 season. His start with the Golden State Warriors was promising, as he was the first rookie to ever lead the league in three-point shooting at 46.7 percent. He was pretty solid with the Warriors for two years (averaging 11.6 points, 1.7 in three-pointers) and with the New Jersey Nets for the next two years (averaging 12.6 points, 1.8 in threes), but the reality became clear: Morrow, 6’5, is an effective knockdown shooter with a crazy-quick release, but it doesn’t seem to quite make up for what he lacks in playing defense. And while his all-around shooting percentages have remained relatively consistent with each team he joined, his playing time plummeted after his stint with the Nets.

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Dwight Howard Brings New Layer to Hawks’ Defense

By Ben Dowsett

By the end of July 2016, the worst-kept secret in Atlanta basketball was how different the Hawks’ defense would look down the middle. Franchise cornerstone Al Horford was gone to Boston, replaced at the center position by hometown product Dwight Howard. The two couldn’t have been more different stylistically; Horford the savvy, undersized-but-mobile defensive fulcrum and Howard the glass-eating, shot-blocking interior pillar.

Centers are the most important defensive players in the NBA on balance, and Horford’s skills in particular made him indispensable to Atlanta’s approach. The Hawks didn’t have that traditional rim protector in the paint, but they made up for it and then some by leveraging the mobility of Horford and Paul Millsap into a harassing defense that applied pressure in the right places, making it hard work for offenses to ever find their way to the rim (or their other preferred spots) in the first place.

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The All-NBA Teams (So Far)

By Joel Brigham

From a statistical standpoint, this has been one of the more entertaining NBA seasons that any of us have seen in quite some time. The league’s top players absolutely are pouring in buckets, hauling in rebounds and dishing out assists at rates that we really haven’t seen in the modern NBA era. Who knows if these guys will be able to keep it up for an entire year, but even to have performed this well through the first fifth of the season has been quite an accomplishment.

If All-NBA teams were to be named at this point in the season, the following are the players that would most likely earn the honors. About 20 percent of the way into the season, here are the league’s best players at each position:

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Sean Kilpatrick Opens Up About NBA Journey

By Michael Scotto

Sean Kilpatrick earned the game ball after scoring a career-high 38 points and grabbing a career-high 14 rebounds to lead the Brooklyn Nets to a 127-122 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers.

After the game of his life, Kilpatrick reflected on his journey and how Nets general manager Sean Marks changed his life.

“Every night I really sit here and say to myself, ‘Where would I be without him?’” Kilpatrick told Basketball Insiders. “It’s like my emotions toward Mr. Marks are kind of crazy because I always say he saved my life, and he did. He really sat here and said, ‘This is a team I want you to be a part of, and just make sure you just play your game and be who you are.’ I think that’s something no team has ever done for me and once I had that type of comfort, it made things a lot easier for me.”

Marks signed Kilpatrick to a 10-day contract for his first transaction as general manager of the Nets. Before joining the Nets, Kilpatrick struggled to find his footing in the league.

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Time to Stop Doubting Butler’s Greatness

By Lang Greene

The probability of an NBA team finding its franchise player with the last pick of the first round in any draft is typically slim to none. However, the Chicago Bulls managed to strike gold when they selected All-Star shooting guard Jimmy Butler No. 30 overall back in 2011.

Butler appeared in only 42 games as a rookie, tallying just 359 minutes on the season, and most were hoping he would eventually develop into a niche role player on a team featuring former league MVP Derrick Rose.

But over the years, as Rose’s physical abilities were hampered due to recurring knee trouble and former All-Star center Joakim Noah endured his own injury woes, Butler slowly began to rise to the forefront and today the former Marquette product is undoubtedly one of the top 20 players in the league.

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How NBA Teams Are Fighting Fatigue

By Oliver Maroney

The average NBA team will travel anywhere from 35,055 miles to 53,575 miles in a season (based on data from the 2015-16 campaign). That’s a lot of miles for anyone, let alone professional basketball players who have to play an 82-game season and sometimes play the same day or within 24 hours after a flight. But it’s not just the travel. It’s the sleep (or lack thereof), fatigue and change in scenery that impacts a traveling team.

“Yeah, just imagine how it feels,” Utah Jazz point guard George Hill told Basketball Insiders. “To play a game and use the amount of energy that we do, then get on a flight in the middle of the night, arrive in a different city with a different hotel and a different food menu, then having to play not even 24 hours later, it’s really tough.”

Most players around the league won’t play the blame game when it comes to back-to-backs and road trips, but the truth of the matter is it affects them greatly. This season, an average of 16.3 back-to-back games are played per team. And while we’re only 20 games in, the statistics already show the impact back-to-backs have on a team’s success. So far, teams are a combined 44-78 in games away from home in back-to-back situations. In fact, only three teams – the San Antonio Spurs, Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors – have a winning record in road back-to-back games. The Spurs are the only undefeated team in these scenarios, and they’re also most known for resting players.

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Chandler Parsons Talks Free Agency, Memphis, Acting

By Alex Kennedy

One of the moves that turned heads over the offseason was the Memphis Grizzlies’ addition of unrestricted free agent Chandler Parsons. Memphis signed the 28-year-old forward to a four-year, $94.8 million maximum deal in an effort to find another offensive weapon and someone who can stretch the floor since he shot 41.1 percent from three-point range last season.

Entering this season, Parsons had career averages of 14.3 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3 assists from his stints with the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks. With Memphis’ core returning and Parsons joining the mix, the Grizzlies hoped to once again make noise in the Western Conference. They have made the playoffs in six straight seasons, advancing as far as the Western Conference Finals in 2012-13.

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Analyzing How Westbook, Harden Dominate

By Jake Rauchbach

Russell Westbrook and James Harden are each playing excellent basketball and filling the stat sheet this season. Westbrook is averaging a triple-double with 31.2 points, 11.3 assists and 10.5 rebounds per game; Harden has posted averages of 28.7 points, 11.9 assists and 7.2 rebounds per game.

Harden ranks first in the NBA in assists and fourth in scoring, while Westbrook is second in the league in both scoring and assists. Westbrook is leading the league in triple-doubles with eight, while Harden is tied with LeBron James for second-most with three this season.

The great Oscar Robertson is the only NBA player to ever average a triple double over the course of an entire NBA season. During the 1961-62 season, Robertson made history when he posted 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists per game. The Big O has obviously set the standard for the triple-double. However, Harden and Westbrook are on a historic tear too.

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Joel Embiid Better Than Advertised

By Jesse Blancarte

The NBA has shifted toward a smaller and faster style of play over the last decade. An inherent and obvious result of that shift is the apparent marginalization of the center position. That’s not to say that there haven’t been star-quality centers in the NBA over the last decade. However, it’s hard to deny that centers are, for the most part, no longer focal points on offense, nor are they usually the most important player on any given team.

There are a few exceptions of course – DeMarcus Cousins is far and away the best and most important player for the Sacramento Kings and Marc Gasol has been a focal point on both offense and defense for the Memphis Grizzlies for years. But in today’s NBA, teams generally need a top-tier point guard, a star-quality wing player, a power forward who can space the floor reasonably well and a center who can protect the rim and ideally switch out onto the perimeter when necessary.

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