MEMPHIS, Tenn. — I flew here for Nikola Jokić vs. Ja Morant.
Ha! Not so fast.
Instead, what I got was an object lesson in the realities of the NBA season. For many teams, on many nights, it’s more about surviving the grind and being able to win even without your stars that defines a season’s success or failure.
While the schedule can be a carnival joyride when everything is clicking and all your stars are healthy (just ask Cleveland), the reality of the current NBA is usually quite different. Relatively few players make it through the season unscathed, and the more that is demanded of them, the less likely they are to glide through 82 games without injury. Even in the first weeks of the season, we’ve already seen multiple stars shelved.
Which takes us to Sunday’s game between Memphis and Denver, a 105-90 wire-to-wire Grizzlies win that was accomplished with tremendous ease despite Morant, Marcus Smart, and GG Jackson all being out and Zach Edey leaving in the second half with what appeared to be a sprained ankle.
The Nuggets, of course, were without three-time MVP Nikola Jokić and star forward Aaron Gordon, but the last two games in Jokić’s absence have underscored a grim reality for the Nuggets. They’ve always struggled without Jokić, but this year the numbers are especially appalling.
First, the good news: Denver has outscored opponents by 11.3 points per 100 possessions with Jokić on the court — championship-contending dominance!
Alas, when he’s out, they’re outscored by a borderline-hilarious 21.5 points per 100. It’s bad enough that Sunday’s loss in Memphis, and Friday’s humiliating defeat in New Orleans to random create-a-players in Pelicans uniforms, actually improved Denver’s stats in the non-Jokić minutes.
GO DEEPER
Without Nikola Jokić, the Nuggets have looked alarmingly helpless
The Grizzlies can relate: A year ago, they were in the same boat. Morant, Steven Adams, and Smart all were injured early in the season, and Memphis cratered almost immediately. The Grizzlies went 6-3 in the nine games Morant played; their 21-52 record in the others was a bit of a problem.
It wasn’t hard to see why they struggled: Their depth wasn’t good enough. Memphis ended up with 1,000-plus-minute seasons from the likes of Ziaire Williams and David Roddy, started Bismack Biyombo at center for 27 games, and used developmental minutes on several other young players.
Some of that investment has paid off handsomely this season — Scotty Pippen Jr. has held down the fort as the starting point guard while Morant is out, forward Santi Aldama is having a career year off the bench, and Jake LaRavia has belatedly emerged as a rotation-caliber player in his fourth season. A lot of it, however, went to fringe talent that will never crack an NBA rotation.
The results this year couldn’t be more different. Memphis’s injury burden has arguably been just as severe as it was at the start of last season, yet the Grizzlies are 8-6 with a top-5 net rating and a top-5 defense.
The Grizzlies are now 3-3 in the six games Morant has missed, and none of the losses were by more than five points. That came despite all those Morant absences being intertwined with other key injuries — Desmond Bane has only played six games, Jaren Jackson Jr. has missed two, Smart has missed six and Luke Kennard seven.
In stark contrast to 2023-24, the Grizzlies’ bench has kept them afloat. Pippen and Jay Huff were originally signed as two-ways but have played so well that they’ve been promoted to roster contracts. Second-round pick Jaylen Wells, a deep cut for draft nerds who had nothing better to do on a late Saturday night than watch Washington State, has started eight games and is averaging double figures. LaRavia and Aldama have fortified a forward rotation that looked overmatched in the non-Jackson minutes a year ago — with Aldama playing some shifts as a three in a huge frontcourt.
In fact, the top four Grizzlies in minutes this year are Aldama, Wells, Pippen, and LaRavia. If somebody told you that in August you would have figured the Grizzlies were 4-10 right now (or worse), not thriving in a Western Conference that looks to be as cutthroat as ever.
If the Grizzlies are the example from tonight, they also underscore the larger example of one of the year’s biggest success stories in Golden State. The Warriors built up the back end of their roster to the point that they basically have a 12-man rotation, with Steve Kerr rotating various players in and out to keep everyone fresh and overwhelm opponents with quality. It’s worked well enough that the Warriors are outscoring opponents by 6.8 points per 100 possessions with Curry off the court.
Similarly, the Grizzlies try to take advantage of their superior bench in part by playing wildly fast — even in the non-Morant minutes, and even while often playing a behemoth plodder from central casting in Edey. The Grizzlies entered Sunday second in pace and second in fast-break points.
Memphis’s game against Golden State on Friday, then, ended up being one of the year’s most interesting … and not just because the Grizzlies spent the fourth quarter frantically cutting into the point differential for NBA Cup purposes while the Warriors kept Steph Curry on an exercise bike.
No, the real fun was in the opening half, when the two teams combined to use 23 players in the first two quarters of a competitive game with no injuries or foul trouble situations.
The Grizzlies used 11 different players for at least seven minutes, with none playing more than Jackson’s 14:56. The Warriors, for their part, played a dozen players at least four minutes, and only Curry played more than 15 minutes.
In the third quarter, Memphis went even further, executing the near-impossible feat of playing 12 different players at least three minutes in the same quarter without garbage time. (OK, Jay Huff technically played 2:51.)
Sure, Memphis was scrambling a bit because the game was going off the rails, but you get the idea: Both teams have been incredibly comfortable playing depth pieces for big chunks of the game, and have benefited hugely from their depth early in the season. As far as season-management approaches go, you might call it the “Thibodeaun’t Strategy.”
And if you have the players for it, it works. There’s the rub, of course: Not everyone can have a dozen rotation-caliber players. It takes a bit of front-office sorcery to pull this off in the salary cap era, and we should tip our hats to both the Grizzlies and Warriors for the work they did this offseason.
It’s still a star’s league in April and May, of course, when some of these depth pieces will eventually be relegated to DNPs. The regular season, however, is a different story. The Grizzlies and Warriors are showing how those secondary players can elevate teams even when their A-list talent isn’t overwhelming (or healthy).
It wasn’t quite what I flew here to experience, but it was a fun reminder that the 82-game grind often comes down to roster building as much as star talent. Now please, basketball golds, lemme see Ja vs. Joker next time I make this trip.
Cup Geekery: Early group stages and what’s next
What do the Atlanta Hawks, Portland Trail Blazers and Detroit Pistons all have in common? They’re in first place in their NBA Cup groups!
That’s right, it’s NBA Cup season! As an enthusiast for this latest piece of the league’s ongoing project to make people care about the regular season, I must report that the first week of games saw teams competing to the buzzer in blowouts for the point differential tiebreaker, and slightly toned-down court designs from last year nonetheless indicating that something very different was going on. (One note on those courts: I’m told the league dictated a lot more of the design this time around and the teams had fairly limited input.)
The biggest news from games last Tuesday and Friday is probably in East Group C, where the Hawks unexpectedly find themselves in the driver’s seat of a group that includes the mighty Cavs and Celtics. If the Hawks beat Cleveland at home on Nov. 29 they will almost certainly win the group; even if they lose, there are plausible scenarios where they could be group champs.
East Group A already seems headed toward a decider on Nov. 29 between Orlando and New York; both won their first two games and have very winnable third contests before this showdown at Madison Square Garden.
As for the West, shall we talk about Group C, “The Group of Death,” with Golden State, Denver, Memphis, New Orleans and Dallas? The Warriors may put this one to bed early — night, night! — if they beat the Pelicans in New Orleans this coming Friday. That outcome, combined with a Denver loss in Memphis on Tuesday (with the Nuggets possibly being without Jokić again) would clinch the group for Golden State.
This coming week, the biggest game is Tuesday’s tilt between Cleveland and Boston. The Cavs are undefeated and looking to stay even with Atlanta atop Group C, while world champion Boston would basically be eliminated with a loss. A Boston win creates the chance for “Tiebreaker Mayhem!” on the last day that might still eliminate one or both these teams.
Also, dare I describe Friday’s Blazers-Rockets contest as a “big game?” The winner would be atop West Group B at 2-0, and every other team would have at least one loss. Portland, sneakily, is 6-8 now.
On the downside, pour one out for the Raptors and Sixers. With two losses already, they are effectively eliminated (though not mathematically, for the true nerds of unlikely scenarios and weird tiebreakers). On Tuesday, we have “elimination” matches of four other one-loss teams, when the Nets play the Hornets and the Nuggets play the Grizzlies.
GO DEEPER
NBA Rewind: De’Aaron Fox’s historic weekend, the 15-0 Cavs and your NBA Cup-date
Rookie of the Week: Dalton Knecht, SG, Lakers
(This section won’t necessarily profile the best rookie of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
The 17th pick in the draft, Knecht was pressed into service as a starter in two games this weekend and scored 14 and 27 points in a pair of Laker wins. That came on the heels of his 5-of-5 performance from 3 in a close win over Memphis. For the week he scored 60 points in 91 minutes, making 12 of his 19 3-point attempts, and only had one turnover in the three contests. Additionally, his 27 in New Orleans on Saturday was likely the difference between a win and a miserable defeat, as the rest of the Lakers had no juice on a back-to-back against the injury-riddled Pelicans’ skeleton crew.
At 40.4 percent from 3 on the year, Knecht is showing that the shooting package he flashed at Tennessee seems very real. He has a quick, high release that allows him to get his shot away against relatively close contests. While he has a relatively low arc for an elite shooter, the longer distance of the NBA shot hasn’t seemed to affect him thus far.
In fact, it’s not the percentage that stands out as much as the volume (1o.4 3-point attempts per 100 possessions). Knecht requires very little space to get his shot away. As a result, he can get away looks like this one in the clip below relatively easily (even if this one missed). If you aren’t right in his grille on the catch, he’s going up with it:
Of late, the Lakers seem to be pushing just how much they can get from his movement shooting. The play above was a pindown they ran for him on the first play of the game in New Orleans, and they ran an ATO for him to shoot a 3 off a screen early in the Memphis game. They’ve also leaned harder into lineups with Knecht even though his defense is … ummm … let’s just say it’s less advanced than his offense.
However, Knecht’s presence in the starting group evens out a Laker lineup that is short on shooting, especially with D’Angelo Russell coming off the bench. As long as Austin Reaves and LeBron James can split the point guard duties, the Lakers can get by without a true point guard in the starting group.
Knecht hasn’t done as much off the dribble yet, but there’s some promise there. He scored that way often at Tennessee and has the athletic pop to get his own shot — he already has six dunks this year (and will surely get a hanging-on-the-rim tech before the year is out), including this DHO rope-a-dope against New Orleans:
It’s easy to get carried away when a rookie has a big game, and surely Knecht will hit more peaks and valleys as the year goes on. But the Lakers desperately needed to hit on a depth piece, especially one on a controlled contract, and shooting was their most glaring need coming into the year. It seems Knecht might be able to check all those boxes.
Prospect of the Week: Cooper Flagg, 6-9 freshman, PF, Duke
(This section won’t necessarily profile the best prospect of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
Along with two or three others who work in the NBA, I went to Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Tuesday to watch Flagg and Duke take on Kentucky in the Champions Classic. (The first game, Kansas vs. Michigan State, was a fine college basketball game but pretty light on scouting implications.)
While other Duke players will warrant heavy attention as the year goes on (fellow freshmen Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach are both potential lottery picks in their own right), on this night everyone was watching Flagg.
The likely top pick in the 2025 draft hardly disappointed with 26 points and 11 rebounds, but scouts came away with a few warts to pick at in Duke’s 77-72 loss to Kentucky. Flagg lost his dribble and turned the ball over on Duke’s final two possessions, both of which came after errrbody-outta-my-way isos that had him staring down the whole Kentucky defense.
Cooper Flagg turned the ball over two possessions in a row late in regulation.
No. 19 Kentucky takes down No. 6 Duke 77-72‼️ pic.twitter.com/11fiwuov61
— ESPN (@espn) November 13, 2024
What stands out about the two plays are two things that were pretty consistent throughout the night. First, Flagg’s jumper isn’t quite consistent enough to bait defenders into selling out onto the perimeter against him, which leaves him driving against defenses that are already retreating and takes away some lanes for easier buckets. Second, in a related story, he often ends up turning his back (like on the plays above) and spinning to try to get to the shot he wants rather than cleanly beating a defender in a straight line, something I only recall him doing twice the whole game.
Of course, we’re in deep nit-picking mode here, because we’re evaluating Flagg as the top pick in a strong draft. Flagg offered plenty of positives that would make him an instant NBA starter, scoring on an alley-oop on the game’s first play, high-pointing rebounds in traffic, flying up and down the court in transition, and showing an advanced handle and passing ability for a player of his size. And it’s not like the jumper was atrocious; he made multiple pull-ups and went 7 of 9 from the line.
Additionally, this has been known about Flagg for some time: Every report on him is that he’s more of a “flow of the game” player than an on-ball shot-creation specialist.
Even so, some of his on-ball reps popped. Check out this pick-and-roll read, which was probably his most impressive play of the day, zipping a pass into a tight window against a late switch for a layup:
Flagg will have more tests, obviously, including an upcoming one at Arizona on Friday that, based on my informal surveying, it seems a big chunk of the NBA will be attending. As a first look, however, the biggest takeaway is that he looked the part as a No. 1 pick. It would take a pretty impressive display of talent for somebody else to knock Flagg from that perch.
(Photo of Stephen Curry: Thearon W. Henderson/ Getty Images)
