The 24 biggest questions for the NBA season: Nuggets repeat? Wembanyama not ROY? – The Athletic

NBA
Fall brings three things to sports. One, NFL teams start running the football, and kickers who are perfect in the September sunshine start pulling field goals left and right as the winds start to swirl. Two, baseball’s playoffs produce amazing, memorable moments, along with unforgettable results.
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And, on this side of the street, another NBA season begins. It promises to be a glorious one.
There hasn’t been anticipation about a No. 1 pick like there is about San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama since LeBron James’ rookie season in 2003. And if the French phenom has a career anything like James’, the Spurs could rise even higher through the ranks of the league’s all-time winningest franchises. How many times can we say or write that he’s doing things that we’ve never seen a player his size do? A hundred? A thousand? There is no mold for him to break; he is the mold. He heads a rookie class that could be one of the best in league history, comparable with those from 1960, 1984, 1996 and 2003.
But there’s more. Teams aren’t shying away from the massive tax implications of the new collective bargaining agreement; a half-dozen squads went all-out, and are all-in, to win titles this very moment. The Suns blew up their roster and emptied their draft-pick stash through the end of the decade to get Bradley Beal. The Bucks went out and got Damian Freaking Lillard to pair with Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Celtics added Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday in one summer and didn’t have to give up Jaylen Brown in either case. Golden State ended the “two-tracks” approach to max out the remaining life of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, adding future Hall of Famer Chris Paul. Normally, I don’t have much good to say about owners, especially ones that come from the venture capital space, but kudos to those who have committed to writing massive second apron checks in search of a ring. That’s all that fans can ask for from their teams.
All of this wonderful movement and change creates expectations — and, questions. Lots of them. I have answers.
Hell, yeah. Sometimes, in this business, we sometimes bury the lead. Not here. Nikola Jokić is the best player on earth. The Finals only made that … final. There’s no reason he can’t win a third league MVP in four seasons, if he wants. And when players as great as Jokić get greedy about rings, there’s precious little the rest of the league can do to stop it. The Nuggets remind me of the 2010-11 Mavericks, led by an equally great Dirk Nowitzki, and who beat LeBron and the SuperFriends on their own floor to win the finals.
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Unfortunately, that Dallas team never really got a chance to defend its championship. Mark Cuban didn’t re-sign defensive anchor Tyson Chandler, who went to the Knicks; the 2011 lockout delayed the start of the following season and really hurt veteran teams like Dallas, depreciating their continuity; Dwane Casey, an assistant to Rick Carlisle and a top architect of the Mavs’ D, left to run the Raptors.
Similarly, Denver lost Bruce Brown and his Swiss Army Knife of two-way skills. But, almost everyone else of note in the Mile High is returning. There’s no reason the Nuggets can’t repeat — if Denver stays healthy. The margin of error is small, given their uncertain bench. The Nugs can’t take a long-term injury to any of their core group, and they’ll need someone, or a committee of someones, to make up for what Brown and Jeff Green provided. That can be ameliorated somewhat if Reggie Jackson can dust off his latter-day Clippers game, and second-year wing Christian Braun continues his upward trajectory, Denver could be OK.
But, also: Jamal Murray should be even better in his second season post-injury, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope remains a textbook 3-and-D wing, and Aaron Gordon is coming off a star turn in the Finals. He showed he could handle the biggest moments. (Plus, loud-talking from the GM! Love it!)
But this is, as everything is in Denver, about the Joker. Will he be satisfied with one ‘chip, or will he demand more company for his fingers? The best of the best make multiple trips to the jewelry store before they’re done. At 28, I don’t think Jokić is done. If he’s still hungry, who’s gonna stop him from eating?
No. Both the Sixers and Clippers have too much to lose by dragging this out much longer than, say, Thanksgiving. Harden’s already — shockingly — engaged in a work slowdown. The Clippers can’t force-feed Harden chemistry with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in a 30-game post-All-Star sprint. Daryl Morey loves to play poker in these types of scenarios, but Joel Embiid’s contending clock is ticking, loudly. If Philly is going to retrench around Embiid and Tyrese Maxey going forward, fine.
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But Embiid, Nick Nurse and Josh Harris are all committed to that process starting sooner rather than later. It will be hard for Morey to hold out for as long as he might under more optimal circumstances.
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VanVleet, because he’s so central to what the Rockets hope will be a 180 in culture and preparation. After the Rockets decided that getting Harden maybe wasn’t the way to go this offseason, they brought in multiple table re-setters in Ime Udoka, Dillon Brooks, Jeff Green and VanVleet, to show Jalen Green and Houston’s remaining young core how to truly be professional, prepare and compete. FVV is perfect for that assignment. Who better than the undrafted 29-year-old former All-Star in Toronto who can keep it 100 with guys who need a nightly example of what to do, and what not to do, to be about that NBA life?
Beal and Porziņģis will both excel for the Suns and Celtics, respectively, and could tip the balance for their teams come playoff time. But they’ll do so in support of already-established foundations – Kevin Durant and Devin Booker in Phoenix; Jayson Tatum and Brown in Boston. VanVleet is trying to re-establish a foundation in what was, once, Clutch City. The Rockets won’t make the playoffs this season, but at least they’ll have a direction going forward after the last couple seasons of utterly rudderless travel.
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The Knicks’ Jalen Brunson. OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton. The Nets’ Mikal Bridges. Orlando’s Paolo Banchero.
I’m bullish on a Wolves relaunch. Karl-Anthony Towns played in just 29 games last season. Mike Conley, Jr., played in 24 after coming from Utah. And Rudy Gobert was, to be charitable, not the best version of himself last season. A return to the lineup and to form from those three in service to AntMan gives Minnesota a higher floor than I think people are assigning them. (Also: Jaden McDaniels won’t punch himself off of the playoff roster again, right?) Add Naz Reid, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Kyle “Slo-Mo” Anderson, Shake Milton and rookie Leonard Miller, and Minny’s depth is plenty good. An over-under of 43.5 wins? Take the over!
Yes.
But.
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Including playoffs, the Grizzlies are 33-17 the last two seasons without Morant on the floor. Now, that record involves two very different outcomes: a seemingly outlier 21-7 mark in 2021-22, and a regression to the mean 12-10 record last season. But with Jaren Jackson, Jr., Steven Adams, Marcus Smart, et.al., Memphis has enough firepower to stay above water through mid-December, when Morant is scheduled to return. (Desmond Bane All-Star campaign commences in 3… 2… 1…) I’m not quite ready to anoint them the top seed in the West, but with plenty of support for the core in the likes of Luke Kennard, John Konchar and Patriot League legend Santi Aldama, the Grizzlies should still be top four come playoff time. That is, assuming no more forced vacations – or major injuries, other than Brandon Clarke, who’ll rehab his achilles tear from last spring all season.
Chet Baby, Chet Baby, 1-2-3-4.
Cunningham and Ball both will help restart their team’s moribund offenses from last season — 28th for Detroit and dead last for Charlotte in offensive rating – with their pinpoint passing and scoring chops. But Holmgren’s two-way game lifts franchises faster. The second pick of the 2022 draft looks completely healthy after suffering a Lisfranc injury in a summer charity game in 2022 that kept him out all of last season. He looked fully recovered during summer league in Vegas, showcasing the defensive skills and wingspan that are so mouthwatering. (I know it’s preseason, but that’s still Damian Lillard Holmgren caught on a switch.) OKC was already top half of the league in Adjusted Defensive Rating last season; with the 7-1 Holmgren’s (re-)arrival, the Thunder could be top 10 this year. And top 10 gets you into the playoffs.
Who says he’s going to be Rookie of the Year?
Legally?
Hear me out. No matter his seemingly unlimited potential, Wembanyama’s still a 19-year-old kid making the jump to the NBA — a league full of grown men, many of whom have a half-decade or more head start on him when it comes to year-round weight training and body maintenance. He’s not going to be out on the wing all the time; he’s often going to be slugging it out in the paint. And San Antonio has, traditionally, had no problem bucking the league when it comes to what the Spurs think is best for their players — even ones that have increased the franchise’s national TV appearances from one last season to 19 this season in one fell swoop.
The Rookie of the Year award is not subject to the 65-game minimum that some of the NBA’s other major awards, including MVP, now require, so Wembanyama doesn’t need to reach any numerical threshold to qualify for it. But, I know voters. They look at games played as a benchmark. And if the Spurs think it prudent to limit Wembanyama, for whatever reason, for an extended number of games, it could open the door for Scoot Henderson — who will have the ball, an emerging supporting cast and the blessing of his head coach to run wild — or the above-mentioned Holmgren, who’s eligible for the award this season after not playing last year.
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Think about 2017, when Malcolm Brogdon beat out Embiid for Rookie of the Year. Embiid, coming off of two full missed seasons because of foot injuries/surgeries, only played in 31 games in 2016-17. Brogdon played in 75 for the Bucks. That mattered. I’ll just say I think the ROTY voting will wind up being closer than you think — maybe not Kidd-Hill close, but close.
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Jevon Carter to Chicago. The Bulls signed him at the beginning of free agency after they found out Ball would miss this season. With Ball’s future uncertain at best, the 28-year-old Carter may start on the ball for Chicago, in a crucial season for the franchise, or at least be a strong backup for Coby White. Carter missed just one game for the Bucks last season, shooting 42 percent behind the arc and posting a very impressive 3.5 Win Shares, per basketball-reference.com. It’s a homecoming for Carter, who played at Proviso East in Maywood, Ill. just west of Chicago, and whose still-ornery defense will be a godsend for Billy Donovan.
Can’t say I see Pascal Siakam having a long shelf life in Toronto. The two-time All-Star is a rising unrestricted free agent next summer, he’s 29, he doesn’t seem to fit the retooling Raptors’ timeline anymore, and things have been a bit, let’s say, cattywampus between him and Masai Ujiri for a spell. There’s an obvious Philly connection for Siakam with fellow Cameroon native Embiid. And while Ujiri can speak bravely now about doing right by his franchise, it’s hard to see him letting another core piece of the team potentially walk away for nothing. If Morey can tie Siakam into a Harden deal with the Clippers, with Siakam winding up with the Sixers, that would allow Philly to take what L.A. is currently offering for Harden – the Terance Mann-less platter – and call it a day.
Give me a minute…
…
…
…
… No.
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Ausar. Amen will be fine in Houston, but VanVleet will be on the rock from the rip, and Ime Udoka (see below) will seek to both get the most out of Jalen Green and make sure the ball moves better than it did last season. Add in Brooks and Cam Whitmore, and there’s going to be a lot of mouths to feed in Houston, where it’s always Şengün season. So I’m not sure if Amen will impact the way I think Ausar will in Detroit. The Pistons’ offense was soooooo bad last season; that’s just where someone with the two-way wing potential of Ausar could provide an immediate and dramatic uplift.
Yes, I know Snyder was hired in Atlanta last season, but this is his first camp with the Hawks. That said, I’m leaning Williams.
Not that Snyder won’t positively impact the Hawks. In his latest really good (naturally) Substack post, Tom Haberstroh notes that Snyder’s teams have overachieved on average by 4.1 wins per season, the highest of any active coach with five or more head coaching seasons. And Snyder will definitely make the Hawks better at the defensive end, where he’ll be able to hide Atlanta’s weaknesses with assorted zones and the like.
But Williams led a then-young Suns team to a 15-win improvement in his first season in Phoenix in 2019-20, culminating in the Suns’ famous Bubble Run. Do I think the 17-win Pistons from last season will hit 32 dubs this season? Probably not. But somewhere in the mid-to-high 20s is certainly possible, if not likely. Udoka will make Houston better, but in the ferocious West Conference, with a core that is still baby’s-breath young, it may be hard to make significant improvement in the won-loss record this season.
The vaccine helped reduce my symptoms.
Besides Ron Holland and Matas Buzelis highlights? Enjoy Bilal Coulibaly’s rookie season, including all of his mistakes. Seriously. There will be times he looks utterly lost on the court, or gets weight-roomed by someone. But that’s precisely what a high-floor, high-ceiling player looks like in his first trip around the NBA sun. And those plays will make you enjoy even more the one time in every game – OK, maybe every other game – when Coulibaly does something that makes you sit up in your chair. And when’s the last time you could say that about a Wizards’ first-round pick?
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Jamal Cain and Cole Swider for the win(s)!
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Milwaukee, Boston, Miami, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Brooklyn.
Don’t you get cable? Oh, wait; you don’t, anymore. Right. Do you bundle? Streaming? Well, anyway: Milwaukee and Boston.
Denver, Phoenix, Memphis, L.A. Lakers, Sacramento, LA Clippers, Golden State, Minnesota.
I’m not! I had Dallas as a top-10 team in my offseason rankings for a reason. Love what they did in the draft, and in free agency. They should be much deeper this season, and I think Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić will be fine playing off of one another. I just think the Wolves, with Edwards leading the way, have a whole other gear they can reach if they stay healthy, and that’s why I have them surviving the Play-In round over Dallas (and, maybe it’s Minnesota that beats Dallas in that round).
I’m not! Jeez. There are only eight playoff spots per conference, not 20.
Denver and Phoenix.
Denver and Milwaukee. Each conference final will be epic. I just don’t know how the Suns stop Jokić enough to beat Denver four times, and I’m not sure how healthy the C’s will be in late May after another long playoff slog. Tatum and Brown have each been injured during playoff series in past years, and we all know KP’s history. And, we also all know that Boston’s bench is, currently, thin. So, I think Milwaukee survives Boston in seven great games.
And, I have the Nuggets repeating, this time over the Bucks, in six. To be followed by a Giannis extension in Milwaukee, which will be followed by Oktoberfest in July in Cream City. Win-win.
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Because of Danny Biasone, the owner of the Syracuse Nationals, who are now the Philadelphia 76ers — and, equally, because of Leo Ferris, the Nationals’ GM in the late 1940s and early ’50s, whose important role in the early days of pro basketball, from integration to merger, should make him an enshrinee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Biasone, Ferris and Emil Barbone, the Nationals’ top scout in those days, all had a hand in the most important innovation in league history in 1954 — the adaptation of a 24-second shot clock to help speed up play and end the interminable stalling and fouling that slowed games to a halt in the fourth quarters.
Before 1954, with no limit on how long a team could hold the ball before attempting a shot, the nascent NBA almost died on the vine. No team had an answer for the Minneapolis Lakers’ great big man, George Mikan, so opposing teams played stall ball in hopes of keeping games against Minneapolis close. The nadir was a 19-18 game in 1950 between the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Lakers, in which the Pistons held the ball for up to three minutes at a time before shooting. Average scores of games plummeted in the early ’50s, and the future of the league, regardless of Mikan’s nightly excellence, was in question.
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NBA lore has it that Biasone, Ferris and Barbone met at a bowling alley in Syracuse that Biasone owned, to figure out some way to introduce a time limit between possessions into the game. They wrote their calculations out on napkins. Biasone got the lion’s share of the credit for what followed, though there is compelling evidence that it was Ferris who did the actual calculations. The group analyzed the higher-scoring games in the league over the previous two seasons, when teams didn’t stall. In those games, the threesome determined, two teams playing at, more or less regular speed, averaged about 120 shots combined per game.
Then, as now, NBA games were 48 minutes long.
Dividing 48 minutes into seconds equals 2,880 seconds.
And dividing 2,880 — the number of seconds in a “normal” game — by 120 — the number of shot attempts in a “normal” game — gives you 24.
”I’m not an expert on the game,” Biasone, who died in 1992, told The New York Times in 1984. ”I never claimed to be. But I knew fans weren’t paying to see the ball being dribbled around all night. So I went to those fellas in the league and said I’m having a tough time selling something here. There’s one thing basketball needs, I said. It needs a time. I don’t care what the time is. Put in a time!”
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Ferris made a proposal for a 24-second shot clock to league owners at their annual meeting in August 1954. The 24-second clock was adopted for that season. Scoring immediately increased from 79.5 points per game in 1953-54 to 93.1 the following year. The next year, it was 99 points a game; by 1957-58, teams were scoring 106.6 points per game.
The NBA has benefitted from all manner of rules changes over the years, helping the game evolve in ways great and small. But it all started with the 24-second clock. There has been occasional grumbling over the years that the shot clock should be shorter, but most of those arguments have failed to gain much traction. The 24-second clock has become synonymous with pro basketball, a near-perfect interval between offense and defense that makes the flow of an NBA game unlike that of any other major team sport.
(Top photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić and Aaron Gordon: AAron Ontiveroz / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images)

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David Aldridge is a senior columnist for The Athletic. He has worked for nearly 30 years covering the NBA and other sports for Turner, ESPN, and the Washington Post. In 2016, he received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Legacy Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He lives in Washington, D.C. Follow David on Twitter @davidaldridgedc

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