Thoughts on an early season
It’s roughly seven or eight games into the season for every team in the NBA, which leaves everyone watching in a curious position. There has been enough going on so far to give everyone a map of what to expect for the rest of the season, but nothing that’s set in concrete. Two or three games at this point in the season could dramatically alter the way any team is viewed and any analysis on players or teams is speculation at best. Still, there are some interesting things transpiring in the early stages of the season that should be noted.
The San Antonio Spurs are off to a slow start, muddling their way to a 3-3 record to begin the season. This is rather disconcerting for a team that many felt should be among the elite few competing for a title. What’s even stranger is that no one’s talking about it at all. They’ve done about the same thing the past few seasons that it’s become as routine as their midseason rodeo road trip or the fact that they’re pretty much guaranteed 50+ as long as Tim Duncan’s around. No one seems to be bothered by this because it’s become common knowledge that the Spurs always take the early part of the season to round into shape. They even did it last season with a rather pathetic roster (at least compared to this season), and people were prone to freak out about it.
Still they have some issues that are fairly hard to ignore. Ginobili looks to be back to reasonable health (especially after his dismantling of the Raptors), but Parker and Duncan are helping the cause by getting themselves banged up. They can’t reach their potential this season without Duncan and Parker, but that’s a given (and what team is going to do well without two of three top players). The holes that have plagued them in seasons past are still kind of there. They’re still a rather old and unathletic team. George Hill and DeJuan Blair definitely give them some youth (and in Hill’s case athleticism), but neither of them are playing enough to totally offset those issues. It would be so big a deal if Richard Jefferson hadn’t gotten off to a slow start (although the after mentioned Raptors game might have set him on the right path). These are things to keep an eye on if the Spurs continue to stumble going into the one-third mark of the season, but like always, it’s far too early to count out the Spurs (and this line of thinking really shouldn’t apply to any other team really).
On the other side of the spectrum for the championship contenders are the Boston Celtics, who are storming out of the gate just like they’ve done since acquiring Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. It’s not so surprising that they’re doing this because they’ve done a good job of it the last few seasons. What is surprising is how they’re doing it (not so much the Celtics in general but teams that get off to quick starts). The trend for fast starting teams is usually based around offensive teams. The reason for this is that truly good offensive teams are able to take advantage of teams trying to find their footing in the opening weeks, which magnifies how good the team is offensively and exposes teams that haven’t quite found their identity. Normally it takes good defensive teams a few weeks to round into shape because of how much teams need to gel to really be effective (this is normally true even with teams who have been together for awhile). Not so with the Celtics, who have stormed out of the gate, not with a blistering offensive pace (although they haven’t been bad there either) but by bludgeoning teams to death on the defensive end. Their point differential this early in the season is a staggering 14 points per game, which is a good six points higher than the next closest team (the Miami Heat with a point differential of a little less than 8 points per game). This kind of cohesion is just not the norm this early in the season.
Speaking of teams that are among the tops in the league, the Phoenix Suns are arguably the most surprising of the one loss teams thus far (well, Miami probably has a claim to this title but they haven’t played any teams of note and lost to the Suns, so tough luck). Steve Nash has been the primary reason for this quick start, as reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated. Last season there were whispers Nash may have been done as one of the top point guards after a relative underwhelming ’08-’09 season. But put the ball back in Nash’s hands and speed up the tempo, all of a sudden he’s looking like the Nash of old (or rather the Nash of his MVP seasons). As it stands now, he’s poised to be only the fourth player in NBA history to notch five 10+ assist seasons (following Big O, Magic, and Stockton), which is going to put him in so rarified air (as well as showing up for a fourth time in the 50/40/90 shooting club). Already this season he’s had two 20 assist games (and a 17 assist game to boot) and it’s been great to see him control games late like an expert puppeteer again. It’s far too early to start talking about potential MVPs, but Nash has inserted himself into the second best point guard spot with a vengeance.
As for the best point guard in the NBA, it’s hard to imagine how he was going to top last season, but someone Chris Paul found a way to take things up notch when it didn’t necessarily seem possible. It’s easy to discount what Paul is doing this season because the Hornets are sputtering and looking to be rather awful (at least for a team expected to make the playoffs), but what he’s doing this season is something spectacular and relatively unheard of. Last season he put up the only other season of 20+ points per game, 10+ assists, and less than 3 turnovers per game (Paul’s also the only player ever to do this and he’s done it twice) and he’s poised to do it again this season. That in and of itself is pretty remarkable and he was able to top it by shooting over 50% from the field. This season he’s decided to top himself by turning into an absolutely lethal shooter. Again, it’s early in the season, so shooting an astounding 63% from the field (and an out of this world 68% from three) is probably not going to hold up for the entire season. But when you look at it historically, he’s already attempted the second most shots for a guard shooting over 60% (the only guard to shoot 60% for an entire season is the Blazers’ Dave Twardzik in ’76-’77, which was a really magical season for the Blazers). I don’t doubt that this isn’t the first time it’s happened but it still shouldn’t be taken lightly considering he’s also scoring 26 points per game at the same time. If the Hornets were slightly better Paul’s unbelievable start would probably getting slightly more recognition.
Even though we’re only two weeks into the season, it didn’t stop NBA.com from releasing their first MVP rankings. This is fairly ridiculous considering, as I pointed out earlier, a few games could change the opinion of any team, in both directions. Case in point is the Denver Nuggets, who were being hailed as potential juggernauts at the start of the season but after two sluggish games have fallen back down to Earth. Their quick start pushed Carmelo Anthony into number 1 spot of the MVP rankings but since then that talk has quietly stopped. This is rather unfortunate because it looks as though the light bulb has gone off for Anthony because he deserves some recognition for this. So often when a player hit a certain plateau in his career, they rarely reach further than that. When a player’s been a solid player for a few seasons, he doesn’t quite make it to borderline All-Star status, when a player spends four or five years as a borderline All-Star, he never quite makes it to All-NBA status, and so on. After about four or five years of consistent playing time and solid production, it’s pretty easy to get a handle on what that player’s ceiling actually is. In the grand tradition of Bernard King and Chris Mullin though, Anthony has stepped up his game quite considerably. He’s become much deadlier on offense, not stopping ball movement, creating more shots for teammates, getting his ass on the block and to the line to get easy points, and he’s not turning the ball over. While the early notions of MVP were quite laughable (not so much for his play but for the concept in general), his play as definitely been on another level and it looks as though he’s becoming the elite player that most everyone was convinced he’d be when he was drafted (I should also give a shout out to Chris Bosh for doing the same thing, but I haven’t seen the Raptors play yet this season and have absolutely no idea how he’s getting his ass to line as often as he is, still kudos to the man with the longest neck in the NBA).
As I pointed out at the start, it’s still early in the season, so any or all of these situations could change by the end f this week, but they are all storylines to keep an eye on as the season progresses. There are several others but we’ll keep those under wraps until the season gets a few more games under its belt.
