As we enter the second half of the NBA season, we suddenly begin to look towards the All-Star break and eventual playoffs. This is the point where teams with playoff aspirations who are sitting back in the standings need to pull their finger out and start winning games. In the East, seed number 8-12 are made up of the Raptors, Wizards, Celtics, Knicks and Hawks in that order – all potential playoff teams. The battle for the eighth seed will be a fight for who can figure it out soonest.
This might be pure bias but the only team I can’t see making it are the Boston Celtics, who are just an absolute rabble, the interlocked limbs of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum fighting for a chance to miss another potential game winning shot. Do I say that because I want Brown traded somewhere that rhymes with the Palace Matchsticks? Probably.
Grayson Allen is the Worst Guy
Things got ugly this week in Chicago when Grayson Allen committed a hard mid-air foul against Alex Caruso, grabbing at Caruso’s wrist as they both flew towards the rim and causing Caruso to hit the floor hard enough to break his wrist and see him out for the next 6 – 8 weeks.
There’s no doubt that basketball is a contact sport, and good defense sometimes necessitates putting an opposing player on their arse, but when it comes to Grayson, he doesn’t come with a clean record.
Back in his college days, Grayson Allen was the Duke player that everyone hated. It’s a tradition that goes back decades and was best personified by Christian Laettner, who is at once one of the greatest college basketballers and one of its worst blokes. Grayson is a chip off the old Laettner block and it seems that he’s making up for the fact that he’s not as good at basketball as Laettner was by being an even worse bloke.
Allen’s signature move in his time at Duke was the trip, which developed from a couple of incidents where maybe he just threw his leg out at the wrong time to full-on flailing towards other players’ ankles whenever things didn’t go his way.
Allen’s short time in the league has seen his reputation improve slightly, after teams have reported that he’s a lovely young man and a consummate professional, he’s appeared on podcasts and made a good impression, he’s also been a reliable source of corner shooting for the Bucks this season. Grayson’s still got a trip in him, which he showed last year in an attempt to slow down Trae Young.
Cut back to this week and Grayson is jumping across Caruso’s body and making a play with his off-hand, which is practically behind his head at the time, pulling Caruso practically horizontal from the force of his momentum. I accept that Allen’s entitled to make a play at the ball, but I refuse to believe that an NBA player with years of experience playing basketball, who did 4 years of college and got his degree, doesn’t realise he’s putting another player at risk.
Given his track record, it’s hard to justify his innocence when it’s clear he doesn’t care about the consequences of haphazardly throwing his body around.
For all this, Grayson was only given a one game suspension, which is ridiculous considering the League confirmed it would account for the amount of games Caruso would miss through injury when determining the length of Allen’s suspension. If there was any justice in this world, he should be suspended for twice as long as Caruso is injured and should only be allowed to talk to Bulls fans for the period of his suspension.
A Worrying Warriors pseudo-slump
The spotlight shone brightly on Stephen Curry this week after the Warriors went down 117 – 121 in an overtime game to an Indiana team made up of the back ups to their back ups. Curry was, in a way, solely responsible for a defensive lapse at the end of the fourth quarter which gave Justin Holiday a clean look at a game-tying 3. Yes the Warriors should have won that game but, hey, joke’s on you. The Warriors have actually been playing like shit since December.
They’re keeping their head above water and turning up every now and then to win big games against Phoenix, Utah and Chicago, enough to fend off any major criticisms. Losses to Denver and Philadelphia again exposed the team’s greatest weakness, their lack of a center – but more on Embiid and Jokic later.
There’s a whole host of issues contributing to the Warriors’ drop in form; Draymond has missed the last nine games due to an injury which began as a calf injury before suddenly becoming a back injury (yikes), Steve Kerr seems to forget that Gary Payton II, one of the league’s most effective defenders, is on the team in key moments, an no one on the team can hit shots. However, I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Recently, I’ve been bombarded with screenshots of Curry’s reduced 3-point shooting percentage, a measly 38% from deep, which is far below his career average of 43%. Whilst I can accept that is an issue, it’s not as if he’s taking bad shots, they’re just not going in. In the last month, Curry has been generating the kinds of shots that he’s famous for, the kind where he’s running back down the court while his shot’s still in the air.
This poor shooting has become endemic throughout the team, without a noticeable drop in the quality of the offense. I don’t know how many times in the last month I’ve seen Andrew Wiggins come off a screen into relatively open space, only for his layup to roll around the rim twice before squeaking out, or for the ball to swing into the corner for an open 3 by great shooters like Klay Thompson or Jordan Poole, which inevitably bricks.
It feels like the Dubs need to go away somewhere and get all their issues out. It’s like when you’ve been annoyed with your partner because they left a glass out for a week and you didn’t mention anything; but now you decide to have an argument about everything to get it out of the way. I need Steve Kerr to sit down and explode about every little frustration, if only to goad Draymond into screaming that he’s “not a robot” again.
The Big Boy Battle for MVP
The NBA MVP is a strange award. It’s one of few sporting achievements where the more you have won the less likely you are to win more. There were very few reasons not to award Giannis the MVP last year, apart from the fact that he’d won it the two previous years and therefore it was someone else’s turn to win the nice trophy.
MVP voters are careful about who is let into the 3+ MVP club, which is made up of only the greatest players of all time, including Russell, Kareem, Jordan, Lebron and Bird. The conspiracy theorist within me suspects that Giannis didn’t win his third consecutive MVP last year because the last player to do so was Larry Bird, whose legacy must be protected at all costs by all the old white guys who vote for MVP.
Even in the midst of another historically great season from Giannis, his chances are reduced by his prior successes and voter fatigue. Not only does Giannis have to be better than everyone else in the league to win MVP, he also has to be better than his previous MVP seasons to have a shot at the award.
Now that Durant is out for a couple of months with an MCL sprain, the race looks to be split between two of the best young centers in the league, reigning MVP Nikola Jokic and the heart and soul of Philadelphia, Joel Embiid.
In 2022, Jokic and Embiid have been throwing monster games at each other across conferences like two heavyweight boxers. On the same night, Embiid scored 50 points in 27 minutes en route to a routine killing of the Orlando Magic, whilst Jokic had a 47 point triple double, his final assist coming from a ridiculous floating pass from above the three point arc to Aaron Gordon sitting in the corner.
Both Embiid and Jokic make their defenders look like a joke. Embiid does it through his mix of sheer presence and skill, pushing his defender around as if they’re nothing more than a bollard between him and the hoop, or spotting up from three, or his more reliable elbow jumper. When Embiid decides to drive the lane, it’s a foregone conclusion, he’s putting you on your back and scoring. In 2022, Embiid has more points scored than minutes played.
Jokic’s game is based more on his ability to see the game in ways that it seems no one else can. Obviously he’s one of the best, if not the best, passers in the League today, so much so that at times his teammates won’t even realise they’re open, they just suddenly have the ball and find themselves a step ahead of their defender. Jokic controls the pace of every offensive possession for Denver, pointing guys towards cuts and making outlet passes when he wants to play with speed, or driving the lane as if in slow-motion, side stepping through defenders as if he already knew which way they were going to go.
Both Jokic and Embiid can go out and destroy a team by themselves, which they’ve needed to do given the notable absences that both Denver and Philadelphia have had this season. At the time of writing, both teams sit at the 6th seed in their respective conferences but will want to fight for a chance at the 4th seed and home court advantage. Expect to see more ridiculous performances from the two of them.
If I was to make a prediction now, I would take Embiid. He is in better form now than he was last year, when he put together an MVP-caliber opening 30 games, before being injured for another 30-or-so games and falling out of the running. Philadelphia have a better chance at climbing into the top 4 of the East than Denver have at climbing into the top 4 of the West. There’s also the narrative surrounding Philadelphia and the role that Embiid plays as their hero, despite everything else going on behind the scenes (which I am prevented from discussing without breaching my previous undertaking).
If you think I’m desperately wrong or unfair or callous, please send me a DM.