The Warriors: The Golden State Warriors, whose roster was expected to weaken in the offseason, actually improved their bench with the addition of two deadly three-point shooters in Nick “Swaggy P” Young and Omri Casspi. The arrival of Casspi, who is the only Israeli basketball player in the NBA, continues the Warriors’ tradition of recruiting foreign players that are revered in their home nations, including Zaza Pachulia of Georgia and Leandro Barbosa of Brazil. The Warriors also managed to engineer deals to extend the contracts of Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, both vital off-the-bench players that many analysts expected would leave for more lucrative starting roles. With the addition of the rookie Jordan Bell, whose draft pick was purchased from the Bulls for cash, the Warriors have also secured an adept defender who has shown occasional promise on the offensive end.
Much like other expected contenders, the Warriors experienced a mixed start to the season, prompting early questions about their mentality. After beginning the season with a loss to James Harden and the Houston Rockets, the Warriors have performed inconsistently, throwing away substantial leads against the Detroit Pistons, Sacramento Kings, and Boston Celtics. Their extended periods of offensive and defensive brilliance, which owe as much to the culture of the Warriors as to the talent of the players, have come less frequently this year, and have been punctuated by dreary, uninspired stretches of thoughtless and selfish play.
Trades Around the NBA: The offseason was perhaps the most exciting in basketball history, with an unprecedented number of high-profile trades occurring in just a few weeks. Superstar point guard Kyrie Irving, in a shock move, left the Cleveland Cavaliers to join the Boston Celtics in exchange for the 5’8 ball-handling wizard Isaiah Thomas. Irving, responding to bewilderment about his decision to leave a title-contending team that he had helped carry to a championship the year before, cited LeBron James’ total control over the organization as the motivating factor for his departure, prompting concerns among analysts about James’ own future with the team.
Elsewhere in the NBA, The Oklahoma City Thunder enjoyed what many consider the best offseason in their history, acquiring two top-tier players in shooting guard Paul George from the Indiana Pacers and power forward Carmelo Anthony from the New York Knicks. The two additions, joining league MVP Russell Westbrook, should have significantly bolstered the offensive firepower of the Thunder, already a potent attacking team. As the season has progressed, however, it has become clear that Oklahoma City’s “big three” are severely lacking in chemistry. Their losses to the Sacramento Kings, Orlando Magic, and Dallas Mavericks, widely considered among the worst teams in the Western Conference, demonstrated that the Thunders’ offensive talent could not make up for their lack of defensive competence. Though many analysts hailed the Thunder as challengers to the Warriors after their triumphant offseason, a series of similarly poor performances has cast doubts on their legitimacy as genuine title contenders, at least this season.
In addition, the Houston Rockets’ acquisition of Chris Paul from the Los Angeles Clippers has been greeted with widespread acclaim, with the veteran point guard joining a talented team that many hope will challenge the Warriors in the Western Conference.
The Prospects: The 2017 NBA Draft class was perhaps the most talented in recent memory, with players that could potentially have been first overall picks in prior years being chosen much later, and highly-talented prospects selected even in the second round.
The most talked-about rookie without a doubt was the talented UCLA freshman Lonzo Ball, an oversized point guard who enjoyed an outstanding season in college and was selected second overall by the Los Angeles Lakers. Lonzo Ball’s father, LaVar Ball, a former professional football player himself, built up a sizeable media presence on the back of his son’s success during the year, claiming that Lonzo would come into the league as one of its best players and founding a shoe company, the Big Baller Brand, before he even played a professional game. Lonzo Ball’s actual performance in the league, however, has been far from impressive, as his lopsided, unrefined shooting form has been exposed and the player many hoped would be the future of the Lakers franchise has struggled to score more than a handful of points per game.
Meanwhile, the first overall pick of the draft, skilled guard Markelle Fultz, has been injured for much of the early going of the season. His pick, originally drawn in a lottery by the Boston Celtics, was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for third overall pick Jayson Tatum and a future first round pick. In the few minutes Fultz has played, his shooting has been as inconsistent as Ball’s, an issue that the young player has blamed on a long-term shoulder problem that has severely limited his movement. Fultz joins two other highly talented young players in guard Ben Simmons and center Joel Embiid, who have both put up outrageous performances early in the season. Simmons, who was out injured the year before, has lit the league up with a series of triple-doubles (scoring 10 or more points, rebounds, and assists) in the point guard position, filling in for the absent Fultz. Simmons has been compared extensively to another dominant, oversized point guard, Lakers icon Magic Johnson, while Joel Embiid’s incredible 46-point outing against the Los Angeles Clippers earned him comparisons to NBA greats Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal.
The Most Valuable Players: Houston Rockets superstar James Harden, who has placed within the top three for MVP voting in each of the past three seasons, is a surefire candidate for the award. While most sports analysts believed that the addition of Chris Paul would affect James Harden’s extraordinary offensive output, Harden has proved otherwise, and is averaging 31 points, five rebounds, and nearly 10 assists per game.
Cleveland Cavaliers legend LeBron James, who is without the presence of the ball-dominant Kyrie Irving this season, ended his team’s poor run of games in November with a number of standout individual performances. His game against the Washington Wizards, during which he scored 57 points in jaw-dropping fashion, cemented him as the most dominant player in the NBA. Though in prior years James has constrained himself during the regular season with an eye on the playoffs, the Cavaliers’ losing record to start the season, which concerns that they might not qualify for the playoffs at all, has inspired James into playing what is arguably the best basketball of his accomplished career. Averaging a remarkable 28 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists per game, a fourth MVP trophy is possibly James’ to lose this season.
Warriors stars Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, having each received the award in the past, are both dark horse candidates for MVP. Curry, despite struggling somewhat from the three-point line, has been outstanding for his team, having a number of exceptional performances during Kevin Durant’s injury-induced absence. However, though Curry and Durant have both established themselves as exceptional, historically-great players, their odds of receiving the award while playing for the same team are slim at best, as the award has typically been granted to a single player who leads his team through a season.
The NBA 2017-2018 season has commenced to an abrupt start with most of the same star players from last year being possible MVP candidates. Although it is just the beginning of the season, many stars have started to cement themselves as MVP through stat patting performances. The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, a seven-foot shooting guard who was named Most Improved Player in 2016, began the season with a three-game stretch of scoring more than 30 points. In the past two months, he has helped lead his team to a number of wins against championship-contending teams including the San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics. He is averaging 10 rebounds a game while also keeping his field goal percentage above 50%, and has blossomed into a legitimate MVP candidate this season.
The Future: The Warriors’ emergence as perhaps the most dominant team in history has prompted a league-wide response, as other teams have had to restructure and change tactics in an effort to catch up to the highly-sophisticated Warriors system.
Teams have essentially been left to choose from one of two options – trade away their best players, and acquire draft picks and young talent with an eye on the future, or acquire as many newly-available star players as possible with the hope of playing making a competitive playoff run against the established contenders.
While many historically great teams, including the Chicago Bulls, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Miami Heat have been accused of “tanking” or sacrificing short-term performance for long-term rewards in the form of draft picks, teams in smaller markets including the Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder have doubled down on their efforts to build competitive teams, signing multiple stars at the expense of future prospects.
The Warriors’ tactics of maximizing shooting output and exploiting a high offensive efficiency from the three-point line have become league-wide this season, as players not equipped with the tools to succeed in a high-volume shooting environment have become significantly less valuable than in the past. Tall, strong centers, historically a vital part of a winning basketball team, have in particular seen their stock fall, as teams attempt to acquire relatively undersized, versatile playmaking defenders in the mold of Golden State’s Draymond Green. Meanwhile, talented scorers inside the paint have been displaced by outside shooters, and the league as a whole has begun to move towards the pass-and-shoot strategy that the Warriors have been employing for years.
Ultimately, though the season is still in an early stage, it has more than lived up to expectations so far, and the year promises to be a great one for the NBA. With a number of talented teams and a exciting prospects, there has never been a better time to be a basketball fan.
