Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
The Thunder also agreed to a two-year non-guaranteed deal with wing Dalen Terry, according to a league source who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The second year is a team option.
For the first time this season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored more than 40 points (43, actually) and carried the Thunder to a much-needed 117-112 win over Cleveland. It snapped a two-game slide in which OKC had been blown out twice, and it was the Thunder’s second win in four tries since it felt like the bottom may have dropped out of their whole season back on Oct. 25. “I am just trying to figure out what winning will look like for this team, with this group,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the game. “Myself and the rest of the group had become so accustomed to what winning looked like with the whole group that we had.
Monday’s two technicals gave Draymond Green three for the season and 182 for his career, according to Elias Sports Bureau. This was Green’s first ejection of the season and the 23rd of his career. He had two ejections last season.
The two Alphas of the Blazers — Damian Lillard and Ja Morant — essentially handed the reins of the team to Deni Avdija. “Coming in, I told him: ‘I want you to be the horse,’” Lillard said. “Ja said the same thing: ‘You be the horse.’ I think him knowing for sure that we are encouraging that … you be the horse … you be on go … you get downhill … you attack. I think that is good for our team.”
Alex Caruso is traveling with the Thunder; his ankle sprain is not believed to be serious. But even with Caruso in the fold, the Thunder will be relying on unproven younger players for big minutes.
Advertisement
In its 2023-24 schedule release, the NBA noted that it “will continue to encourage fans and the broader NBA community to make a plan to vote and participate in the civic process.” On Nov. 7, 2023, no games were scheduled, and in 2024, there were no games on the night of the presidential election. In its schedule release this year, the league said that it “will encourage fans and the broader NBA community to make a plan to vote and to participate in the civic process. All 30 teams will be in action on the day before Election Day.”
Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green was ejected in the third quarter of Monday’s 116-113 win over the Phoenix Suns after an incident involving the Suns’ Dillon Brooks and Khaman Maluach. With 10 minutes left in the quarter, Green collided with Maluach and went to the ground. Green got up and pushed the Phoenix big man to the floor, immediately getting whistled for a technical. Green then got into an argument with Brooks and was assessed another technical foul upon a video review, which also resulted in a technical on Brooks. “He lit a fire in all of us and we had to respond,” Warriors star Stephen Curry said after the game. “So I’m glad we did. It was a combination of that moment and we got to have our brother’s back when he defends us. But it was also this is one of those games, most of the guys are on a back to back. Phoenix had been off for a couple days … definitely that moment kept us in the moment.”
The respect Smart immediately had for Udoka, because of his direct and sometimes harsh approach, was mutual. In many ways, the two of them are alike. They take pride in their toughness, their defiance, their resilience and, above all, their insatiable desire to win. So, once they had a chance to reunite in Houston five years after their only season together and finish what they started, it was a no-brainer for both. The pair, reunited, face their old team, the Celtics, Monday night. With the Rockets at 6-1 and Smart serving as a key reserve so far, the reunion is going well. “I thought he was a perfect fit who addresses a lot of what we were missing,” Udoka said in a one-on-one interview with The Athletic late last week. “I thought we lacked a little depth at point guard, and he brings that defensive identity. We still have high-level defenders, but he brings that edge and toughness and tone-setting that Dillon (Brooks) brought to us before he left the building.”
Even after the two wins, the Heat are still ranked 11th in offense (115.2) and 26th in defense (118.6), which means they’ve been outscored by 3.4 points per 100 possessions, according to numbers from Cleaning the Glass. They still have an awful lot of work to do to wash off the stench of the first week of the season.
The Knicks lost to the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday when a late comeback effort fell short. But they left Xfinity Mobile Arena with a positive: They took more green 3-pointers against the Sixers than they had in any of their first five games of the season, Brown said. But they did not make enough of them. The Knicks shot an unimpressive 33 percent on wide-open 3s against the Sixers, according to Second Spectrum. Such has been the greatest struggle of their start. Shots, even the green ones, aren’t going into the hoop at the rate any reasonable onlooker would expect.
Advertisement
What Natalie Nakase pulled off is even more impressive. Lacob made the same five-year declaration when the Bay Area was awarded an expansion WNBA team, but no team in any North American major sport had ever won a title by its second season. “We’re so excited for the Valkyries for Natalie, for everybody involved,” Steve Kerr said. “It’s an incredible turnaround from just having an expansion team without a name two years ago to within two years building this brand and winning a title, just remarkable.”
“I wasn’t that excited about it,” Kyrie Irving admitted Friday. Three years later, Irving said he has gotten more comfortable with the idea of the NBA handing out a trophy prior to Christmas and sees value in gunning to win the NBA Cup. “I think I understand the concept of it now and what it means for the fandom of basketball,” Irving said. “And just getting your legs up underneath you. … The Knicks and the Spurs last year, we saw them in the Finals. I think there is some correlation to playing well early in the season and that leading to success later on down the line.”
In the five games Kyrie Irving and Cooper Flagg have played together, the Mavericks have a 4-1 record with wins over the Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder and Rockets. Dallas has outscored its opponents by 12 points per 100 possessions in the 98 minutes they have shared the floor. “We are still growing,” Irving said. “We still have a level we want to get to — a higher level. We are going to continue to push each other. We obviously know the external chatter as well and the 15-year age gap and what we are going to accomplish and how we are going to mesh. I think we threw all that out the window and just really focused on what we can control, which is our effort and how we treat each other.”
Some of it is probably to be expected, though the highs the Lakers hit in their first four wins probably masked it. The reality is the team is still learning one another, learning when and how to cut, learning how to impact winning on a team and for an organization with incredibly high expectations. “We want to become a great team,” Redick said. “You don’t become a great team in six games.” Still, this was bad. “A terrible loss,” Austin Reaves muttered in the locker room.