NBA takeaways: Wiseman shining, Nets' Big 3 finding form
As the calendar turns and the first month of 2021 appears in the rearview mirror, the NBA season is beginning to take shape.Steph Curry and the Warriors stand 11-9, treading water in what is an incredibly tight playoff race in the Western Conference.Elsewhere, Bradley Beal is piling up the points on a dreadful Washington Wizards team, the league’s newest Big 3 is rounding into form, and the COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on the schedule.Here are a handful of takeaways from the first 40 days of the 2020-21 season.
After a breakout campaign last season and a solid performance in the bubble, the Dallas Mavericks were a common sleeper pick as a team that potentially could challenge the Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers for Western Conference superiority.
Luka Doncic fever was at an all-time high, but Dallas has stumbled to an 8-12 start through 20 games, including five consecutive losses. The return of Kristaps Porzingis in mid-January gave hope that things would turn around, but he hasn’t been the salve Mavericks fans were looking for.
Doncic nearly is averaging a triple-double, but if he can’t start making the teammates around him better, Dallas might have a hard time clawing its way back into the playoff picture. The Warriors will see Dallas twice in the next week, as the teams will play on Thursday and Saturday at Chase Center.
Two of the best rookies so far in the NBA season both call Northern California home, as James Wiseman and Tyrese Haliburton have been bright spots for the Warriors and Kings respectively.
Wiseman continues to show how physically gifted he already is, and how much room he still has to grow. The No. 2 overall pick paces all rookies in rebounds and blocks, and even after being moved to the bench last week, the big man put together his best individual game of the season.
Haliburton is second among rookies in minutes per game and assists while showing the versatility that had many pundits listing him as a top-10, even top-five talent in the 2020 class.
NBA.com’s latest rookie rankings have Wiseman at No. 1 and Haliburton at No. 3. If the two maintain their current trajectories, it’s hard to imagine the Rookie of the Year trophy ending up anywhere else.
After adding James Harden in a trade, the Brooklyn Nets put together the league’s best trio of players on one team since Kevin Durant was playing his home games in the Bay Area.
Those two along with Kyrie Irving have helped the Nets top 125 points in six of Brooklyn’s last eight games. Defense has looked like an afterthought for this group, but it always takes longer to mesh on that end of the court.
KD has shown no ill effects from his 2019 Achilles injury, and as long as the defensive issues get ironed out in the coming months, Brooklyn looks like a sure-fire pick to represent the East in the NBA Finals.
The NBA’s leading scorer somehow currently plays for the worst team in the Eastern Conference. Bradley Beal is averaging an astonishing 34.7 points per game, but his Washington Wizards are just 4-12 through 16 games. He showed some visible frustration during a loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday.
COVID-19 has knocked several players out of the lineup in recent weeks, but the 27-year-old guard seems like the most likely potential trade candidate before the March 25 deadline.
Sunday's stunning win over the Nets notwithstanding, Washington won't be among the eight playoff teams in the East without a significant uptick in performance.
The swap of Russell Westbrook for John Wall hasn’t lessened the burden on Beal, and the Warriors likely will be among a number of teams throwing trade packages at the Wizards over the next month. It’s clearly time for Washington to embrace a full rebuild.
Last year’s appearance in the Western Conference Finals seemed to confirm that the Denver Nuggets were a prime contender going into 2020-21 to capitalize on that success in the bubble.
But a 6-7 start to the season featuring a pair of losses to the lowly Kings raised questions as to whether Denver was an aberration in Orlando last summer. However, Denver has won six of its last seven games, including an 11-point win over the West-leading Utah Jazz on Sunday, a game in which Nikola Jokic put up 22 points in the first quarter en route to a career-high 47 points.
Jokic’s MVP stock will continue to rise as Denver recaptures its winning ways, and the Nuggets look like a team poised to strike fear into the LA teams once the postseason rolls around.
