NBA Player News

Recent rumors made it seem that Toronto and Nurse were headed towards a breakup, and it became official on Friday. Nurse will be a coveted candidate to take over as the head coach for multiple teams, including Houston and Detroit. Ime Udoka is expected to be a serious candidate to take over in Toronto as well.

Two days after Curry dropped 46 points in a win in San Antonio, he provided an encore. He set new season-highs for both points and three-pointers in what was his best game of the season. Since being held to 11 points in a blowout loss to the Thunder, Curry has responded with 95 points and 14 triples across two games. Poor San Antonio. Up next on this road trip is a stop in New Orleans on Sunday to wrap up this week. The Pelicans have a bottom-three defensive rating this season, making this a great opportunity for Steph to stay scorching hot.

Wembanyama wasn’t able to replicate his triple-double from Wednesday’s game, but this was another strong performance for him against Golden State. On top of all the highlight plays, this was his fourth straight double-double, and after a slight lull to start November, Wemby is back to stuffing the stat sheet and dominating games. He’ll look to close out the week against the Kings on Sunday with another big game.

This was only Fox’s fourth game of the year, while the first two were solid, he struggled in Wednesday’s loss to Golden State. He was better in the rematch, matching his season-high for points and setting a new season-high for assists. It wasn’t enough to get a win, but it was encouraging to see Fox be used more as a playmaker. This was his best performance so far, and he’ll look to carry that into Sunday’s matchup with the Kings to close out the week.

Marshall can have big games when the Mavericks are missing starters as we saw last year. It was the same story on Friday against the Clippers as the 27-year-old forward filled in for P.J. Washington (shoulder). Marshall played 47 minutes and had 28 points and eight rebounds in the double overtime loss to the Clippers. He’ll have streaming value until Washington gets back.

Butler was able to supplement Stephen Curry’s 49 points with enough offense for the Warriors to escape with a win. Butler scored at least 20 points for a second straight game, but he wasn’t able to replicate his five three-pointers from Wednesday’s game against the Spurs. They’ll leave San Antonio with back-to-back wins, and Butler was solid in both.

Russell played 39 minutes, which is the most he’s played in a game this year, in the Mavericks’ double overtime loss to the Clippers on Friday. The 29-year-old point guard’s 28-point performance seeming came out of nowhere. Russell hadn’t scored more than 10 points in his last six games and his three-point shooting has been terrible recently. He’s 2-for-21 from behind the three-point line over his last four games including Friday night. Not much has changed for Russell despite the big minutes and point totals in a double overtime game. He also had seven turnovers to go with five assists.

Champagnie was a solid source of offense off the bench in the loss. He was third in scoring for the Spurs behind Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox, with most of his points coming from behind the three-point line. Champagnie was a starter to open the year, but in his four games as a reserve, his production has been top inconsistent for him to be worth rostering at this point of the season.

Murphy had no issues getting things going on offense in this game. Unfortunately, he didn’t get much help from his teammates. He has been on fire since his 41-point game last week and has averaged 29.8 points, 7.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.3 steals and 3.3 three-pointers while shooting 56 percent from the floor over the Pelicans’ last four games. Not much is going right in New Orleans, but Murphy has figured things out.

Bogdanović played 37 minutes off the bench in the Clippers’ 133-127 double overtime victory over the Mavericks. The 33-year-old shooting guard had the hot hand from behind the three-point line, going 5-of-8 and scoring 21 points on 14 attempts. Bogdanović also recorded four steals on the defensive end. He is likely to continue to see regular minutes in the wake of Bradley Beal’s injury.

Fears continues to be a solid scorer, which is rare for a rookie point guard this early in his career. However, it was his defense that stood out in this game. This was only the 16th time in NBA history that a rookie had at least eight steals in a game, with the most recent occurrence prior to this one coming from Michael Carter-Williams in 2013. Fears has been fantastic to start his career and is on pace to make an All-Rookie team in a stacked class.