Every day in the NBA there is a lot to unpack, so every weekday morning throughout the season we will give you the three things you need to know from the last 24 hours in the NBA.
1) Emotional Kyrie Irving returns home, drops 50, but stumbles on the game winner. Kyrie Irving got what he wanted, and it’s easy to tell he is happy to be back in the place he considers home, New York.
You could see it in the way he got emotional speaking to the fans before the game.
"Oh man, I'm sorry it's just hitting me right now."
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) October 23, 2019
An emotional @KyrieIrving thanks the fans on opening night 😭 pic.twitter.com/Ga25uDeesv
You could also see it in the way he played in the season opener — his 50 points were the most ever by a player in his debut with a new team. (Your trivia answer, it had been Kiki Vandeweghe with 47 points for the Trail Blazers back in 1984.)
Irving was comfortable and aggressive, shooting threes if he got any space at all (and hitting 7-of-14 from deep) plus finishing when he got to the rim (8-of-11). The crowd was in his corner, roaring approval with every shot. Irving took what the defense gave him and also had seven assists (and eight rebounds).
The question about this year’s Nets has never been “can Irving get them buckets?” Of course he can. The question has been, “can the rest of the team rise up to his level?” There, the answer was spotty on Wednesday night. The best evidence of this, Caris LeVert had 20 points, but it took him 19 shots to get there and he had five turnovers.
Brooklyn took the lead with and 11-4 run late — a rainbow three from Irving with 1:16 left had them up 115-112 — but as he had done all night Karl-Anthony Towns took charge for the Timberwolves. KAT finished the night with 36 points and 14 rebounds.
The game went to overtime, where it went back-and-forth until the Nets got the ball with 11 seconds left down one. It was time for a storybook ending for Irving, the Nets went 1-4 flat and let Irving iso for the win…
And he slipped.
Irving still got off a surprisingly good look, it just did not fall. Notice that Irving’s team ran over to pick him up.
It’s still the kind of game the Nets can be optimistic about. The team is still coming together around Irving, the role players will have better nights, and they were in it to the end against a good team.
For a Minnesota team with playoff aspirations in a stacked West, this is the kind of road win they need. Towns was all-world, and he has to do that all season. But it was more than that. Treveon Graham started and made some impressive hustle plays, Josh Okogie was gritty, Robert Covington played well. And as for Andrew Wiggins, the Timberwolves were simply better when he sat most of the night, but when he attacked took things happened and he did that a couple of times in overtime. It’s a good start to the season for Ryan Saunders and company.
2) Bradley Beal was ejected, and the league should rescind this. Luka Doncic was on fire — 34 points on 12-of-19 shooting on the night, 4-of-9 from three, plus he had 9 boards. If Washington was going to have any chance of coming back in the fourth quarter and beating Dallas, it had to slow down Doncic.
Bradley Beal took on the challenge. He was physical, he was aggressive, he was competitive, and he was ejected on a poor couple of calls. First, there was an unnecessary double-technical, and when Beal waved his arm at the referee — not in a threatening way, they were 20 feet apart at least, this was more dismissive — the official was thin-skinned and tossed Beal.
Come on now. It’s late in a chippy game, but there was zero need for the first double technical, and the ejection — with just a minute to go in the game — was a pointless exercise in power.
Doncic gave Beal a hug before he left the court — Doncic got this was just two guys competing.
All Beal’s defensive efforts didn’t work, Dallas picked up a quality 108-100 win to start the season. Kristaps Porzingis played well with 23 points on 16 shots, and his alley-oop sealed the game.
Kristaps Porzingis provides the exclamation point ‼️#KiaTipOff19 #MFFL pic.twitter.com/WuzwSwtyii
— NBA (@NBA) October 24, 2019
3) Markelle Fultz looked pretty good for Orlando. It’s one game against a team lacking any rim protection to speak of, but for Markelle Fultz this was a good night.
Fultz finished with 12 points on 6-of-12 shooting, plus six assists. His three wasn’t falling, but it didn’t matter because he was aggressive attacking the rim and the smaller Cavaliers had no answer. He had three nice drives out of the right corner, but this ended up being his best play of the night.
It’s just one game, but that was as good a start for Fultz as Orlando could have hoped. By the way, the Magic beat the Cavaliers 94-85.