Every Thought I Have About the 2024-25 NBA Season So Far
Welcome back to my tortured mind...
THEY TRIED TO KILL US BUT WE’RE ALREADY BONES, THEY TRIED TO BREAK US BUT WE’RE ALREADY A MILLION PIECES SCATTERED AMONG THE WRECKAGE. WELCOME BACK TO THE BROKEN PRESS, MY FRIENDS.
We haven’t talked in about four months but it feels like ten million lifetimes, each one without your presence more agonizing than the last.
Basketball has never been more back (since last year) and if we don’t talk about it I’m going to combust — in a bad way, no less.
We’re almost four weeks into the NBA season so your eyes no longer deceive you… what you see is to be believed. Except for the Warriors. I still think they may be deceiving us.
Very few stats in this one. Let’s just sit and talk ball this time, you know?
Donovan Clingan Has Done Miracles on Me
Yes, an NBA team is 14-0 and we’re starting this by talking about a rookie who plays 15.8 minutes a night on a 5-8 team. Because that’s my 5-8 team, okay? And I will die for them, okay?
Donovan Clingan should be the starting center for the Portland Trail Blazers. DeAndre Ayton is a passable low-volume center who think can be a productive NBA player in a significantly reduced role, but there’s no reason for Ayton to start over Clingan going forward.
In his first game playing more than 25 minutes, Clingan posted 18 points, 12 rebounds and EIGHT BLOCKS against Minnesota. He’s already an elite post defender and has developed a rapport with Scoot Henderson which, please god, someone help Scoot because Chauncey Billups sure as shit isn’t going to do it.
Clingan was my (somewhat biased) pick for Rookie of the Year and I feel strangely confident about that right now. Just give the boy more minutes.
The Cleveland Cavaliers Have Solved Basketball
I’m not going on my Cavs victory tour yet because we’re 14 games into the season, but things are going literally as well as possible through those 14 games.
Watching Cleveland finish games is as close to experiencing religion as I will ever come. They’re already dominant for the first 40 minutes of games, but then something clicks on and each player becomes a supercharged version of themself. The skills they all possess multiply by about five times.
Cleveland is perfect in the last five minutes of games, which sounds silly but it literally has a clutch time net rating of +70.8.
I don’t know how many games this team is going to lose but I don’t think it’s more than 20.
I Have Started Cheering Against the Knicks
For the record, I never cheered for the Knicks, but something about the 2024-25 Knicks is not resonating with me. If you’re a Knicks fan (and to my knowledge only one reads this newsletter, hi Mike) I apologize because I didn’t go into this season planning on hating the Knicks, but the vibes are rubbing me the wrong way.
I think it’s mostly Josh Hart’s fault, to be fully transparent. I believe he’s capable of great evil.
Being a Cam Thomas Hater is Embarrassing
In 2025, being a Cam Thomas hater and being a Trump supporter are one in the same. I don’t have time for it anymore! It’s embarrassing! Keep it away from me!
The discourse around Thomas is so funny because yes, he’s obviously a one-dimensional player. Plenty of guys in the NBA are one-dimensional, but they don’t get denounced for their lack of dimensions, they get celebrated for being so good at their single dimension. Celebrate the outrageousness of Cam Thomas scoring the basketball and your life will improve. I’m not being hyperbolic either… you’ll see the light.
Tyrese Maxey & Cooper Flagg Would be a Stellar Duo
No, I’m not kidding. I’m sick of this!
Every year we say this year is so important for the Sixers and if they fall short then something has to change and then they flame out and nothing changes and we act out the same charade a year later.
What if we shift our mindset? What if we go from existentialism to nihilism? Instead of this year is everything for the Sixers, we try this year is nothing for the Sixers and tank for just one year.
Yes, tanking immoral and unethical and whatever adjective you want and I AGREE OKAY, but I’m officially out on believing sustained success will happen with Joel Embiid. Until this year I convinced myself the Sixers were one lucky break away from the run that will save everything but that run is a figment of our imaginations — in two games Embiid looks god-awful at both ends and he’s a 30 year-old center who can’t play back-to-backs who’s hindering his team while the top of the East gets better and better.
You know what’s not a figment of our imaginations? Cooper Flagg. Ace Bailey. Egor Demin. The 2025 NBA Draft is loaded with guys who could change this franchise’s path and pair very, very nicely next to Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain who, by the way, is the best rookie in basketball by a wide margin right now.
Why does success have to happen through Embiid? I don’t think it does, and at this point, I don’t think it can.
Listen to me Daryl Morey: Let Embiid sit out as many games as he wants while McCain and Maxey develop chemistry, hope to God next year’s pick is top six, draft your cornerstone wing then run with a Maxey, McCain + rookie Big 3 with Paul George in a sixth man role and Joel Embiid playing 20 minutes a game. Who cares? Why is that such a scary thought? Is everyone in this city going to miss second-round exits that much? Actually change something.
The Minnesota Timberwolves Want to Fit in so Badly
And I don’t really understand it. I talked about this over at FanSided (where I’ll be at a lot going forward) a few weeks ago and it holds true. Minnesota is shooting way, way more threes than last year because that’s what you do in today’s NBA.
More threes is fine — I understand the theory behind relying on threes — but here’s my problem with the Wolves, and kind of with the NBA’s insane three-point volume as a whole: Minnesota doesn’t have good enough shooters to be a super high three-point volume team. The Wolves are trying to put the square peg in the triangle hole. They have good shooters who should shoot a moderate amount of three-pointers, but their offense being built around three-point shooting is a bad strategy, point blank. This doesn’t apply only to the Wolves, but I think they’re the most prominent example.
The players on Minnesota are better at driving, slashing, cutting, shooting in the midrange than they are hoisting up threes. And in the fourth quarter of games, when perimeter defense ratchets up, this team is going to be forced to play inside the arc after having not done so all game long and they’ll have no rhythm doing anything except shooting threes and it’s going to lose them a lot of games they don’t need to lose.
I know this sounds like an old man take, and maybe it is. But forcing your roster — full of players with diverse offensive skillsets — into being the Boston Celtics is not the way to improve from last year when you went to the WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS despite being near the bottom of the league in three-point volume.
Also, it’s very funny this team traded its best three-point shooter and then decided it was time to start chucking up threes with worse shooters.
Fuck it, the Lakers are Good
I didn’t want to admit it. I thought if I ignored it enough, it wouldn’t be true. I thought I could run away from it. But the truth catches up to us all, and the truth of the Lakers being good caught up to me and pummeled me with a baseball bat.
JJ Redick is very enjoyable to listen to as a broadcaster and podcaster but he’s also incredibly easy to cheer against because he went to Duke and looks like he had rich parents, so I was hoping the Lakers would be a dumpster fire this year because it would have been a funny narrative. No dumpster fire here; quite the opposite!
This is the best Lakers offense since… LeBron’s been there? Is that crazy? They’re fifth in offensive rating and that looks sustainable. Redick is smart at maximizing the skillsets of his players, which I think that’s a really important trait as a coach. Anthony Davis has been fully unleashed and good heavens he can disrupt a game. Square pegs in square holes.
LaMelo Ball is a Singular Basketball Player
He’s almost created a new subgenre of the “tough shot maker” archetype by only taking off-balance, contested heaves because those are the shots he’s most comfortable taking… and he makes so many of them, are they even bad shots?
LaMelo setting his feet or being on-balance when he shoots makes me less confident a shot is going in. I have no idea how you coach a player like this, but Hornets rookie coach Charles Lee appears to be doing it by saying “Here, go do whatever you want,” and I think that’s probably the best strategy.
Who else is going to score? Grant Williams?
I Think Oklahoma City Can Beat Boston
Not sure how to expound on this but… yeah. I don’t know if they will beat Boston this year but Christ have mercy these kids can hoop. I’m really curious if this team makes a trade to consolidate its roster or lets it ride this year with this lineup. I’m kind of in favor of the second choice; coach Mark Daigneault has so many capable bench options he can just switch lineup combinations around depending on the matchup.
I was expecting a bit of a regression from this team and… not even close. Their two losses are to Golden State and Denver, with the Warriors loss coming while the team didn’t have a real center on its roster.
Speaking of centers, Chet’s injury sucks really badly and I hope he comes back this season. I also think (I’m whispering this) they might be able to make the Finals with Isaiah Hartenstein starting.
What I’m Listening To: Ka
Ka died a few weeks ago and I cannot overstate how devastating of a loss that is to the hip-hop community, the writing community, the music community at large. Consistently one of the sharpest lyricists alive, Ka painted the human experience more vividly through words than almost any other musician I’ve ever listened to. Rest In Peace.
Let'sssss Gooooo
We are so back