The NBA playoffs put even the most potent offenses to the test — particularly those that struggle to find an extra gear. That’s the reality facing the Atlanta Hawks as the team’s strongest offense in nearly 15 years has been effectively stifled this postseason. Atlanta trailed only the Utah Jazz in offensive efficiency during the […]
Joel Embiid and James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers are diametrically opposed as player types. Harden has averaged more than 10 assists a game for two seasons in a row and led the league in isolations per possession every season since at least 2015-16, while Embiid has led the league in post-ups per possession every […]
Nikola Jokić’s case to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award for a second-straight season is quite compelling. The Joker finished in the top 10 in points (27.1), assists (7.9) and rebounds (13.8) per game while shooting an astonishing 58.3 percent from the field. As FiveThirtyEight’s Robert O’Connell wrote recently, no high-scoring big man has […]
The New Orleans Pelicans’ impromptu September mini-camp in Nashville after the devastation of Hurricane Ida drew headlines for the one player who didn’t show up: Zion Williamson. But as the outside world fixated on the supposed franchise player’s previously unreported foot surgery, the rest of the Pelicans players were witnessing the birth of a three-word […]
For much of this season, the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks have not seemed like the same Milwaukee Bucks team we had come to know over the past few seasons. Milwaukee won more than 71 percent of its regular-season games and led the league in wins (by a mile) during the first three years of the […]