10 Most Intriguing Players in the Eastern Conference
Zach Lowe did his most intriguing players podcast, and that spurred me to make my list again. I did this last year, and it was one of my favorite pieces. So I thought I would do it again. Once again, I kept it to 10 players in the Eastern Conference, and started with the Celtics player I chose.
Sam Hauser
I almost put Jaylen Brown here, but ultimately I think Hauser is the Celtic I'm most intrigued by. For the second straight postseason, Hauser saw a big drop in his minutes played per game from the regular season to the playoffs. In the 2022-2023 season, they dropped from 16.1 to 6.9 minutes per game, and in 2023-2024 they dropped from 22.0 to 14.9. After a great series against the Miami Heat, Hauser turned into a pumpkin against the Cavs and Pacers, and while it was a little surprising, it also felt familiar. Thankfully, he recovered in the NBA Finals, shooting 11-for-23 from deep, and getting his minutes back up to 15.5 per game. His 8.2 points per game in the series were his best mark in any of the nine playoff series' he has played.
The Celtics showed they have confidence in Hauser this offseason by signing him to a four-year, $45 million extension. The Celtics also showed that they have a backup plan by drafting Baylor Scheierman, who – interesting mustache aside – could be a Hauser clone. Little will be expected of Scheierman this season, but he's there, just in case. Will the extension lead him to get even more run the way it did for Payton Pritchard last season? Or will his minutes get cut in favor of Scheierman, Lonnie Walker IV, or by coach Joe Mazzulla feeling the need to play more two-big lineups to compensate for Kristaps Porzingis' injury and Al Horford's age? I think it's one of the Celtics' biggest lineup questions this season.
Mitchell Robinson
Speaking of bigs, a lot of the Knicks' hopes reside in the balky angles of Mitchell Robinson. Not that it's a long list, but Robinson is my all-time favorite Knicks player. Since entering the NBA in 2018-2019, Robinson has shot .701 from the field. In that timeframe, among players who have played at least 7,000 minutes, Robinson is the only one to shoot .700 from the field, and only eight other players have shot above .600. The problem is the minutes played part. Robinson has only played 7,832 minutes in that timespan, which ranks 158th overall. Over the past two seasons, he's only played in 54.9% of New York's regular-season games, and for his career, he's at just 68.7%.
This is an issue now because the Knicks never signed a backup center. They still have 6'8" Precious Achiuwa and 6'10" Jericho Sims, but Robinson's fellow seven footer on last year's squad, Isaiah Hartenstein, fled the big city for the oil fields. Robinson and Hartenstein helped the Knicks control the offensive glass, but last season it was more Hartenstein than Robinson. The offensive glass is important for the Knicks, because they're not particularly good at shooting the basketball. Last season, their .465 FG% ranked 21st, and their .540 eFG% ranked 16th. The same was true in the playoffs, as their .453 FG% ranked 10th out of 16 teams, and the Cavs were the only team among the six that ranked worse that actually advanced out of the first round. And that was only because they faced an Orlando Magic team that shot even worse than they did.
If you're a Knicks fan, one reason for optimism about the Knicks' ability to control the glass without Hartenstein would be that after coming over to the Knicks, Achiuwa averaged a career-high 2.9 offensive rebounds per game. Maybe it's all Tom Thibodeau's coaching! But if Robinson gets hurt, Thibs will be awfully tempted to just stick Julius Randle at center and play small. If Robinson can't stay on the floor, Thibodeau is going to have to hope his guys become dead-eye shooters, and that seems somewhat unlikely. Hope is not a strategy unless you're Ethan Hunt.
Tyrese Maxey
Thus far, Tyrese Maxey has led a charmed NBA life. Nobody has ever blamed him for Philly's failures. In his second season, when his minutes ramped up, Philly's defeat at the feet of the Heat was chalked up to Joel Embiid playing poorly after literally breaking his face, and James Harden only being willing to take nine shots in the decisive Game 6. The next season, when Boston ran them off the floor in Game 7, the team collapsed somewhat equally. And last season, Maxey was the hero for keeping the 76ers in the conversation until the big fella got back onto the court, and then he made that crazy four-point play (even if he did travel).
This season is going to be a different story. For one thing, he's now the Second Star for real after becoming an All-Star last season. The branding of Paul George coming in was "now the Sixers have a third star," not "now the Sixers have a new second banana/co-star behind Embiid." Call that talk if you want, but what's very real is that the Sixers have seven new guys to work into the mix, and three of the guys who return – Embiid, Kelly Oubre, Jr., and Kyle Lowry – have never been shy about getting shots up.
It's all on Maxey to organize that offense and make sure it's humming. Can he do it? The only times he'll have any kind of playmaking help is when Lowry joins him on the floor. Martin's career high assists per game is 2.2. Oubre's is 1.5. And when Harden joined the Clippers last season, George's assists per game immediately dropped to 3.7. He is getting older, and would probably like to be in the Ray Allen role (Allen never average more than 3.1 assists per game with the Celtics or Heat, and averaged 2.5 per game in those seven seasons). Embiid's best at playmaking when he is double teamed, and with George in the mix, there will be fewer double teams coming the big fella's way. Lowry will help, but when they are on the court together, the Sixers will be very small and exploitable on defense. Lowry is better suited to filling the 10-15 minutes per game that Maxey doesn't play.
Maxey's assists jumped to a career-high 6.2 last season. He's going to need to maintain or improve upon that and make sure he's spreading the ball around. Tobias Harris might have been happy to disappear on the court, but Embiid and George, and Martin and Oubre are going to want to shoot the ball. No pressure!
Jaime Jaquez Jr.
When last season started, Jaquez seemed to become the physical manifestation of his team's logo. By the end of it, he was very much the opposite. He shot .231 from three in the playoffs against Boston, and by the end of the series, he was actively passing up open three's, because he knew they weren't going to drop. He sat out the series' final game, but whether that was due to injury or embarrassment is an open question.
The problem for the Miami Heat writ large is three-point shooting. They don't take enough three's (18th in the NBA last season), and the guys on the team best equipped to shoot them (Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson) are extreme defensive liabilities. Bam Adebayo started shooting more last season, but as I've discussed recently, he's got to be closer to the hoop for Miami's offense to work properly. So the Heat need Jaquez to shoot more like the guy who shot .392 in October and November of last season, and less like the guy who shot .294 for the duration of the season. The former is a borderline All-Star, but the latter is barely a rotation guy in the playoffs, even with Jaquez's energy and hustle. When the chips are down, everyone hustles.
Gary Trent Jr.
Since they won the championship in 2021, the Bucks have had a hard time finding the fifth guy in their lineup. In that NBA Finals, it was clearly Pat Connaughton. The next season Grayson Allen supplanted him in the starting lineup, and that was fine until they faced the Celtics in the playoffs and Allen forgot how to shoot (.310/.208/.571 in 185 minutes). The problem was exacerbated in the 2022-2023 season as the Bucks lost Khris Middleton for much of the season, which made Allen the fourth starter and gave the Bucks another wing spot to fill. They tried Connaughton again, and also Jevon Carter. Marjon Beauchamp even started 11 games somehow. The team traded 4,000 second-round picks for Jae Crowder, but he immediately got hurt and was/is basically cooked. Last season, with Allen sent off to Phoenix in the disastrous Damian Lillard trade, it was Malik Beasley's turn. Beasley was very durable for his part, playing in 79 games and starting in 77. But Beasley didn't help Milwaukee get past the first round, so now it's Gary Trent Jr.'s turn.
Trent's signing was lauded as a huge bargain, and that's nice and all, but once the games start, it won't matter so much. I want you to look at these two stat lines from last season and tell me which one is Beasley's and which one is Trent's:
One guy shot better from the field better and was better on the defensive glass. One guy averaged more points per game, but also took more shots, and had more steals. There's not a lot else separating them here.
The line on the bottom is Trent's. Trent is two years younger, a bonus, and is currently listed as one inch and 22 lbs. heavier, so he could be a better defensive player. But I've never watched Trent play and thought "wow, Trent is really playing great defense." I don't know that he's really much of an upgrade over Beasley, who signed with the Pistons. If he isn't, did the Bucks really get better this offseason?
Dyson Daniels
Trae Young finally has the perfect backcourt partner. It was supposed to be Dejounte Murray, but Murray turned into a ball hog that doesn't play defense the second he made an All-Star team. Daniels is nobody's idea of an All-Star, but if he can get his career .311 three-point percentage closer to Murray's .345, he's going to make life much easier for Young. And there were glimpses in the Olympics. He shot 3-for-4 from deep when as a starter in Australia's win over Spain. In fact, he put in 13 points and seven rebounds, with two assists, one steal, and zero turnovers in that game, and was a big part of that win. For the Olympics overall, he shot 5-for-13 from deep, and 13-for-27 from the field. If he can do that on Atlanta, that offense will be humming.
I have him here because I assume he'll start in the backcourt next to Young, with Jalen Johnson, De'Andre Hunter, and Clint Capela filling out the other three spots. Maybe I'm wrong, and Bogdan Bogdanović will start, but I think Bogey is better suited to the sixth-man role. Either way, Atlanta doesn't have a lot of guard depth, especially with Kobe Bufkin hurt again, so after two years of the New Orleans refusing to play Daniels significant minutes, he's going to finally get his chance to prove he's a good NBA player. I am here for it. I'm very high on Daniels. He's really great defensively, his two-point field goal percentage improved a lot last season, and I think he was yo-yo'd in and out of the lineup too often to say that he definitively can't shoot three's. I think the Pelicans are going to regret the Murray-Daniels trade, and I think they're going to regret it almost immediately.
Tyrese Haliburton
Tyrese Haliburton was well on his way to an All-NBA first team selection when he got hurt last season. He would make third team, and in my opinion, the Pacers gave the Celtics their best series in the playoffs. That series was very nearly tied at two games apiece instead of being a sweep. Now, he'll get a full season with Pascal Siakam, and get Benedict Mathurin back healthy. I think the Pacers are firmly in play for the three seed in the East, and maybe even the two seed, because teams just don't like playing them. They play fast all the time, and with Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, and T.J. McConnell, they are a terror for even great defenses. There's just a lot of nights where opposing teams aren't going to want to deal with that.
The intriguing question comes on the other side – can Haliburton become a passable on-ball defender? He's pretty good at jumping passing lanes, but in the playoffs, he got picked on relentlessly in pick and roll. He doesn't have to become an elite defender, but he does need to become a good enough defender to not get roasted over and over. At 6'5" with long arms, he's perfectly capable of becoming that guy. Haliburton is not Stephen Curry, but the parallel is there – once Curry got more serious about defense, the Warriors started winning championships.
Two years ago, I scoffed at the notion that the Pacers won the Haliburton-Sabonis trade. I've come around. Haliburton proved he's the real deal last year. I don't care who was hurt on the Knicks, it's hard to win a Game 7 in MSG. Haliburton led them to it – he shot 10-for-17 from the field – and talked shit to Knicks fans while doing it. I couldn't possibly love that more.
Ausar Thompson
I'm keeping my stock. If you're sensing a theme in this piece, it's three-point shooting. Thompson may have had the most unique shooting season ever last season. When I did a search for players who played at least 1,500 minutes in a single season and attempted at least 100 three pointers, with an overall FG% of at least .480 and a 3-point percentage of .200 or worse, there was just one name – Ausar Thompson. Last season, Thompson was essentially a center in a small forward's body. If the Pistons figure out how to either maximize his strengths or teach him how to shoot three's, he could be a devastating player. Either way, I've got the popcorn ready.
Brandon Miller
We are all rightly focused on the ascension of Victor Wembanyama. But let's not sleep on the possibility of Brandon Miller making a big year two jump. He has all the tools, and now with Charles Lee, he also has a good coach. If LaMelo Ball is healthy and plays like an adult, and if Mark Williams is healthy, and if, and if, and if...look, there's a lot of things that have to go right for Charlotte to become a respectable team. But the biggest will be Miller's development. He really came on in April after having faded a little in the second half. Was that because no one cared about the Hornets at that point, or was that because he was putting things together?
Lonzo Ball
Right when he was putting it all together, Lonzo Ball got hurt. He has missed the last two and a half seasons, having not played since Jan. 14, 2022. Now, he is seemingly ready to play again. Just getting back on the court in an NBA game would be a massive, massive victory. The only player I can remember having this much injury difficulty is Shaun Livington, and Livingston didn't miss as much time as Ball has. If he is even remotely close to the guy he was...who knows, maybe the Bulls can be interesting this season. But I am not worried about that, because even if he's great I assume the Bulls will commit some other kind of self-inflicted wound to keep them from contention. I just want to see this dude suit up again. It would be the best feel-good story of the season. Fingers crossed.
Other Players Considered
Jaylen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Marvin Bagley III