My All-Star Fix and Other League Notes
The All-Star Game is going to have a new format this year. I don't mind it, but I don't think it's going to work the way the league wants it to. They'll have four teams of eight players playing a tournament, with one of them being made up of the Rising Stars. It's the right idea, but I think the wrong application. No one votes for the Rising Stars, and some of those teams are truly awful.
What I would have done is excise the Rising Stars, and just have two games, creating a situation where one of the three mini All-Star teams gets a bye. You'd still have teams of eight. How do you figure who gets a bye? By tenure, of course. Whether you want to do it by guys with the most times on the All-Star team, or by age, I think you'd create something really compelling. And as an added bonus, guys like LeBron James wouldn't need to play heavy minutes. Here's a mockup of how this would look with this year's prospective All-Stars:
You could quibble with this a little if you like. Maybe you think Devin Booker or Alperen Sengun or Derrick White or LaMelo Ball or Jalen Williams should be an All-Star. But this is pretty much how the All-Star team is going to look. The only way the eight oldest guys or most All-Star tenured guys in the above chart is if everyone decides they still hate James Harden or if guys like Kevin Durant or Stephen Curry miss a bunch more games, which I doubt.
The reason everyone loved the Olympics was because it was the three old guys doing it together. Can you honestly imagine the dynamic here? A frontcourt of LeBron, Giannis, and AD, with Durant and Curry at guard? And Harden, Irving, and Lillard coming off the bench? Or Durant coming off the bench with one of the other three diming out everyone? LeBron to Giannis alley-oops?
I think this would be incredibly compelling. One of the most famous moments is young Kobe Bryant refusing to defer to the older All-Stars. This would be the same dynamic. How many people know who Jalen Johnson is? How many would know who he is if he throws a dunk down over LeBron? And as an added bonus, having the most tenured/oldest players on one team gives the mini-game format some structure. And I don't think there's any question that people would rather watch this than the Rising Stars.
Move the Pelicans to Las Vegas
The NBA has a problem. They want to have two expansion teams, and three potentially great cities for expansion – Las Vegas, Mexico City, and Seattle. The solution is to give expansion franchises to Mexico City and Seattle (and then confer the Supersonics' history on that expansion franchise) and move New Orleans to Las Vegas.
The Benson's don't really deserve to own an NBA team. They have never invested heavily in the Pelicans, and from a team history standpoint, the Pelicans are the clear choice to move. This is only the franchise's 23rd season, and in the prior 22, they have only won a two playoff series. They have never reached the Conference Finals. There is legitimately not much history to hang on to here, and from a population standpoint, it's not even close. Vegas has nearly double the population of New Orleans, and the population of Vegas is growing while New Orleans' is declining. New Orleans, which ranks 53rd in population by city, also doesn't make the top 50 in North American metropolitan statistical area either. Mexico City, on the other hand, ranks first. And Mexico City is likely to be the odd city out if no team moves.
With apologies to the good people of New Orleans, there just isn't much justification for the NBA to have a team there, and moving them to Las Vegas would be a best-case scenario for the league.
Taking Out the Sinister Six
Now that the season is more than one third complete, we can see that there are six teams clearly at the bottom of the league – Charlotte, Toronto, Washington, Portland, Utah, and New Orleans. I feel slightly bad about putting Portland in this group, but three of their wins did come against New Orleans and Utah. These are the six teams that look to be trying to Capture the (Cooper) Flagg. Brooklyn has long been thought to be part of that group, and may drop into this group in time, but for now, there's a clear line of demarcation between them and Charlotte, Toronto, and Washington.
One thing that I think helps clarify which of the other 24 teams are good or not is to see what their record is if you remove the games against these sinister six teams. (No, they're not really sinister for being bad/tanking, but I love the name because of Spider-Man, so that's what I'm going with).
A few things:
- The top of the league here tracks pretty well (almost identically, in fact) with the top of the league overall. Though it is interesting that the only team that has played 10 games against the Sinister Six is Cleveland.
- While things could get a lot harder for Orlando in terms of how many of their key players are hurt, they have played a league-low four games against the Sinister Six. The only other of these 24 teams that has played just four games against them is Brooklyn. Which is another reason why Brooklyn still may not sink into this group.
- My continued belief that the Golden State Warriors are not good bears out here. They're 6-0 against the Sinister Six and 9-15 against everyone else. It's not quite as severe for the Lakers (6-0 and 11-13) but it's certainly a warning sign.
- I'm super ready for the Spurs to be a play-in team, but they're 8-1 against the Sinister Six and 8-14 against everyone else. Maybe that won't matter as they continue to find a rhythm together, but maybe we need to take a beat before we get too excited about seeing Victor Wembanyama in the playoffs.
- I'm not sure if it should give me more or less confidence in Minnesota that they've been pretty decent against everyone else but just 3-3 against the Sinister Six. Honestly, they're just such a confounding team.
- The only two teams to play a Sinister Six team four times are the Spurs (3-1 vs. Utah) and Philadelphia (4-0 vs. Charlotte).
Fun With Trades
It's going to be harder for NBA trades to happen this season, but that's not going to stop me from having fun with the trade machine. One trade that either works or is close enough to working to talk about is:
- Dallas gets: Anthony Davis, Jalen Hood-Schifino
- Lakers get: Klay Thompson, PJ Washington, Maxi Kleber, Dereck Lively II, and however many draft picks necessary
The Lakers get to fully transition into their rightful "LeBron sunset" mode while reloading with a guy who could be Anthony Davis in a couple of years, plus multiple picks. Thompson gets the homecoming he nearly had this offseason, and Washington is a quality player. The Lakers start LeBron, Lively, Thompson, Hachimura, and Reaves. Respectable. The Mavericks, on the other hand, could be a super team. This would be their core rotation after the deal:
- Starters: Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Naji Marshall, Quentin Grimes
- Bench: Daniel Gafford, Dante Exum, Spencer Dinwiddie
- Deep Bench: Jaden Hardy, Dwight Powell, Olivier-Maxence Prosper
Is that enough depth for the Mavericks to win it all? Or at least the West? I think the West, definitely. Would it be enough to beat Cleveland or Boston? I don't know, but I'd love to watch either series. Ideally, you'd want a better eighth man than Dinwiddie or Hardy, but that top seven is pretty hard to argue against.
Here's another one:
- Atlanta gets: Robert Williams III
- Portland gets: Larry Nance Jr.
Nance is great, and is doing great when Atlanta plays him. But I just want to see Rob catching lobs and swatting shots in the paint again, and Atlanta would be the perfect place for him. Clint Capela should only be playing like 10-15 minutes a night, and I'm sorry, but Onyeka Okongwu is not a center, and is also not good at defense. Williams would, when healthy, immediately be Altanta's best center. It'd be a low-level gamble for Atlanta, and given that Nance's contract is up after this season and Williams still has one more season, the added flexibility may be enough for Portland that Atlanta would only have to attach a second-round pick or a highly-protected-and-unlikely-to-convey first-round pick.