10 big observations from the first 2 weeks of the NBA season

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Though NBA personnel will tell you we’re still a long way from having a sample large enough to truly evaluate teams, players, and trends, an off day Nov. 7 at the two-week mark of the new season presented a great opportunity to take stock of things.

We have another five-to-seven months to figure out what’s real and what’s a mirage, but for now, let’s have some fun. Below are 10 big observations from the first two weeks of the season.

Defending champs are a well-oiled machine

There’s no championship hangover in Denver, where the Nuggets have throttled opponents by an average of 10.9 points per game while winning seven of their first eight.

With Nikola Jokic at the center of it all, and every player orbiting around him playing his role perfectly, the Nuggets have reached a level of basketball mastery that every team aspires to. The combination of Jokic’s brilliance, a selfless supporting cast, and continuity over the years has Denver two steps ahead of opponents at every turn. Every Nuggets player knows where to be, where the ball should be, where it’s going next, and how the other four players on the court will react in kind.

Even Bruce Brown’s departure has barely been felt, with young reserves Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and 29th overall pick Julian Strawther filling in admirably off the bench.

The only bad news is Jamal Murray’s hamstring injury, which could derail momentum. Then again, in Denver’s first game without the Canadian, the Nuggets turned a 20-point deficit into an 18-point victory while Jokic cruised to a 35-point triple-double. Ho-hum. – Joseph Casciaro

New-look Bucks lost their defensive identity

Nathaniel S. Butler / NBA / Getty Images

We knew Milwaukee was going to take a big step back defensively this season, especially after announcing that Malik Beasley would start alongside Damian Lillard in the backcourt. The Bucks were getting flimsy on the wing even before this offseason, and then they took a huge hit at the point of attack. Beasley, a minus defender his whole career, has been getting the toughest perimeter assignment every night.

The Bucks’ saving grace, in theory, is that they still have two of the world’s best rim-protectors and back-line helpers in Brook Lopez and Giannis Antetokounmpo providing a safety net behind that leaky perimeter. One problem, though: The scheme new coach Adrian Griffin had them running to begin the season often pulled those rim-protectors away from the basket while tasking their smallest and weakest help defenders with arduous rotations. Lopez was defending way higher up the floor than he’s used to, and never seemed entirely comfortable there. Behind him, nobody seemed quite sure of where they were supposed to be or what they were supposed to do.

No one suffered more from that confusion than Antetokounmpo. It was bizarre watching a five-time All-Defensive teamer and former Defensive Player of the Year regularly blow rotations and get manipulated into abandoning his help assignments to concede layups and dunks.

With the team languishing in the bottom three in defensive rating and allowing opponents to shoot over 80% at the rim (over 80%! At the rim! Against the Bucks!), Griffin wisely took his own players’ advice and reverted to a more conventional drop-back scheme. The results quickly improved. Lopez is back where he’s supposed to be – barricading the basket – while Lillard and Beasley have looked better (albeit still not good) in a role that asks them to do more on-ball chasing and less weak-side helping. Antetokounmpo still doesn’t look like himself, though he may be turning a corner.

But that isn’t a solution, as demonstrated when Brooklyn hung a 120.2 offensive rating on the Bucks on Monday night. Their drop coverages will still suffer from a lack of rear-view pressure, and they’re still going to be prone to blow-bys at the point of attack. Things aren’t much rosier on the wing, where a slowing Khris Middleton is on a tight minutes limit and Jae Crowder can no longer stay in front of anybody. Lopez, in his age-36 season, can only cover for so much.

That half-court scheme tweak also won’t fix the fact Milwaukee is getting absolutely shredded in the open floor, allowing both the highest frequency of transition possessions and highest scoring efficiency on those possessions of any defense in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. It’s a problem that started to show up last season as the team’s age and lack of athleticism became more evident.

They won’t be this bad all year, especially once Griffin realizes MarJon Beauchamp – the best and most athletic perimeter defender on the roster – needs to be starting over Beasley. But it’s clear that defense is going to be a weakness rather than a strength, and that puts a ton of pressure on the Bucks’ offense, which has some early kinks to iron out. – Joe Wolfond

Doncic, Mavs own crunch time

Perhaps it’s the full-time presence of Kyrie Irving, the timely shotmaking of Grant Williams, Luka Doncic’s shooting luck turning around, or a combination of all those things, but the Dallas Mavericks are finally thriving in crunch time.

Over the first five years of Doncic’s career, the Mavericks had a 103-110 record in games that were decided in the clutch (within five points in the final five minutes), with a 26-29 record in such games last season.

Though clutch performance is heavily influenced by randomness and luck, you’d also expect a team led by a player as dynamic as Doncic to tip the scales in their direction. After all, he’s supposed to be basketball’s version of a closer. Except that he really hasn’t been.

Though he’s already had enough game-winners and buzzer-beaters to fill a highlight reel and set social media abuzz, Doncic actually entered this season shooting under 44% in clutch minutes over his career, with his crunch-time efficiency dragged down by a wretched 38-of-166 (22.9%) mark from deep.

Part of the problem has simply been that Dallas’ Doncic-dependent offense was too predictable; there were too few weapons around him who could either help initiate the team’s attack, pull some of the defensive attention away from Doncic, or make opponents pay for swarming him. Dallas may have finally solved those problems.

The Mavs are already 6-0 in games that enter NBA-defined clutch territory. For his part, Doncic has scored 25 points on only 13 shooting possessions in crunch time, knocked down five of seven 3-point attempts, and handed out four assists without committing a turnover.

Also worth monitoring when it comes to the Mavs is the performance of rookie center Dereck Lively and the fact Dallas is playing faster. The team has never finished higher than 18th in pace in the Doncic era and it finished 28th in that department last season, but it’s up to 12th so far this year, adding nearly four (3.72) extra possessions per game. The Mavs are especially playing quicker after opponents’ made baskets. – Casciaro

CP3 fitting in and fitting out in Golden State

It wasn’t the most impactful offseason addition, but Chris Paul joining the Warriors was arguably the most interesting marriage (or potential clash) of player and team. How would Paul’s penchant for slowing the game down, reducing the risk, probing with his dribble, and running endless pick-and-rolls jive with Golden State’s fast, freewheeling, organic, unpredictable brand of basketball?

Pretty damn well, it turns out. Paul is thriving as the Warriors’ sixth man (a role he’s playing for the first time in his life), partly by adapting and partly by staying the same. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that such a cerebral player picked up the team’s offensive concepts in short order, but whenever Paul slots in alongside Steph Curry and the rest of the team’s starters, he looks like he’s been playing in Golden State’s system for years; he’s routinely getting off the ball early, relocating, making brilliant reads and extra passes, and generally playing within the flow.

When he’s out there captaining the reserves, Paul still looks very much like Paul – in all his fastidious, micromanaging glory. It may not produce a very Warriors-y aesthetic, but his responsible stewardship is allowing the team to survive while regularly trotting out five-man bench groups. Paul gives those lineups structure, as well some reliable go-to plays – mainly pick-and-pops with Dario Saric and pick-and-rolls with Gary Payton II, Jonathan Kuminga, or Trayce Jackson-Davis. It’s all working pretty well despite the fact Paul has lost most of his scoring juice and has shot 4-for-29 (13.8%) from 3-point range.

The balance isn’t always perfectly harmonious; Paul can tip into over-dribbling when he’s out there with starter-heavy groups and lapse into passivity when he’s leading the bench. But the net effect has been overwhelmingly positive so far because of his sound decision-making at both ends.

One of the biggest ways that decision-making has impacted things is ball security. The Warriors have long been notoriously loose with the ball (partly as a consequence of their style of play), but with Paul on the floor, they limit turnovers at a 90th percentile rate, per Cleaning the Glass. That’s led them to a top-10 turnover rate overall for literally the first time in the Steve Kerr era. In that 10-year span, they’ve only had one other season in which they even ranked above average. They were dead last a year ago, and 29th the year before that. Paul himself has an assist-to-turnover ratio of 10.3-to-1.

And here’s the most important thing: The Warriors have never figured out how to succeed without Curry on the court, not even when Kevin Durant was in the Bay. But through eight games this season, they’ve outscored opponents by 8.3 points per 100 possessions when Paul’s on the floor and Curry’s on the bench. They’re also at plus-21.8 per 100 – with a comical 131.3 offensive rating – when the two of them are on the floor together. – Wolfond

It’s MAXey time in Philly

The 76ers had to trade a (perpetually) disgruntled James Harden at some point after The Beard’s offseason request, but Tyrese Maxey’s star turn made it easier for Philadelphia to move Harden in exchange for future-minded assets rather than an immediate upgrade.

That’s because by passing the reins from Harden to Maxey, the Sixers already upgraded their outlook.

The two-man game between Harden and Joel Embiid helped the former win the assist crown and the latter win MVP while fueling the third-ranked offense last season. But Maxey’s skill set is arguably a better complement for Embiid. The 23-year-old’s combination of speed, limitless shooting range, and efficient playmaking pairs perfectly with Embiid’s plodding, inside-out game.

An attack built around Embiid is never going to operate at breakneck speed – nor should it – but with Maxey taking control of the offense, Philly’s gone from 24th in transition frequency last season to fifth so far this year.