Goeiedag, enchantée and welcome to this week's episode of Eight 2 Four presents: All-NBA Team of the Week. Three teams have crossed the halfway mark, the Bucks, the Grizzlies and the Kings. That means the trade deadline and All-Star weekend can’t be too far away. The first results for the All-Star voting have been released, and there are very few surprises this year. I sort of expected Ben Simmons on this list, as a joke, but obviously fans around the league are just as annoyed at the situation as Philly fans are. Steph Curry is leading all votes, definitely no surprise there, before KD, Giannis and LeBron. This week we’re focusing our attention on the 5 teams with the biggest current winning streaks in the league and the players that helped put them in place. Get ready for your All-NBA Team of the Week!
PICK #1
Our first pick of the week is Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs had a difficult start to the season. Luka, their absolute superstar, didn’t look great. It seems like he took some time to decompress after another tough loss against the Clippers in the Playoffs and a fantastic Olympic campaign with Slovenia, only just missing out on a medal after losing the Bronze Medal game against an incredible Patty Mills and Australia. Luka seemed out of shape and unfortunately, the Mavs struggle if Luka is not playing well or at all. This week though, he finally seems to have turned the corner. He averaged 20 points per game, 8 rebounds and 11 assists in his last 3 games and sparked a 5-game winning streak for Dallas. But he is now listed as questionable again and could be missing some games.
The Mavs are 6 and 9 in the games Luka had to sit out so far this season. Not a great record for a franchise that wants to be an outsider for the NBA Championship. We all know about the rumblings in the front office over the offseason, with GM Donnie Nelson and Coach Carlisle leaving after internal struggles with Bob Voulgaris who had the ear of owner Mark Cuban. Instead of surrounding Luka with great role players, Cuban had to spend the summer looking for a new coach, Jason Kidd, and GM, Nico Harrison. I had my doubts about Kidd but he seems to be managing this roster quite well lately. Harrison is heading for his first big test with the trade deadline coming up. The Mavs have to make a move. This roster is way too reliant on Doncic, especially at the end of games. Those 9 games they lost without Doncic, all of those were single digit losses, lost in the final few minutes of the game..
It is clear that they need someone else they can count on at the end of games. Ideally, KP is that guy, and he has been playing pretty well this season, but he is not available often enough. He has already missed 13 games himself this season, and being in Health and Safety protocols right now, he’s not going to be around for another while. But the main problem the Mavs have is that they need an upgrade on every position. Yes, Tim Hardaway Jr is a good player, Jalen Brunson has been fantastic so far this season and Maxi Kleber has been playing well. But these are not the guys who are winning you games. And the players Dallas can or wants to move are not making enough money to bring back a great player. Harrison has been handed quite a challenge, and I think that they will just ride this season out, see where the plane lands and take another shot at it next season. But I’d love to see Luka getting out of the first round this season!
PICK #2
Our second pick of the week is Seth Curry of the Philadelphia 76ers. Watching the Sixers play without Ben Simmons is still strange, and it took them a very long time to work it out themselves. But coming off a 6-game winning streak, and Joel Embiid putting up better numbers than last season, when he was strongly considered for MVP, the Sixers have reclaimed their spot in the top 6 and are only a game and a half behind home court advantage. Without Simmons in the line-up, Embiid is playing more minutes than usual and taking on more of a facilitator role. Before this season he averaged less than 3 assists per game, he is handing out more than 4 dimes a game this season. And one of the players who is taking advantage? You guessed it, Seth Curry.
Obviously, the Simmons-minutes would have to be divided around the starters since the front office hasn’t found a trade yet, and the younger Curry brother is the one making the most of it. The extra minutes mean that he gets to take extra shots and surprisingly, those are not really coming from behind the arc. In fact, his 3-point shooting percentage is the lowest it has been in his career, and yet he is scoring a lot more than in previous seasons. Seth has discovered the mid-range, where is making a lot of pull-up shots off the dribble. Alongside Tyrese Maxey, who is also having a break-out season, Seth is one of the revelations in Philly.
The Sixers have won their last 6 games, granted only Brooklyn was a real test in those games, and with the Rockets, Hornets and the Celtics in disarray, the Sixers could be hunting for a ten-game winning streak when they go down to Miami. Other than Miami, the only other difficult teams they play this month are the Lakers and the Grizzlies. By the end of January, the Sixers could be right back where they belong, in the top 3. And they still have the Ben Simmons card to play. If GM Daryl Morey can swallow his pride a little, and settle for a bunch of role players for Simmons, this team could become a true nightmare for the likes of Milwaukee and Brooklyn during the postseason.
PICK #3
Our third pick of the week is DeMar DeRozan of the Chicago Bulls. Right now, the Bulls are the best team in the East and DeRozan is the best player on the Bulls. That makes him the best player in the Eastern Conference, right? It’s not quite as simple as that but we can say that DeRozan is back. His numbers are very similar to his best season in Toronto, the year before he was traded, the best year in his career. He is playing as if he has something to prove, and quite frankly, I believe he has. The league had forgotten about DeMar while he was in San Antonio. Nobody cared anymore and worse, they said he was washed. This is his chance to show everyone that he is not finished yet. And by banking 2 game-winning buzzer-beaters 2 games in row, he’s definitely doing that.
Alongside him we see 3 other players flourish: Zach Lavine is having an all-time season, Nikola Vucevic is proving that he can be a winning player on a winning team and Lonzo Ball is slowly becoming the player his dad predicted he could be. And then you have the bench unit, led by Caruso, Coby White and rookie Ayo Dosunmu. There is so much to be excited about on this Bulls roster. It is incredible how this team went from a lottery team to the number 1 in the East in only a few months. Vuc was traded on the deadline and everyone else was added during the offseason. Some very big moves from the Chicago front office to convince Zach Lavine to stay. At this point, you’d expect those moves to pay off.
But Lavine hasn’t decided yet what he wants to do next season. Either way, the current roster is giving fans a lot of joy around the league. DeRozan is leading all guards in the East after the first results of All-Star voting came back. In fact, he is the second most popular guard in the league right now, after Curry. For someone who has been branded as bland or even boring for most of his career, that’s quite an accomplishment. DeRozan is not boring, not even if he tried. His style of play fits this new Bulls team, it even reminds me of a certain someone back in the day, but let’s not go that far just yet. If this roster can make Chicago forget about Derrick Rose and the 2010-2011 Bulls, they have done their job perfectly.
PICK #4
Our fourth pick of the week is Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors. It has taken a while but we are finally starting to see the same Pascal who was causing headaches for opposing teams alongside Kawhi Leonard. That’s pretty much the same amount it took Klay Thompson to return from his injury. Obviously, the Raptors have had a lot more joy from Siakam in that time than Golden State had waiting on Klay, but it is very hard to imagine it took Siakam such a long time to get back to the level he was on then. He wasn’t really injured but the bubble season, and the year in Tampa must have really messed with his mental state. Now that the Raptors are back in Toronto, Siakam is slowly growing back into the guy he can be. And that is exactly what the Raptors needed.
On the back of Siakam the Raptors are on a 5-game winning streak. But obviously, he is not doing it on his own. Fred Van Vleet is stepping up and banking 3’s, he is averaging over 30 points over these 5 games, leading the Raptors into battle. Teams around the league are worried about coming to Canada, and it shows on the court. Teams are worried about bringing their best players to Toronto, so the Raptors get to play worse versions of each team. But you still need to beat them and that is exactly what this Raptors team is doing. Besides, isn’t it time that the Raptors have an advantage over other teams instead of them making all the sacrifices?
Their winning streak has given them a bit of breathing room in the standings, climbing up to the 7th spot. Making it into the top 6 will be hard, especially because the East is so good across the middle. But this team should comfortably finish in the Play-In games. And who knows? If President of Basketball Operations Masai Ujiri feels like he needs to shake things up, he has a few pieces available to make some trades. But don’t expect a win-now move. No, technically, this Raptors team is still in full rebuild so they are still looking for pieces to put around Scottie Barnes. And looking at how strong he is already, this franchise has a bright future if nothing happens to him.
PICK #5
Our fifth pick of the week is Steven Adams of the Memphis Grizzlies. Aquaman is not the best player on this Grizzlies roster, especially not after the week Ja Morant and Desmond Bane had, but he deserves a lot of credit for the way this team has been playing, basically all season. He is so much more versatile than Jonas Valanciunas, who is a great scorer and rebounder and proving that over in New Orleans, but Adams brings a lot more offensive possibilities to the table for the players around him with his screening and passing. Having him on the court makes life easy for Ja, Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr.
This Grizzlies team has to be my favourite team in the league right now. I love watching them battle for every possession, from the first second to the last. And what makes it really special is that they are not underestimated anymore by the other teams. Last season, teams wouldn’t try as hard when playing Memphis, expecting a fairly easy win. But that is different this season. Teams know what this roster is capable of and are preparing for them. And yet, the Grizzlies are the fifth best team in the entire league. Looking at the ladder across the league, they sit behind the Jazz and just in front of Brooklyn. A team they quite comfortably beat by double digits this week, a team that includes one of the frontrunners for this years’ MVP, Kevin Durant.
This Grizzlies roster is the best roster they have had since 2013, when the Grizzlies went to the Conference Finals, that team included Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol and Mike Conley. I’m not saying that this team will go to the Conference Finals themselves this year, no, they are clearly just running ahead of schedule. If they can hold on to home court advantage, and that is a real if once the Lakers, the Mavs, the Clippers and even the Nuggets could catch a break this season, but if they can hold on to home court, they can start experiencing the Playoffs for what they really are, maybe even advance to the second round. Whatever they can achieve now is a learning experience for when it really counts, a few years from now.
This is our All-NBA team of the Week. Please share our podcast and give us 5 stars. If you have any questions, you can contact the show on eight2fouroffice@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, ballers out!
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