Around the Arc: First Week of the Season

Hi, hello, and welcome to your weekly dose of basketball, the Around the Arc. Each week you will find anything that I have found interesting during the week. This will include a discussion of any breaking news, film breakdown, and literally any other random things that made me go oh wow! At the end of each piece, you will have the Around the League section where I try to highlight the top content I have read, watched, or listened to.

We have had five days of basketball so far and it has been one hell of a week. It’s only been a week and we already had players go for 40 plus, 25 points in a quarter, and blowing out the defending champs.

I know, I know it’s only been around three games, but everyone overreacts at this point of the season. At the time of writing this, the Los Angeles Lakers just beat the Memphis Grizzlies in a close game, but before this game, they haven’t won a single game since the playoffs.

This tweet is kinda funny. LeBron James needs shooters around him. That has been known for the course of his career, so to see that they have this bad spacing is funny.

What stood out the most is Russell Westbrook. He was their biggest addition in the off-season and is not playing like one. The game against the Golden State Warriors was bad. He finished with 8 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists on 4–13 shooting — he’s 1–11 from deep so far in the season.

And the stats don’t tell the whole story. He wasn’t good when it comes to off-ball, his defense wasn’t that good, and bad shot selection — taking way too many shots early in the shot clock.

Do you know what his true shooting percentage is right now? 37.3%

What’s more concerning is his finishing at the rim. He is shooting 50.0% in the restricted area.

Another surprising stat is so far only 13.3% of his shots are assisted. This will have to change and it most likely will with time, but as of now, the concerns are worrying.

But it hasn’t been all that bad. Although a very, very limited sample size, James has been a damn shooter — going 14–29 from deep in three games.

I’m still a believer in the Lakers, but most of it is blind faith in James. He wasn’t healthy last season, nor did he have enough help that was also fully healthy. We must be forgetting that just over a year ago, he was winning FMVP, then following that with being an MVP candidate before the injury.

There are a lot of new pieces and it will take time for everyone to know their role, and chemistry to build, and get everyone on the same page on both ends of the floor.

Curry is Simply Ridiculous

Is it fair to say Stephen Curry is the best player in the world? I know everyone wants to say Kevin Durant or Giannis Antetokounmpo, for good reasons, but what Curry is doing is just simply too amazing.

He is continuing exactly where he left off last year. He struggled in the first game of the season, yet he still had a triple-double and got the win against the Lakers. It didn’t take long to get back into rhythm, though.

Against the Los Angeles Clippers, he erupted for 45 points, 25 of them came in the first quarter where he didn’t miss!!!

Look at the way he got those points in a number of different ways.

In the first clip, he fakes to set a screen away from the ball, but then quickly changed his plan and cuts right in for an easy pass from Draymond Green to get the layup. That’s what makes Curry so dangerous — on JJ Redick podcast, they’ve discussed who is the hardest to guard and the consensus was that Kevin Durant and Curry are 1A and 1B.

The reason for that is Curry is hella dangerous when he has the ball with his handles, his ability to get the shot off around the perimeter, pull-up from 30, or split the defense and finish at the rim. But then he gets more dangerous once he passes the ball — that is the difference between him and other great offensive stars.

In the second clip, he gets a screen, quick crossover to pull up from mid-range. Or he can go one-on-one and step back from 3. Or he can find his way to the rim.

Just came across this tweet and it’s just so stupidly good.

Curry might just play around and be right up there in the MVP conversation and possibly win it.

The NBA 75th Anniversary

It’s amazing to see the NBA hit this milestone. What this milestone meant was the NBA released a new top 75 players in the history of the game.

25 years ago, the league released the top 50 greatest players of all time, and this time, 25 players were added. But like with any other lists, there are snubs, controversial picks, and big surprises — although it would have been great entertainment, it was a good idea that they didn’t rank those players in order.

We had 11 current players added to the top 75:

• Damian Lillard
• Giannis Anntetokoumpo
• Kevin Durant
• Carmelo Anthony
• James Harden
• LeBron James
• Chris Paul
• Russell Westbrook
• Stephen Curry
• Anthony Davis
• Kawhi Leonard

There is one player that is missing but is still playing. Dwight Howard.

That was the biggest snub and for good reason. Howard is an 8-time All-Star, 8-time All-NBA (5-time first team), 5-time All-Defensive (4-time first team), and 3 straight DPOY. He’s been a top-5 MVP candidate four times and a runner-up in 2011.

In his time in Orlando since his first All-Star appearance, he had averaged 21.5 points, 14.6 rebounds, 1.7 assists, and 2.6 blocks on 61.0% true shooting.

People want to say his peak was too little and the second half of his career was entirely different, but how is 5 All-NBA first team too short?

Another argument that arose was the fact that there seems to be biased towards the older generation of players. And I understand that. JJ Redick made a good point on his latest podcast — there is no way a player like Dolph Schayes is better than current-era stars, but they have that historical context.

The older era is always going to get love despite current stars being better basketball players, but that’s okay.

When it comes to making these lists, I don’t think it is simply who’s a better basket player or who has more impact — it’s about everything else, the influence, on and off-court impact.

Originally published at https://www.simplyballin.com.