2025-26 NBA Season Discussion

[Peregrine01]

This definitely isn’t going to last, but it’s pretty astounding to see that Jokic has a 78.6% FG% on two-point shots 10 games into the season, particularly since he’s a guy who doesn’t dunk a lot.

I think one day we’re going to view Jokic’s touch the same way we do Steph’s 3 point shooting. Just by far and away the best ever with no real competition for second.

We already do. Jokic had also been dealing with a nagging right wrist injury the last two seasons and his touch was still the greatest we've ever seen. Now apparently his wrist is feeling a lot better.

[ball_takes23]

This is a pretty general observation, but I feel like we're seeing a significant shift in the league this season. The stars are starting to age out, the younger players are now established stars, and there's plenty of up and coming players. And sure, that's a natural progression of the league decade to decade, but this season feels more unique. Only a few weeks in and so many teams look different.

With all that said, really enjoying the season so far and looking forward to seeing where we were at the halfway point. Right now my observation is a bit intangible, so maybe by then we'll be able to quantify it better. Meanwhile the Thunder look unstoppable despite no Jalen Williams and rotating through whichever role players are healthy that night.

Wemby right now isn't better than peak Gobert IMO. He looked like he turned a big corner offensively with his shot selection and approach but he's regressed back to old habits as the league has adjusted to him. Until he realizes his only effective spot on the court is the elbow, he will be a middling offensive player. For all the flash and hype, his offensive game is not good at all. SA has a lot of bogged down possessions when you watch them, and it's really based on him a lot of times.

he's got a lot of the same weaknesses on offense that KD does, both players kill against single coverage vs other bigs but are susceptible against smaller sturdier players and both struggle with passing out of double teams, and neither have great passing vision in general esp for their height where they should be able to see the whole floor. Houston's entire strategy against GS was basically to force their offense to run thru KD post-ups, it was by far their least efficient offense and was the best chance at beating them. similarly forcing the Spurs offense to run thru Wemby post-ups is a winning strategy, they are averaging 0.85 PPP which is in the bottom third among qualifying players

https://www.nba.com/stats/players/playtype-post-up?dir=D&sort=PPP

KD eventually became more efficient out of the post after GS by just becoming a midrange god but never really fixed the other weaknesses in his game

[Peregrine01]

Sheesh. I hate hyperbole but I really think we’re watching the best offensive player of all time right now. Let’s not take this for granted.

[frica]

Sheesh. I hate hyperbole but I really think we’re watching the best offensive player of all time right now. Let’s not take this for granted.

The advanced stats are getting more comical every game.

[parsnips33]

I think the path for Wemby is off-ball offensively. The fact that he's already a crazy lob threat, but can also run off screens for jumpshots outside just make him such a weapon.

[parsnips33]

This definitely isn’t going to last, but it’s pretty astounding to see that Jokic has a 78.6% FG% on two-point shots 10 games into the season, particularly since he’s a guy who doesn’t dunk a lot.

I think one day we’re going to view Jokic’s touch the same way we do Steph’s 3 point shooting. Just by far and away the best ever with no real competition for second.

It's why it was always crazy when people were acting like when the only case for him was a statistical one. Literally just watch him any night, a guy that big is not supposed to have hands that good

[Peregrine01]

The stuff leaking out now about Nico Harrison's talent evaluation is alarming but not all that surprising. How people like that get head roles on multibillion dollar franchises shows once again that it isn't competence that gets ahead but how well you can kiss ass.

[Doctor MJ]

The stuff leaking out now about Nico Harrison's talent evaluation is alarming but not all that surprising. How people like that get head roles on multibillion dollar franchises shows once again that it isn't competence that gets ahead but how well you can kiss ass.

So I do want to say: When I looked at the thing about Jokic & Jrue it seemed to be more a list of target priorities than it was about talent tiering, and that's not unreasonable.

That said:

1. I don't think Nico was a great scout.

2. It blows my mind that the Nike guy who f--ed up their relationship with Steph is the one who became an NBA GM. Talk about failing upward - and yeah, I kinda think the fact that Nico was a bit of a f-- up is probably part of why Cuban wanted him. He wanted someone who would be flawed enough that he wouldn't try to take control, and just didn't quite realize that how flawed someone is has little to do with how self-aware they are about their flaws.


3. I do think it's a reasonable concern to think that perhaps a Black American Nike exec underrates White Euros.

[Peregrine01]

The stuff leaking out now about Nico Harrison's talent evaluation is alarming but not all that surprising. How people like that get head roles on multibillion dollar franchises shows once again that it isn't competence that gets ahead but how well you can kiss ass.

So I do want to say: When I looked at the thing about Jokic & Jrue it seemed to be more a list of target priorities than it was about talent tiering, and that's not unreasonable.

That said:

1. I don't think Nico was a great scout.

2. It blows my mind that the Nike guy who f--ed up their relationship with Steph is the one who became an NBA GM. Talk about failing upward - and yeah, I kinda think the fact that Nico was a bit of a f-- up is probably part of why Cuban wanted him. He wanted someone who would be flawed enough that he wouldn't try to take control, and just didn't quite realize that how flawed someone is has little to do with how self-aware they are about their flaws.


3. I do think it's a reasonable concern to think that perhaps a Black American Nike exec underrates White Euros.

Didn't know that he was the central figure in Nike's mess up with Steph. It's consistent with his world view of a "winning player" is which isn't all that different from conventional biases.

Seems to me like he got really close to some important Nike people (namely Kobe and then later AD) which bolstered his profile and led him to the opportunities that he got. That this guy became the chief decision-maker for a professional team's roster because he was a key decision maker for who got on the roster for Nike (a marketing and sports apparel company) is befuddling.

[jalengreen]

Obviously Nico completely tanked his rep as GM in one clean swoop, but any conversion on his rise and fall shouldn't miss the fact that about one year ago, he had a great reputation! He was 2nd on this board's Executive of the Year voting. The relevant snippets from the four posters who had him on their ballot:

Massive turnaround with smart drafting and some unheralded midseason acquisitions that several would-be contenders could have obtained for themselves. Interested to see how the Mavericks build on this incredible chemistry next year.

Nico Harrison making the right moves, drafting Lively to the deadline deals to the Kyrie Re-Signing is huge.

Harrison did something remarkable, which is taking a solid but flawed team and adding two players mid-season to elevate them to contender status (not just the playoff run; also the end of the RS was brilliant for Dallas). Adding Washington and Gafford in the middle of the season, drafting Lively, and signing Exum and Jones Jr. as contributors – that worked out perfectly and warrants a ton of credit.

2nd spot to the other finalist. Approaching the award as I do does tend to make me focus on the teams who had elite success in the past year, and that’s an approach with some flaws, but it also makes it so that when a team really breaks through and I didn’t see it coming, I have a chance to give a mea culpa. Harrison’s plan, much to my surprise, really seems like it’s working both in terms of how to make the team fit, and how to make the players buy in.

And of course these weren't fringe opinions. I imagine most any sample of posters would have settled on Nico at #2 for such a vote.

That is to say, this story is more interesting than "weird, unorthodox hire unsurprisingly crashes and burns in epic fashion." It's more like "weird, unorthodox hire is surprisingly successful.. before promptly crashing and burning in epic fashion."

[Doctor MJ]

The stuff leaking out now about Nico Harrison's talent evaluation is alarming but not all that surprising. How people like that get head roles on multibillion dollar franchises shows once again that it isn't competence that gets ahead but how well you can kiss ass.

So I do want to say: When I looked at the thing about Jokic & Jrue it seemed to be more a list of target priorities than it was about talent tiering, and that's not unreasonable.

That said:

1. I don't think Nico was a great scout.

2. It blows my mind that the Nike guy who f--ed up their relationship with Steph is the one who became an NBA GM. Talk about failing upward - and yeah, I kinda think the fact that Nico was a bit of a f-- up is probably part of why Cuban wanted him. He wanted someone who would be flawed enough that he wouldn't try to take control, and just didn't quite realize that how flawed someone is has little to do with how self-aware they are about their flaws.


3. I do think it's a reasonable concern to think that perhaps a Black American Nike exec underrates White Euros.

Didn't know that he was the central figure in Nike's mess up with Steph. It's consistent with his world view of a "winning player" is which isn't all that different from conventional biases.

Seems to me like he got really close to some important Nike people (namely Kobe and then later AD) which bolstered his profile and led him to the opportunities that he got. That this guy became the chief decision-maker for a professional team's roster because he was a key decision maker for who got on the roster for Nike (a marketing and sports apparel company) is befuddling.

Yeah Nico seems like a smile & handshake schmoozer who got put into a Big Title position by someone (Cuban) who didn't actually intend for him to have the power of someone in that Big Title position, but then when that someone stopped being the boss, the Big Title allowed the schmoozer to convince the new boss he was the brains of the operation.

[Doctor MJ]

Obviously Nico completely tanked his rep as GM in one clean swoop, but any conversion on his rise and fall shouldn't miss the fact that about one year ago, he had a great reputation! He was 2nd on this board's Executive of the Year voting. The relevant snippets from the four posters who had him on their ballot:

Massive turnaround with smart drafting and some unheralded midseason acquisitions that several would-be contenders could have obtained for themselves. Interested to see how the Mavericks build on this incredible chemistry next year.

Nico Harrison making the right moves, drafting Lively to the deadline deals to the Kyrie Re-Signing is huge.

Harrison did something remarkable, which is taking a solid but flawed team and adding two players mid-season to elevate them to contender status (not just the playoff run; also the end of the RS was brilliant for Dallas). Adding Washington and Gafford in the middle of the season, drafting Lively, and signing Exum and Jones Jr. as contributors – that worked out perfectly and warrants a ton of credit.

2nd spot to the other finalist. Approaching the award as I do does tend to make me focus on the teams who had elite success in the past year, and that’s an approach with some flaws, but it also makes it so that when a team really breaks through and I didn’t see it coming, I have a chance to give a mea culpa. Harrison’s plan, much to my surprise, really seems like it’s working both in terms of how to make the team fit, and how to make the players buy in.

And of course these weren't fringe opinions. I imagine most any sample of posters would have settled on Nico at #2 for such a vote.

That is to say, this story is more interesting than "weird, unorthodox hire unsurprisingly crashes and burns in epic fashion." It's more like "weird, unorthodox hire is surprisingly successful.. before promptly crashing and burning in epic fashion."

Great post.

Part of why I get so frustrated with people doing the conspiracy stuff is that I think they're actively missing a great case study in how modest success can beget catastrophic failure, or "pride comes before the fall".

Nico made a series of moves - Kyrie/Lively/Gafford/Washington - that built better around Luka than Dallas had ever been able to do before, and seemed to display not only those Nike connections but an unexpectedly sharp sense of team fit - with that specific all-in on 48 minutes of rim runners. The latter wasn't really part of, what I'll call, the Cuban theory of Nico, and it made us stand up and take notice that Nico was apparently more than we expected.

And then, the thing.

Reflecting back on this now, I'll say:

1. My assessment of the likelihood of Nico having a grand vision of a team build has gone down considerably. Not directly because of the Luka trade, but because of the fact Nico clearly didn't see the issue with adding AD to said rim runners while diminishing the team's floor general bullpen something fierce. If he at all understood how a team worked, he'd have been looking to sell high on one (or both) Gafford & Lively, and get some serious guard play. This was true before they won the lottery, but then got Cooper, and it made it all the more so.

I think the most you could credit him with, then, is being able to execute moves to address specific issues with the current roster with some talent in the eye department (despite my criticisms of him of him in that department).

2. I think Nico's pretty clearly a case of someone who let his success go to his head in a spectacularly self-defeating way. He seemed to come to treat these trades like pieces of art, with the AD-for-Luka trade being an aspirational magnum opus for this stepping stone in his legendary journey.

3. The things Nico did & did not seem to consider - what he could see and what was in his blind spots - are really worth studying. I haven't done any kind of exhaustive study, but the way he didn't seem to even think all that hard about age when moving from Luka (age 25) to 31-32 (Kyrie; AD) was so strange. If you're going to re-build your roster around guys that age, you better do it ASAP, not saunter around as if the job is done. WTF? Did he think the team didn't need to re-tool at all?