Follow the bouncing ball
So many questions, stories expected in new season
And ... it’s back.
The NBA’s new season started Tuesday night with a pair of games; Kevin Durant and the Nets welcomed Durant’s former team in the Warriors, while the defending champion Lakers opened with the Clippers in the renewal of rivals whoshare a building.
For the first time since March, all 30 NBA teams are playing this week. Whenthe season resumed in July, only 22 teams went to the NBA bubble at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. So, for eight teams — the Warriors, Timberwolves, Hawks, Hornets, Knicks, Bulls, Pistons and Cavaliers — games will be played for the first time since March.
For others, it’s the first time since August. Others, the first time since September. And for the Lakers and Heat, who met in last season’s NBA Finals, the offseason only started in mid-October.
The league has had 30 teams since 2004, and on Monday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver suggested that it might be time to consider expansion once again. Extra teams would figure to mean extra revenue, and while nothing is imminent — really, it’s years away if it happens — Silver did say that it’s something under advisement.
“It’s an economic issue and competitive issue for us,” Silver said. “So, it’s one that we’ll continue to study, but we’re spending a little bit more time on it than we were pre-pandemic.”
For now and for the foreseeable future, though, the NBA is 30 teams. The first half of the season goes through March 4, the second half starts March 11 and runs through May 16, the play-in tournament goes from May 18 through May 21, the playoffs start May 22 and the last possible date for the NBA Finals is July 22.
All that is pandemic-permitting, of course. Everything is subject to change. But opening night, at least, arrived. Here’s some of what to know for this season:
MVP Giannis: Larry Bird, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain are the only players in NBA history to win three consecutive MVP awards.
The Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo has a chance this season to join their club.
The star from Greece — and proud owner of a newly signed supermax extension — is already the first two-time MVP hailing from Europe and joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James as the only players to win the award twice before turning 26.
LeBrons’s stats: LeBron James is about at the point where every game he plays creates a new entry in the NBA’s record book.
He enters this season with 995 consecutive regular-season games with at least 10 points scored, the longest such run in NBA history and in position to reach the 1,000 doubledigit games in a row milestone when the Lakers play on the road against the Spurs on Dec. 30 — which just happens to be James’ 36th birthday.
The last time James didn’t have at least 10 points in a regular-season game was Jan. 5, 2007, when he was held to eight against the Bucks in Milwaukee.
Other milestones within reach for James this season: He’s six triple-doubles shy of 100; 654 assists from 10,000; 759 points away from 35,000; and 1,448 minutes from 50,000.
Welcome back: Stephen Curry played in only five games last season with the Warriors, part of the long list of injured players that derailed any chance for the team.
Curry returns this season and likely won’t need long to move into No. 2 on the all-time 3-pointers made list. He enters with 2,495, just 65 away from Reggie Miller’s total of 2,560.
Ray Allen holds the all-time mark of 2,973 makes from 3-point range. At Curry’s current career pace of 3.6 made 3’s per game, he would need 134 more games to catch Allen — which means the record could be his in the latter stages of the 2021-22 season.
Wall’s return: The Rockets’ John Wall is scheduled to return to the court Wednesday, in what will be his first game since Dec. 26, 2018.
To put in context how much time he’s missed while recovering from heel and Achilles injuries: Danny Green has appeared in a league-high 158 games since Wall’s last appearance, 114 of them wins; Rockets guard James Harden has scored 4,887 points since Wall’s last game; Nikola Jokic has handed out 1,085 assists; and Antetokounmpo has grabbed 1,664 rebounds.
All or nothing: The Heat are either going back to the NBA Finals or missing the playoffs entirely.
That is, if the trend from the last seven seasons holds true.
Starting with the Spurs’ loss in the 2013 finals, teams that lost the title series either go back to it the following year or miss the postseason. Of the last seven runners-up: The Spurs won the 2014 title, the Heat missed the 2015 playoffs, the Cavs wonthe title in 2016, the Warriors won the title in 2017, the Cavs lost the finals in 2018 and missed the playoffs in 2019, and the Warriors missed the playoffs last season.