Luka's on an all-time heater, LeBron punches Father Time in the mouth, Jokic is better than ever and more
A helluva season so far in the NBA.
Happy New Year! Here’s everything that’s happened in the NBA the past four days. Well, almost everything. Email platform surely can’t handle this volume of basketball, so click the headline to open in a browser or use the Substack app to get the full enchilada.
Oh, and hey … we have a new logo!
Inspired by Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates. Created by my illustrator wife (we’re working on getting a website going).
Drop a comment if you’d buy a coffee mug or sticker with the logo on it.
Let’s basketball.
Your Early Dunk of the Year Candidates
You may notice that I have been calling out Dunk of the Year candidates regularly in the newsletter this season. That’s because I’m tracking them all so that we, GMIB, can award the actual Dunk of the Year at the end of the season.
I’m going to keep adding them to this running list until the playoffs end.
Then we’ll do some sort of voting or bracket to determine a champion. So many good nominees already. Even if the NBA player base commits to only perform finger rolls and fundamental lay-ups off the window for the rest of the season, we should be in good shape.
Scores
THURSDAY
Cavaliers 126, Pacers 135 — This is incredible. Tyrese Haliburton’s dad tells Buddy Hield to stop dribbling and just shoot the ball. Buddy gets the tip and shoots immediately. It’s the fastest bucket in a game in NBA history.
Tyrese Haliburton's Dad to Buddy Hield: "Shoot the ball, stop dribbling."
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) 12:43 PM ∙ Dec 30, 2022
Buddy: Catches the opening tip and knocks down a three! Fastest 3-pointer in the play-by-play era.
(Via @Pacers)
Clippers 110, Celtics 116 — Two really good teams playing at a high level. This could very well be a Finals preview.
Grizzlies 119, Raptors 106 — The Raptors schemed to try to take Ja Morant out of the offense, so he racked up 17 assists, including multiple alley-oops of at least 30 feet of airborne distance.
FRIDAY
Wizards 119, Magic 110 — The NBA suspended so many Magic players for leaving the bench in the Mo Wagner-Killian Hayes scuffle (eight) that the league had to stagger the suspensions so that Orlando didn’t have to forfeit this game.
Lakers 130, Hawks 121 — Incredible stuff from LeBron on his 38th birthday: 47-10-9 in a win with lots of family in the building.
A report came out after this game that Nate McMillan has contemplated resigning as the Hawks’ coach. He’s denying it.
