NBA Stock Watch: Giannis Trade Rumors, Cavs as Contenders, and More

Getty/AP/Ringer Illustration Which early season trends are we buying or selling? We examine the Bucks' brutal start, the Cavs' perfect one, the Lakers' legitimacy, and two All-Stars trying to make the leap. We're now a few weeks into the NBA season. Sample sizes still aren't big enough to provide too many firm conclusions—and injuries to Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, Aaron Gordon, Chet Holmgren, Kevin Durant, Paolo Banchero, Tyrese Maxey, and a few others have cast a pall over the action—but enough time has passed to warrant a good old-fashioned stock watch. Here are a few developments around the league that I'm buying and selling, and a few I need more time to contemplate. Buy: Realistic Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade Rumors Not even two minutes into the second half of Sunday's meltdown loss, Doc Rivers called a timeout to stem a Celtics run. The Bucks then came out of the huddle and executed a play that was pedestrian enough to encapsulate everything wrong with this team right now: The result was bad but the process was worse. Not only did the possession end with a contested elbow fadeaway from Giannis Antetokounmpo (someone who's never been particularly good at hitting contested elbow fadeaways), but it featured almost zero movement. Damian Lillard runs to the corner and stands still while Andre Jackson Jr. cuts to the dunker spot. There's no motion on the weak side and the spacing is bad. This is only one play, but it's not an isolated incident. There's something about how unimaginative it was, how little trust and energy were seen. It felt fatalistic, and reinforced an idea that's crossed my mind while watching Milwaukee play: Right now Giannis kinda looks like a "good stats, bad team" guy. That's not who he is, of course. He's a two-time MVP and a champion. But the mere thought should be viewed as a sin that almost everyone in the Bucks organization (Giannis included) is held accountable for. He's averaging an efficient 31 points, 12 boards, and five assists per game. All of it's necessary on an old, injured roster that was manifested by the constant pressure Antetokounmpo has put on Milwaukee's front office. The Bucks are 2-8 and rank 28th in assist rate, with an offense that isn't generating quality shots and a defense that's exposed at the point of attack. On the court, in between spells of pure dominance, Antetokounmpo occasionally makes plays that aren't necessarily conducive to winning basketball. They aren't selfish, per se, but carry the weight of a man who feels overburdened enough to think he must conquer the world on his own. Here he is driving into two of Boston's largest defenders while Jackson stands wide open behind the 3-point line: I understand the in-game context here. I know Giannis is hyperefficient. But during the regular season, superstars have a responsibility to instill confidence in their teammates. It's a months-long process. This does the exact opposite. So does the isolation play later on that can be seen below. A shot-ready Taurean Prince slides into Antetokounmpo's sight line, but never gets his attention: After losing to the Celtics, the Bucks now have the second-worst record in the league. On the bright side, they've suffered through a demanding, road-heavy schedule without Khris Middleton—a truly critical component—and six of their next seven games are at home against some beatable teams. It's still so early; their hole is shallow and the Eastern Conference is putrid. (The 5-5 Pacers currently sit in third place.) Big picture, though, it's not about being respectable and winning a series or two. Antetokounmpo wants to contend for a championship. The Bucks are not close to doing that as presently constructed. That doesn't mean they can't get there in a few months, but every loss makes divorce seem more realistic and rational. Where does that leave everybody? Milwaukee has won only one playoff series since its title run in 2021, and through that disappointment Antetokounmpo has helped accelerate the team's slide toward irrelevance by putting great demands on his coaches and the front office. In terms of trade value, despite turning 30 in December, on a contract that expires in 2027, Giannis's is extravagant. Any team that trades for him must be prepared to break its bank, shorten its runway, and widen its expectations. That list of suitors is theoretically the entire league but realistically shorter than you think. The Heat probably don't have what it takes to get him. The Thunder, as a small-market organization, may not want to risk trimming the gold-paved path they're currently walking on by relinquishing all their draft capital (and there's almost no chance Sam Presti will put Jalen Williams or Holmgren in the deal). If you're the Nets, absolutely not. Back away from the phone. The Magic, Spurs, Hawks, Grizzlies, Pelicans, and Jazz will have interesting internal debates about how much they're willing to offer for someone who could be a flight risk sooner rather than later, and what acquiring him would do to their long-term trajectory if they bite the bullet and go all in. This is why the Rockets might be my favorite option. They're positioned to make a consolidation trade that could brighten Milwaukee's future without imploding their own infrastructure. I don't think Antetokounmpo will be moved before February's trade deadline, but Houston will be primed to pounce this summer when, barring a miraculous playoff run, it's easy to imagine a scenario in which Giannis and the Bucks decide to split. Hold: The Cavaliers as Title Contenders I respect the Cavs. Now 11-0, they're a ridiculous collection of ascending talent that's apparently unlocked something on offense without abandoning the defensive foundation that carried them the past three years. I love an emboldened and aggressive Evan Mobley. I think the newly hired Kenny Atkinson is going to win Coach of the Year. Donovan Mitchell could lead the NBA in scoring if that was his goal. Max Strus has not played a minute. Darius Garland is their fourth-best player. I would not be the least bit surprised if Cleveland finished with the best record in the NBA. I also know how different the regular season is from the playoffs, a volatile environment that's increasingly predicated on health, matchups, 3-point shooting, and positional versatility. This doesn't mean who the Cavs are or how they're playing can't work in the playoffs. One first-round loss against the New York Knicks shouldn't be enough to abolish such a young team's proof of concept. In reality, Cleveland has made progress and shown growth on a fairly normal path. And yet, I go back and forth about how realistic it would be for the Cavs to win four straight playoff series. Their start is very encouraging, for sure, but not altogether a surprise. It's also hard to know how much the start signals a deep playoff run. Only three teams in NBA history won the title after starting the season with at least 10 wins in a row. And these Cavs have pulled off their streak with the help of some unsustainably hot 3-point shooting. They're at a league-high 50.0 percent on wide-open attempts, with Isaac Okoro and Caris LeVert having made well over half their total attempts. That's not real. Garland is at 48 percent, including 44.7 percent off the bounce. That's (probably) not real. To be clear, all skepticism is strictly reserved for the playoffs, when opposing defenses and offenses will lock in to poke at their roster's structural snags. Mitchell, Garland, Mobley, and Jarrett Allen have a +7.9 net rating in 137 minutes together. That's awesome. Atkinson is also staggering this foursome as aggressively as his predecessor J.B. Bickerstaff did, usually pairing Mitchell with Mobley and Garland with Allen. (By a fairly sizable margin, Cleveland plays lineups that have two or three starters in them more than it does its starting five; the two bigs didn't share the court for the final 21 minutes of Saturday night's competitive win over the Nets.) Spacing is not nothing. Mobley's 3-point shot has yet to materialize (a nonissue if every other part of his game continues to grow) and teams with physical wings will eventually, repeatedly hunt Garland and Mitchell on defense. They're such a conflicting bunch, almost intrinsically limited, but also so clearly skilled enough to erase every fair doubt about the roster's incompatibility. Mobley will be an All-Star and strong candidate for Defensive Player of the Year. Allen is nearly shooting 70 percent from the floor. If they host the Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, nobody should be surprised. At the same time, falling in the first round to the Sixers, Bucks, Magic, or any other injury-riddled team that's struggled out of the gate doesn't seem far-fetched, either. Buy: The Denver Nuggets' Breakneck Pace The Nuggets have never been molasses, but when you employ Nikola Jokic and are able to cheat code your way through a set defense, it doesn't make a ton of sense to play fast just for the sake of it. With a centerpiece who's one of the smartest, most physically dominant and enriching offensive players in basketball history, the Nuggets seized a methodical approach, positioning all their synergistic pieces where they should be, and then carving up the opposition. But now, with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope out, Russell Westbrook in, Christian Braun elevated, and a few injured holdovers in and out of Michael Malone's rotation, Denver has started to pick up the pace. Outlet passes are fly routes. Defenses are on their heels. Spacing is (slightly) less relevant. Just look at how the Nuggets opened their Friday night win against the Heat: This wasn't out of the ordinary. Right now, on average, just 10.9 seconds lapse before the Nuggets take their first shot in a possession. That's the third-fastest mark in the league, and 0.2 seconds faster than where the zippy Indiana Pacers ended last season. Denver ranked 24th in this category in 2023-24, and were 21st when they won the title after the 2022-23 season. It's a change that can be perceived two ways: discovery or concession. Denver is either underlining strengths in this season's roster or acknowledging the half-court mastery that gave the Nuggets an invincible sheen over the past few seasons may no longer be as dependable. Committing to a faster pace accentuates the vigor that Braun and Peyton Watson bring in transition, while simultaneously quashing the liability Westbrook can be when the game is more deliberate and less random. (Denver's overall pace is 105.8 with Russ and a team-low 99.3 without him.) Three-point shooting matters, but Denver isn't held hostage by its inconsistent options like it would be with a more tepid attitude. Whether you're optimistic or cynical about what's happening, it makes sense. Great basketball teams, coaches, and superstars adapt to their surrounding personnel and understand no season is exactly like the one prior. Stylistic mutations, for better and for worse, are an unavoidable part of modern NBA maintenance. Rosters and rotations are transient creatures, and right now, these Nuggets are successfully adjusting to what they have. At least so far as the regular season goes, speed may be their savior. (For the record: I'm also buying Nikola Jokic's fourth MVP award, but do not want to seriously engage with that debate before Thanksgiving, so help me lord.) Sell: The Lakers' Depth I've said, written, and thought this many times over the past couple years: The Lakers have one of the most impractical and retrograde rosters in the NBA. While most teams around the league have developed an allergic reaction to one-way specialists, the Lakers are collecting them. There's no range. What they should have done to support LeBron James and spotlight Anthony Davis is embrace well-rounded role players who can impact both sides of the ball with a modern sensibility. Rob Pelinka is committing malpractice and there aren't any magic buttons for JJ Redick to press. Benching D'Angelo Russell is a step in the right direction—it gives L.A.'s offense a bit more juice and space around AD, while diminishing Russell's defensive shortcomings against opposing second units—but this team still ranks 23rd in 3-point differential. Gabe Vincent's PER is 0.8 (a league low among all players who've logged at least 100 minutes). Max Christie, Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes, and Dalton Knecht would not crack over half the Western Conference's regular rotations. Some kind of trade is inevitable, but, to be clear, regardless of how dominant Davis is on both sides of the ball, this team is more than one player away from competing with the best of the best, let alone finishing the regular season with a guaranteed spot in the playoffs. Buy: Stephon Castle's ROY Candidacy I couldn't care less right now about Castle's efficiency—he currently owns the sixth-lowest true shooting percentage in the league—or where his field goal attempts are coming from. His shot chart is mostly stuck in the DeMar DeRozan zone, though Castle isn't in DeRozan's universe as a shotmaker. For now, that's insignificant. What matters more, to me, is all the other smart, developed elements in the rookie's game that he's already comfortable enough to try with the ball in his hands. There's an assertiveness that can't be taught. He's a ball of fearless energy, attacking and pestering at all times. Castle drives with his head up, on the lookout for a cutting teammate. He's strong enough to absorb contact and finish through it. He never stops moving and has instincts that will serve him well as a potential Spurs cornerstone. On the play below, instead of jogging into the corner after a pass to Victor Wembanyama, he stops to set a ball screen—which catches Portland off balance—then rolls into the paint, draws help, and makes an incredibly difficult jump pass to Chris Paul look easy: This sequence is particularly meaningful: Teams do not pay attention to Castle when he's off the ball. They'll either put their weakest perimeter defender or a big man on him (as the Clippers did with Ivica Zubac). If he can be comfortable involving himself in the play, San Antonio can keep Castle on the floor. There's a valuable calmness about him, too. Later in the fourth quarter of that same game, Portland switches everything on defense, denies Wemby the ball, and blows up San Antonio's set. With the shot clock winding down, Castle makes something out of nothing, driving left before skipping a tough pass to Harrison Barnes in the weakside corner. This is advanced stuff: Mistakes are common but quickly learned from. Castle understands angles. He knows how to position his body on a screen to make himself open on the roll. And we haven't even mentioned his NBA-ready defense yet, or the long-term benefits he'll secure spending so much time around Chris Paul. Scoring on the Spurs in a few years, with Castle and Wemby on the court, will be torture. Hold: Tyrese Haliburton's Track to Superstardom Up until Sunday's 35-point, 14-assist performance against the Knicks, this season had not been pretty for Haliburton. Coming into that game he was averaging 14.7 points and 7.7 assists, shooting just 37.9 percent from the floor and 25.4 percent from behind the arc. He'd gone 0-for-8 from the field in an earlier game against New York, 2-for-8 against the Pelicans, and 2-for-11 against the Hornets. As someone who cracked defenses without hesitation for most of last season, Haliburton regularly channeled an immediacy as a scorer or as a playmaker—that just hasn't been true this season. The Pacers functioned as a 54-win team when he was on the court last season. Featuring arguably the most disappointing offense in the league this season, they were down to a 28-win pace before Sunday's win. His true usage rate has dropped a curious 9.03 percentage points while Indy's transition frequency has dropped when he's on the court. Anxiety about this is valid. Thanks to defensive warts that won't be corrected anytime soon, Haliburton pretty much needs to function as a revelatory Steve Nash 2.0 to justify his max contract. For most of last season that's exactly who he was. Now, according to Sportradar, only 10.8 percent of his drives that end a play are logged as a blow-by, down from 17.7 percent in 2023-24. (For the sake of comparison, at the top of this leaderboard right now is Damian Lillard at 26.9 percent and LaMelo Ball at 25.2 percent.) None of this is good news for the Pacers. It's also too soon not to give a 24-year-old who just made third-team All-NBA, and is rumored to be playing through an injury, any benefit of the doubt. Leniency can't last forever, though. At some point he has to string together a lengthy stretch in which he resembles the MVP candidate who left skid marks all over the league last season. If not, any hope Indiana had of sustaining the momentum that carried the team to the Eastern Conference finals will dissolve. Sell: Bam Adebayo's Woeful Start This is a weird one, but (probably) nothing to worry about. Adebayo's true shooting percentage is nearly 14 points below his career average and currently 10th-worst in the entire league. Yes, he's taking more 3s, but the two per game is negligible. (Most are jacked up because he's too open not to let it fly.) An early shooting slump isn't reason to panic. Adebayo has established himself as one of the finest tough-shot makers at his position; his nightmarish 5-for-21 performance against the Phoenix Suns last week felt like an aberration. Nothing went in. It happens. At the same time, Bam has always had a narrow margin for error. Despite basically cutting long 2s out of his diet, he still takes a bunch of paint jumpers and floaters that don't terrify the defense. When those don't fall, it's a serious problem. If there's any change in Adebayo's game worth monitoring, it's how he's functioning in the pick-and-roll. According to Sportradar, Bam is popping to the perimeter 33.8 percent of the time after setting a ball screen. That's way up from last year's 20.8 percent, and significantly higher than every season before it that's been tracked. On its face this isn't worrisome, but Bam isn't Bam if he isn't putting more pressure on the basket—his at-rim shot frequency is all the way down at 29 percent—and there are moments when he willingly takes himself out of the play. It's strange: Bam's touches per game are about where they were last year, though. And minus a few uncharacteristic errors that are likely caused by his own frustration with teammates who've made some avoidable mental mistakes (Bam has missed routine rotations, been back cut for easy baskets, endured some unsustainably great shooting, and committed more goaltending violations than 21 teams), his defense is a squall. Much like Haliburton, Adebayo deserves more time to look like himself. It'd be a crippling death blow for the Miami Heat if he can't. Buy: Charles Lee's Influence Charlotte is quietly turning into a respectable basketball team. Despite being so depleted at the center position that 39-year-old Taj Gibson is starting games, the Hornets' defensive metrics have dramatically shifted in some wise ways that reflect their new head coach's one-year stint with the Boston Celtics. Last year, Charles Lee was the lead assistant on a champion that used the 3-point line to its advantage better than any other team. Charlotte currently ranks second in 3-point rate (trailing only … the Celtics) after finishing about average last season. Having a healthy LaMelo Ball helps, but doesn't solely explain such a dramatic uptick. On the other end—this is where Lee's impact really shines—Boston likes to eliminate corner 3s and instead welcome (most) shots above the break. Well, Charlotte's opposing corner 3 frequency is now fourth lowest in the league after ranking 23rd last season. Here's what that looks like in practice: Instead of closing out on Jrue Holiday (a very good shooter) and giving up a pass to Derrick White in the corner, Josh Green shades to the sideline and allows the lesser of two evils. The Hornets aren't very good, but their bright coach is clearly getting through to them—a beneficial place to be for a young team that's in the process of building good habits.

NBA Stock Watch: Giannis Trade Rumors, Cavs as Contenders, and More

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