SI:AM | Five Things to Watch This NBA Season
The MVP race, the full-strength Clippers and more.
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The rain here that I mentioned yesterday did not, in fact, clear up. That means the Yankees and Guardians will play a do-or-die game today at 4 p.m. ET.
In today’s SI:AM:
🔥 Burning questions ahead of the NBA season
🟠 What does the NFL think of Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker?
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The NBA Returns
The sheer volume of sports occurring right now is frankly overwhelming. The NFL is fully underway at this point. The MLB playoffs are starting to get serious. The NHL season just started, and I haven’t even had time to do a preview package because of everything going on in baseball. College basketball starts in three weeks. It’s a lot to keep track of, and it’s not getting any easier, because the NBA regular season begins tonight.
The 2022–23 campaign starts with a bang with two tantalizing matchups airing on TNT: 76ers at Celtics (7:30 p.m. ET) and Lakers at Warriors (10 p.m. ET). But rather than focus on those two games, here are five season-long story lines I’ve got my eye on.
The MVP race
The debate over the MVP award is one of the biggest season-long story lines in the NBA. Any number of players could win it this year. With Jamal Murray back by his side, Nikola Jokić could very well win the award for the third straight year. Giannis Antetokounmpo is always among the most impressive players in the league. Veterans like Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant can never be counted out. What about a young dark horse like Jayson Tatum or Ja Morant? But the real reason I’ll be following the MVP race is the potential for a deserving young superstar to finally have his crowning moment. The current MVP favorites at SI Sportsbook are Luka Dončić and Joel Embiid (in that order). Dončić, who is entering his fifth season in the league, has steadily improved with each passing year and really took his game to the next level during the playoffs last season. Embiid has long been plagued by injuries but played a career-high 68 games last year and perhaps not coincidentally averaged a career-best 30.6 points per game. Both guys are among the most entertaining players in the NBA, and if the MVP race comes down to the two of them it’ll be a blast to watch them duke it out.
Zion Williamson
There’s a reason why Zion Williamson landed on the cover of the latest issue of SI. He is one of the most electrifying athletes to ever put on an NBA uniform. He appeared poised for a breakout after making the All-Star team in his second season, in 2020–21, but his momentum was halted by last year’s foot injury. Now he’s healthy again and ready to throw down more highlight dunks, which is part of the reason why Rohan Nadkarni thinks the Pelicans will be the most entertaining team to watch this season.
Can the Lakers rebound?
LeBron James hasn’t missed the playoffs in consecutive years since his first two seasons in the league, in 2003–04 and ’04–05. Have the Lakers done enough to avoid that fate after finishing 11th in the West last year? Probably, but whether they have enough to be among the conference’s top six teams and avoid the play-in tournament is a bigger question.
There are three things that will be key if the Lakers are going to be serious playoff contenders:
- Darvin Ham’s success as a first-year head coach.
- Anthony Davis’s health. He has played just 76 combined games over the past two seasons, but the Lakers especially need him to be available and effective with James turning 38 this season.
- The whole Russell Westbrook conundrum. His poor play last year might have been as much to blame for the Lakers’ struggles as the injuries to Davis and James. One of Ham’s biggest challenges will be deciding what to do with Westbrook. He brought him off the bench in Friday’s preseason finale but didn’t commit to keeping Westbrook out of the starting lineup during the regular season.
The Clippers at full strength
The other team in Los Angeles is also worth paying close attention to. After a surprisingly successful 42–40 season last year, the Clippers will open this season with both of their big stars healthy once again. Paul George missed most of last season with an elbow injury, while Kawhi Leonard sat out the whole year after tearing his ACL in the 2021 postseason. Most of last year’s roster that kept its head above water without George and Leonard is still intact, with the addition of John Wall. The Clippers could be among the league’s elite.
The race to the bottom
Get ready for some serious tanking this season. Victor Wembanyama is such a transcendent prospect that he’s already all but locked up the No. 1 spot in next summer’s draft. An 18-year-old who is listed 7'2" and can create his own shot on the perimeter as well as he protects the rim looks to be the kind of player who may actually be worth throwing away your season for a 14% chance of landing him. Several teams appear to be prepared to do just that. After trading away Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz are a shell of the team that secured the No. 5 seed in the West last year. The Spurs are even worse, employing just two players (Doug McDermott and Josh Richardson) who will earn more than $10 million this season. The Thunder are also going to stink, especially without the injured Chet Holmgren, as are the Pacers and Rockets. The question is which teams will eventually decide to join them in the chase for the most Ping-Pong balls.
The best of Sports Illustrated
The season-opening edition of Chris Herring’s NBA newsletter, The Playmaker, earned today’s Daily Cover label. He breaks down some of the biggest burning questions in the league, such as: Will the Lakers trade Russell Westbrook? You can sign up to get it for free at SI.com/newsletters.
Conor Orr’s NFL power rankings are a race to earn the No. 2 spot behind the Bills. … Several USMNT hopefuls face long layoffs before the World Cup after their MLS teams were eliminated from the playoffs early, Avi Creditor writes. … Here’s what NFL folks are telling Albert Breer about college stars like Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker. … Jonathan Wilson explains why Karim Benzema was a no-brainer choice for the Ballon d’Or.
Around the sports world
NJ.com has a good breakdown of the discussion among the Yankees, Guardians and MLB that led to the decision to postpone Game 5 until this afternoon. … The Panthers traded Robbie Anderson to the Cardinals one day after he was booted from the sideline. … The Titans and the city of Nashville have reportedly reached an agreement to build a new domed stadium. … The Texans have fired controversial executive Jack Easterby. … The reason the Steelers initially benched Mitchell Trubisky was reportedly a locker room confrontation with a teammate.
The top five...
… plays from last night in the NHL:
5. The Maple Leafs’ game-tying goal in the final minute gets overturned on review.
4. The unlucky bounce that cost the Red Wings the game in overtime.
3. The Canadiens’ late game-tying goal with their net empty and Kirby Dach’s overtime game-winner.
2. Ty Dellandrea’s perfect no-look assist to Tyler Seguin.
1. David Pastrnak’s goal after deking between a defender’s legs.
SIQ
This season, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić will attempt to become the first foreign-born player to win the NBA’s MVP award three times. Who is the only other non-American player to win the award twice?
Yesterday’s SIQ: On Oct. 17, 1991, the Penguins’ Paul Coffey passed Denis Potvin to become the NHL’s all-time leading scorer among defensemen. Who later passed Coffey and now holds the record?
- Ray Bourque
- Niklas Lidstrom
- Al MacInnis
- Chris Chelios
Answer: Ray Bourque. He compiled 1,579 points during his career, compared to 1,531 for Coffey. Bourque passed Coffey’s points total on Oct. 25, 2000, with a pair of assists against the Predators.
Interestingly, Bourque and Coffey were contemporaries. Bourque’s career began in 1979, while Coffey debuted a year later. Coffey put up bigger offensive numbers early in his career, though. Coffey passed Potvin in his 12th NHL season and went on to run up the total during a 21-year Hall of Fame career. Bourque, however, didn’t pass Potvin until his 14th season. From that point forward, though, Bourque put up much better numbers. From the 1993–94 season until both players retired after the 2000–01 season, Bourque had 482 points to Coffey’s 330.
From the Vault: Oct. 18, 1999
Bob Rosato/Sports Illustrated
Rarely is the starting quarterback of an NFL team—let alone a successful NFL team—as anonymous as Kurt Warner was in 1999. But after Warner unexpectedly led the Rams to an undefeated start, it really was fair to wonder, as the cover of SI did, Who is this guy?
Unlike many signal-callers who fans are familiar with from following college football or the draft, Warner was undrafted and hadn’t played major college football. It had been six years since Warner’s senior season at Northern Iowa. He famously worked at a grocery store before playing in the Arena Football League, where he was good enough for the Rams to sign him and send him to NFL Europe. In 1998, he was the Rams’ third-string quarterback. But when veteran Trent Green went down with an injury during the ’99 preseason, Warner was suddenly the starter. St. Louis coach Dick Vermeil had modest expectations, to say the least.
“I thought he could be a solid backup, a guy we could get by with,” Vermeil told SI’s Michael Silver. “When Trent went down, I told our team we could win with Kurt. I didn’t expect him to play well enough that we’d win because of him.”
Warner exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. He led the NFL in touchdown passes, completion percentage and passer rating, and won the MVP award while leading the Rams to a Super Bowl title. Asked to explain his success, Warner told Silver it was simple.
“I’ve been doing all these interviews lately, and people are looking for the secret to my success,” he said. “I tell them it’s my faith in Jesus Christ, and they don’t want to hear that. So they ask me the same question, again and again, even though they’ve already gotten the answer. The Lord has something special in mind for this team, and I’m really excited to be a part of it.”
Warner’s religion and family life are the focus of Silver’s story.
“Such proclamations serve as a red flag for even the mildest of cynics,” Silver wrote, “but once you meet Warner and hear his story, it's awfully tough to question his faith.”
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