NBA Recap: A Fresh Restart
Happy 2024 everyone! I hope the holiday season was warm and kind to you, and may this year be filled with abundance in all positive aspects of your life. If you’re reading this, better is on the way.
While Christmas, signifies the time where more people tune into the NBA regular season, January 1st is when the NBA begins to take over most of the sports coverage. There aren’t many college football games left. The NFL regular season is at an end, meaning there are only a handful of pro games left, as well. Baseball is still over a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting. And we now get more NBA games as the headlining broadcasts on networks. For example, there will be NBA games on Wednesday on ABC—something that didn’t happen until the Finals. The point is, this is a bit of a restart for the NBA and the coverage and importance of the games increases at this point in the year.
Restarting is the theme of this recap. We begin with the return of Ja Morant to the Memphis Grizzlies after a 25-game suspension. Memphis only managed to win six games during that time, even with Desmond Bane having a career year. With Morant in the lineup, the team has four wins, including Ja hitting a game-winner in his first game back—on national TV. It was a storybook return that the NBA benefitted from. Morant’s suspension makes him intelligible to receive any awards or have his stats register among the league leaders, but his visual impact will be felt as long as he’s on the floor. He confirmed that he is the most electrifying player in the NBA.
The year 2024 is also a fresh start for the Detroit Pistons. After a historic 28-game losing streak, the team won its final game of 2023—a two-point victory over the Toronto Raptors. Now sure, the Raptors had just completed a trade with the New York Knicks that sent OG Anunoby and Precious Achiewa to MSG in exchange for Canadian RJ Barrett and emerging star Immanuel Quickley. So, their roster wasn’t whole. But the Pistons have managed to play relatively hard enough to be in more games than people think. The kidding streak has reached a point where no team, not even a struggling Washington Wizards team, wanted to be who the Pistons beat to snap the skid. To continue to battle for victory is a testament to at least some of those players and coaches having a will to keep looking for ways to win. Now, they promptly lost their first game of 2024. But hopefully, this isn’t the beginning of another losing streak worthy of Japanese last breath poetry.
Here are the first Till Takes off the year!
If the NBA had an Offensive Player of the Year award like the NFL does, it would be Trae Young’s to win the past few years. Other players like Luka Doncic and Kevin Durant would be up there as well. But the reason I would give it to Trae is because of his size. At somewhere around six feet tall, Young is responsible for at least 40 the Atlanta Hawks’ points per game, between his scoring and assisting. As basketball moves to become even taller (there will be more and more taller guards like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander coming into the Association—and they’ll be on the shorter end), players around Young’s height have to be so good at basketball to even keep a spot on a roster, let alone be a high All-Star caliber player. I know the Hawks aren’t contenders so it’s eat to forget about him in Atlanta. But he’s as productive as any offensive player going.
The NBA In-Season Tournament may be over and only one year in, but it was successful enough for the WNBA to implement their own version for the Commissioner’s Cup when their season starts later this year. If course, there will still be things to figure out. But no matter how the games go, the event is worth keeping around for years to come.