The Grip - WED Oct 9 2019

The defeatist’s guide to the NBA season, pt. 3

October 09, 2019

Wednesday, Oct 9th, 2019

  The opening tip

  • Our season preview, The defeatist’s guide to the NBA season, returns, with a look at the Pistons, Bulls and Pacers

  • The NBA-China fallout continues 

  • Zion Williamson blessed us with highlights in his first preseason game 

  • Kevin Durant offers an explanation on why the Knicks get no free agency love 

  • Ben Simmons hit a 3-pointer!

The Pacers are Midwestern good 

What’s true: The inevitable sweep of the Minnesota Twins on Monday -- the team’s 14th, 15th, and 16th consecutive playoff losses, which seems entirely impossible -- got us thinking, who are the Twins of the NBA? And, obviously, the answer is the Pacers: always decent but never great; cold; midwestern; prone to getting swept; probably underrated but definitely not overrated; with loving but gullible fans. The Twins are Minnesota Nice; the Pacers are Midwestern Good. They’re like Spongebob in the episode where Plankton tries to get him to be assertive. When the Pacers are on the doorstep of something truly noble -- a title in 2000; the six Conference Finals they reached with Reggie Miller and the two others they reached with Paul George -- they defer. “You can have it!”What’s depressing: Nobody knows when Victor Oladipo is going to be back, least of all his freaking coach. “There’s no timetable,” Pacers coach Nate McMillan said last month. "I haven't had any information given to me that he will be practicing live anytime soon." He tore his quad in January.A prediction: The Pacers, behind some good but not great players, and some good but not great coaching, see their record swell for the first few months of the season, leading to a 30-15 record and some serious no one believes in us mojo, all culminating in a 50-win season and -- here’s the kicker -- a first-round playoff exit.Something positive: Indiana poked the Suns into giving up TJ Warren, who scored 18 points per game last season on 42.8 percent from 3, for cash. Cash! The ‘50s are over, Phoenix! This is now an economically viable league!**Until the NBA is forced to sever ties with China

The Pistons are the new Hornets  

What’s true: We all love Blake Griffin. He’s funny. He even roasted Caitlyn Jenner. And we’re all happy that he is back playing good basketball. He made his first All-Star game since 2015 last year and was named third-team All-NBA. He has inspired a troop of national NBA writers to parachute into Detroit -- something that hasn’t been done since the Chauncey Billups days -- and he deserves those fawning profiles. He does.What’s depressing: This team is not good. And, worse, it isn’t bad, either, and so it will enjoy the middle-class spoils of going 41-41 in the league’s lesser conference for the next few years. It’s ceiling is lower than it’s cap situation, and it owes a still-vulnerable Blake Griffin $36 million next season and $38 million the next. The Pistons are essentially a simulation of what would have happened if Charlotte gave Kemba Walker the max this offseason. Hello darkness, Detroit’s old friend.What’s good: Iso-Joe is back in the league, and, true to Iso-Joe form, he for some reason chose to play for the Pistons. They also still have former Coach of the Year Dwane Casey, who might be able to work his magic on another suffering franchise.What’s really depressing: Derrick Rose, who is on this team, on why he joined this team:  

“That’s the only thing missing from my resume: a championship. Being here and seeing what happened last year with the Raptors and coming to the East, you never know what can happen.” 

If you believe the Pistons have a shot at winning the title this season (say it with us), we have an economically viable NBA newsletter to sell you.What’s funny: Andre Drummond is shooting 3s now. He’s certainly not making them. But he’s taking them.

The Bulls are unorganized chaos 

What’s not enviable: Every beat writer for the Chicago Bulls is going to have a tough time this season trying to spin a story-a-day out of a team wandering into a season like a hippie at Burning Man. Going to be a lot of ‘Bulls remain positive despite recent skid’ angles.The coach: Jim Boylen, who we aren’t sure wasn’t just plucked off the local military base when Fred Hoiberg got canned last December. His first order of business? Forming a leadership committee, which would have maybe worked on a Little League team, but not on a coalition of jaded and disgruntled millionaires.The best player(?): The Bulls actually have some fun pieces, who would possibly even flirt with an eighth seed if not for the unyielding grip that Zach LaVine has from a physical standpoint on the basketball and from a mental standpoint on the roster. LaVine has inherited the good-stats-bad-team baton from such former luminaries as Corey Maggette, Jerry Stackhouse and Antawn Jamison. The funnest games for the Bulls this season might be their two against the Suns, when LaVine and Devin Booker battle to see who can score 57 and lose.What’s exciting: Coby White, the team’s eighth-overall pick this offseason, is bouncy and fun to watch. Here was his endearing reaction when his friend and college teammate, Cam Johnson, was picked 11th by the Suns in the 2019 draft. Wendell Carter and Lauri Markkanen will have exciting careers, as well, once they escape the grips of GarPax.

Ben Simmons, for the first time, from deep 

This, which happened last night, is the first 3-pointer of Ben Simmons’ career. You have to love his team’s reaction.

NBA vs. China isn’t going away

A banner is taken down in Shanghai promoting a Nets-Lakers preseason game. (Hector Retamal/Afp Via Getty Images)

On Friday, Daryl Morey’s tweet wedged a fissure between a handsome financial handshake and a geopolitical disagreement.Six days in, the standoff’s momentum is still gaining speed. The Chinese government canceled two events featuring the Lakers and Nets that were scheduled for later this week. 11 Chinese companies have suspended or ended their partnerships with NBA China.Adam Silver, who is in China right now, has issued several statements, all of which have managed to piss almost everyone off (which, of course, means he was praised by Gregg Popovich).Here’s what Silver said on Tuesday:

“It is inevitable that people around the world -- including from America and China -- will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences. However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way.”

The lose-lose predicament the commissioner finds himself in has best been summed up by Bryan Curtis’s piece in The Ringer: 

“This week, Adam Silver suffered the ultimate humiliation. He was outed as less of a progressive hero than Ted Cruz. For citizens of the free world, that’s bad news. For sportswriters, it’s almost a relief. We can start covering Silver like a sports commissioner, not like our pal.” 

Zion with the flush 

Zion Williamson’s first preseason game did not disappoint. 

  Quick Hits 

 Concrete Reads 

  • Jrue Holiday is the NBA’s best-kept secret [The Ringer]

  • The Lakers arrive in Shanghai without much fanfare [The Los Angeles Times]

  • The Magic’s Markelle Fultz gamble is starting to look pretty, pretty good [The Ringer]