We’ve kind of hit our stride in this NBA season. We’re seeing some clarity about who the good and bad teams are, and some of those are surprising. We’ll see if that holds true as the rest of the season. As for the Charlotte Hornets, they’re rather uninteresting right now with LaMelo Ball out. Let’s see what else is going on around the league.

The In-Season Tournament Quarterfinals start tonight

The NBA In-Season Tournament has been a hit as far as I can tell. Last Tuesday we saw all sorts of advancement scenarios, and it led to situations where coaches of bad teams were mad that their opponent was “running up the score” at the end of the game. That’s the drama we live for. And there is no such thing as running up the score when you’re playing professional sports.

Now we’ve made it to the knockout round. There are only two NBA games tonight and tomorrow night, one quarterfinal from each conference. These games are played on the home floor of the higher seeded team. The winners go on to play the semifinals in Las Vegas on Thursday for a chance to go to the title game, which will be played on Saturday.

All of the have-nots that missed the knockout round, like the Hornets, are playing each other on the off days to make sure everyone plays the same amount of games.

Josh Giddey is under investigation for inappropriate relations with a minor

The original rumors that started this whole situation started a couple of weeks ago, but it’s reached peak seriousness in the last week or so. If you’ve been living under an NBA rock, Giddey is accused of having a ‘relationship’ with a girl that was 15 years old at the time. Recently, the NBA came out and said they were launching an investigation into the rumors. Not long after, it was reported that police in the area where the girl lives are also investigating. To add to the fun, he reportedly was cited for two different traffic violations in that area during the summer of 2022.

The Mavericks scored 30 straight points in the fourth quarter…and lost

The Dallas Mavericks went on a 30-0 run against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday. They trailed 111-87 before reeling off 30 straight points over a six-plus minute stretch. It clearly took every bit of gas they had left because once the Thunder finally scored to stop the run, the Mavericks went cold again. The Thunder ended up outscoring the Mavs 15-3 between the end of that run and the end of the game to steal the win despite the absurd scoring run by their opponent.

The race to the bottom is hot

Last time I did one of these, I pointed out that the bottom five teams are so had all lost a significant number of games in a row. Most of them have started sprinkling some wins in there. However, two teams have not. The San Antonio Spurs have lost 14 straight despite the presence of transcendent rookie Victor Wembanyama. The Detroit Pistons have lost 17 straight and have prompted questions about whether they need to blow up their rebuild and rebuild some more. Or something? As if they could be any worse. No prospect has separated themselves in this draft class so far, so I don’t know who the crown jewel would be to tank for.

The Knicks are suing the Raptors

This isn’t a new story, but it’s popped up again in the last few days. Knicks owner James Dolan is suing the Toronto Raptors because a former Knicks video assistant (who now works for the Raptors) allegedly forwarded a bunch of scouring information to the Raptors while he still worked for the Knicks. The Raptors basically said “yeah okay” and ignored the litigation threats. The Knicks have pushed forward with the lawsuit because this is certainly a legal issue and not a basketball issue, and from what I can tell, absolutely no one is taking them seriously. It’s just James Dolan doing his thing.

As an aside to all of this, what qualifies as ‘news’ on the Internet is really…disappointing. Apparently about 8 players have “made NBA history” in the last week or so, but you can only find what it was by clicking into the article. And I think about 75% of ‘news’ articles are just like one Tweet with 50 words of context provided. Riveting stuff.