The Charlotte Hornets had themselves a week last week. It started super great and then was the opposite of that. They also traded Terry Rozier with the trade deadline coming up and the team nowhere near competitive right now.
They weren’t the only team playing basketball or even doing news things in the NBA. Let’s take a look at the other stuff that’s been going on.
The Miami Heat are in a tailspin right now
Speaking of Terry Rozier, there has to be a fleeting thought somewhere in the back of his head wondering if he’s the problem. The Heat have all three games in which Rozier has played, including blowout losses to the Celtics and Knicks. To be fair, they lost three in a row immediately preceding Rozier’s arrival so it’s not like their poor run of play has directly coincided with Rozier joining the lineup. But still, it’s got to be frustrating leaving a sinking ship like the Hornets only to land on a Heat team that’s been taking on water. They’ll probably turn it around before long, but it’s still an interesting thing to see happening.
NBA players are dropping insane point totals
We watched Karl-Anthony Towns drop 62 on the Hornets, lose the game, and not even have the best scoring night in the NBA that night because Joel Embiid dropped 70 on the Spurs. That wasn’t even the only time that series of events happened that week. On Friday, Devin Booker did his best KAT impression by scoring 62 points, losing the game, and also not having the top scoring performance of the night. That honor went to Luka Doncic, who dropped 73 points on the team that technically drafted him and traded him on draft night. It took him only 33 shots to get those 73 points.
Imagine scoring 70 points and not even having the best scoring night of the week. What a week. It’s also created some discourse on the Internet where since a rare thing happened multiple times, we need to discuss if it’s a problem that need to be fixed. Good job Internet.
Teams on both ends of the Eastern Conference are getting new coaches
The Milwaukee Bucks fired Mike Budenholzer last offseason presumably because the team was underperforming in the playoffs. They replaced him with Adrian Griffin and almost immediately put him under the microscope. They asked Doc Rivers to be a “consultant” in December then fired Griffin the next month to make Rivers the team’s next head coach. And if there ever was a guy that could turn around postseason misfortunes, it’s Doc Rivers. Ya know, the guy that has led four teams to blown 3-1 series leads in the playoffs and a few more 3-2 series leads. Surely this will go well for Milwaukee.
On the other end of the Eastern Conference standings, the Wizards politely asked Wes Unseld Jr. to stop coaching the team and instead put him in a front office role. Assistant Brian Keefe will coach the team for the rest of the season. There might be a lesson to learn for the Hornets in there.
We have All Starters
The NBA announced the starters for the upcoming All Star Game, which will be going back to the old East vs West format.
Eastern Conference
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Joel Embiid
Jayson Tatum
Tyrese Haliburton
Damian Lillard
Western Conference
LeBron James
Kevin Durant
Nikola Jokic
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Adam Silver is going to be around for a long time
Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that Adam Silver is close to an extension with the league that will keep him as commissioner at least through the end of the decade. I don’t think there will be any complaints with this since Silver seems like the only professional sports league commissioner that’s liked by owners, players, and fans alike. Woj also mentions in his report that expansion is on the docket for the next stretch of his contract. It seems like a 32 team NBA is on the horizon.
