NBA A season marked by the calendar in which the favorites are still in the preseason
La 2020-2021 season has started at full speed and has already fulfilled its first week since the curtain rose on December 22. Seven days that give to make a first quick reading of what can await us in a course marked by the little time that teams and players have had to prepare. That is why we find ourselves with such a strange beginning in which teams like Orlando Magic or Atlanta Hawks rule the league without having lost a single game or favorite franchises like Nuggets o Rockets They have not yet begun to function as expected.
Since we are talking about hasty conclusions the first mention has to go to Clippers cyclothmics. In the wagon of favorites before raising the curtain of the course with Lakers and Bucks, the poor brother of Los Angeles its price has dropped several integers. And all for a match. It is true that he has been able to demonstrate solvency by winning the Lakers from Leonard’s hand on the first day. But the blushing beating Received at the hands of the Mavs has raised doubts around a team and, especially, around a Paul George who showed that without Kawhi at his side his performance and leadership skills decline. And we already know that Leonard likes to rest a lot during the season. What will happen to Tyronn Lue’s team then?
With scarcely two weeks of preparation and three or four games in the zurrn Before the start of the season, the ring favorites seem to have started the course with the handbrake on. Or better yet. They haven’t started it yet and they continue with their particular preseason in terms of role adjustments and adaptation to systems, in this campaign marked by calendar squeezes. Those rush to start as soon as possible and not run into the calendar and the Games has led to a first week in which the level is far from that seen, for example, in the Orlando bubble playoffs. Bulging markers, crazed attacks, and misplaced defenses have drawn a few firsts days of low level. And for example, the button of the Christmas day.
To continue thinking about the calendar and a season that has started by the hair, we have the theme of the injuries and breaks that we will see throughout the course. Players like Marquese Chriss o Spencer Dinwiddie have said goodbye to the first exchange and others like Ja Morant They have also scared their fans with minor injuries. He little time for body rest in some cases and few workouts they have had (and that they will have during the regular season since at most they will be able to stop two days in a row) will make teams choose to give more frequent breaks to players like LeBron James or Jimmy Butler, who have barely had 70 days of disconnection.
WE ARE NO LONGER IN KANSAS, STEPHEN
Stephen Curry, Steve Kerr, Draymond Green and all the fans of the Warriors They have to change the dominant team chip in the NBA. Those of San Francisco, even son of Klay ThompsonThey aspired to get into the playoffs and give some displeasure to other franchises with more staff and packaging. A goal that after a week of competition seems quite a long way off of its real potential. Wiggins, despite his game against the Pistons, is still missing and less and less news is expected from him, Oubre is still in the Arizona desert and the Green’s absence weighs more than expected. Just the good start of James Wiseman seems to give Curry reason to smile back, but the two-time NBA MVP also has to change the chip and realize where you are and who surrounds you. Only then will its best version come out.
The Lakers are still the big favorites in order to revalidate the ring they won last season, despite already adding two defeats in four games. The ‘blessed’ breaks have made Angelenos have started to idle and more pending adjustment of new acquisitions to their schemes than to add victories. Among those new pieces is a Marc Gasol who has begun to show what he already knew he could contribute to this team: defense and game reading. However, some doubts remain after the first matches about their role in the decisive minutes of the matches. It seems that, for now, Vogel bets on Davis -immovable- and Harrell, whose defense leaves questions, as an inner couple. It may be to limit the minutes of Spanish and that I arrived in full physical condition at the important moment of the season, but for the moment his role is played by another.
The beating the Clippers may have masked the irregular start of a few Mavericks who miss the contest so much Porzingis and that has left too lonely Luka Doncic. The Slovenian has cleared the doubts about his physical condition and has started at the level that is assumed before starting the preseason. However, in his eagerness to multiply to do everything the Slovenian is sometimes not making the best decisions in attack. Especially when taking more shots at a time when you can’t find the rim so easily. as they show their percentage from triple with a 12% . Is what has to be too much alone. The second unit is not enough, for now, and the Mavericks are missing a third star to help Doncic and Porzingis step up and make the Mavs real hopefuls.
If there is anything resectable in these first seven days of competition, it is to see that Kevin Durant has come back after more than 520 days in the dry dock. And he has done it as it was: as one of the top three players in the league. And that’s the best possible news. The forward has shown from the first minute that He is not afraid of anything And that he is fully involved in a mission: to conquer the ring that he already won twice in the Warriors and that in 2018 escaped him because of Achilles. If what we have seen so far from Durant, and his good harmony with Irving on the court, is what awaits us throughout the season, NBA fans, we are in luck. And the Nets, more.
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