Three Thanksgiving Things

Chet Holmgren! Nick Nurse's brilliance is back! And a young Hawks forward taking steps forward!

Happy Thanksgiving! (May you be blessed with lots of pie and turkey-induced naps today.) While you digest that lump of stuffing in your stomach, let’s take a look at a few fun and exciting early-season trends.

Philly’s Offense is HUMMING

Let’s start here: give all the credit to head coach Nick Nurse and his staff who designed an outstanding offensive system this offseason in the midst of immense turmoil and question marks of who would even be on the roster come opening night. (We cannot give the same credit to Clippers head coach, Ty Lue, who despite a James Harden trade being telegraphed for months, did not seem prepared in the slightest for his arrival to LA as the Clippers have come out with the 26th-ranked offense since his first game.)

Last year, Joel Embiid and Harden led one of the most devastating pick-and-roll attacks in the NBA. With the departure of Harden, we were all left to wonder what was next for this Philadelphia offense. Would Embiid be able to get the same quality of looks? How good can Tyrese Maxey be?

As Maxey has ascended at the start of the season, much of the attention has (deservedly) focused on his and Embiid’s pick-and-roll and the high-quality looks that the 76ers are getting from it. But, there’s another critical aspect to this offense that has gotten lost in the discourse: the Sixers role players are WAY more involved this year.

In the Harden / Embiid-centric offense, the role players looked more like statues behind the 3-point line than dynamic athletes while they watched Harden and Embiid carve up the defense with a two-man game.

This year, the Sixers are playing in transition much more frequently (up from 27th in pace to 13th this year) and run a significant amount of their halfcourt offense through Embiid at the elbow.

Now, the halfcourt offense has become a whirring machine of cutters into space and wide-open looks - their points are coming off cuts on 7.1% of possessions (tied for 10th-most), up from 5.2% which was the 29th-most last season per NBA.com.

One big benefit of this new style of offense is that it’s unlocked Embiid’s passing abilities. Embiid has long struggled to take care of the ball when defenses double him - however, running the offense through the elbow in the middle of the floor makes it much more difficult for defenses to bring double teams. All this has led to Embiid’s assist numbers being way up (4.2 assists per game up to 6.1 and a 22.9% assist rate up to 30.7%) while his turnovers have remained relatively steady at 3.7 per game per Basketball Reference.

The biggest benefactor of the new Philly offense is Tobias Harris. Harris has turned back the clock with his scoring getting back up to the levels that he showed as a Clipper and in his early days as a Sixer (currently 26.1 points/100 possessions). He has been aggressive in transition (15th-most transition buckets in the league to this point) and has been a determined cutter (11% of his scoring has come on cuts). He looks like a reborn man in this new offense.

The rest of the Philly offense makes sense in this new system. Kelly Oubre Jr. (get well soon!) was shooting the lights out before he was hit by a car. Nic Batum (who came to Philadelphia as part of the Harden trade) is a quick decision-maker who thrives in a fast-paced offense like this. De’Anthony Melton is having his best season as a 3-point shooter and passer (the Sixers are asking him to do more ball-handling than he ever has before - similar to what the Nuggets asked Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to do last year - and Melton has been up to the task attacking closeouts and running pick-and-rolls on the weakside).

All this has led to the Sixers playing with the 3rd-best offense and a 10-4 record through the first 14 games.

Very few teams can survive their 2nd-best offensive player leaving with no significant assets coming back in return - let alone remaining a top-5 offense. Maxey’s ascension certainly helps, but Nick Nurse deserves a TON of credit for designing a system that uses the best of all of his core players.

(One last note: It will be interesting to watch the Sixers over the next few months as the trade deadline approaches. We all thought that they would move the farm for another star - but, at this rate, the Sixers may be better off going in on a starter-level player who can play in this system rather than another star who will expect to have the ball in his hands. The Sixers may be wise to follow the Nuggets blueprint when they traded for Aaron Gordon. We will see who is available in a few months and how real this early offense is.)

Chet Holmgren is BRILLIANT

Many fans and analysts were optimistic about the Thunder going into this season. They were a trendy pick to plow their way into the playoffs with many even predicting a top-4 finish. (I confess that I was not one of the optimists.)

I anticipated that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander would again be brilliant (he has been) and that Jalen Williams would take another step forward (he has). I was pretty sure that Cason Wallace would be able to contribute immediately (he has been excellent on defense in particular). I thought Josh Giddey would take that leap we all want from him (he’s been okay but that leap has not come - I will never not be intrigued though!).

One thing that I definitely did NOT anticipate this early on is that Chet Holmgren is an absolute stud. Let me be clear, I was high on Chet when he was drafted last year. I felt pretty good about his all-star potential long-term. But, I also expected it to take a little bit of time (that’s why I was hesitant to declare the Thunder as having arrived going into the season).

Chet has not cared about my misgivings early on though - he is second on the team in win shares at 1.9 (a measure that accounts for a player’s offense and defense and estimates the number of wins that player has contributed) and has a box plus/minus of +5.4 (an estimate of a player’s contribution compared to a league-average player) - 11th and 16th in the ENTIRE league respectively.

“Rookies” aren’t supposed to be this good. (Chet isn’t actually a rookie but he did not play last season due to a foot injury.)

All that said, the most impressive part of Chet’s game is his offensive diversity.

Want him to set a screen and roll hard to the rim? Sure thing.

Can he set a screen and pop to the 3-point line for an open jumper? No problem boss.

Need Chet to create a shot from the post? Okay, sure.

How about Chet attacking in transition? Yep.

Drive a closeout?

There’s literally nothing this guy can’t do. His combination of driving, shooting, post-ups, rolls, popping to the perimeter, and passing is rarely seen in players his size (or shorter players for that matter) and gives the Thunder a significant amount of flexibility in how the rest of the roster can be built long-term.

I’m 100% IN on Chet. And you should be too.

Jalen Johnson is… PRETTY GOOD

When the Hawks traded away John Collins this summer, I questioned what their plan was for their forward position. This was a team that mortgaged part of their future for Dejounte Murray thinking they were one player away from being contenders - only to end up hovering around .500 again last year.

While the Hawks may still be a .500 team this year, they have something in Jalen Johnson.

His minutes have doubled this year to 30.6 per game and he’s shooting the lights out so far this year at 65.5% EFG% (league average EFG% is 54.1%). Some of that may just be an outlandishly hot start, but Johnson passes the eye test as well.

Johnson loves to run the floor with his guards or grab the defensive rebound and push it up the floor himself.

Previously, if the Hawks wanted another ball handler on the floor with Trae Young and/or Dejounte Murray, they had to bring Bogdan Bogdanovic off the bench - Johnson gives them a bigger, less compromising defensive option as well.

He excels as a weakside connector that can attack closeouts, make the extra pass, or even run an occasional pick-and-roll. He has good vision when he gets into the paint and can make multiple kinds of passes.

(Johnson makes the nice pass to a backcutting Trae Young at the beginning of this sequence that eventually leads to a Saddiq Bey putback.)

Defensively, he is an alert help defender and his athleticism helps him to challenge shots at the rim.

My guess is that Johnson still only tops out as a starter-level player. That’s okay though - every team needs starter-level players to fill out the roster! But, Johnson is only in his 3rd year and the flashes have been encouraging - there could be more in there than I’m anticipating.

The Hawks are probably still one to two key players away from contention. Maybe Johnson is one of those pieces. For now, though, Hawks fans can celebrate Thanksgiving this year by being thankful that the team has secured another core piece long-term in Johnson.