Keepie Uppie

Can these guys keep up their hot starts? And can others break their cold streaks?

For those who don’t know, and also don’t watch Bluey (with or without kids, it’s a great show), “keepie uppie” is a game where you try and keep a ball or balloon up in the air for as long as possible. For soccer players, this is a test of their control. For friends and family with a balloon, it can become a great test of will.

Some of the more important players in the league are having anomalistically great or poor starts to their season, and I wanted to highlight a few of them.

Keep It Up!

Obvious candidate that I won’t be talking about: Nikola Jokic

Karl-Anthony Towns

Traded from the Wolves to the Knicks in the offseason, the Timberwolves seem to be having a harder time adjusting to the post-Towns life than Towns is to the post-Wolves life. Towns is playing the best basketball of his career so far with the most talented starting lineup of his career. Nate Duncan offered an insight in a recent pod about this (referring to a different player on a different team), that having better shooters around you likely helps a great shooter get more opportunities (because of added spacing), not less (because others are getting a few more shots). And at least in this case, it’s showing to be true.

Past two seasons: 21/8/4 on 50/40/87 shooting

This season: 26/13/3 on 55/47/84 shooting

Having seen the Knicks rain threes on the Suns recently, this team’s offense has something great going for them. With the 2nd ranked offense and the 27th ranked pace, they’re avoiding turnovers and really, really, really making their shots. It seems likely that KAT can keep this up to a certain extent.

LaMelo Ball

Plagued with injuries the last two seasons, LaMelo has come back with high-usage intentions (in fact, he has the highest usage percentage in the NBA). The Hornets are clearly choosing to double-down (justifiably) on Ball and Miller as their clear-cut cornerstones, with Miller also increasing his offensive workload considerably. As we can see, Ball’s efficiency isn’t up a ton like some of these other guys, but his scoring is up 7 points per game.

Past two seasons: 24/6/8 on 42/37/85

This season: 31/5/7 on 44/36/87

The team is struggling with him off the floor (per CtG, the team’s offensive rating is 10.7 points worse with him off the floor, which is in the 92nd percentile for players). Personally, I’ve never doubted Ball’s ability to do this, but we’ll see if Charlotte can build the team that can take advantage of this.

Christian Braun

Remember this offseason, when the Denver Nuggets were heavily criticized for not retaining Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (wait until you see how his season’s been going)? It turns out that Braun may have more in him than even KCP had to offer. Even Michael Malone may be okay with KCP being gone at this point.

Past two seasons: 6/3/1 (12/6/2 per 36) on 47/37/67 shooting

This season: 16/5/2 on 57/47/79 shooting

Not only is Braun doing this, but KCP is also making between 7 and 8 times the amount that Braun is over the next two seasons. Not a bad deal!

Cut It Out!

Obvious candidates I won’t be talking about: Tyrese Haliburton, Mikal Bridges

Bam Adebayo

A very unique player, Bam has always been a model of consistency. He is a good passer, can handle the ball, is a good free throw shooter, and fills gaps in a way NBA nerds really love. This season, however, his scoring efficiency has taken a real hit. As you can see below, an about-2 threes per game increase is not enough to justify a 10% drop in FG%.

Past two seasons: 20/9/4 on 53% from the field (barely any 3’s) and 78% on FT’s

This season: 17/9/4 on 43/35/71 shooting (shooting 2.7 threes per game now)

The thing is, his defense and IQ provide tons of value. But this offseason, Adebayo signed a max contract extension, so in two years he will be making over $50m a year for the subsequent three seasons. That kind of investment clearly displays confidence in an offensive leap, not a plateau.

Jamal Murray

Having been one of the most reliable playoff performers until last year, Murray’s solid-but-not-amazing regular season numbers were always shrugged off as the cost of doing business. As long as they made the playoffs, he would turn into Maple Jordan, right? Then, we had last year’s playoffs and the Olympics, where he clearly was dealing with an injury. Now, it’s bled into this season.

Past two seasons: 21/4/6 on 47/41/84 shooting

This season: 18/4/6 on 40/34/78 shooting

Another extension signee this summer, Murray was not supposed to take a step back. Nuggets fans know that they’ll need him at his best to take advantage of Jokic’s current best-in-the-league levels.

NOTE: Speaking of which, is it possible that Jokic is playing like this because he knows that Murray’s not at his usual level? Just a good teammate right there, bearing the burden for the two of them.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

The prized acquisition this past offseason for the Magic, KCP looks like he really, really, really misses playing with Nikola Jokic. Maybe it’s not Pope’s age (he is almost 32 though), but it seems like this could be a miss relative to what the Magic expected from him.

Past two seasons: 10/2/2 on 46/42/86 shooting

This season: 7/2/2 on 35/22/96 shooting

Perhaps, shooters need Nikola Jokic more than Nikola Jokic needs shooters.

Thanksgiving Spirit

In the spirit of the holiday, I hope that all of the first few guys keep it up, and the other three guys cut it out. Another few guys I hope (because of the holiday) can keep up their good work (but I don’t commit to rooting for all of them after Thursday’s dinner):

• Hopefully, Bradley Beal can keep up the numbers he’s putting up but also stay healthy. So, basically the same as last year.

• Jayson Tatum fans will tell you that he’s playing great basketball and deserves to be MVP.

• Pascal Siakam is playing very zen these days, with his highest TS% by far but a lower usage than usual. Hopefully the Pacers can help Hali find his footing by leaning on Pascal a little bit more.

• Jalen Williams is showing that linear improvement really is possible. At this rate, he’ll be averaging 30 points per game in year 6!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!