NBA Stretch Run Time
Please consider this Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza (which is dropping, yes, on a Wednesday) just a quickie appetizer before a monster helping of Power Rankings lands on Thursday
One more sleep.
And you've made it.
It can often feel like a l-o-n-g and testing wait between All-Star Weekend and the tipoff to the NBA's regular season stretch run, but I'd say it actually went by pretty quickly this week. Thursday's 10-game slate is almost here and I certainly welcomed the opportunity to seize upon a night or two without games to team up with my NBA on Prime colleagues to assemble the following video essay that looks ahead to the stretch run of the regular season:
I also posted some 2,000 words of opinion, reflection and Intel whispers coming out of All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles. Sharing it all again here in case you missed the Monday Musings:
Can NBA tanking be stopped? Fixed? Curtailed?
LOS ANGELES — Monday Evening Quarterbacking is not a thing.
Plus there was this on Wednesday morning:
(You are very much correct: I both LOVE any and every opportunity to shift into video essayist mode, as you surely know by now, and likewise openly relish the fact that publishers' ability to relentlessly drop tweets into Substack posts has been restored.)
Jake Fischer is on assignment this week (more to come soon on his reporting/travel adventures) and The Committee (of One) will indeed return from its Trade Season winter exile Thursday with a long-awaited fresh installment of its vintage Power Rankings to further prepare you for the closing straight that completes our six-plus-month journey to reach the NBA postseason.
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Chatter Box
My primary working gig at All-Star Weekend last Friday was a pretty good one:
That's right: With Brian Scalabrine on an All-Star break of his own, I was asked to co-host alongside Sirius XM NBA Radio star Frank Isola for three hours. Even better: Pistons All-Star center Jalen Duren and coach J.B. Bickerstaff, along with Milwaukee's Bobby Portis, were among the guests delivered to us for interviews.
And that gave me the chance to ask both Bickerstaff and Duren something I've wondering about all season: What do they see as the tougher jump? Going from 14 wins to 44 last season? Or from 44 wins to the East's best record at the break this season for the first time since 2006-07?
Bickerstaff: "I would say the 14 to [44]. I think that's because of all the things that were going on before [namely Detroit's 28-game losing streak during the 2023-24 season]. To be able to shake that mentally is huge. The hardest thing in our league to do is to learn how to win. So for our guys to figure out, you know, how to win, I think that's the biggest jump. And now you're just catapulting off that foundation that you already established."
More Bickerstaff: "We've looked and we've studied and we've watched film [before taking the Detroit job] and there was talent. You know what I mean? It wasn't an empty cupboard, so to speak, when we got there. But what we noticed is they were down and what they had gone through was extremely difficult. You talk about hearing 28 [losses in a row] over and over and over again. They needed some love and they needed some confidence. And that's what we did as a staff — that was our priority. Our priority was to build great relationships with them, let them see the best versions of themselves over and over again, so then they could go out and replicate it. We just didn't want to have a negative attitude around the team. And I think the guys took to it. They bought into it. They believed in it."
Added Duren: "I think the journey itself as a whole was tough. Coming from, like you said, 14 wins and 17 wins before that [in] my rookie year. Just coming back from those first two years — just a struggle, adversity, whatever you want to call it to where we are now … the path — it was rough. It was hard. It was tough. At some points you can even say we were the laughingstock [of the league]. The guys who went through it took a lot of pride in [bouncing back from] that. Obviously we got a lot of pride in our game. To be here now, I would say the adversity is what made us and what set the foundation and set the path to where we are now. Without that … I'm not going to say we wouldn't be here. But without that I think it would have [taken] longer."
Duren and fellow All-Star Cade Cunningham — along with Ausar Thompson, Isaiah Stewart and Marcus Sasser Jr. — are the current Pistons who were also part of Detroit's 2023-24 team.
A couple more clips from last Friday's interviews:
(Substack) Note(s) of the Week
Some recent declarations of note via Substack Notes:
Re Bickerstaff's positive approach: I would contend that David Adelman has done the same thing with injury-wracked Nuggets this season. Listen to his postgames and you'll hear, "They are NBA players, they just haven't gotten time. We keep telling everyone, 'Be ready, practice hard, we will need you.'" And that came true. Look at the lineup that beat Philly and Boston on the road: Spencer Jones, Nnaji, Pickett, Julian Strawther, Hunter Tyson, Bruce Brown ... Adelman convinced them they could play and win. He's done an amazing job this season with all the injuries that have been staggered. Hope you can give him a shoutout when possible.