Numbers Game, at last, is back
It's been more than a month since we've been able to assemble one of these trademark staples of The Stein Line ... so we let this edition run a little longer than usual
Maybe you noticed. Maybe you didn't.
Either way: It's been a long, long time.
It's been several weeks, actually, since I was able to assemble a Numbers Game compilation.
The last time I ran one, amazingly, was way back on June 19. Of course, as I've explained more than once lately, this is just what happens in June and July. Some of the staples here unavoidably have to go on hold when so much newsy stuff is percolating.
Yet I must confess: It shook me a bit that no one has actually complained about the lack of recent Numbers Game postings. I've always considered it one of my strongest regular features. My pal
at Substack once advised me that I should make them a separate feature every week.Hopefully you guys actually did miss them. So I decided — believing that is the case — that this Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza would lead with a lengthy edition of Numbers Game to try to get back in the groove:
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Pretty significant news via the official EuroBasket Twitter feed Tuesday morning: Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo not only appears on Greece's preliminary 19-player roster for the tournament that begins in late August but was touted by FIBA as a confirmed participant for the event:
🏀 77
The Lakers' Luka Dončić is also committed to play for Slovenia.
🏀 15
An official announcement on the participation of Nikola Jokić (Serbia) is expected soon. Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert have already withdrawn from the France roster.
🏀 24
The enclosed graphic shows the full 24-team field for EuroBasket, which is scheduled to take place in Cyprus, Finland, Poland and Latvia from Aug. 27-Sept. 14:
🏀 620
The Suns spent $620 million over the past two seasons in salary and luxury tax payments thanks in significant part to the trades new owner Mat Ishbia pushed for to bring Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to Phoenix.
🏀 0
The Suns won zero playoff games with both Durant and Beal on the roster alongside star guard Devin Booker.
🏀 3
Durant had three different coaches in his 2 1/2 seasons as a Sun: Monty Williams, Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer.
🏀 97
Thanks to the Damian Lillard waive-and-stretch in Milwaukee on the $113 million left on Lillard's contract, Beal stunningly did not establish a new league record by securing a buyout from the Suns that will pay him $97 million over the next five years. Or $96,915,050 to be exact.
🏀 13.4
Beal's collection of that amount, though, began with a tidy advance payment of $13.4 million on July 15 — one day before his buyout was secured — based on a 25% up-front mandate due from his originally scheduled 2025-26 salary of $53-plus million. Or $13,416,567.50 to be exact.
🏀 5
The Rockets are Durant's fifth team. He's been traded three times.
🏀 82
A number, at last, to make the Suns smile: Newly acquired Jalen Green has played in 82 games in each of the past two seasons.
🏀 4
The recent announcement that New Orleans rookie Derik Queen sustained a wrist injury during summer league play that required an operation and will sideline Queen for at least 12 weeks means that four key players for the luckless Pelicans are all in the midst of surgery recovery: Herb Jones (shoulder), Trey Murphy III (shoulder), Dejounte Murray (Achilles) and Queen.
🏀 3
What is with the Southwest Division? Injury-tortured Memphis lost Jaren Jackson Jr. to a turf toe injury one day after committing to a five-year, $240 million contract extension for Triple J earlier this month. And Dallas has three projected starters of its own in surgery recovery: Anthony Davis (eye), Kyrie Irving (knee) and Dereck Lively II (foot).
🏀 154
Interesting tabulation as compiled recently by my pal Tom Ziller, who has created his own BPA (Best Player Alive) metric based on three-year averages for how each player fares in balloting for five separate awards: MVP voting, All-NBA voting, All-Star voting, Conference Finals MVP voting and NBA Finals MVP voting. Ziller's system has Denver's Jokić ahead of Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander by the count of 154-149.
🏀 6
Here are the six five-team groups for Year 3 of the NBA Cup, which begins Oct. 31 and concludes with the semifinals and championship game to be held in Las Vegas on Dec. 13 and Dec. 16:
🏀 6
More good reading: My fellow Substacker
recently put together a piece that contains everything you could possibly want to know (statistically) about the NBA's Sixth Man Award. Check it out:
🏀 82
There have been 82 60-win teams in NBA history according to Basketball Reference.
🏀 39
Thirty-nine of those 82 teams have reached the NBA Finals.
🏀 30
The Thunder last month became the 30th of those 39 to win it all.
🏀 73
The only two 60-win teams to reach the NBA Finals in the 21st Century and then lose are the 73-9 Warriors in 2015-16 and the 60-22 Mavericks in 2005-06.
🏀 10
There are still 10 current NBA franchises that have yet to win a championship after Indiana lost Game 7 of the Finals at Oklahoma City. This graphic from my Sportsnet pals has the full list:
🏀 2
Wednesday marks two years — dating to July 23, 2023 — since Twitter was renamed X.
🏀 2
It's true: The Stein Line somehow has two birthdays. The first story ever published here went live on June, 25, 2021. But the first full story after the announcement that I was moving into the world of independent publishing dropped on July 12, 2021.
🏀 4
In case you missed my recent piece reflecting on four full years of self-publishing operation:
The math sounds surreal to me, but Year 5 for The Stein Line is really underway
Fourth of July fireworks on a Friday night.
The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.
As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Best Available Free Agents
I asked my buddy
to compile one of his thorough lists pinpointing the top five remaining free agents at each of the NBA's traditional positions. Here it is via Twitter:POINT GUARD
Josh Giddey (Restricted)
SHOOTING GUARD
Quentin Grimes (Restricted)
Cam Thomas (Restricted)
SMALL FORWARD
POWER FORWARD
Jonathan Kuminga (Restricted)
CENTER
*As The Stein Line has reported for days now, Melton and Horford are widely expected to sign with Golden State and not truly regarded as available by numerous rival teams interested in both players.
Sunday Best: The latest, hottest and freshest NBA free agency and trade buzz ... even after leaving Las Vegas
Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday?
Re-run: NBA Bubble History Lesson
Five years ago at this time, I was just emerging from a quarantine in my 314-square-foot casita — Room No. 4151 — at the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World in Orlando. I was as isolated as I had ever been for those seven days, eagerly awaiting clearance to step out of that tiny space and, beyond the obvious hunger for the resumption of NBA basketball, just see some semblance of the outside world again.
Yet your incurably nostalgic NBA correspondent, as you surely guessed, can even find some sappiness to share when it's time to think back and reflect on the not-so-magical NBA Bubble Summer of 2020.
There has obviously been little time for such storytelling in the midst of the NBA's ongoing offseason chaos, but I did recently tape a fun podcast to do some reminiscing with Basketball Hall of Fame Gowdy Award-winning photographer Andy Bernstein about our respective Bubble stays for July 1 distribution.
Andy and I have been colleagues dating to my first days on the NBA beat covering the Clippers for The Los Angeles Daily News in February 1994. He started chronicling the league with his trusty camera about a decade before I started and has snapped so many of the most prized NBA photos in my own personal collection … like the one that somehow ended up on a Panini trading card in September 2019 that has long held Pinned status on my Twitter feed.
We didn't get to spend any time together in the Bubble because I was part of the first wave of media allowed into the NBA's first-ever leaguewide village and I believe Andy entered during the second wave so he could be there when a champion was crowned. Yet we certainly had a good laugh or two on his Legends of Sport pod reliving the experience.
Check it out when you have a moment to hear some old Bubble Tales:
We are a patient bunch, Marc. That's why there were no cries for the absence of Numbers Game. Plus, I believe we were being pretty well taken care of by the voluminous information being offered instead.
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