Plus, find out how long it could possibly take to put up a basketball net
As your eyes recovered from no longer being forced to stare at those neon NBA Cup courts for two-and-a-half straight hours, some pretty amazing basketball went down this weekend. Victor Wembanyama and Jayson Tatum joined elite statistical clubs, while the Orlando Magic completed an unfathomable comeback with an unfathomably depleted roster. Meanwhile Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards made us scratch our heads and ask that all-important, universal question: How honest is too honest?
If pondering that philosophical brain-teaser is too tall a task for whichever hour of the day or night you’re reading this, why don’t you just skip ahead to the winners and losers from this weekend’s NBA action.
Winner: Wemby’s never-ending resumé
Victor Wembanyama basically makes history every night he plays. Maybe it’s blocking shots. Maybe it’s scoring. Maybe it’s putting up triple-doubles. On Saturday, it was a whole bunch of things combined. With 30 points, 10 blocks and four 3-pointers in the Spurs‘ 114-94 win (all in 30 minutes!) against the Trail Blazers, Wembanyama added a few more lines to his resumé.
- Sixth player in NBA history with 30 points and 10 blocks in a game (Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Artis Gilmore, Dwight Howard, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)
- First player age 20 or younger with multiple 10-block games
- First player to block 10 shots and make four 3-pointers in the same game
- Reached 200 career 3-pointers faster than Stephen Curry, James Harden and Ray Allen (top three in all-time made 3s)
- Franchise-record 62 straight games with at least one block, passing David Robinson
Again, this all happened in one game. Sheesh. At this point, Wemby’s list of accomplishments already looks like a CVS receipt, and he’s only in his second NBA season.
Loser: Magic fans’ sanity
There’s really not much more to say here: Paolo Banchero. Franz Wagner. Jalen Suggs. Now Moe Wagner is out for the season with a torn ACL. The Magic’s injury situation is absolutely ridiculous, and Orlando fans must be understandably furious right now.
Moe Wagner was in Sixth Man of the Year contention with averages of 13 points and five rebounds in 19 minutes per game, and was being relied upon for offense with Banchero and his brother Franz already out. Absolutely brutal. The Magic have been about as resilient as you can be through all these key injuries, sitting at No. 4 in the East at 18-12, but at a certain point you just can’t win consistently without your horses. Don’t tell that to Cole Anthony, however, who lit up the Heat for 35 points, nine assists and eight rebounds as the Magic improbably erased a 25-point deficit for the shorthanded win on Saturday.
Winner: Tatum’s Celtic status
A lot of NBA fans may not realize it, but Jayson Tatum is quickly becoming one of the greatest Celtics of all time. He’s already second in franchise history in 3-pointers made, and with 43 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists in Saturday’s win over the Bulls, he became just the second Celtic ever to record a 40-point triple-double. The other one is Larry freaking Bird.
“You can’t simulate what it’s like playing in Boston because of all the greats that have come before you,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said of Tatum after the game. “And when you see guys go after that greatness all the time, it deserves that type of recognition.”
Loser: The Beam
Sacramento has been lit the last two seasons — quite literally — as Mike Brown led the Kings to 48 and 46 wins, respectively, to get the franchise back in the playoff picture for the first time since Yung Joc had the No. 1 song on the hip hop charts. The “Light the Beam!” chants after every win — home or away — reverberated across Northern California, and losing was a thing of the past.
Until this week, that is. The Beam has been moping around unlit recently as the Kings have dropped four consecutive home games to see their record fall to baffling 6-11 at Golden 1 Center and 13-17 on the season. On top of that, Sacramento has reportedly entered the “danger zone” as it pertains to star point guard De’Aaron Fox, who apparently isn’t about to tolerate a backslide into their bygone, losing ways.
Trading Fox might be the prudent move for Sacramento if the front office can’t see a path back toward contention with this group, but his departure would signal a white flag of sorts for the Kings era that was only supposed to have just gotten started.
Winner: Honest Ant
Whether you like the message or not, you have to respect Anthony Edwards telling it like it is. Less than a month ago, Edwards called out the Timberwolves (himself included) for being “soft as hell” after a bad loss to the Kings. The team rattled off six wins in seven games after the comments, so Edwards must have thought, “why not try this again?”
Following Thursday night’s loss to the Knicks, in which Minnesota trailed by as many as 36 points, Edwards said, “We don’t have shit on offense. We don’t have no identity. I mean, we know I’m going to shoot a bunch of shots, we know [Julius Randle] going to shoot a bunch of shots and that’s all we know. We don’t really know anything else.”
Scorched. Earth.
Edwards went on to explain that the lack of offensive gusto wasn’t the coaches’ fault, and that the onus was on the players to execute the game plan. His blunt message didn’t work quite as well this time, however, as the Wolves mustered just 103 points in Saturday’s loss to the Warriors.
Loser: Target Center maintenance crew
Look, we’ve all been there. You swish too many jumpers on your backyard hoop and the net literally rips, forcing you to drive to a sporting goods store to buy a new one, or — more likely in 2024 — wait for the Amazon delivery to show up. It can take a few minutes to figure out how to put the replacement on, but it’s pretty straightforward. And you’d think, if you do this as your job, that it would be a pretty quick and painless process.
Well, on Saturday night in Minneapolis before the Timberwolves’ matchup with the Warriors, it was slow and painful. After the net suffered a malfunction (possibly likely due to seemingly harmless pregame antics from Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga), nobody in the building seemed to know how to string up the new one. The delay lasted nearly half an hour as one crew member after another was befuddled by the intertwined synthetic polymer.
Hey, we all have off nights and they’ll surely be better next time, but this was a rough look for the Target Center maintenance crew.
