Basketball is not a sport, it's a way of life.

The Nets fall for no man, Chet's a safe bet, Herb is cooking....

• Following the Brooklyn Nets' firing of head coach Jacque Vaughn this past Monday, newly promoted interim coach Kevin Ollie, in his press conference announcing his elevation to the position, mentioned, among other things, the Nets' need to draw more than offensive fouls. Clearly, this was said as a means to intone a need for more effort by Brooklyn, particularly defensively. So it was fair to assume that the number five was a bit of a for-effect under-representation of Brooklyn’s defensive efforts thus far. In fact, your 2023-24 Brooklyn Nets have actually taken six charges this season. Which, in all fairness, only puts them 62 charges away from a tie with the first-place Golden State Warriors. That means that over their 56 games played so far, Brooklyn is somehow averaging just a smidgen over .1 charges drawn per contest. To contextualize that, the second-worst teams in terms of charges drawn this season—a tie between the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets—have more than doubled that number at 13. If the Nets were to stay at their current pace of charges drawn, or not drawn as it were, they would finish the season with a total of nine. That would be the lowest number of any team over the last ten years. Yet, to really punctuate how paltry a sum that is, there are currently 30 individual players who have drawn more charges than the Nets have as a team this season (my guy Brandon Podziemski has 31 himself). Good luck Coach Ollie, you’re going to need it. Because the terms “offensive” and “foul” have been used to describe this Brooklyn situation many times this season, but rarely in succession of each other. And of course, true to form, in the two games that Ollie has coached this week since taking the helm, Brooklyn has managed to draw a total of zero charges.

• It requires only a cursory knowledge of my basketball proclivities to assume that Herbert Jones was destined to make an appearance here at LBB. Jones, who is in his third season with the somewhat surprising New Orleans Pelicans—NOP is 34-23 and currently sit 5^th in the Western Conference Standings (so much for my appeal for a “needed” trade a few months back)—isn’t the type of player whose numbers jump off the page, but what he does on a night-to-night basis is about as impactful as you can ask for from a sub-star level player. Jones for the year is averaging a healthy 11.3 points per game, on 50.8% from the field, and a very encouraging 41.5% from distance; shoutout “The Shot Doctor” Fred Vinson for another successful operation. Seriously, Vinson took Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Herb Jones and increased their three-point percentages by more than 5% during his time working with them. What that has meant for each of these players after Vinson’s work is that by unlocking their long-range shooting, they have changed the tier of player they were respectively considered capable of reaching. For Jones, who in his four years in college at Alabama averaged just 7.3 points and shot above 30% from distance in only his senior season (35.1%), he has gone from a project with defensive upside to a defensive star with offensive upside. Jones entered the league as a lightly regarded—particularly because organizations prefer projects with more runway in terms of developmental years than four-year guys offer—defensive prospect out of Alabama when New Orleans selected him in the second round with the 35^th overall pick in the ’21 draft. Going into his rookie campaign, not much was expected of Jones. But when a foot injury ended-up keeping Zion out for the season, Jones was given a bigger role, and Herb responded by becoming an absolute defensive terror. Jones, who has great length and agility, was particularly a force in the passing lanes, where his 1.7 steals per game were good for tied for seventh in the league, and as a perimeter pest, where he uses his substantial length (7’0+ wingspan) and wonderful ability to contort himself to insinuate his body in between his man and a screener, to hound perimeter players. Jones would finish his rookie campaign fifth in the NBA in contested threes at 275 and was fourth in deflections at 243. All of this as a rookie who was thought so little of that the likes of Josh Christopher, Isaiah Todd, and Rokas Jokubaitas were drafted ahead of him. If you’re asking who? That’s kind of the point. Herb’s rookie season was an unmitigated success when you take value added versus expectation, but at only 33.7% on just .7 makes per game from behind the three-point line, and with a frame too slight at 210 pounds to play full-time power forward, the shooting questions still remained a big issue for Jones’ ability to be a full-time starter. Particularly with the return of Zion Williamson, another non-shooter from the perimeter. Fast forward two seasons and thousands of hours with Vinson, and Jones has turned himself into quite the viable threat from distance at a very respectable 41.5% on 1.5 makes per contest this season. The 1.5 makes are more than double his prior career high, and while he has shot well in general, Herb really kills from the corners, where he feasts on open shots after defenses collapse on drives by Zion or BI. Jones has also become a terror in the open court, where he defies his quiet demeanor with a nightly offering of loud posterizations when he gets a head of steam when filling the lane. Jones is seventh in the league in transition frequency at 28.3%, as he rarely misses an opportunity to get out and run on the break. But don’t get it twisted, Herb made his bones hounding people defensively, and he’s been as good a perimeter defender as there is in the league this season. In fact, while OG Anunoby gets more of the press because his strength allows him to contend physically against all positions, I would argue that what Jones lacks in imposing his physical will, he more than makes up for in explosive skill. Jones remains one of the most disruptive wing defenders in the league, but the Pels will also throw Herb on a point guard and ask him to lock him up for 94 feet—as he did against Fred VanVleet this past Thursday. This versatility and dynamic impact makes Jones a near lock for a first or second-team all-defense for the next several years. Though Jones will likely never be a star, I think an offensively juiced-up version of Bruce Bowen’s career feels like a likely path for the defensive stalwart.

• While Wemby is my rookie of the year, it’s well past time that I give some love to Chet Holmgren. To catch you up, Holmgren’s rookie season averages thus far (rankings are amongst all rookies): 16.9 points (2^nd), 7.7 rebounds (3^rd), 2.6 blocks (tied-2^nd), 54% from the field (3^rd), 39.6% from the three (5^th), 63.9% True Shooting (3^rd),10.8 contested two’s (1^st), 13.2PIE (2^nd). That type of versatility and efficiency aren’t just rare for rookies, they’re rare in general, particularly for 7’1 centers. In any normal season, Chet would likely be the runaway favorite for the rookie of the year award. Unfortunately for Holmgren, he is making his first impressions in the year of la licorne apex. Yet, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, Chet should have been competing for the rookie of the year with Paulo Banchero last season, were it not for a Lisfranc injury that befell him prior to the start of his rookie campaign. Now, whether Chet would have been more likely to win the rookie of the year last season may be up for debate, but what isn’t is how beneficial the additional year of preparing his body and mind were for the Thunder big man. While Holmgren may still be about a biscuit shy of skinny—he is listed at what may still be a generous 195lbs—the reported 13 pounds he gained going into this season has gone a long way in aiding his ability to contend physically at the NBA level. Additionally, Holmgren, who has always proven a quick study—watch the way he adjusts the subtleties of his body-positioning defensively within the first few plays of a game, or how rarely you see him make a mistake without an immediate adjustment the next time down the floor—plays with a poise and wisdom that benefited greatly from watching and learning as he sat out last season. It also doesn’t hurt that unlike Wembanyama, whose San Antonio team is a dumpster fire competitively, Chet has been able to graft his substantial skills onto an already very healthy Thunder host. The Thunder being as deeply talented as they are, means Holmgren isn’t being relied on to do more than what he’s already best at: rebounding, defending, and knocking down open shots.  And for a player of any level of experience, let alone a second-year rookie, Holmgren is accomplishing those feats with a competency that is already near all-star level for a Thunder team that currently resides a surprising second in the West at 39-17, in very large part because of their very versatile rookie.

• If we were to stretch the history of the NBA across a timeline, the period in which trades for a player 35 years or older making a significant impact on a team would cover about 5% of that scale. Really, it’s only been about the last four seasons where a deal for a guy on the 17^th hole of his career’s back nine was even regarded as noteworthy in terms of on-court play. The Milwaukee Bucks traded for PJ Tucker in ‘21, there was the deal Boston made to acquire Al Horford that same summer, and the Minnesota Timberwolves' deal for Mike Conley at last season’s trade deadline. Since making the deal with Utah for Conley Jr. on Feb. 9th of last season in the three-teamer that also brought D’Angelo Russell to Los Angeles, Minnesota has gone 52-29, which is the fourth-best record in the entire league over that span (BOS: 63-21, MIL: 56-28, CLE: 52-28). I mention this because this week Conley, who is in his 17^th season as a pro, signed a two-year contract extension worth $21 million to stay in Minnesota. This is an excellent piece of business by the Timberwolves, not only because Conley very likely could have made more money had he gone to market as a free agent this coming off-season, but also because Minnesota’s salary-cap situation is set to self-destruct in the next year. This prioritization of getting Conley signed also shows that the Timberwolves understand the value of Conley to their organization. Minnesota, who is a surprise atop the Western Conference standings after getting their 40^th win against the Nets on Friday—the fastest point in team history to 40 wins—bringing their season record to 40-17, are a bunch that would be labeled precocious at best and immature at worst. And Conley in many ways is the line of demarcation. If you think that's hyperbole, take a look back at KAT’s 62-point performance, a game for Minnie that was mired in immature play and overt struggles to focus the offense. Guess who missed that game for the Wolves? The veteran leadership of Conley brings a steadying poise and an element of gentlemanly class—Conley is the reigning NBA Sportsmanship Award winner; an award he has won three other times as well. (Quick aside: someone let Dennis Schröder’s people know that going after one of the league’s nicest guys for shooting a shot at the end of the shot clock is why no one wants to deal with his ass.) While Conley’s stats won’t blow anyone away this season—10.6 points, 6.3 assists on 44.6% from the field and 44.4% from distance—the Timberwolves have enough offensive firepower with KAT and Ant that they really only need Conley to be the table-setter and mood stabilizer. At second in the league with a 5.74 assist-to-turnover ratio, along with his 44.4% three-point percentage being tied for sixth in the NBA, all while still being one of the smartest defensive players going, Conley has been just that for a Timberwolves team whose aspirations have changed from plucky upstart to serious contender. Wanna guess who was there when that changed?