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

The Clips find their way, Delle Donne is gone, trade deadline likes and dislikes....

QUICK HITS

• Surely, I have never been constituted as a Collin Sexton “guy”. At best, I’ve found his tenacity and unflappable confidence to often be equal parts beneficial and detrimental. But I’m wrong a lot, and my writing off Sexton as a low-efficient gunner seems to have been one such occasion—he’s just a gunner. In fact, despite the player profile of Sexton that exists in my head, he’s been a relatively efficient scorer (18.7 points, 46.6%fg, 38.1%3pt for his career) pretty much since the Cleveland Cavaliers made him the 8^th pick in the 2018 draft. And in all fairness to Sexton, who is averaging 17.5 points on 48.2% from the field and 38.7% from distance this season, that’s perhaps more than enough—particularly when his volume scoring is contextualized within being an additive component to the Jazz’s significant improvement since adding Sexton to their starting lineup on Dec. 13^th. While Sexton would never qualify as a player lacking for confidence, it would seem that both his season’s fortunes and the Jazz’s turned once the team found confidence enough in him to make him the full-time starter at shooting guard. After starting the season 7-13 with Sexton coming off the bench, where he was averaging just 12.7 points on 44.7% from the field and a not-so-great 32.5% from behind the arc, both Sexton and the Jazz have been playing beautiful basketball music since shaking things up and adding the guard into the starting lineup—Utah’s 19-11 record is good for seventh in the NBA since 12/13. Sexton, who is the type of player who gets his numbers going on bucket binges, would seem to appear to be perfectly suited as offensive punch off the bench. But the additional runway in terms of minutes on the floor that he gets as a starter clearly allows Sexton added opportunities to get his scoring game off the ground. And once in flight, Sexton’s soaring scoring this season has been potent enough to put him in an elite group of bucket-getters, as his 25.8 points per 36 minutes rank him 17^th in the entire league, despite being the only player to average less than 25 minutes per game in the top-40 of such scorers. Yet, scoring has never really been much of a problem for the sixth-year guard (Sexton averaged 24.3 points per game his third season with Cleveland). The questions with Sexton have always been about how to optimize his scoring punch while dealing with the fact that he is essentially a scoring guard in a lead guard’s body. But Sexton has actually made some great strides as a playmaker this season, as his 4.5 assists per game are a career high. While Sexton will never be considered a high-level playmaker, those assist numbers come in 10.9 minutes less per game than his prior career-high of 4.4 dimes per contest with the Cavs in the ’21 season. Utah has clearly figured out that letting Sexton be a potent offensive weapon, and allowing him to do so without burdening him with the expectation of playing a style that does not fit his strengths, has actually made him the type of “guy” that can really help a franchise.

• It turns out that playing in the most potent offense in the league, with the best pure distributor going, will do wonders for a player’s shooting. Since being traded to the Indiana Pacers 13 games ago on Jan. 17^th, Pascal Siakam seems to have found the shooting stroke that’s evaded him since the 2020 season—Siakam shot 35.9% from distance on a career-high 2.2 threes per contest that season, the last year he shot above 35% from behind the arc. Since becoming a Pacer though, Siakam is shooting a very solid 42.5% from the three after shooting only 31.7% in his 39 games with Toronto this year. Siakam’s biggest improvement regarding his shooting has been his ability to convert catch-and-shoot opportunities, which had become a weakness in his game over the last few years with the Raptors. Since joining the Pacers' run-and-gun-and-fun offense, Siakam has increased his catch-and-shoot field goal percentage from 33.8% with Toronto to 43.2% with Indianapolis. This improvement is due in large part to the fact that Siakam is converting the open shots that he’s now getting in a far more fluid offensive system in Indianapolis. Where in Toronto, there was little movement and a lot of “your turn, my turn” happening between Siakam and first-year all-star Scottie Barnes, in Indianapolis, Siakam now functions in a system whose main objective is to work to get the best shot, as quickly as possible. In turn, Siakam has increased his conversion rate on the opportunities significantly, going from shooting just 36% with the Raptors on open shots (shots attempted with a defender 4 or more feet away) to 49.3% with the Pacers.

• Anytime that an all-time great player steps away before the collective "we" is ready to say goodbye, it’s a bit gutting. Sports fans are selfish by nature. We covet greatness and hope to extract every last indelible moment from the players that gift it to us. We are only ready to say goodbye once we’ve wrung every last drop, savored every last enduring play, and left the player athletically a husk of what once was. We want to feel like we were given everything before they limp off solemnly into retirement. Is that fair? No. Does it make it easier for us to say goodbye to our idols? Of course. I say all that as preamble for the saddening news that the Washington Mystics’ two-time WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne has unexpectedly decided to step away from the game. Delle Donne, who in addition to the 2 MVPs, was also the 2013 Rookie of the Year and a seven-time all-star, has been hampered by back issues that have required several surgeries, forcing her to miss 57 of 108 games played over the last three seasons. Yet, in the 23 games she played last season, she was still very effective, averaging 16.7 points per contest, while shooting her typically efficient 48.5% from the field, 39.3% from distance, and 93.8% from the line. That efficiency has been a hallmark of Delle Donne’s. Her career numbers are an extremely impressive 19.5 points per contest, on 47.5% from the field, 39.2% from behind the arc, and a stellar 93.7% from the free throw line; meaning that the former 2^nd overall pick from Delaware (’13), is essentially flirting with 50-40-90 for her career. A feat she accomplished once in her second MVP season (‘19), averaging 19.5 points, while shooting 51.5%fg, 43%3pt, and an insane 97.4% from the line. Delle Donne’s 19.5 points per game career scoring mark is the fifth highest per game average in WNBA history, trailing only Cynthia Cooper (20.9), Breanna Stewart (20.8), Arike Ogunbowale (20.2), and A’ja Wilson (19.9). Additionally, the career 93.7 % free throw percentage is good for first all-time in WNBA history. But Delle Donne, who was designated a core player by the Washington Mystics in January, a move that essentially revokes her free agency in lieu of a one-year supermax at $228,094 (similar in essence to the NFL’s franchise designation), now leaves the Mystics and the WNBA with a hall of fame-sized hole going into the 2024 season. And of course selfishly, I’m sad to see one of the WNBA’s all-time greats go. Thank you for the memories.

• The NBA regular season is a grueling 82-game marathon that spans nearly six months. Over the duration of that time, the varied peaks and valleys, inputs and outputs, vicissitudes and machinations that form a team through the course of the season are so relentlessly unexpected—an injury here, an unhappy player there, a coach on the brink—that generally speaking, it’s rare for a team to have a clearly defined inflection point in its season. Sure, the trade of a superstar can change fortunes, a significant injury can derail plans, and the firing of a coach can unsettle franchise moorings, but rarely do those things occur within a season at such a level of impact that they become flashpoints for an organization’s direction. Yet, the Los Angeles Clippers have such a moment to point to. But, it’s not the moment that James Harden arrived that became the fulcrum point for this Clippers team. Rather, it was at the instance that this group finally figured out who they actually were with this somewhat new cast of characters that has become the singular moment of recognition.

  If this Clippers season were to end in some manner of glory, Nov. 17^th would be the day in which the direction of this LAC season found its true North. See, Harden may have been traded for on Halloween, and he may have made his first appearance on November 6^th, but after losing the first five games he appeared in, it’s not until the 17^th of November that Harden would get his first win as a Clipper, and the team’s fortunes would turn dramatically. Since what seems to be fated as “the game that turned around a season”, the Clippers are a sensational 32-9, good for nearly a .780 win percentage—both the wins and win percentages are best in the league over that time.