Top NBA Stories Week Nine
Steph Curry Snaps His Record
Sunday night at Portland, Curry went into the game with a streak of 268 games straight with at least one three-pointer made which is the most in NBA history. He could not make one going 0-8, which is rare for him, considering he is the greatest shooter of all time. The last time Curry failed to make a three-pointer was in the 2018 season when they still had Kevin Durant and Lebron James was still with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Will Curry create another streak and break his record? Seems unlikely because he would have to play at least another five seasons which means he’d be 40 years old. With the way he plays, I can see him playing past 40 because he’s a finesse type of player. He isn’t an athletic freak who relies on his athleticism to get him by, so he’s a lot more durable than most players. He already has all the three-point records, and this is just another one on the list of impossible records to be broken.
Detroit Pistons Lose 25th In A Row
The Pistons lost their 25th straight game last night and are now an abysmal 2-26 on the season. It has gotten so bad that in last night's loss, the fans were chanting, “Sell the team”. Now I don’t see what selling the team would do because that wouldn’t magically make the team and players play better. They’ve had some games where they only lost by a couple of possessions, but they’ve also had a lot of games where they lost by over 30 points. Doing some research on it, I wanted to say that they are one of the younger teams in the NBA, so there would be growing pains for them. While they rank 8th in that category, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the second youngest team and the Orlando Magic rank 5th. Both teams are playing at a very high level with the Magic currently sitting at 4th in the east and the Thunder in 2nd place right now. Individually, the Pistons have some great young talent. PG Cade Cunningham is having a great year averaging 22 PPG and is 10th in assists this season at 7 APG. Their rookie guard Ausar Thompson is having a great season as well averaging 10 PPG, 8 RPG, and getting a block every game, which is impressive for a guard. They also have the highest-paid coach in the league Monty Williams, who they hired with the belief he would be able to develop this young team. So far that hasn’t shown but I'm rooting for them to turn it around.
Surprise Team This Season
The biggest surprise team this season thus far has to be the Minnesota Timberwolves. While they have some great talent like Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns, no one was expecting them to be this good this season. Many people have referred to Edwards as the next great star in the league and he has taken over late in the games this season, which is great to see. He has only progressed every season he’s been in the league, and he seems to add something different to his bag every year. Last season when the Wolves traded for Gobert, there were questions about whether he and Towns would be able to play and co-exist together. Well, this season we are seeing them play very well together. Having Gobert play center and clog the paint frees up Towns to do what he does best, which is play off the dribble and from the outside in. Towns is one of, if not the best three-point shooting big man. So, when bigs guard him, they have to go all the way to the three-point line and most bigs hate to do that because he’ll just blow past them. Having these two on the court together creates matchup nightmares. They have quickly become a defensive team being anchored by Gobert who is the front-runner right now for defensive player of the year. This is exactly what the Wolves front office envisioned when they traded all those assets for Gobert last offseason and it’s starting to show positive results. I don’t think the Wolves will end the season with the top seed in the west, but they’ll still end up in the top four. What I do know is that this team is for real and no team in the West will want to play this team in a seven-game series come playoff time.