Grading early-season priorities and plans for 10 key NBA teams

Every NBA team comes into the new season with plans for how to better reach their goals. Not all of them manage to execute.

A month into the regular season, it’s time to look at how well teams have executed some of their most important strategies. In some cases, such as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ undefeated start or the Golden State Warriors riding a deep rotation to one of the Western Conference’s best records, it’s clear things are working out. But some teams still haven’t seen their early-season priorities take off.

The Milwaukee Bucks are scraping to get back into the Eastern Conference playoff picture, while the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks are off to slow starts after their preseason blockbuster trade.

And the Philadelphia 76ers, who are falling behind in the East race, might jeopardize their ability to follow through on a plan to manage Joel Embiid and Paul George with an eye toward the postseason.

Let’s break down the numbers and grade how well several of the NBA’s top teams are handling what they prioritized coming into the 2024-25 season.

Jump to a team:
CLE | DAL | DEN | GS | LAL
MIL | MIN | NY | PHI | SA

and Donovan Mitchell this offseason made it clear: The Cavaliers were going to try to make it work despite last season’s evidence that Allen and Mitchell struggled to coexist with Evan Mobley and Darius Garland, respectively.

Overlooked in that discussion was that while Cleveland’s best four players didn’t perform well together last season — outscoring opponents by just 2.2 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA Advanced Stats — the same was not true in 2022-23, when they had a plus-8.8 net rating en route to the second-best point differential in the East.

With Garland, in particular, performing much better at full health, Cleveland is back to that same kind of success this season. The Cavaliers’ net rating with their four best players on the court is almost identical to two seasons ago (plus-8.8 points per 100 possessions).

In many ways, new coach Kenny Atkinson has married what worked in 2022-23 (the starters) with what saved the Cavaliers last season in strong production from units mixing starters and reserves.

Because of the overlapping skill sets of their stars, Cleveland’s best lineups have still featured Mitchell at point guard (plus-29.0 net rating in 96 minutes going into Sunday’s game, per my analysis of lineup data from NBA Advanced Stats) and Mobley at center (plus-18.4 in 203 minutes ahead of Sunday). But the Cavaliers have done well enough with all four together to make things work at a league-best level.

: Perimeter defense by committee

Grade: A-

After losing stopper Derrick Jones Jr. and replacing him in the starting lineup with Klay Thompson, the Mavericks knew their perimeter defense would take a hit but were confident it could still be successful. Coach Jason Kidd joked at media day that star Luka Doncic would be Dallas’ new ace defender.

The Mavericks’ defense hasn’t been the reason for their .500 start. Dallas is up to sixth in defensive rating, 12 spots better than last season, albeit not quite as good as during the Mavericks’ run to the conference finals. (Dallas ranked fifth in adjusted defensive rating relative to their opponents’ regular-season performance.)

Instead, it’s the Mavericks’ offense that hasn’t lived up to the hype despite Thompson’s strong start. With Doncic performing at a sub-MVP level thus far and Dallas’ other shooters besides Kyrie Irving struggling from beyond the arc, the Mavericks rank an identical eighth in offensive rating as compared to last season.

If and when the shooting comes around, Dallas’ D looks good enough to support it during the regular season. P.J. Washington has stepped up to the challenge of defending top scorers. According to data from Second Spectrum tracking, Washington’s matchups have an average season-long usage rate of 23%, up from 21% last year with the Mavs when Jones (24%) typically defended high-usage opponents.

: Replacing a key veteran in KCP

Grade: B-

The storyline in Denver was clear: How would the Nuggets replace Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a key starter on both the 2023 title team and last year’s group that tied the NBA-era franchise record with 57 wins? Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth’s confidence that recent draft picks Christian Braun, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson could jointly fill the void was some part of the ongoing tension with coach Michael Malone that ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne reported on recently.

When Denver started 2-3, with both wins in overtime against 2024 lottery teams (Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors), that plan looked flawed. The Nuggets have righted the ship since with a five-game winning streak, including close home victories over Dallas and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Braun, Caldwell-Pope’s replacement in the starting five, has been strong all season. He is hitting 44.7% of his 3s, albeit on limited volume (3.2 attempts per game as compared to 4.1 for Caldwell-Pope last season). And Denver’s remade starting five has the NBA’s second-best net rating (plus-14.9 points per 100 possessions) among lineups that have played at least 100 minutes.

The bench, the Nuggets’ early issue, has stabilized. Strawther’s 38.3% 3-point shooting is only average, but his 6.5 attempts per 36 minutes are important for a Denver team that ranks last in 3-point volume. Meanwhile, Watson has filled in well for the injured Aaron Gordon with double figures in the first five games since Gordon went down with a right calf strain.

The Nuggets’ formula still relies too heavily on MVP-caliber play from Nikola Jokic, as evidenced by back-to-back losses this weekend without him. But that also might have been true of Caldwell-Pope, who is off to a slow start with the Orlando Magic, shooting just 23% from 3 thus far.

. The Warriors have used at least 11 players in every game this season, the only NBA team to do so thus far. And it’s working to perfection. Every single Golden State player has a positive net rating.

The question is how long Kerr can keep it going.

Injuries will obviously cut into the Warriors’ bench. Already, Golden State has lost starting guard De’Anthony Melton to a left ACL sprain. That simply means more minutes for guard Lindy Waters III, who had a 21-point game off the bench with Stephen Curry sidelined last month. It’s fair to wonder whether Kerr can give meaningful minutes to so many players into the postseason.

Since 1996-97, only one team that played beyond the first round has used an average of 11 players per game for more than five minutes: the 67-win 2015-16 San Antonio Spurs, who featured a 10-man rotation with a variety of cameos from the likes of Boban Marjanovic, Kevin Martin and Andre Miller. San Antonio swept the short-handed Memphis Grizzlies in the opening round before being upset by the Thunder, who subsequently lost to the Warriors in a memorable seven-game Western Conference finals.

Certainly, Kerr has played his share of large rotations. Fueled by blowouts, an average of 10.2 players per game saw more than five minutes in the postseason during Golden State’s run to the 2017 title. The previous year, the Warriors played 10.1 players that often, albeit just eight in the Game 7 loss to the Cavaliers in the Finals.

Those teams had more margin for error than this year’s Warriors, which might force Kerr to tighten his rotation a bit at some point.

: Davis to make an MVP case

Grade: A-

Technically, this quote came earlier this month, after the Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers. But new Lakers coach JJ Redick was asked what his goal was for Anthony Davis coming into the season, and he responded, “to win MVP.”

It will be difficult for Davis to earn the award in a season in which Jokic continues to play at an MVP level and Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jayson Tatum are all off to strong starts. Yet Davis has put his name in consideration, producing at his highest rate since finishing sixth in MVP voting in 2019-20, when the Lakers won the championship.

Even as LeBron James has begun to assert himself with four consecutive triple-doubles last week, Davis’ usage rate remains a team-high 32%, the second best of his NBA career. And Davis’ efficiency has never been better thanks to 58% 2-point shooting and a career-high 11 free throw attempts per game.

Consider Davis’ production perhaps the best of the changes Redick has made to a Lakers roster that had little turnover from last season, as detailed last week by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin and Matt Williams.

at point guard and Doc Rivers as coach. Lillard was dropped into Milwaukee’s lineup just before training camp, while Rivers took over for Adrian Griffin midseason.

The results for Lillard have been positive. He’s making 55% of his 2-point attempts, up from 49% a year ago, albeit not quite back to the career-best 57% Lillard shot inside the arc during his final season with the Portland Trail Blazers. Lillard’s usage rate has ticked up too, and he had 36 points (albeit with eight turnovers) as the Bucks gave Cleveland a scare without Antetokounmpo recently.

Lillard’s bounce-back wasn’t enough to prevent Milwaukee from starting 2-8. The Bucks have improved only marginally on defense after dropping from fourth in defensive rating in Mike Budenholzer’s final season as coach to 19th last season. With few quality wing defenders and Lillard at point guard, the personnel isn’t what it was with Jrue Holiday on the roster, but Milwaukee hoped for a better start.

To Rivers’ credit, he’s starting to find more workable rotations on the wing, compensating for the team’s lack of two-way role players with Khris Middleton sidelined. AJ Green’s shooting has opened things up offensively, which helped the Bucks survive Lillard’s absence in the concussion protocol, earning wins over Toronto and Detroit before Saturday’s loss in Charlotte.

Still, there is currently little evidence outside of Antetokounmpo’s dominance that Milwaukee can contend for a title.

for Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle is we can’t see how Minnesota’s 2024-25 season might have gone with Towns. Previously, my stats-based wins projections had outlined reasons for concern about the Timberwolves repeating their 2024 run to the conference finals.

Chief among those was Minnesota’s perimeter depth, a need addressed with DiVincenzo. Because the Timberwolves’ rotation has been almost entirely healthy, we’ve seen fewer than 100 combined minutes from rookies Rob Dillingham and Terrence Shannon Jr. and veteran Joe Ingles.

When Dillingham was forced into the rotation with starting point guard Mike Conley sidelined Wednesday in the second game of a back-to-back, the early returns weren’t great. Dillingham had three turnovers in nine minutes and Minnesota was outscored by 13 in that span in a 106-98 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.

DiVincenzo has yet to shoot the ball as expected, making just 32% of his frequent 3-point attempts (9.9 per 36 minutes) after shooting 40% over the previous two seasons with the Knicks and Warriors. Yet the Timberwolves’ bench has been a strength. It’s their starting five, which is outscoring opponents by just 3.7 points per 100 possessions with Conley (.479 true shooting percentage) scoring far less efficiently, which has struggled.

as their only healthy center with NBA experience had New York not acquired Towns. The offseason departure of Isaiah Hartenstein, plus surgery that has kept Mitchell Robinson on the sidelines, left a gaping hole at center, which the Knicks sought to fill with Towns.

What’s clear is the New York defense hasn’t worked thus far with him. It’s inevitable he’ll have more success protecting the rim going forward. Opponents are shooting an eye-popping 85.5% on attempts inside 5 feet with Towns as the primary defender, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats.

However, a good rule of thumb: The more shocking the stat, the less likely it is to continue. The highest mark over a full season defending at least five shots per game in the camera-tracking era was when opponents shot 72% against Kevin Love in 2019-20, and Towns’ own track record of rim protection is far better.

The bigger concern might be how many corner 3s the Knicks are giving up. New York’s 12.2 allowed per 100 possessions are the most in the NBA, up from 11.1 during the 2023-24 regular season. Those attempts are a big reason Knicks opponents have the sixth-easiest shot diet in the league, per Second Spectrum’s quantified shot quality metric (qSQ), which considers the location and type of shot and distance to nearby defenders.

, Philadelphia’s focus entering the season was on managing the minutes of stars Joel Embiid and Paul George to make sure they’d be healthy for the playoffs after Embiid’s track record of playing through postseason maladies. The question after a 2-10 start is whether the 76ers can be confident they’ll be in the postseason with Embiid and George playing full-time.

For now, the answer is yes thanks to the forgiving East.

On average, simulations using ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) show the seventh-place team in the East winning 38 games, meaning 39 wins are necessary to finish in the top six and avoid the play-in tournament. To get there, Philly must go 36-34 the rest of the way. That’s plausible even with Embiid, and potentially George, sitting out back-to-backs and All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey still sidelined with a hamstring injury.

The 76ers advance directly to the playoffs in 45% of BPI simulations. At some point, it’s plausible Philadelphia will have to revisit its thinking if the team continues to dig a deeper hole. And particularly given the fluky nature of the Embiid’s injury history, which includes an orbital fracture and Bell’s palsy last season, sitting out back-to-backs alone won’t guarantee his postseason health. For now, however, the Sixers can feel OK sticking with their preseason plan.

‘s impressive Rookie of the Year debut, San Antonio focused its offseason on doing more to surround him with veteran talent. Most notably, the Spurs brought in Hall of Fame point guard Chris Paul as both a mentor and setup man for Wembanyama.

In part because backup point guard Tre Jones hasn’t played since opening night, that hasn’t really transpired. Wembanyama is actually being assisted less frequently (68% of his made field goals, down from 74% a year ago) and taking tougher shots as measured by Second Spectrum’s qSQ.

As I noted last week, that was partially due to Jeremy Sochan’s breakout leaving less room for Wembanyama in the paint. But his shot quality hasn’t moved much since Sochan was replaced in the lineup by the smaller Stephon Castle. Instead, Wembanyama’s shot making has improved. As a rookie, Wembanyama’s quantified shot index (qSI) — the difference between his actual effective field goal percentage and his qSQ — ranked in the 56th percentile among players with at least 100 shot attempts. This season, that has jumped to the 79th percentile.