The responsible way to approach opening night is to remember that it’s just one game out of 82. The lowly Bulls beat the 60-win Pistons last year, and the Jazz, who tanked so shamelessly later on that they were eventually fined for it, blew the doors off the Clippers. Weird things are going to happen. Destinies are determined in the spring, not in October.
But we’re human, and we come into opening night knowing we’re seeing something new. It’s one of 82, but it’s the first of 82, and therefore perhaps the single most informative game out of those 82 about how we should expect the other 81 to go. Wednesday’s 11-game slate featured debuts for 22 of the 30 NBA teams, and inevitably, there have been standouts thus far. Here are the biggest winners and losers from NBA opening night.
Winners: Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball
Minnesota’s last two postseasons ended in distressingly similar ways: Anthony Edwards, with no suitable sidekick, trying and failing to will his way through doubles to lift an otherwise hapless half-court offense. Tim Connelly traded the team’s jumbo identity for a new, more finesse-oriented theory of a team. The Timberwolves won’t overwhelm opponents with size and defense anymore. The name of the game now is speed and shooting.
Edwards and LaMelo Ball are two of the NBA’s most prolific pull-up 3-pointers, and everything Minnesota does will flow out of the attention defenders need to pay to them behind the arc. Sure enough, in Wednesday’s opener against the Heat, a possible top-five defense, Edwards was free to bomb 3-pointer after 3-pointer against relatively light coverage en route to a 45-point outburst in a 131-106 win. Doubling is much harder with Ball on the floor because he’ll destroy 4-on-3s, and when he’s shooting as well as he did against Miami, defenses are effectively helpless. This was proof of concept in a single game, an example of just how explosive two guards like this can be together, and how much they can amplify a supporting cast as athletic as Minnesota’s. There’s plenty to tighten up, but opening night went about as well for the Wolves as they could have hoped.
Loser: Miami Heat (other than Giannis)
Giannis Antetokounmpo did his job against the Timberwolves. You can’t ask for much more than a 35-point debut, but the concern surrounding Miami was that there simply wasn’t enough offensive firepower beyond him to create a credible contender. Antetokounmpo accounted for more than one-third of the Heat’s points as his teammates shot 26-of-62 from the floor in an ugly 25-point loss.
This is an enormously unconventional offensive roster. While NBA champions have been built around jumbo creators in the past, we’ve never seen one so firmly reliant on its biggest players, in this case Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo, to create its shots. The Heat eschewed individual creation in favor of 3-point shooting in most of their follow-up moves after the Antetokounmpo trade, and that put an enormous burden on the role players to actually make their 3s. The benefit of Antetokounmpo’s gravity is that it leaves everyone else wide open. This version of the Heat simply does not work on nights when they make 24% of their 3s, nor does it work when they are held to 33 3-point attempts. Antetokounmpo’s best Bucks teams bombed triples as much as anyone in the league.
Few felt the Heat had a complete roster entering the season. Inevitably, Pat Riley will have to seek reinforcements at the deadline. He’s done it before. But watching the Heat against a team with as many ways to score as Minnesota has was somewhat startling. Outside of the two-time MVP, this is just a severely limited group of offensive players.
Winner: Walker Kessler
Walker Kessler’s rookie contract coincided with perhaps the bleakest four-year stretch in Jazz history. An entire tenure spent tanking. Rosters intentionally weakened at trade deadlines. Playing time seemingly reduced at the behest of the lottery gods. There were plenty of reasons for Kessler to leave Utah, and the biggest certainly seemed to be contractual. Among them, though, was probably the reality that he’d never really been able to play serious basketball with the Jazz for more than a few weeks at a time.
Well, now Kessler plays with the Lakers, alongside the patron saint of offensively dependent centers: Luka Dončić. No shot creator in the NBA makes life easier for that specific sort of player, and sure enough, Kessler’s Lakers debut was historic. In a 127-105 win over the Warriors, he made all 12 of his shots, becoming the first Lakers player with a perfect game on that many attempts since Wilt Chamberlain. In the process, he became the first Laker since Shaquille O’Neal to record 10 or more dunks in a game. Kessler is known for his defense. He was acquired for that defense. But joining Dončić’s team might be exactly what he needed to unlock his offensive potential.
Whether the Lakers overpaid for Kessler is a fair conversation that will play out throughout the season. They’re more or less out of tradable assets at this point, so if this team isn’t good enough in the spring, some hard conversations will be had. But Kessler undoubtedly made the right call in forcing his way to Los Angeles. This was the best thing he could have done for his career, and now he’s in a position to take a major leap in his fifth season.
Loser: Stephen Curry
Look, nobody outside of the Bay Area is shedding tears for Stephen Curry. He’s a four-time champion and, as of his recent contract extension, the highest-paid player in NBA history. He’s had plenty of good fortune. But opening night was a jarring reminder of the bleak ending he’s headed for, and it has nothing to do with his own performance.
Far from it. Curry scored 17 points in the first quarter… and the Lakers still won the frame. Once Curry cooled off, the Warriors had no chance. Curry expressed frustration at the narrative that the Warriors would struggle before the season, but after seeing it play out in a real game, things might be worse than we thought.
Curry was the entire offense, and there’s not much defense outside of Draymond Green and a rookie in Yaxel Lendeborg, who made the mistake of trash-talking Dončić. Between Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porziņģis, the Warriors started the season with around $90 million sidelined indefinitely because of health. Unless something here changes, Curry is in for a long season with this supporting cast.
Winner: Anthony Davis
The Anthony Davis extension campaign begins now. After agreeing to table contract talks until midway through the season, the future of the Davis-Washington Wizards partnership appeared fraught. He’s one of the most commonly discussed trade candidates in the NBA, never having seemed especially enthused about joining such a young roster. Without a new deal, well, it felt like only a matter of time.
We’re only one game into the season, and it came against the sort of terrible Bucks defense Davis has made a career out of destroying, but hey, it was nice to see Anthony Davis look like Anthony Davis again: 34 points and 12 rebounds in a 128-116 win. His brief detour through Dallas was a disaster on several levels. Aside from the Luka Dončić disaster, he simply seemed to have declined in his handful of games with the Mavericks last season. It didn’t help that he was playing on a roster devoid of guards and shooting, but he’s older and injury-prone. Maybe his prime really was over.
A strong opening night outing against one of the NBA’s worst teams doesn’t totally dismiss those notions, but it helps. The Wizards have spent the past several seasons tanking as egregiously as anyone in the NBA. For a night, at least, they were a competitive team led by a veteran star. If Davis puts together another dozen or so nights like that in the months to come, he might get that new deal after all.
Winner: Tyrese Haliburton
The last time we saw a healthy Tyrese Haliburton, he had nearly stolen a championship with perhaps the greatest run of clutch performances in NBA history. The Pacers’ fourth-quarter comeback over the Pelicans on Wednesday wasn’t quite as dramatic, but Haliburton was the difference in the closing minutes of a 123-120 win. We saw several Haliburton hallmarks in the last few minutes: a full-court pass into a Pascal Siakam layup, a floater, and an and-one layup.
On opening night, at least, the two-time All-Star more or less looked like his old self. A 23-point outing with a 4-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and a 17-point advantage in fast-break points is vintage Haliburton, and perhaps most importantly, his new pick-and-roll partnership with Ivica Zubac was promising. The Pacers won their joint minutes by six points, and Zubac’s rebounding in particular was a welcome addition to an Indiana team that never used to get that out of Myles Turner. There will be bumps in Haliburton’s recovery. He’ll miss games out of caution. The Pacers will have to adjust to a different sort of roster.
For now, at least, you could hardly tell he was playing his first game off of a torn Achilles. Haliburton, as usual, was the best player on the floor, and being back out on the court certainly meant a lot to him.
Winner: Damian Lillard
For a variety of reasons, Haliburton felt like a relatively safe bet to recover well from his torn Achilles. He’s younger than Damian Lillard, and he’s bigger, too. His game relies less on the sort of burst that age and injuries can rob players of, especially smaller guards. Lillard is 36. Expectations were reasonably tempered.
And then Lillard came out and looked like himself again. He scored as many points in the first quarter as the Suns did and closed the night with 25 points on 7-of-12 shooting. He’s already pulling up from the logo, and the Trail Blazers opened the season with a dominant 124-83 victory. It’s been an uneasy offseason in Portland. The Ja Morant trade drew mixed reviews. Micah Nori is essentially coaching on a one-year deal, and the rumors of a possible relocation aren’t going away. Blazers fans needed this: an uncomplicated blowout and a chance to celebrate arguably the greatest player in franchise history.
Loser: Orlando Magic
The Magic hired Sean Sweeney mostly to revitalize an offense that hasn’t ranked above average since roughly the Truman administration, and if opening night is any indication, he’s going to do that. Orlando’s 125 points against a strong Hawks defense would represent the fourth-most points the Magic scored all of last season. The maligned duo of Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner scored 57 combined points and, perhaps more importantly, didn’t lose their minutes together. That was probably the recipe for a Sweeney debut victory, but a controversial challenge helped Atlanta escape with a 132-125 victory.
With the Hawks leading by one, Jalen Johnson appeared to foul out after elbowing Desmond Bane in the face. However, upon review, it was deemed a blocking foul on Bane. The Hawks outscored the Magic by six from there, thanks in large part to four points, four rebounds and two assists from Johnson. The loss will sting for Orlando, but an offensive outburst like this bodes well for the season to come.
Winner: Ty Jerome
One of the best performances on Wednesday’s loaded slate featured Jerome dropping a career-high 45 points in a 123-103 win over the Jazz. Jerome was able to get to his spots on the floor at will against Utah’s defense. Whether it was in the paint on drives or knocking down five 3-pointers on eight attempts, everything came easy. Jerome is one of the most entertaining and underappreciated guards to watch in the NBA. When Jerome is on, he’s electric. And he certainly had things going in Memphis’ opener.
Loser: Caleb Wilson
It was a bit cruel for the NBA to force Caleb Wilson to debut against this specific Raptors team. A No. 4 overall pick playing in his first game on a Bulls roster this young and limited in terms of shooting is just red meat to Toronto’s defense. The entire theory of this team revolves around generating a million turnovers and killing their opponent in transition. Sure enough, the Raptors won the turnover battle, 27-10 and as a result, they outscored the Bulls by 21 in fast-break points in a 135-92 blowout.
Wilson contributed nine of those turnovers and needed 21 shots to score 16 points. He finished the game with a -45 plus-minus, the worst in a debut in NBA history. Remember Cooper Flagg getting blanked by Victor Wembanyama a year ago? The schedule makers aren’t always kind to top rookies. This was a growing-pains loss for Chicago in a season that will likely include quite a few of those. They’re going to look better against teams with shorter arms and less sheer thirst for activity. Chicago will be far from the only team to get overwhelmed by this Toronto defense this season. Wait and judge Wilson against more normal defenses.