Toward the end of the third quarter on Friday night, Evan Fournier hit a falling and-1 three, then finished the four-point play to extend Orlando's lead over San Antonio. To 36. The Magic went on to win 114-87, improving to 4-1, their best start in five years and the Eastern Conference's best start this season, period. Excuse my being blunt, but, what the hell? Even granting that Kawhi Leonard was still out, the Spurs came into the game 4-0 and the Magic just buried them, mer

In the opening minutes of the Pistons' first game, I joked that maybe I'd overlooked Tobias Harris as a Most Improved Player candidate. The kinda perpetually-underwhelming forward hit six of seven shots in the first nine minutes of the game, scoring 17 of Detroit's 25 points. It was a fire start, but also not something totally out of character for Harris, who's been a streaky scorer for a long time in the NBA. He usually comes back to earth. Now we're five games into the seas

Here's a perhaps obvious but too infrequently-spoken truth about big-man three-point threats: They only need to be a threat. It's great if you're DeMarcus Cousins and you've developed a genuinely good three-point shot that allows you to actually contribute to the team as a three-point shooter. But for most guys - think Giannis Antetokounmpo and Anthony Davis - it doesn't need to run that deep. In fact, and again this might be obvious, if your star big man is spending more tim

The good news for Kings fans is, first, that Houston didn't play down to Sacramento in Thursday night's opening 105-100 loss. The Kings took it to the Rockets, and were rightfully in it til the end. Yeah, Houston was off from three, but Sacramento played really solid wing defense, in my opinion, and can take some credit for that. Beyond that Houston played a fairly strong game, their two-point percentage was high, they weren't sloppy turning the ball over a bunch or anything.

The Celtics and Cavs will launch NBA 2017-18 tonight, so might as well try to get some of these in while I still can. These are highly unscientific, and it's important to remember predicting things like awards and All-NBA teams is in some ways distinct from predicting who will totally deserve those recognitions. But this kinda stuff is supposed to be breezy and, really, predictions are only fun anyway if they're full of holes and can be mercilessly picked apart for how bad th