Every day in the NBA there is a lot to unpack, so every weekday morning throughout the season we will give you the three things you need to know from the last 24 hours in the NBA.
1) Anthony Davis looks like an MVP going off for 36 points, 19 boards in Charlotte. Early in the first quarter Sunday in Charlotte, Hornets fans started chanting “M-V-P” when Kemba Walker went to the free throw line. With good reason. Walker is having a monster season, averaging 27.1 points and 6.2 assists per game, shooting 37.2 percent from three, and carrying the Hornets’ offense.
But if there was an MVP candidate in the building Sunday, it was the Pelican’s Anthony Davis. And he showed it. Davis finished with 36 points and 19 rebounds, plus played his usual stellar defense, in leading New Orleans to a road win.
While Walker is playing at an All-NBA level, Davis is playing at a real MVP contender level — 27.8 points, 12.7 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 2.7 blocks a game. Plus, he is playing Defensive Player of the Year level defense. Davis is second in the NBA in PER (28.7), fourth in win shares (3.6), fifth in B-R’s value over replacement player and third in ESPN’s real plus/minus. What could hold Davis back is the Pelicans as a whole — they are 12-12 despite Davis’ best efforts (they are 0-4 when Davis sits).
Right now Giannis Antetokounmpo is the likely frontrunner for the award (just talking to other voters early on) with some sympathy for LeBron James as well. Davis deserves to be mentioned in that group, especially if the Pelicans start to win. Walker, Joel Embiid, Stephen Curry (he might lead if not for injuries), Kevin Durant, and everyone else is in a group after those top names. That said, it’s very early and the race is still wide open.
Just don’t talk about the MVP award without mentioning Davis.
(P.S., someone is going to want to talk about the Pelicans trading him. Don’t bother to even discuss it before next July, it is not on the table, sources say New Orleans is trying to win and keep him. They are buyers at the deadline, not sellers. This July 1 the Pelicans will put a $240 million designated veteran max contract extension on the table in front of Davis and his agent. If Davis says no to that — and only then — the Pelicans will be forced to seriously consider a trade, with the Lakers and Celtics waiting at the front of the line. But don’t be so confident he walks away from all that money, and before he does there is no trade to be had, no matter how impatient you are.)
2) Clippers’ Patrick Beverley ejected after throwing a bounce pass to a fan who insulted his mother. If you sit within the first few rows of an NBA game, there is a little postcard sitting on your seat when you get there warning you that you can be ejected for what you say to a player, coach, or referee. The reality is that is inconsistently enforced across the NBA — fans cross the line all the time and all too often arena security doesn’t do much about it.
Which brings us to Sunday in Dallas. A fan sitting courtside along one baseline — a long-time season ticket holder and regular in those seats — was going after the Clippers’ Patrick Beverley’s mother. Beverley said the fan said “f*** your mother” while the fan said he did not use profanity but did insult Beverley’s mother. Security did nothing. Eventually, a frustrated Beverley threw a bounce pass to the fan during a break in the action. That got Beverley tossed from the game.
The fan? He got to stay and watch Dallas eventually knock off the Clippers. Here’s Beverley’s quote, via Tim MacMahon of ESPN.
Bingo.
What happened to Beverley just wrong. In my book, if you sit courtside and decide to verbally joust with a player than you opened the door and he has the right to come right back at the fan verbally without retribution. Cross a line — say, insult a player’s mother/wife/kids — and he has the right to ask security to remove that fan. If security isn’t going to do its job then if Beverley wants to fire a chest pass into the face of the fan, so be it (the bounce pass was mild). To use the sentiment our parents used, “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.”
I get it, probably not a good look for the league to have players yelling back at fans or firing passes into their faces. And when in the past I have asked a league official about the apparently growing number of people sitting courtside verbally going hard at players — often baiting them while camera video rolls, looking for a gotcha clip — the response was we don’t see how many fans are tossed for this behavior. Maybe so. But in a sport with this level of close interaction between fans and players, the players cannot be expected to restrain themselves while the fans have no such boundaries. There has to be a better give and take here.
By the way, Beverley was involved in more than just that play, he knocked out Dennis Smith Jr.'s tooth, too.
3) USA Basketball qualifies for 2019 World Cup with a win — bring on the NBA stars. Jeff Van Gundy and his rag-tag crew — actually, a few different rag-tag crews, there was very little continuity — have done it.
With the USA’s 78-70 win in Uraguay, the United States became the latest team to qualify for the 2019 FIBA World Cup, which takes place in China starting next Aug. 31. Travis Trice, the former Michigan State star who went to training camp with the Knicks in 2015, led the way with 17 points. John Jenkins, the former No. 23 pick of the Hawks who played in 145 NBA games but is now out of the league, added 13. Van Gundy coached a rotating group of similar G-League players to an 8-2 record to qualify for the World Cup, and his teams performed admirably.
Why the G-Leaguers? Because FIBA decided to flex its muscle and try to be like it’s soccer brethren, where international World Cup qualifiers take place during the club season. It was a pure power move, although FIBA sold it as wanting to see qualifying games played in home countries (there was a group play spread out over different weekends played in different countries, rather than one big regional tournament). The difference is in soccer there is a tradition of the major leagues taking mid-season breaks to let the players compete for their countries. Did anyone think the NBA was going to do that? No. The major European leagues? Limited, but mostly no. So what was left was countries around the globe scrambling to put together teams without their best players (Giannis Antetokounmpo did not suit up for Greece, for example).
The World Cup will not be that way — expect the USA Basketball World Cup team (and, subsequently, the Olympic team for 2020 in Tokyo) to be stacked with the NBA’s biggest names. Not many guys are backing out, unlike like we saw with the Rio Olympics. Why? Pride for playing for their country? Sure, some of that. Also, the World Cup is being played in the massive and fast-growing basketball shoe market of China so you can be sure Nike wants Kevin Durant to go, Under Armour wants Stephen Curry to go, Adidas wants James Harden to go, etc. (The same is essentially true of the next Olympics in Tokyo, the same region of the globe.) The stacked USA roster will be heavy favorites in China last this summer.
But it took some G-Leaguers to get the USA to that stage, and they deserve credit, too.
