Cleveland has won its first 12 games and is off to the best start in the league. There are 10 teams in the Western Conference with winning records. And somehow, only two teams in the Eastern Conference have winning records.
There is a common dominator on both sides of the ledger: Everybody is hurt. At least it seems that way.
Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey have yet to play together for Philadelphia. Khris Middleton hasn’t debuted this season for Milwaukee. Same goes for Kawhi Leonard with the Los Angeles Clippers. New Orleans — already without C.J. McCollum and Dejounte Murray — is bracing for weeks without Zion Williamson.
Orlando will be missing Paolo Banchero for probably 10 more games, at minimum. Scottie Barnes is sidelined in Toronto. Phoenix’s Kevin Durant, Memphis’ Ja Morant and Miami’s Jimmy Butler are all likely out for a week or two at minimum. And now Oklahoma City is facing months without Chet Holmgren, who missed what would have been his entire first season, then played every game last season, and now is out.
All those big-name injured players are critical to their teams, all of them All-Star or in some cases All-NBA candidates when they’re at their best.
“On one hand I know how to approach it, I know what to do, what not to do and how beautiful the other side is,” Holmgren wrote on social media after getting hurt Sunday night. “But on the other hand I’ve felt the frustration of this process, and the wear it puts on your mind.”
By any measure — also including the absence of San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich for medical reasons — the first three weeks of this season have not gone well on the NBA health front.
Plenty of teams are depleted going into this week’s start of the NBA Cup — the new name for what was called the In-Season Tournament a year ago when it debuted. Among Tuesday’s opening tournament games on the colorful courts: Dallas at Golden State, in Klay Thompson’s return to the Bay for the first time in anything other than a Warriors uniform.
“To me, it’s just another regular season game in November,” Thompson said, downplaying what will certainly more than that.
It’ll mean plenty to the Warriors. “We’ve had homecomings before,” Golden State star Stephen Curry said, “but nothing like this. … He deserves the celebration and the welcome that he’s going to get.”
For some teams — Philadelphia (2-7) and Milwaukee (2-8) among them — maybe the NBA Cup can be the springboard to a much-needed jumpstart to the season. The 76ers are getting Embiid back, which will obviously help. The Bucks have Giannis Antetokounmpo but will open tournament play Tuesday against Toronto without Damian Lillard, added to the injury list Monday night because he’s now in concussion protocol.
“I think you’ll see every team, no matter what their record is, I think people will take it way more serious,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “First of all, I think they understand it now. I did a lot of interviews and I was with a few guys in Vegas who made it (last year for the tournament’s final four) and didn’t understand it. They didn’t even know how they got there. Now, I think everybody kind of understands it.”
It’s not that difficult to figure out: teams are in a group of five, play the other four teams once, and the six group winners along with two wild-cards go to the quarterfinals. Win that, and you go to Las Vegas for the semifinals. Indiana made the final last year and it’s more than reasonable to say the Pacers learned something from that experience that helped propel them to the East finals last spring.
“Our guys got a real taste of what the elevated stage is all about,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said at the time.
The Pacers entered Monday third in the East, but they lost James Wiseman and Isaiah Jackson to Achilles tears early in the season, and now are without Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard.
Nobody, it seems, is safe from the injury bug. Not even the Cavs, who have gotten off to their red-hot start with Max Strus out since preseason with a badly sprained ankle.
But they have more than endured, and other teams have found ways to get through being short-handed as well. Boston, for example, just played four games without Jaylen Brown; the NBA champions, to no one’s surprise, are off to a 9-2 start. Other than the Celtics and Cavs, every team in the East starts play Tuesday at .500 or worse.
The Magic haven’t been the same without Banchero. It’ll be a test for the Thunder to remain near the top of the West without Holmgren. Those coaches — Orlando’s Jamahl Mosley and Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault — see the absences of their young stars as opportunities for others to grow into evolved roles.
But nobody wants to dig too deep a hole, either. It’s early, but what happens now might be the difference for some teams when it’s time to fight for seeding in April.
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