#luka-doncic

#luka-doncic

Here are this week's national NBA survey results from SB Nation Reacts.Our Washington Wizards team survey results were released yesterday.A decisive majority think the NBA's single game record COULD be broken again

Forty-two percent of our national respondents believe that Wilt Chamberlin's single game scoring record will never be broken again.

In less than six months, the basketball world will descend upon Japan's southernmost island, Okinawa.Okinawa will be Japan's only host city for the 2023 FIBA World Cup.The Philippines and Indonesia will be the other two host nations.Team Canada will be playing in the world's fourth most populous country (Indonesia), but Japan's tropical island got a warm-up before August's big event, hosting the inaugural East Asia Super League (EASL) games from earlier this month.

Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal could very well be wearing a new uniform next year.So what teams can realistically trade for Bradley Beal?Well, whatever team that is will need to meet certain criteria:


Beal must WANT to go there
Beal's new team must have the cap space to take on his contract + 15% trade kicker
Beal's new team has to have inflated contracts they're willing to move


Outlined below are my three most realistic trade packages surrounding Bradley Beal.

While Jalen Brunson has become the most reliable basketball player in New York, that wasn't always the case.Less than a year ago, there were people around the league who believed that the Knicks had overpaid for the young floor general and questioned just how good Brunson could be.It's not like pundits and analysts thought that he was bad, but given his short stature, defensive limitations, and lack of experience as the go-to guy, many thought that his ceiling and potential were somewhat limited.

The Lakers have done themselves no favors in the last five days or so, losing games to bottom-of-the-league Houston and play-in rivals Dallas.Both losses were particularly frustrating for differing reasons and certainly made it feel like things were coming crashing down on the Lakers this season.The important context to note in all of this is that everyone in the play-in race is experiencing these types of losses.

The Lakers came back from 27 points down to beat the Mavericks 111-108 on Sunday in Dallas.Here are four reasons why they were able to mount their largest comeback for a win this season:
LeBron James' toughness
In the third quarter with the team on its way back from a 27-point first half deficit, James planted his right foot and crumpled to the court in severe pain.

To call Monday's report about Kyrie Irving asking the Mavericks to trade for LeBron James illogical would be quite the understatement.The Lakers aren't trading LeBron and if they are, it won't be to Dallas.There are numerous reasons for that sentence to be true, but none more so than the fact that the Mavericks don't have anything attractive in a trade.

The Boston Celtics have reached the conference finals four times in the last six years as Jayson Tatum has gone from top pick to superstar.The 25-year-old has been first-team All-NBA for two straight years and is just entering his prime, but he has been unable to lift the Celtics to their 18th championship.

There is no better look at how compacted the Western Conference playoff race is than Sunday night's game between the Knicks and Lakers.Had the Lakers won the contest, they would have moved into a 3-way tie for the seventh seed with the Mavericks and Timberwolves with matching .500records at 34-34.Instead, the Lakers lost, dropped to 33-35 and into a four-way tie for the ninth seed.

98.5 The Sports Hub's Matt Dolloff isn't overly confident about the odds of the Boston Celtics winning the 2023 NBA Championship after the trade deadline - mainly due to the field improving far more than the Cs did.While the 2021 west champs Phoenix acquired Kevin Durant and 2022 Western Conference title team Dallas adding Kyrie Irving to a backcourt with Luka Doncic, Dolloff sees the Mike Muscala trade with the Thunder as one barely moving the needle.

Fired former Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka will be a highly sought-after coaching target during the upcoming offseason according to Heavy's Steve Bullpett, who reported that several teams were vetting the 45-year-old after his recent talks with the Hawks.Atlanta had fired Nate McMillan midseason but instead went with Quinn Snyder as their replacement.

The New York Knicks made the big move before the 2022-23 season to sign former Dallas Mavericks guard Jalen Brunson.Brunson was coming off a decent regular season in 2021-22 that saw him average 16.3 points, four rebounds, and 4.8 assists per game.The 2022 playoffs is when the scrappy Villanova guard started to turn heads.

Once upon a time, Deni Avdija was compared to Luka Doncic.He is a very good player but talents like Doncic don't come around too often.But Avdija has shown flashes of basketball brilliance at times this season, and it has been in short spurts.His rollercoaster season has seen him as a starter and has also seen him coming off the bench.

Sometimes it seems as though the Boston media is trying to prod and provoke the fanbases of each of the city's professional sports franchises - with a certain level of trolling being reserved for the team's winningest franchise throughout history though not recently, the Boston Celtics.James Stewart of 98.5 The Sports Hub had a particularly poignant prodding saved for Celtics fans in a piece exploring who the team could acquire in a Jayson Tatum proposal: the false hope that Luka Doncic could be acquired by the Cs during the offseason along with the misleading assertion that No. 0 could hit the trade block for any reason.

Hallelujah, they're finally paying attention.After years of inexplicably being ignored by voters for the NBA's All-Defensive team, O.G. Anunoby - one of the most effective, dogged, and versatile defenders in the league - was finally selected for the league's All-Defensive second team.Anunoby started the year on a defensive tear, right from opening night, when he grabbed three steals; that set the tone for his season, where he ended up with a league-high 128 thefts and led the league in steals per game (1.91), too.

Celtics The Celtics got a huge game from Jaylen Brown and a victory on Wednesday.The Celtics claimed a hard-fought - and somewhat controversial - win over the Timberwolves on Wednesday, holding off a fourth-quarter charge for a 104-102 victory.Here are the takeaways.1.In 10 games since the All-Star break, Jaylen Brown has been the Celtics' best player, averaging 28.1 points and shooting 50 percent from the field.

When someone scores 71 points in an N.B.A. game, that's remarkable, of course.Scoring 71 points is hard.Doing it against professional defenders is harder still.But there have been so many high-scoring games in the league recently that Damian Lillard's 71-point performance in the Portland Trail Blazers' 131-114 victory over the Houston Rockets on Sunday night wasn't even the first of its kind this season.

The Washington Wizards were quiet at the NBA Trade Deadline, though they may buy out Will Barton.But the rest of the league was busy.Our national survey was this week, but it came out before the news of Kevin Durant's trade to the Phoenix Suns.Let's get to the results!Most fans thought the Brooklyn Nets were the winners of the Kyrie Irving trade
Let's get to our first question of the survey where 56 percent of respondents thought that the Nets were the winners of the trade.

Here are our SB Nation Reacts national survey results, just in time for the All-Star Break.The Nuggets and Celtics are the favorites to win the East and West
Welcome to our national survey results which are out just before the All-Star break.As you might expect, the Wizards aren't mentioned in any questions, because ... they just aren't relevant right now.