The Harden Saga and 4 More Things to Watch This NBA Season
As the NBA season opens, many of the changes in the league this year stem from the new collective bargaining agreement agreed to by the league and the players association last spring. For instance, teams will have to rethink how they rest their stars, with minimum game requirements for awards eligibility. There are also new punitive measures against teams that blow through the salary cap.
The new season offers plenty of on-court stories to follow, as well. The usual offseason merry-go-round sent Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal, Jrue Holiday and Chris Paul all to new teams.
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Oh, and there’s that really tall French guy. The San Antonio Spurs’ rookie and No. 1 overall draft pick Victor Wembanyama has taken the league by storm, and he has yet to play a regular-season game. With most teams tipping off their seasons Wednesday night, Wemby is the elephant in the room, but here are five other things to look out for:
1) The In-Season Tournament
The NBA’s In-Season Tournament will debut this season. After much speculation about the format, the league decided to build it into the regular season schedule.
The 30 teams are split into six groups, with each playing four designated group stage games in November that also count as normal regular season games. Eight teams will advance to a knockout stage, with the quarterfinals played on Dec. 4 and 5, and the NBA Cup semifinals and finals played on Dec. 7 and 9, respectively, in Las Vegas.
The players on the winning team will each get $500,000, the runners-up will win $200,000, and those losing in the semifinals and quarterfinals will receive $100,000 and $50,000, respectively. Of the 438 players with 2023-24 salaries listed on Spotrac, 201 of them will earn less than $5 million, meaning that an NBA Cup win would result in at least a 10% bonus for nearly half of the league’s players.
The Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks are the co-favorites to win both the NBA Finals and the NBA Cup, but the latter is more up for grabs. Those teams are 4-to-1 to win the Finals, but 9-to-1 to win the Cup, per DraftKings.
The big story to watch here is, well, how many people will watch? The last two rounds will notably occur during the dead week of the college football season, between conference championships and bowls. The NBA has made Christmas an event to stand out from the rest of its regular season—the top three non-playoff TV audiences almost always come from Dec. 25 games—and it hopes to do the same with the NBA Cup.
2) The James Harden Saga
Harden opted into the final year of his deal with the Philadelphia 76ers in July and subsequently requested a trade to the Los Angeles Clippers. At an Adidas media event in China, Harden called out the team’s president of basketball operations, saying, “Daryl Morey is a liar, and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of.”
Harden was disgruntled by the lack of a long-term contract offer this offseason after he reportedly took a pay cut last year. He’s under contract for $35.6 million this season.
The 2017-18 NBA MVP eventually arrived late to training camp and practiced with the team before leaving due to personal reasons and missing all four preseason games. ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne said it may be “quite some time” before he takes the court. The 76ers are allowed to fine him $390,000 per game if he fails to communicate with the team about a timetable for his return.
The 76ers have the reigning MVP in Joel Embiid and hope to contend for a title, but are not close to negotiating any trade involving Harden. It remains to be seen how much longer Morey will put up with the ongoing soap opera—and when he no longer does, if any teams will line up as Harden suitors.
3) Will Offense Continue to Prevail?
NBA teams averaged 115.1 points per 100 possessions in 2022-23 and shattered the record of 112.8 set two seasons prior, according to Cleaning the Glass. The Sacramento Kings scored more efficiently than any team in league history, at 119.7 points per 100 possessions.
The reasons for the recent offensive explosion are abundant, including the rise of small-ball lineups, increased emphasis on offensive rebounding, refereeing trends and higher usage rates for star players.
If teams look a little rusty offensively to start the season, though, it doesn’t mean that defense is making a comeback. League-wide offensive rating in the first month of the season has trailed the full-season number in 19 of the past 20 seasons, so we’ll likely need to wait until 2024 to determine if buckets continue to spike.
4) More Coach’s Challenges
The NBA introduced the coach’s challenge in 2019, 20 years after the NFL implemented its system, and has since tinkered with it. This season, coaches will be awarded a second challenge if their first is successful, which they can use any time in exchange for a timeout.
Coaches were previously only allowed one challenge, so they often saved it for end-of-game situations, even if that meant letting a blatantly incorrect call go in the first quarter. Indeed, in 2022-23, 500 of the 805 coach’s challenges (62%) were used in the fourth quarter or overtime, with only 40 (5%) coming in the first quarter.
Because coaches are more selective early in games, those challenges have been more accurate. In the four seasons of the challenge’s existence, 60% of first-quarter challenges were successful, compared to 45% of fourth-quarter challenges. The rule change this season will lead to more early-game calls reversed, as coaches will hesitate less to use their first challenge.
5) Which Team Will Break Out?
Over the past 20 seasons, 22 teams have exceeded their Vegas sportsbook over/under win total by at least 15 games, so more than one per year. In 2022-23, for example, the Oklahoma City Thunder were projected to win just 23.5 games but finished 40-42 in a surprising regular season that landed them in the Play-In Tournament.
History says there is almost guaranteed to be a sleeper team that nobody expects to be competent but is in fact quite competitive. Which team will it be?
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