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 has historic night against Suns, Pelicans win sixth straight. Phoenix’s Devin Booker would have been the star of the game most nights — 40 points on 18 shots, plus 10 rebounds.
Monday night it wasn’t close to enough. Continuing a run of insane play, Anthony Davis went off for 53 points on 29 shots, grabs 18 rebounds, and had five blocked shots.
More importantly, Davis led the Pelicans to a 125-116 win that they needed (their sixth straight) in a tight playoff chase in the West. The Pelicans are up to the five seed as of Tuesday morning (just 1.5 games out of the three seed, but still just two games clear of the nine-seed Clippers and being out of the playoffs in the tight West).
Since Cousins went down Davis has been playing at an MVP level (and will get serious bottom half of the ballot consideration from voters). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Davis has 196 points and 72 rebounds total in the past five games (39.2/14.4 per game average). The last guy to put up those kinds of numbers in a five-game stretch? Shaquille O’Neal in March 2000.
This run of play by Davis is going to make the All-NBA ballot interesting:
Not so fast with the forward thing, my friend. Davis has been brilliant both of late and all season, but is he having a better season than LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo? The All-NBA ballot is specific: Two guards, two forwards, one center. So far this season, Davis has played 60 percent of his minutes as a forward, 40 as a center, but the center numbers are climbing fast with Cousins out. If voters choose to classify Davis as a forward (and the NBA has some say in this, by whether he’s made available as a center on the voting list), then one of LeBron/Antetokounmpo/Davis gets screwed and pushed back to the second team. If Davis is the first team center (as he was last season), the Joel Embiid gets pushed back to the second team. It’s not going to be an easy call for voters.
2) Rockets recover from a sluggish start, surge to beat Jazz and extend win streak to 13. Houston had one of the tougher back-to-backs in the NBA: The high altitude combo of Denver Sunday night followed by the Utah Jazz the next night.
Didn’t matter, they kept on rolling. Utah had the lead early as the Rockets looked understandably sluggish (and the Jazz are playing well), but Houston found its groove later — Mike D’Antoni went extra small against Rudy Gobert and put Luc Mbah a Moute at center, where he went 7-of-7 and finished with 17 points — and the Rockets won. Their win streak is now at 13 and they remain on top of the Western Conference (one up in the loss column on those pesky Warriors).
James Harden had 26 points on 13 shots, plus pulled down 11 rebounds, and he combined with Chris Paul dominated the game.
Although the best play of the night? Chris Paul tries to dribble the game out in the final seconds, high fives Harden’s mom courtside, and gets called out of bounds because she’s out of bounds.
Utah has dropped two-of-three out of the All-Star break and remains 1.5 games out of the playoffs in the West (but still have the easiest schedule of anyone in the conference the rest of the way).
3) Kawhi Leonard is coming back to the Spurs lineup in March (we think), and that changes everything. After a week of “what is going on with Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs?” questions, and the inevitable “is this the start of a divorce?” speculation, we learn that Leonard is coming back — both to the Spurs now and the court this March (knocking on wood).
Leonard isn’t already all the way back, but after three weeks of meeting with doctors for second opinions in New York (it leaked the team said he was medically cleared, but I have no idea why the team would leak that and damage the relationship), Leonard is going to practice with the team starting soon. The goal is to get on the court in March, play his way into shape, and be ready to go for the playoffs.
If Leonard is back for the playoffs and back to being his MVP-level self, the Spurs just become a much more significant threat in the West. (They’re not a contender, but they will be dangerous and would no longer be the team everybody wants in the first round).
As for the overblown speculation about Leonard’s future and relationship with the Spurs, I can think of 50 million reasons that gets smoothed over. Leonard is eligible to be offered a “designated veteran” supermax extension this summer (the same deal that Stephen Curry and John Wall got). It would mean an extra guaranteed year and as much $50 million more than any other team can offer — no player offered this full deal yet has turned it down, and I doubt Leonard would be the first. Remember, LaMarcus Aldridge came to Gregg Popovich last summer when he demanded a trade, Pop smoothed it over and Aldridge is an All-Star. He will do the same with Leonard.
