Worst Surprise: Lakers are still the same from last season.
Best Surprise: Rockets
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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The timberwolves… holy shit. They are crushing the best teams in the league rn.
Best: Wolves, Maxey, Barnes, Tobias Harris
Worst: Lakers
I’m genuinely happy for Wolves fans. I think they’ll still regret the Gobert trade long term, but they might just be a legit contender right now
Lakers stink
If you're a contender not named the Bucks, the Bucks defense is the best surprise you could ever wish for
Best Surprise: Rj Barrett taking the leap
Worse Surprise: Cam Thomas being a certified bucket because we gotta play him 4 times a year for the next decade
A surprise is something you dont expect. A lot of what you listed was expected.
Bucks defense was gonna be sus with Dame and Khris coming back from injury. Suns health was all anyone talked about when they were mentioned. People correctly thought Poole was gonna be an inefficient chucker who popped off for 30+ sometimes, which he did in a preseason game.
Cade had a great rookie year and missed last year from injury. Still, its only his 3rd year and we expected him to continue where he left off.
Poole is hardly a surprise
Best surprise:Chet and Cason Wallace are both huge contributors as rookies. Lu Dort shooting 51% from 3 while playing insane D, better shot selection.
Worst surprise: Josh Giddey’s disaster start shooting the ball. Fans are starting to turn on him in the Thunder sub
Worst surprises: Bucks' defense, Suns' health, Kings' cold shooting, Jordan Poole
Only the Kings' shooting was a surprise.
The worst surprise has to be the Grizzlies. I knew there would be some negative effect from Ja being out, but not worst team in the West bad.
The best is probably the Magic looking like a quality team.
Worst surprise: Patrick Williams, the front office keeping this core together
Best Surprise: I guess it's Carter and Craig Attorneys at law. Carushow
One worst surprise is the Jazz slow start, compared to how they performed last season
Best surprise is Tyrese Maxey playing like an all-pro without Harden. Love to see it
I think last year's Jazz was held up by their crazy start to the season when they still had Conley dictate the attack and Vando killing it on the Defensive side
The Bucks defense has not been bad in the last 3 games they’ve reverted back to Brook being in drop more, that’s old news
We're better than I thought we'd be, Cam is really good
Best Suprise: Shaedon Sharpe can pass, defend, AND score at a high level.
Worst Suprise: Scoot, while I'm not super worried long term, was not as prepared to hop into the NBA as the g-league truthers made it seem.
I expected a bit of a down year due Sharpe relative to what our fans expected. Delighted to have been wrong based in what we’ve seen so far
Best: Wolves. Moderately surprised. I thought we were nice, but not beating both Denver and Boston nice.
Also shoutout to KAT. His defense has been above average.
Worst: Banchero, Scoot. I thought they’ll be much better than how they’re performing now
Best: Rockets, Seem like last year Jazz
Worst: Your Memphis Grizzlies
I don’t like this question…
really? Jordan poole?
I am not surprised at all.
kings, on the other hand, really surprised me. You guys had historical great offensive rating last year
Not sure if you are watching the same game, but Cade is pure ass playing at a below replacement level right now
This is a novel called “I don’t watch the Pistons.”
4-6 of Detroit’s rotation (literally all of their 3-point shooting, Monte, Bojan, Ivey, Livers, Burks) have been out since the season began, and teams quite literally double him the second he crosses mid-court. Cade quite literally has to take bad shots, or the Pistons can’t generate any offense.
I’d like to meet the player who can score efficiently in those circumstances.
Best surprise: Twolves Twitter
Worst surprise: Twolves Twitter
So far, the biggest "surprise" for me has the opening records for the top seeds. We'll see how it all shakes out, but I wasn't sure any team would be much over .600 / 50-ish wins, after last season.
At this point, .600 / 50-ish wins is projecting out to be what it will take to get a top 6 seed in either conference. Which, could drop the play-in teams down to the .400-ish range. Maybe even drop the non-playoff teams into that .300 or less range.
I thought the parity would come more at the top first, but it might pan out to be the exact opposite. :)
Chet has been a positive surprise. I thought he’d struggle a bit.
Jordan Poole has been atrocious with a green light. It’s hilarious.
This might be the best rookie class we've seen in a while. Wemby, Chet, Ausar, Lively all of those look like studs. Scoot has some woes but he will be better. Amen unfortunately is lacking the playing minutes.
Worst: There is something seriously wrong with Andrew Wiggins.
Warriors being legitimately good again is a nice surprise after such a minimal off-season .
The worst surprise is how many people are buying less than 10 game sample sizes from teams or players as established trends now, eg. "this team is good/bad", "this player has taken a leap/dropped off", based on 8-9 games.
Give things 25-30 games to properly shake out at least.