Shai Gilgeous-Alexander breaking records, book-smart Harrison Barnes and more NBA trends – The Athletic
A veteran won’t miss. A team needs to miss to make basketball fair again. And a steamroller is preying on defenders who forget the scouting report.
Let’s open up the notebook to run through three NBA trends that have caught my eye over the past week:
Harrison Barnes’ green light
Harrison Barnes arrived in San Antonio last season on a mission. He and the future of his new franchise held one passion in common, and Barnes was about to lean into it.
Victor Wembanyama loved to read, especially science fiction. Barnes preferred other genres but also figured he could make an exception for the up-and-comer he was supposed to help mentor. So Barnes started a book club, which a few players joined at first, only for the NBA season’s literary attrition to whittle the group down to two: Barnes and Wembanyama.
The first book that Barnes chose, no coincidence, was from Wembanyama’s favorite writer, Brandon Sanderson. The sci-fi novels continued.
Barnes’ off-court presence was supposed to be his greatest value after San Antonio acquired him in the summer of 2024. He had been the star prospect, the college standout, the lottery pick, the role player, the starter on a championship team, the scorer on a bad team and more. He was a respected teammate in all his stops. The goal would be to show Wembanyama how to be a professional. Barnes was supposed to be the 21-year-old star’s veteran.
However, the discussion about Barnes’ leadership skills, as if his best days were behind him, papered over what has now become a theme of the Spurs’ season: When he’s not turning pages through a novel, that dude can still ball.
The Spurs (17-7) have arrived, even with Wembanyama hurt. And Barnes’ blitz from long range is a significant reason why.
He’s taking more 3s than ever and hitting 43 percent of them, tying his career high, which he set last season. A higher ratio of his deep balls are heavily contested than in any other year of his 14-year career — and he’s nailed 40 percent of those looks, according to Second Spectrum.
Barnes is a better marksman than ever, whether he’s spot-up shooting, which is his norm, or trying the left-to-right shuffle that’s freed him for 3s every so often this season. When games get close, San Antonio finds him in the corners. He doesn’t usually let his team down. Barnes is shooting 45 percent from deep when the scoring margin is less than five points.
Spurs in-game analyst Sean Elliott has started calling him “Mr. 100,” inspired by his shooting percentage, not his age.
Leave it to those with NBA-brain to imply that a 33-year-old is ready to be sent to the home. Instead, he’s at the center of a vital storyline.
This season was supposed to be too early for the Spurs. Their talent was too young, still a few years away. The injuries have been prevalent. All-Star point guard De’Aaron Fox missed the beginning of the season. Wembanyama hasn’t played in almost a month.
Yet, San Antonio sits in the top five in the Western Conference. It is 9-3 since Wembanyama got hurt. The Spurs are sixth in points per possession during that 12-game stretch.
Yes, some of the youth have accelerated their timeline. Reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle has taken a leap in Year 2, especially with his patience as a passer. First-year guard Dylan Harper doesn’t just have a bright future; his present is shining, too. Harper is in constant attack mode. Fifty-nine percent of his shots have come at the rim, the highest ratio of any on-ball guard in the league, according to Cleaning the Glass.
The prime-aged contributors are performing across the board. Fox has been masterful since returning from injury. Luke Kornet is a wall at the rim. Keldon Johnson is shooting 59 percent from midrange. Julian Champagnie and Devin Vassell are dangerous from deep. Fox and Wembanyama have played only four games together all season. Once San Antonio has them both, maybe it meshes the early-season defense, which formed around Wembanyama’s paint protection, with its high-voltage offense of late.
But even then, one guy won’t fit into any of these young or prime-aged boxes. And now, he has to read more sci-fi than he ever thought possible.
The Josh Hart timeout
One type of timeout has dominated New York Knicks games for almost three years. And the Knicks are never the ones who call it.
The preamble is easy to spot. Josh Hart races up the court on a fast break. Inevitably, he dashes to the basket, dribbling with his left hand, only to step through whichever defender plants in front of him to rise into a righty layup. This move is in Hart’s DNA. Prepared defenders anticipate it, though that’s not always enough. Those who bite are helpless.
Hart’s step-through is stamped onto the scouting report for any Knicks opponent, which is why the second time it happens on any given night, a timeout is guaranteed to follow.
The Toronto Raptors learned that Tuesday.
In the first quarter of the Knicks’ NBA Cup quarterfinal victory, Hart slid around Ja’Kobe Walter for a layup. At the beginning of the second, Scottie Barnes tried to take a charge and realized too late that Hart was slithering. Barnes leapt to contest the shot but couldn’t alter it. A timeout from head coach Darko Rajaković came in a fraction of a second.
This is Hart’s signature — not just the step-through but also the frustration it inspires. And lately, it has burst blood vessels.
Hart re-entered the Knicks’ starting lineup, where he resided for all of last season, at the end of November. And he’s playing as if he doesn’t want to leave it again. He’s nailing 3s, running the offense when needed, guarding physically and, maybe most importantly, adding pace to an attack that head coach Mike Brown wants to glide.
The Knicks don’t always move at the velocity Brown prefers. They average a shade over six seconds to get into the first actions of possessions, which ranks 17th in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum.
But want to rev up the machine? Just let Hart be Hart.
New York’s offense looks no healthier than when Hart is snagging rebounds and flying the other way.
The Knicks score a dominant 127.2 points per 100 possessions when Hart brings the ball up after corralling a defensive board, per Second Spectrum. And it’s not like those plays are uncommon. Hart is a loose-ball fiend, one of the league’s most relentless rebounders.
Forty-seven percent of those possessions end in transition. Juxtapose that with the league-average transition rate of 14 percent, sprinkle in some fast breaks where he doesn’t go for his patented layup and instead creates a 3 or finds a cutter on his way to the basket, and you have Hart’s value.
Nearly half the time he gets a board and bolts, he’s generating the most efficient shot in basketball: A transition look. And that’s why, by the second time he tricks a defense with that step-through, any coach has seen enough.
Add the 3 to the list
A 49-point defeat has never been so respectable.
The Phoenix Suns didn’t stand a chance against the Oklahoma City Thunder when the two met in the NBA Cup quarterfinals on Wednesday. However, then again, the rest of the league hasn’t fared much better — and it would probably look as capable as the Suns did if they had to face shooting so sweet.
Oklahoma City nailed 22 of 40 3-pointers against Phoenix. If the Thunder are hitting their long-range shots, it’s goodnight for anyone facing them. This group is too suffocating defensively and too consistent with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leading the way for anyone to disturb it when it’s hot from deep.
The problem for the rest of the league is that lately, this is what the Thunder do.
This team is stampeding. It is 24-1, heading into the NBA Cup semifinal against the Spurs. Its only loss was by two points, on the road, in the second half of a back-to-back, in a game it once led by 20.
During its current 16-game winning streak, OKC is outscoring opponents by 20.3 points per 100 possessions. On the season, it is pacing to blow the net-rating record to smithereens.
Right now, the Thunder can do no wrong, including from 3-point land, where they started the season cold. Their mission to perfect basketball is going swimmingly.
Oklahoma City has shot 43.7 percent from beyond the arc over its past 12 games. Last Friday’s around-the-league notebook zeroed in on Gilgeous-Alexander’s herky-jerky stepback, but that’s not the only type of jump shot that’s annihilating the competition. Gilgeous-Alexander is shooting 52 percent on jumpers in general, first among the 140 players who have taken at least 100 this season.
The single-season record (minimum 350 jumpers) belongs to Kevin Durant, who shot 49.9 percent on them in 2022-23.
So on top of deploying a famously record-breaking defense, the Thunder, or at least Gilgeous-Alexander, might be on track to break offensive records, too. What just happened to the Suns could happen to anyone else.
