The main NBA themes that stand out after Christmas
Wemby is redefining NBA paint defense, while Los Angeles and Denver face different issues surrounding their superstars.
With the second NBA Cup with the exciting five-match Christmas Day slate behind us and the 2025 schedule just days away, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the most notable trends that have taken hold during the first third of the season.
The Boston Celtics and the Oklahoma City Thunder are as strong as we thought they would be, while the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets have been extremely pleasant surprises, and each of them are vying to be seen as not just a good regular season story, but true title contenders.
And with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Indiana Pacers, two of last season’s conference finalists, joining contenders like Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns In conference play-in battles, the second half of the season could be crazy, especially with the trade deadline just six weeks away.
With the new year on the horizon, here are a handful of takeaways we’ve drawn from the first two months of the season, including a big jump for the Los Angeles center San Antonio Spurs, Victor Wembanyamatwo contenders facing opposing issues surrounding their superstars and the future of the league’s 3-point explosion.
The Lakers have been worse with LeBron James on the court
As a 22-year-old veteran and leading scorer in NBA history, most of the statistical feats James accomplishes upon turning 40 next week will be firsts.
But amid the Lakers’ up-and-down season (the dramatic Christmas Day win over the Warriors is the latest chapter), LeBron has already accomplished one he’d rather reverse: for the first time since James’ rookie season in 2003. 04, his team is worse when he is on the field than when he is not.
It’s well known that plus-minus metrics can be noisy, as they are often influenced by the many players sharing the court, but the Lakers’ performance when James plays without Anthony Davis (minus 12.1 points per 100 possessions) is perhaps the most illustrative (and problematic). It represents a huge reversal of 17 points per 100 possessions from last season. In Monday’s loss to the Pistons, for example, Los Angeles was a plus-17 in James-Davis minutes, but a -18 in the minutes James played without his star teammate.
James is a -107 overall, the second-worst in the NBA among those playing for a team that would be in the postseason if the season ended today. (Only Denver forward Julian Strawther, at -117, had a lower plus-minus heading into the Christmas games.) That’s a stark contrast to the plus-218 James posted last season or the plus-214 he posted in 2022-23.
The bottom line is this: The 17-13 Lakers have been 8.7 points worse per 100 possessions with James on the court than without him. That huge net rating gap is equivalent to the one between the 14-14 Wolves and the 7-22 Charlotte Hornets.
Almost all of that margin is due to defense, where opposing teams are scoring 115.8 points per 100 possessions against Los Angeles when James is playing, the second-highest mark among Lakers rotation players. (Only rookie Dalton Knecht’s 116.2 is higher.) But the team gives up just 106.5 points per 100 when James takes a break, which would be a top-five rate in the league on a team scale.
James, who had been playing because of a nagging foot injury, sat out a couple of games earlier this month and has looked better on defense since returning. Los Angeles has looked like a top-five defense in the four games since James returned. Still, the Lakers face an uphill battle to become a contender in the West. A huge factor will be whether James and the Lakers defend better in their minutes on the court.
Wemby’s campaign for the Defensive Player of the Year award has begun
The 20-year-old’s game progression is on display every night in almost every aspect; particularly in defense, where Wembanyama He has looked dominant, even compared to his impressive rookie season.
In the last four games, the Frenchman has compiled 29 blocks, and his total of 95 this season is 31 more than the next closest player. Equally impressive: He has been penalized just once for poor goaltending all season. (It helps that he has an average wrist height of 9.42 feet in his games, the tallest in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum.)
But it’s not just the shots Wembanyama returns to sender that he’s affecting. Aside from the deterrent effect it has on shooters, Wembanyama also forces attackers to rush into shots due to their fear of blocking. He’s limiting shooters at the rim to a dismal 48.9% shooting, nearly 14 percentage points worse than their averages. (Both metrics are the best in the league among players who have challenged 150 of those shots this season.) Last season, for comparison, players shot 53.7% against Wembanyama, which was about 11 percentage points below their average, putting them 11th in the NBA at the time.
Denver has a painfully obvious problem
After a rocky 2-3 start, with those first two overtime wins against the rebuilding Brooklyn Nets and Toronto Raptors, the Nuggets won five of their next six. Still, the team hasn’t solved its biggest problem: It can’t defend when its three-time MVP sits down.
Nikola Jokicaveraging a career-high 30.9 points to go along with 12.5 rebounds and 9.7 assists, has been fantastic, even by his own MVP-caliber standards. Denver has outscored opponents by 211 points with him on the court, but has been outscored by 118 when he’s on the bench. Look no further than the Dec. 3 game against the Golden State Warriors, in which Denver gained Jokic’s minutes by 23, but lost his bench minutes by 19.
It’s been a familiar story all season for the Nuggets, who have lost second quarters, when their second line typically gets its most playing time, by an average of 9.1 points per 100 possessions. Only the Wizards (4-23), Hornets (7-22) and the New Orleans Pelicans (5-25) have managed to have worse results. Even with free agent newcomer Russell Westbrook playing well, the Nuggets bench has been among the weakest units in the league, even when the team’s second or third best player shares the floor with the reserves.
An example: When Jamal Murray plays with the other four starters on the bench, Denver is being outscored by 5.1 points per 100 possessions in 75 minutes. Worse yet, when Michael Porter Jr. is on the court without other starters, the Nuggets are overwhelmed by more than 60 points per 100 possessions in 65 minutes. Neither of those things bode well for a club that is still evaluating what it has in terms of role players, but will need to survive at least a few minutes per game in the postseason without Jokic on the court.
The NBA is analyzing the continued explosion of three-pointers
Last week, NBA commissioner Adam Silversaid he and his staff are paying attention to the growing role of the three-point shot in the sport. But should they? Are long distance jumpers getting more attention than they deserve? The answer is mixed.
Yes, teams are shooting 37.6 3-pointers per game (up from 35.1 last season), the highest average in league history. But at the same time, jumpers overall are actually below where they were two seasons ago (53.4% of all shot attempts compared to 53.8% in 2022-23).
Perhaps most interesting: League-wide quantified shot quality (qSQ) on 3-pointers (i.e. the probability of a shot going in taking into account the distance of the shooter and the proximity of the nearest defender) is the highest it has been since Second Spectrum tracking data was first recorded in 2013-14. Now that plays are getting better and more efficient, teams have little reason to pick less.
If anything, this suggests the league needs to do more (perhaps allow more physical play on defense) to better equip defenses trying to cover an increasingly spaced field.
Matt Williams of AM850 Research contributed to this story.
