Four weeks of competition have flown over our heads just like that. Now that fans and experts alike are starting to get a feel for all 30 teams’ trajectories moving into week 5 of the season, it’s to be understood that, yes, this year is still very premature and some abnormalities will end up realigning with how things are supposed to be, as they always fall under the natural order of things. But there are some teams that should be held accountable for their sluggish starts.
While Eastern favorite Milwaukee continues to rake in wins, Philadelphia’s 7-5 start is downright obscene, considering all of the hype surrounding the Sixers and their proficiency at each position. Seeing the Portland Trail Blazers struggle to get out of the gates and be stained with some uncharacteristic losses to the Golden State Warriors and the Brooklyn Nets is surprising, though they look to improve that 5-8 mark when Carmelo Anthony gets settled into his new role as the team’s starting Small Forward a couple of days from now.
Other than some tweaks to the other 28 on this week’s power rankings, expect more of the same from previous weeks. The elites out West are only getting stronger, and the unexpected teams with high winning percentages are proving why their season aren’t flukes.
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1. Los Angeles Lakers (11-2, Last Week’s Ranking: 1)
Year 17 LeBron is getting as good as it gets. With the Celtics having their 10-game winning streak snapped on Sunday afternoon against the Sacramento Kings, the Lakers currently own the best record in the NBA. LeBron tallied 33 points, 12 assists and was inches away from obtaining his fifth Triple-Double in their 20-point win over the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night, and it’s getting harder and harder to dispute this team as secondary to their roommates across the hall in the Staples Center.
Just about everything is clicking in Frank Vogel’s first season as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Anthony Davis still looks like an MVP candidate, Kyle Kuzma is molding into a walking double-double, Dwight Howard looks as happiest as he’s ever been, the Lakers are still the most defensively efficient team in the league, and it doesn’t look like they’re slowing down any time soon.
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2. Boston Celtics (10-2, Last Week’s Ranking: 3)
The loss of Gordon Hayward hasn’t looked like it’s shaken this Celtics team to the core as of late. Despite their one-point loss to Sacramento, caused by way of Buddy Hield’s 35 points and an unlucky missed floater by Marcus Smart in the game’s final seconds, the Celtics are slightly behind the Lakers as the hottest team in the NBA.
Where Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker have had some difficulty to score, Jaylen Brown has played the best stretch of basketball in his professional career, averaging over 23 points, 8 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game on a team that lacked consistent wing scoring due to Hayward’s absence. Some considerably impressive wins against Golden State, Dallas and Washington kept the Celtics in the top 10 in overall defensive rating, and third overall in total point differential across the entire NBA.
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3. Milwaukee Bucks (9-3, Last Week’s Ranking: 4)
The Bucks climb a spot in this week’s ratings and by the way things are going, could be contending for that No.2 or top spot as the season goes by. The Greek Freak is getting “freakier”, as Giannis continues to improve on his already amazing numbers from last season. He’s back to averaging 18.7 ppg., a feat only reached in his best season as a pro in the 2017-18 season – and we’re only 12 games in the new year.
The Bucks have had to replace the two-way output of Khris Middleton as he’s currently battling an ankle ailment that will sideline him for a month and a half, but that hasn’t affected Mike Budenholzer’s Bucks at all. They have won three straight games and seven of their past eight, including a 19-point dismantling of the Indiana Pacers and former Buck Malcolm Brogdon.
Considerably so, their offense has paved the way as they are leading the league in scoring at 118.8 points per game, are fourth in team field goal percentage and get it done on the other end of the floor, as the Eastern Conference’s most defensively efficient team.
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4. Houston Rockets (10-3, Last Week’s Ranking: 9)
After a slow start to the year that had all fans questioning if the Rockets should blow this thing up a quarter way into the season, H-town’s team, or should I say James Harden, answered all doubters in the team’s last seven games, as Harden has scored 40+ in each of the team’s last seven games and has averaged a whopping 40.3 ppg. during that stretch.
Nowadays, you don’t sound crazy if you don’t predict Harden to be the second player in league history to average 40 points per game in a single season. Wilt Chamberlain was the other player to do so, before you ask who else.
Houston is allowing only 95.9 points per 100 possessions with Harden on the floor during the winning streak, and they are finally rounding into shape as one of the Western conference’s most dangerous teams, as expected.
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5. Los Angeles Clippers (8-5, Last Week’s Ranking: 2)
So, we’ll start with the bad news first. The Clippers have lost five games, and three with Kawhi Leonard in the starting lineup. They have been banged up a little and their depth has taken a hit with the sudden loss of Landry Shamet.
But now for the good news: Paul George is all healed up from his shoulder surgeries and when I say he’s back, I mean it. George debuted this past weekend for the Clippers and dropped 33 – in a weird loss to the Pelicans, nonetheless – and came home to the Staples Center to show off in front of his new home crowd, all to display his exceptional end-to-end talent by scoring 37 in a blowout win over the Atlanta Hawks. We’ve yet to see the fully-operational machine of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George being on the floor at the same time.
So when NBA fans get a chance to see that, No. 5 will be the lowest spot the Clippers will be on this list all season.
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6. Denver Nuggets (9-3, Last Week’s Ranking: 5)
The Nuggets had a solid week since last week’s power rankings, only falling one spot lower than their No. 5 spot just days ago. Other than letting Trae Young go ballistic on them in a 42-point night by the young dynamo, they’ve gone 6-1 in their seven-game stretch with wins over the Timberwolves, Nets and Grizzlies. Each game has seen a different scoring leader and a different piece to run their offense through in all of their games, whic is a good thing.
On Sunday night, Jamal Murray had a night where the basket looked as wide open as a trash can, as he scored 39 points. A couple of nights earlier against Brooklyn and Memphis, it was stingy defense by all of the Nuggets that led to some easy transition buckets. Just like how they ended up possessing the 2nd-best record in the West, the Nuggets don’t have to rely on their stars to carry them through on a nightly basis, because a team-wide effort gets that done.
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7. Utah Jazz (8-4, Last Week’s Ranking: 7)
The Jazz stay put in this week’s power ranking list. Though Rudy Gobert remains a stronghold inside on the defensive end (16.7 points on 72.5% shooting, 15.5 rebounds, 1.8 blocks per game), the Jazz are starting to feel the effects of the injury bug’s bite.
After losing newly-acquired big man Ed Davis to the Injured Report by way of a broken fibula, the Jazz have won four of the team’s last six games but struggled on the road, losing to the Memphis Grizzlies in Mike Conley’s return to the FedEx Forum. They still sit 4th in the West as it stands now, and that mark improves only if the combined scoring averages the Jazz’s new duo of Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley rise.
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8. Miami Heat (9-3, Last Week’s Ranking: 10)
The Heat have looked the part of one of the East’s most treacherous teams to face, and are living up to that reputation. Jimmy Butler brought more than his name and brand to South Beach. In reality, he’s given this franchise a new identity of sorts, a new ideology to play under that doesn’t just qualify high scoring as winning basketball. Miami currently sits at No. 4 on the defensive net rating list behind the Bucks, Jazz and Lakers, and they’re doing this against some really tough competition, as the Heat have the second-toughest schedule in the NBA.
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9. Philadelphia 76ers (7-5, Last Week’s Ranking: 8)
The Sixers have gone into a wild tailspin. Other preseason power rankings suggested that this No. 1 team on their lists would have surely made easy work out of teams like the OKC Thunder and Orlando Magic, right?
Wrong.
The Sixers have gone 3-5 in their eight-game stretch and look as unprepared and disappointing as any championship favorite in recent memory. What’s even more startling: Friday’s loss to the Thunder was only the second time all season that the starting lineup that debuted on opening night, composed of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Josh Richardson, Al Horford and Tobias Harris.
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10. Toronto Raptors (8-4, Last Week’s Ranking: 6)
Toronto was bumped down four spots in this week’s power rankings, mainly due in part to their 3-2 road trip that included some upsets over the Trail Blazers and Lakers but crushing losses to the Mavericks and Clippers. The loss of Kyle Lowry is being felt, and though it’s becoming increasingly difficult to replace his 25 points a game, Fred VanVleet has done a pretty good job of providing backcourt support on both the offensive end (22.8 points, 8.0 assists) and defensive end (2.0 steals per game).
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11. Phoenix Suns (7-4, Last Week’s Ranking: 11)
The Suns are knocking on the door of the top 10, but won’t breach it for the second week though their efforts are convincing. Devin Booker continues his campaign to get him to his first All Star game, shooting the pill at a career high 50 percent from downtown. But what’s been the biggest, most unseen factor this season has been the play of Aron Baynes, who is experiencing career highs in the same stat, shooting 46.8 percent from three. They went 1-1 on the week with a loss coming against the Phoenix Suns, but a 7-4 start to a new season looks and feels like anything but a fluke.
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12. Dallas Mavericks (7-5, Last Week’s Ranking: 12)
Dallas looks like a playoff lock in a lot of ways, and Luka Doncic is making a case that he is capable of averaging a Triple-Double in his second season. In every game, it just looks like Luka is making massive leaps and strides to be one of the league’s elite all-around beasts at just 20 years old. Problem is, the Mavs would have been a lot higher on this list had they not lost two straight games to one of the worst teams in the NBA, the New York Knicks.
Aside from those two losses, the Mavericks are the second-most offensively efficient team in the league, and Kristaps Porzingis, who hasn’t quite found his footing in returning to being the “Unicorn” we know him to be, has strung along some solid 20-point games in contests against Toronto and New York.
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13. Indiana Pacers (7-6, Last Week’s Ranking: 14)
The healthy light is at the end of the injury-filled tunnel for Pacers, as the time on the IR for the Pacers stars in Victor Oladipo and Myles Turner look to be finally ending. Myles Turner returned in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks Saturday evening, leading the Pacers in scoring and Oladipo practiced with the Pacers G-League affiliate team, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Still, they were without their other leading scorer Malcolm Brogdon in their 19-point loss to the Bucks due to the 2017 Rookie of the Year suffering from back soreness.
The Pacers do have one of the league’s easiest schedule so with losses against two of the best teams in the league in Houston and Indiana, the Pacers want their best pieces healthy in time for when their slate of games toughen.
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14. San Antonio Spurs (5-8, Last Week’s Ranking: 13)
The Spurs currently sit at 5-8, and conservatively force the fewest turnovers and have the lowest three-point attempt rate in the league which is as Gregg Popovich-esque as you could imagine. San Antonio has been notorious in not following the curve of the league’s romance with analytics, opting for not creating extra offensive possessions by taking the ball away from the other team. By following that, they’ve fallen under the line of competitiveness by dropping five straight for the first time since the 2011 season.
And even with all of their early-season pitfalls, we’re talking about a franchise that has a 20-year streak of making the postseason
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15. Minnesota Timberwolves (7-6, Last Week’s Ranking: 15)
Minnesota Timberwolves fans have to love the start of the season, though their record could have looked a little better when analyzing some close losses, but have all the optimism in the world, thanks to Andrew Wiggins having the bounce-back season of a lifetime. Other than missing a couple of games due to personal business, Wiggins is in midst of a remarkable run, averaging 31.6 points, 6.0 assists, 5.0 rebounds and even 2.6 combined blocks and steals per game.
His already low-turnover rate with his high usage rate has really accentuated Wiggins as one of the league’s most efficient players. He’s essentially cut out bad, contested looks from around the perimeter and inside the arc, opting for shots that drastically improve his shot profile. T’Wolves fans have to be thinking to themselves now, “where was this Andrew Wiggins after we drafted him?”
The Wolves just finished a 3-5 stretch that all but erased their 4-1 start, but things are starting to look up for their Lottery pick-filled frontcourt.
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16. Sacramento Kings (5-7, Last Week’s Ranking: 25)
Sacramento will be without De’Aaron Fox for a while with his Grade 3 Ankle sprain, but the guard’s absence has not been in vain, though it will be difficult to fill in his 18.2 points, 4 assists and 7 rebounds per game. Fortunately for the Kings, Bogdan Bogdanovic has done just that and more, averaging 18.8 ppg., 8.3 assists and nearly 3 made three pointers per game in the team’s last three games, including their biggest win of the season over the streaking Boston Celtics who came into Sunday’s matchup with the best record in the league.
Two quality wins against the Blazers and Celtics keep the Kings in the hunt, and with Marvin Bagley coming back soon, the once 0-5 starting Kings are now 5-2 in their last couple of games, and look like they can potentially challenge for a playoff spot in the near future.
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17. Brooklyn Nets (5-7, Last Week’s Ranking: 17)
Caris LeVert’s thumb injury sidelines the guard for 4-6 weeks, and then Kyrie Irving sidelines himself with a shoulder impingement. The result? A 2-3 effort on a road trip both Irving and LeVert started. A loss to Phoenix prevented the Nets from going 4-1 on that trip but with injury woes aplenty, Brooklyn needs their backcourt healthy for all the reasons you expect out of a 5-7 team. Defensively, they’ve been abysmal down the stretch, losing consecutive double-digit leads to the Nuggets and Jazz.
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18. Oklahoma City Thunder (5-7, Last Week’s Ranking: 18)
The Thunder’s record is perhaps the only reason they don’t quite rise or fall on this list, namely because against every major competitor they’ve faced all season, they’ve hung around and have stayed in games late. Chris Paul’s start was snail-like, to put it nicely, but the 7-time All Star is adjusting to his new leadership role in Oklahoma City nicely, indicative in his Point God-level performance at home in an upset win over the Philadelphia 76ers in which he scored 27 points and had 16 of those in the fourth, with all of the Sixers’ normal starting five on the floor.
Danilo Gallinari also chipped in with a team-high 28 points on a 7-11 shooting night, as he and Paul mesh almost perfectly with the Thunder’s youth in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Terrance Ferguson and Hamidou Diallo. This week, OKC deals with one of its toughest slates of games on their schedule, starting with both Los Angeles teams.
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19. Orlando Magic (6-7, Last Week’s Ranking: 20)
Steve Clifford’s Magic got win No. 6 on the year last night, behind Nikola Vucevic’s 30 points and 17 rebounds, but Markelle Fultz has been the talk of the town scoring a career-high 19 points of an astoundingly efficient 80 percent from the field.
The Magic have certainly bounced back from their bad start, and with the simple change of starting Evan Fournier at point (21.0 points and 5.4 assists per game during the team’s most recent 4-1 stretch), they’ve earned some tough victories over the Philadelphia 76ers and the Washington Wizards. Al-Farouq Aminu has served as a good replacement for Jonathan Isaac, who recently sustained an ankle injury, putting up 13 points and 13 rebounds in their win over Philly.
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20. Portland Trail Blazers (5-8, Last Week’s Ranking: 16)
The Blazers broke the internet on Thursday night, ending the year-long drought of NBA fans not seeing Carmelo Anthony terrorize opposing defenses as one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history by signing Anthony to a one-year, non-guaranteed deal that’s pretty low-risk if he appears to be a shell of himself, and ultimately a high reward if he settles in quickly in Terry Stotts’ rotation to return into that All-Star isolation scorer we’ve known him to be his entire career. The Blazers need some spark and fast, considering how offensively ineffective the entire team has become throughout this entire season.
Portland might get lucky to kickoff Melo’s tenure as a Portland Trail Blazer though. He won’t play tonight in a revenge game against the Houston Rockets, but assuming he debuts Tuesday in New Orleans, five of his first six opponents are sub-.500 teams; New Orleans and Cleveland are just a few of them.
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21. Charlotte Hornets (6-7, Last Week’s Ranking: 22)
Devonte Graham has been an absolute bucket for the Hornets and a sight for sore eyes for fans of basketball in Charlotte and he earned his first start of the year against the Memphis Grizzlies this past Thursday night. Even though they lost, Graham has been unbelievable source of offense for the Hornets.
He’s averaged over 18 points off 41 percent shooting, and a strikingly consistent 41.4 percent from beyond the arc. He drilled a game-winner in the Garden against the Knicks this weekend, a game in which fans saw the second-round draft choice in 2018 out of Kansas make nine three pointers – tied for the most made in a game this season.
Others like Malik Monk and Marvin Williams have salvaged a season that could have very well sent the Hornets into the trash heap of the Eastern conference, but instead sit at the No. 8 spot in the East.
And, the Hornets are only a win away from being at .500 on the year with wins over the Pistons (by way of a Malik Monk buzzer beater) and Kings in this early season.
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22. Detroit Pistons (4-9, Last Week’s Ranking: 19)
As if things could not get any worse for Dwayne Casey’s squad.
Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose’s health haven’t been the main topic of concern on a more positive note, but they’ve lost four straight games with a terrible defensive gameplan that’s surrendered an average of 109 points over the course of their last nine games. Luke Kennard has been a bright spot for the Pistons as their only consistent scorer, averaging 17.8 ppg. off of 45 percent shooting.
That’s still may not be enough to replace Blake Griffin’s nightly output, considering that Detroit finds it much safer to occasionally rest him due to his extensive injury history (rested in their blowout at the hands of the Miami Heat last week due to his load management).
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23. Cleveland Cavaliers (4-8, Last Week’s Ranking: 23)
It’s just the right thing to do in keeping the Cavs at the 23rd spot, for now. This team hasn’t really been able to string a winning streak together, and this season has been full of their young pieces gaining those teachable moments and experiences, especially with a too-close-to-call loss to Philadelphia last week and a dominant win over the struggling Knicks. They could have risen a little higher on this list had it not been for Kevin Love’s game winning three ball slipping out of the cylinder in Tuesday’s loss to the Sixers.
Darius Garland and Collin Sexton’s chemistry is a year-long process that isn’t gonna be achieved overnight, evident in their combined 4-of-16 shooting night against the Heat at home.
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24. Memphis Grizzlies (5-8, Last Week’s Ranking: 27)
Ja Morant is the front-runner for Rookie of the Year, no denying that. He continues to lead all rookies in scoring through four weeks of competition and it’s apparent that Grizzlies fans are in good hands giving him the keys to run the offense every time he steps on the floor. His lefty layup off the glass over what looked like every Hornet on the floor (and maybe James Borrego himself) who tried to contest it tried to no avail, as it careened off the top of the glass and in to give the Grizzlies a two point victory over Charlotte.
Following that victory was a 113-109 win over the Spurs, making the Grizzlies win back-to-back road games for the first time since 2017. As franchise-leading scorer Mike Conley returned home to play his old Grizzlies, Morant dropped 25 and a go-ahead floater to beat the Jazz with 1:32 remaining in the fourth quarter.
The Grizzlies suffered losses to Denver, resulting in a 3-1 week, but have redeemed their slow start with exciting, headline worthy basketball.
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25. Atlanta Hawks (4-9, Last Week’s Ranking: 21)
The Hawks have suffered some unfortunate losses of personnel in recent weeks, most notably their young star forward John Collins to a 25-game suspension. Since then, wins have been very hard to come by, and Trae Young, who albeit is having a monster season, can’t carry the load on both ends of the floor as the Hawks are 26th in the league when measuring total defensive net rating. They’ve lost six of their last seven games, and that mark is going to presumably get worse with the Bucks and Raptors coming to town.
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26. New Orleans Pelicans (4-9, Last Week’s Ranking: 26)
New Orleans has now sustained injuries to about three quarters of their starting lineup. Without Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Zion Williamson, and Josh Hart, the Pels have had major difficulties scoring the basketball. JJ Redick has been the only offensive source, and a good one at that, averaged 22.8 points in his past four games, three of which New Orleans has won, and hit 50 percent of his 3-point attempts during that span.
A knock-off victory over the Paul George-led Clippers saw Jrue Holiday lead his Pels in scoring with 36, though.
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27. Chicago Bulls (4-9, Last Week’s Ranking: 24)
Chicago’s 2019 season hasn’t started out great, but their rookie Coby White has soothed some of the pain, knocking down a rookie-record seven threes in a 120-102 home win over the New York Knicks this past Tuesday. He followed up that performance with six threes, but in another loss to the Bucks. Chicago has yet to beat a tea with a .500 record and above, though their young pieces in Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter, who is the 15th-best rebounder in the NBA.
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28. Washington Wizards (3-8, Last Week’s Ranking: 28)
If you analyze the Wizards’ offensive effort, they tell the tale of an elite NBA team, even though some of those stats that say that the Wizards are good are probably left over from their one-point, 159-158 loss to the Rockets during the first game of the year.
Bradley Beal upholds that statement, scoring 44 on back-to-back nights against the Celtics in Boston, and against the Timberwolves at home in DC. What hasn’t been as efficient is their defense.
The Wizards gave up 125 points to the Orlando Magic just a night ago, and currently own the 29th spot in total defensive net rating by giving up an average of 125.8 points per game. They’ve only held two opposing teams to under 25 points in their past 20 quarters of play. That’s not good.
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29. New York Knicks (3-10, Last Week’s Ranking: 29)
Well, at least they got the wins they’ve wanted, beating the excommunicated, former Knick Kristaps Porzingis and his Dallas Mavericks for their only wins against Western conference teams all season. If someone said that the Knicks are passing around a petition to continue to play the Mavericks for the rest of their 69 games.
They got their first Eastern conference win against the Bulls weeks ago, and haven’t had much success since. They could have gotten their second, had it not been for Devonte Graham’s clutch three ball in the waning moments of Saturday night’s game against the Hornets. At this point, the of firing David Fizdale has been put on hold, due to the suddenly competitive play of Marcus Morris, RJ Barrett and Taj Gibson.
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30. Golden State Warriors (2-12, Last Week’s Ranking: 30)
Keeping Golden State at spot No. 30 is growing rather stale, but the Warriors’ injury woes keep it that way. The last decent piece of offense left – D’Angelo Russell – is now headed to the IR and will be in street clothes for the next two weeks after spraining his right thumb in Golden State’s 105-100 loss to the Boston Celtics. Luckily, they ended their six-game skid of a losing streak last night against an undermanned Pelicans team behind another eye-opening performance from Eric Paschall.
The Warriors’ 2018 selection out of Villanova has now scored a game-high 30 points twice on the year, joining Stephen Curry as the only Warrior with at least two 30-point nights in his rookie season.
