National Basketball Association

NBA Stock Watch: Jayson Tatum MVP case rising, Lakers pointing way down

Updated Mar. 1, 2023 3:56 p.m. ET

By Yaron Weitzman
FOX Sports NBA Writer

One weekend of NBA basketball is in the books. Sure, it's a small sample and all that, and we don't want to jump to too many strong conclusions. But that doesn't mean we can't single out some noteworthy trends.

So, with that, welcome to FOX Sports' NBA Stock Watch, a weekly column where we take a look at whose stock is rising and whose is falling.

RISING: Jayson Tatum's MVP candidacy

So much for the Ime Udoka saga impacting the Boston Celtics' on the floor. The defending Eastern Conference champs opened the season by winning their first three games — including victories over the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, two teams expected to be among the best in the conference. They dropped Monday night's game to the Chicago Bulls.

A scorching offense was the catalyst for the hot start — the Celtics racked up 124.3 points per 100 possessions, a mark 10 points greater than that of last year's No. 1-ranked Phoenix Suns — and if you want to know how the Celtics are scoring at such a blistering pace, look no further than the continued growth of Jayson Tatum.

Tatum's game-by-game point totals in his first three games: 40, 29, 35. More impressive is that he started by shooting a ridiculous 58.7 percent from the field. The most encouraging sign is that he finished 82 percent of his shots at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass, after struggling in that area (60%) during last year's playoff run.

Obviously these numbers will come down. But watch the Celtics and you can see that something about Tatum just feels different. Call it The Leap, a maturation, or whatever you want. But he's established himself as a clear top-10 player. Put a guy like that on a team that looks like it could rack up 55 wins, and you have what could be a good MVP bet.

FALLING: LeBron's chance at another ring

Entering the season, there was a belief among some that the Los Angeles Lakers, despite the obvious roster issues, could possibly be a tough team for the simple fact that, in LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they have two of the game's top 15 or so players.

Well, we're just three games into the Lakers season and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone other than GM Rob Pelinka who still holds this belief. The Lakers are bad. Very bad. It's not just the 0-3 start. It's that they have the league's worst offense. That's not a take — no team is scoring fewer points per possession, according to NBA Advanced Stats. And the reason is one we all could see coming: They can't shoot.

Lakers fall to 0-3

The Lakers went 6-for-33 from 3, and Russell Westbrook was benched for the final three possessions as L.A. blew a late lead to Portland and remained winless.

They've launched 118 triples this season. You know how many they've hit? Twenty-five. For the math challenged, that's 21.2 percent.

And as LeBron hinted at after Game 1, these numbers are not a fluke.

Russell Westbrook is obviously the biggest issue here. Case in point: After scratching out a two-point win over the Lakers on Sunday, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups said he slotted center Jusuf Nurkic onto Westbrook late in the game so that he could have Nurkic play as a free safety.

"Putting him on Russ, we were just going to kind of play off of Russ," Billups told reporters.

But it's still stunning that Pelinka has basically avoided adding shooters to the roster over the past two years. Because it doesn't matter how hard the Lakers play or how well they defend. No shooting means no space, and no space means they're going to struggle to be even a league-average offense.

Oh, and making matters worse — it's not even like the Lakers can tank this season; the Pelicans, thanks to the AD trade, own the right to swap picks with the Lakers.

RISING: Brook Lopez's rim defense

Since arriving in Milwaukee, Lopez has turned himself into one of the league's premier paint defenders. One of the reasons the Bucks took a step back on defense last season — they finished just 14th in the league — is because a back injury kept Lopez sidelined for all but seven regular-season games.

When healthy, Lopez is an impenetrable force, the rare center who has the size and strength to match power at the rim, but also the smarts to know when and how to leap and attack. And through two games this season he looks as healthy and spry as ever. Exhibit A:

Lopez has swatted seven shots in two games. Shooters have converted just six of their 14 looks at the rim with him in the vicinity, according to NBA Advanced Stats. That number's not a fluke, either; he held opponents under 50 percent shooting at the rim in the two seasons before last.

When Lopez is playing like this, the Bucks defense becomes impenetrable. They drop him into the paint, which allows them to unleash Giannis Antetokounmpo as a roving menace. How do you score with Lopez walling off the path to the rim and Giannis lurking on the weak side? The answer is that usually you don't.

FALLING: The Jazz's Wobbling for Wembanyama

When Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge decided to ship out both Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert this offseason, and give the team's head coaching job to a 34-year-old assistant named Will Hardy, well, it's fair to say Ainge wasn't exactly being coy about his plans.

There is a once-in-a-generation prospect in this year's draft in Victor Wembanyama and the Jazz were going to do everything they could to be in a position to draft him.

The problem, though, is that it seems Ainge might not have gone far enough. The Jazz jumped out to a 3-0 start before finally dropping a game to the lowly Rockets on Monday. And while they're obviously not quite this good, they do have enough professionals on the team to hurt their odds of finishing with one of the league's worst-three records (the three worst teams all enter the draft lottery with a 14-percent chance of landing the top pick).

Jordan Clarkson, Collin Sexton, Lauri Markkanen, Mike Conley, Kelly Olynyk … these are legit NBA players with legit skills.

I'm not saying this is a playoff squad. But the Jazz's early season wins do present an interesting question: Is Ainge better off waiting a few months for a more desperate team to come to him and make a better offer for one of these vets, or should he just sell for whatever he can get now and improve his team's lottery odds?

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