NBA buzz: Cavs’ playoff plans, Warriors and Rockets trade intel

The second edition of the NBA Cup has arrived — and so has another slew of injuries.

Friday will mark the second of seven days of group stage games taking place over the next few weeks. It will have a tough time topping Tuesday’s wild and unpredictable opening night, which featured the Atlanta Hawks upsetting the Boston Celtics without Trae Young, the Portland Trail Blazers shocking the Minnesota Timberwolves and Joel Embiid making his season debut in a loss to the New York Knicks. Meanwhile, several players have gone down with injuries, including stars such as Zion Williamson, Kevin Durant and Chet Holmgren.

Heading into this weekend’s action, here’s everything in our notebooks, including early NBA Cup standouts, Karl-Anthony Towns’ best game as a Knick, Holmgren’s injury timetable and more. But we begin with the NBA-best Cleveland Cavaliers, and why the league’s lone unbeaten is playing its superstar the fewest minutes of his career.

How the league’s best team is already planning for the playoffs

Bontemps: On Wednesday, a few hours before Cleveland extended its season-opening winning streak to 13 games, I asked Donovan Mitchell about the Cavaliers starting so hot with him playing a career-low 30.7 minutes per game.

“My body’s excited, I’ll tell you that,” Mitchell said. “I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, I saw this coming.’ But what makes me excited is the fact that, man, we haven’t even revved up the minutes. At this point last year, the past three years or so, I’ve been playing 35, 36.

“[Fewer minutes] allows you to kind of be freer mentally, physically and have a trust in the guys that like, ‘Look, I’m not playing as much and we’re still able to push and continue to get better.'”

Last season, Mitchell struggled with a series of leg injuries that culminated with him missing the end of Cleveland’s second-round loss to Boston. The goal this time around is for Mitchell to be ready when it matters.

Windhorst: In the wake of the injuries that slowed him last season, Mitchell changed his offseason approach. He took six weeks off after the season — double his normal downtime — and didn’t get back to working out until August.

At the urging of his mom, he took up Pilates. He also hired a full-time chef who sometimes even travels with him on the road. “I’m not 34, but I’m also not 22, you know what I mean?” Mitchell, 28, said in the preseason.

Bontemps: Keeping Mitchell healthy is paramount, but when coach Kenny Atkinson was hired to replace J.B. Bickerstaff after last season’s second-round exit, another key goal was to get more out of Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, the team’s two young stars who have been inked to max contract extensions. Their growth has been evident this season.

Garland is posting career highs in field goal percentage (53.4) and 3-point percentage (44.9). Rival scouts noted to ESPN his performance down the stretch last week against the Milwaukee Bucks, when Garland repeatedly attacked reserve guard AJ Green with pick-and-rolls in the closing minutes of a comeback victory.

But Cleveland might be most excited about Mobley’s progress, which goes beyond a simple scoring uptick. Several people within the team pointed to Mobley’s willingness to grab rebounds and bring the ball up himself — allowing the team’s shooters to get open looks.

Bontemps: After I used this stat relayed by ESPN researcher Matt “Stats” Williams on Monday’s episode of “The Hoop Collective” — entering Tuesday’s games, Karl-Anthony Towns had allowed 32 of 35 field goals on shots in the restricted area, per Second Spectrum tracking — it inspired a lot of reaction, both online and within the league.

“I think KAT is playing better defense than people give him credit for,” one scout, who saw Towns play recently, told ESPN. “At least he’s playing with effort.”

And while defensive metrics are universally regarded as being less consistent than offensive ones, Towns ranks at the bottom of the league across a range of them, according to Second Spectrum — including the worst shooting percentage allowed in the league, regardless of shot location.

Windhorst: Towns is not a good defender in the aggregate. But scouts will tell you he can be an effective part of a defensive scheme.

“The Wolves had the No. 1 defense with Towns playing big minutes last year,” one Western Conference scout told ESPN. “They gave the Knicks the answers to the test already.”

When Towns played with four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert last season, the Wolves had a plus-8.9 net rating. When he played next to Naz Reid, they were plus-7.0 with a defensive rating of 106, better than the team’s league-leading defensive rating of 108. Towns was effective at defending Nikola Jokic in the playoffs. But for the moment, the Knicks are ill-equipped to give Towns the defensive support with which he clearly can thrive.

Bontemps: That is what people with the Knicks and around the league keep coming back to. In talking with scouts and executives about New York, center Mitchell Robinson is brought up repeatedly as a potential fix for New York’s issues with Towns at center. Robinson, however, has missed more than 20 games in three of the past four seasons. He played just 31 games last year and is out for several more weeks due to offseason ankle surgery.

In the meantime, the Knicks are getting an extended look at life with Towns at the 5. With the the fourth-ranked offense in the NBA but the 20th ranked defense through the first 3½ weeks, it raises questions about whether he can be good enough defensively to anchor a deep Knicks playoff run.

“What made them really good [last year] was their ability to defend,” a league executive told ESPN. “They’re a totally different team now.”

An under-the-radar traded player taking flight in Atlanta

Windhorst: With six seconds left and the Celtics down one point to the Hawks Tuesday night, NBC Sports Boston play-by-play announcer Drew Carter asked analyst Brian Scalabrine who coach Joe Mazzulla should draw up the final shot for.

“Whoever Dyson Daniels isn’t guarding,” Scalabrine said.

The Celtics became the latest team to witness the defensive stopper Daniels is becoming after joining the Hawks as part of the package that sent Dejounte Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans.

Daniels had six steals against the Celtics in addition to a career-high 28 points in the win. He has 23 steals over the past four games and is the fourth player to have at least six steals in three straight games since the stat became official in 1973-74. This season, Daniels has six games of at least three steals and leads the league with 7.6 deflections per game.

“The thing is, the deflections may not even be what he’s best at,” one scout told ESPN. “He is elite at getting over screens; he defeats them like nothing. And even if you do get him off you, his arms are so long he can disrupt the ball handler anyway.”

Bontemps: When Atlanta decided to move on from Murray, sources said the goal was twofold: to get back draft assets sent out from the initial Murray deal two years earlier, and to continue to add to the team’s young talent base after landing French forward Zaccharie Risacher with the No. 1 pick in June.

Now, between Daniels, Risacher, Jalen Johnson and Onyeka Okongwu, Atlanta has four potential long-term starters aged 23 and under. And Daniels, Risascher and Johnson are all switchable wings coveted across the NBA in today’s pace-and-space era.

“He’s always been good defensively,” one scout told ESPN of Daniels, “but offensively he is playing free and is not as scared to make mistakes. Sometimes the change of scenery can really help guys. It also helps when your coach lets you play through your mistakes.”

Windhorst: The Pelicans weren’t anxious to trade Daniels in the package for Murray last summer and tried to keep him out of the deal, sources said, but the Hawks badly wanted someone who could help protect Young on defense. New Orleans had already paid Herb Jones and was lining up to pay wing Trey Murphy III — they ultimately gave him $112 million over four years — and that made Daniels expendable.

He is not a good shooter — his 27% 3-point percentage and 53% free throw percentage tell that tale — but internally, the Hawks have been thrilled with his attitude and work ethic after playing in the Olympics with Australia. And now there’s potential Defensive Player of the Year buzz perhaps in the offing.

Bontemps: Amid the excitement around Daniels and the intrigue of the 19-year-old Risacher, who had a 33-point game last week, the question that will continue to hang over the Hawks is where Young fits into their long-term plans.

The 26-year-old point guard has one guaranteed year left on his deal after this season plus a player option for 2026-27. For a player with Young’s résumé, that’s when a potential contract extension discussion would begin. But in talks with scouts and executives from across the league, he is one of several players — including Zach LaVine, Julius Randle and Brandon Ingram — whose futures remain uncertain as the league adjusts to the financial realities of the new collective bargaining agreement.

Trade talk: Warriors’ Podziemski on rumors; Rockets’ strategy

Windhorst: Two years ago, Brandin Podziemski left the University of Illinois after playing just 69 minutes as a freshman. Fast forward to this past summer, when he saw reports that he’d been deemed “untouchable” in trade talks by the Golden State Warriors that contributed to the team being unable to acquire All-Stars Paul George or Lauri Markkanen.

“It was hard for me to process it mentally,” Podziemski said in an interview that will post next week on the Hoop Collective podcast. “Everybody is hyping you up but at the same time tearing you down, like ‘Why didn’t we trade him? We should’ve traded him for X, Y, Z.'”

The 19th pick in the 2023 draft after a year at Santa Clara, where he transferred after leaving Illinois, Podziemski made the All-Rookie first team, and the Warriors clearly have plans for him in their future.

“You feel the respect and love from [GM] Mike Dunleavy and [owner] Joe Lacob and our front office and how much they value me after seeing just one year of what I could do,” Podziemski said. “And it’s not like I was being mentioned for another role player, these were All-Stars being talked about. … To see the Clippers and the Jazz to want me in return, it showed Golden State’s value for me to teams around the league.”

League executives are well aware that Podziemski is well-liked by Lacob, and the bar to get him out of Golden State remains very high.

Bontemps: It’s good Podziemski was able to learn about processing his name coming up in trade conversations this summer — because it’s going to happen again this season.

No, that doesn’t mean he’s going to be traded. However, with Golden State now 9-2 with Stephen Curry playing like an MVP candidate in perhaps his final true shot at contention, the Warriors’ plans between now and February’s trade deadline will be closely monitored around the league.

Scouts and executives have tabbed Golden State and Houston as the two teams most likely to make a splash ahead of the Feb. 6 trade deadline. Both have a combination of young players and draft picks to make deals, whereas most of the other teams expected to be in that mix have one or neither at their disposal after the many big deals made in recent seasons.

Windhorst: Speaking of the Rockets and their potential place in the trade market, the message they are sending out is that they aren’t interested in trading much of their young core right now. Draft steal Tari Eason, for example, has been drawing attention for the past year but has been labeled off limits, sources said. Same for last year’s lottery pick Amen Thompson.

Rockets GM Rafael Stone has prioritized acquiring tough defenders in the draft and free agency — Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet are examples — and coach Ime Udoka is famous for demanding defensive accountability. Udoka’s influence is often most powerful within games, team sources said. Film sessions and practice time are where most defensive coaching is done but Udoka’s huddles during games are often eventful.

The result? The Rockets are 8-4 and third in the NBA in defensive efficiency. Nothing is written in granite in the NBA. Priorities shift and there are always forms of negotiation happening, but Houston likes its hand. For now.

Bontemps: With Holmgren out indefinitely after his hip injury in Sunday’s loss to the Warriors, the Thunder find themselves without a traditional center or a traditional power forward. With Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein (hand) and Jaylin Williams (hamstring) all sidelined, Oklahoma City has gone the past two games with a starting lineup of players under 6-foot-6 — with 6-9 forward Ousmane Dieng only getting a handful of minutes.

But despite the size problem, multiple scouts told ESPN that the Thunder will be able to weather the storm in large part because of their elite ability to create turnovers. To that end, the Thunder gave up 15 offensive rebounds to the LA Clippers on Monday and 21 to the Pelicans on Wednesday. OKC won the possession battle in both games by recording 16 steals in each.

Windhorst: Thunder GM Sam Presti has turned focus in recent years to the value of possessions and has favored strategies that helped his team win the nightly possession battle. For example, it has been easy to focus on the Thunder’s rebounding issues over the past two years, but Presti and coach Mark Daigneault often use lineups that sacrifice size for those that can force opponents into misses.

Bontemps: Oklahoma City did address its rebounding issues this summer, when it lavished Hartenstein with a massive three-year contract. The 7-foot center is an excellent rebounder and was the anchor of a top-10 Knicks defense last season.

While he has been out since the preseason with a fractured hand, Hartenstein is on pace to be back by the end of November. The Thunder will still need to play small in spurts, but that’s what Oklahoma City was already doing when Holmgren was healthy. OKC still has the league’s best defense by more than two points per 100 possessions.

Joel Embiid’s return checks the boxes

Bontemps: It wasn’t the prettiest return for Embiid in his season debut, as he shot just 2-for-11 and scored 13 points in 26 minutes against the Knicks.

Both Embiid and Paul George were then ruled out for Wednesday’s back-to-back with Cleveland, though coach Nick Nurse said before the game that George’s minutes restriction — which prevented him from playing in overtime of Philadelphia’s win Sunday against Charlotte — has officially ended. Nurse said both George and Embiid will play Friday in Orlando.

The mood around the 2-9 76ers could be better, but team sources told ESPN that hasn’t changed the long-term plan when it comes to its stars. The goal is to get Embiid and George through the season healthy and ready for the playoffs. The fact that Philadelphia currently sits just 2½ games out of sixth in the East helps. (By comparison, the Sixers would be twice that far back in the West.)

With eight games before Philly’s next back-to-back, the next two weeks present a prime opportunity for Embiid and George to build chemistry.