2 DEC 2022 · Father time, they say, is undefeated. But you can at least negotiate with him. In what will indisputably be the latter stages of his career, Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love is holding back the inevitable. As the hair greys and the team around him transforms, he remains the mainstay, the lone holdover from the championship era, the bridge to the past. And he also remains very good. It has been quite the reputational transformation for Love, a man who 18 months ago was thought to represent everything wrong with the Cavs. In contrast, he now represents everything that is right.   - Find me @MarkDeeksNBA or mark.s.deeks@gmail.com, for feedback and aggressive spam email campaigns. For more of my stuff, try https://linktr.ee/markdeeks. 

1 DEC 2022 · For whatever reason, Deandre Ayton has become the barometer by which the Phoenix Suns are often measured. The man who has simultaneously been a big-minute starter and an afterthought, who they did not much value yet whom they gave a maximum salary to, who they would not extend but who they would match an offer sheet for, and who can be both underwhelming and irreplaceable, occupies an enigmatic place in the hearts and minds of his own team's fanbase, let alone the wider basketball world. To look at his total body of work outside of any microcosms, though, sees some positive through-lines emerge. And of late, in the absence of Chris Paul, he has been putting it together.   - Find me @MarkDeeksNBA or mark.s.deeks@gmail.com, for all your complaints. For more of my stuff, try https://linktr.ee/markdeeks. 

22 NOV 2022 · The Philadelphia 76ers drafted Tyrese Maxey with the 21st overall pick in 2020, directly between Precious Achiuwa and Zeke Nnaji. He had averaged 14.0 points, 4.2 assists and 3.9 rebounds per game in a heavy minutes share in his only season at Kentucky, but had not really shone in any area of the game; while he had few weaknesses and played with energy, he was not a huge athlete, a sub-par shooter, inefficient from many areas of the court as a scorer, unremarkable as a defender, and with mostly scoring inclinations as a playmaker. It quickly transpired, though, that Maxey's stand-out attribute was his work ethic. The player before us today is a hundred times better than the Kentucky Wildcat of two and a half years ago. Indeed, he is one of the most rapidly-improving players in the world.   - @MarkDeeksNBA (follow me on Twitter before it, or I, die)

3 NOV 2022 · "Culture", a thing that is both hard to define and badly yearned for, is key to creating winning sports teams. So says everyone. Basketball is no different. The late Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause was widely mocked for his (paraphrased) statement that "organisations win championships", and his clunky phrasing (which either gave or allowed for the inference that he was saying he and his front office were more important than Michael Jordan) did not help his case. But he was on the right lines. It is a foundational principle of roster construction in the NBA that, no matter where on the ziggurat a team places, they need to be developing the right "culture". But how do we measure culture? If we cannot measure it, how do we acquire it? And what if it is only identifiable by its absence?