Dwayne Bacon’s top five scorers of all time: ‘Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving’

For instance, without either Paul George or Kawhi Leonard to play with anymore,2 James Harden has gone from a near career-low usage of 20.6% last year to 31.8% (his highest since 2019-20) this year. No player has seen a larger bump in offensive responsibility thus far. But now that he’s gone back to being The System, Harden has a career-low 103 offensive rating — with a very poor 26.8 3P%, which should probably rebound some, but also uncharacteristically mortal rates of turnovers, drawing fouls and even attempting 3s. -via Neil Paine’s Substack / November 5, 2024

Law Murray: Asked James Harden about what Clippers need to focus on for tonight vs Suns Harden said “For us, I think it’s the same game plan every game” Focused on transition defense and defensive rebounding pic.x.com/cCu75dccJs -via Twitter @LawMurrayTheNU / October 31, 2024

Shams Charania: Sources: Cast for season two of Netflix’s NBA documentary series Starting 5: Kevin Durant, James Harden, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Haliburton. 🍿🍿🍿 -via x.com / October 29, 2024

Duane Rankin: “They can critique what we do. We want to critique as well.” Kevin Durant on relationship with media as he’s had back-and-forth with Stephen A. Smith. #Suns pic.x.com/TrARQ3azz5 -via Twitter @DuaneRankin / November 5, 2024

“Respectfully, Kevin Durant, could you stop lying, please? I’ve been an NBA reporter and I was a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer as well,” he said. “Kevin Durant has seen me in the locker room when he was at Oklahoma City. He has seen me in the locker room when he was at Golden State. He has certainly seen me at games throughout his career. But unfortunately for him, I don’t have to be at shootaround and I don’t have to be in the postgame locker room. I happen to have a hit show that’s been No. 1 for 12 years. I have other things to do with my time. I go to games all the time. I’m not a beat writer anymore. So let’s get that out the way.” -via Awful Announcing / November 4, 2024

Never one to hide from a confrontation, Smith carved roughly four minutes out of Monday’s episode of First Take to respond. And what followed was a virtuoso sports talk television performance in which the 57-year-old bounced between showering Durant with praise and insulting him. “I got bad news for Kevin Durant: If you’re expecting me to reciprocate with that kind of pettiness and childishness, it’s not gonna happen,” Smith began. “Kevin Durant is one of the greatest players to have ever played this game. He’s a future Hall of Famer. He’s a two-time champion and two time Finals MVP and I’ve been on the record saying he’s also a good dude. So if he wants to resort to that level, even though we’re both grown men and if he had something to say, he knows my number and he refrains from doing so that’s what he has to live with.” -via Awful Announcing / November 4, 2024

It’s the fourth-most expensive NBA jersey of all time behind Jordan’s $10.1 million “Last Dance” jersey; a signed Kobe Bryant jersey worn in his lone MVP season in 2007-08 which sold for just over $5.8 million; and a 1972 NBA Finals jersey worn by Wilt Chamberlain during the Los Angeles Lakers’ first NBA title run ($4.9 million) — all of which sold via Sotheby’s. The 1996-97 Jordan red jersey is the only MeiGray Authenticated red jersey from Jordan’s first five championship seasons. -via ESPN / November 5, 2024

For most of Karl-Anthony Towns’ life into his first several NBA seasons, he did the same thing every time he made a trip to the charity stripe — a deep breath, two dribbles and then a deep squat before shooting. But a few years ago, after shooting 80-plus percent from the free-throw line through his first four seasons, Towns did what many creatures of habit wouldn’t dare to: he changed up his routine. “I was watching Kobe (Bryant), the way he was shooting, the way he was minimizing energy used at the free-throw line,” Towns said. “I played a ton of 2K to get that free-throw style down. “You think I’m joking? I’m deadass serious.” -via New York Times / November 4, 2024

Who was the best player in the league when you played? Goran Dragic: Definitely it’s Kobe Bryant. If I go back, I play the 2010 Western Conference Finals, Phoenix versus Lakers, I see that Mamba mentality. It was unbelievable. We put like three or four guys on Kobe, and he was just smiling and shooting over three guys and scoring. He had a good team. He had Pau Gasol, [Andrew] Bynum, [Jordan] Farmar, [Lamar] Odom, all these players, but when the game was on the line, we all know where the ball was going to go, but we couldn’t stop it. So for me, for sure it was Kobe Bryant at that time. And then you have D-Wade, LeBron James, you have many many players, I would say Kobe was the best closer, and D-Wade. When I played with D-Wade I saw so many games where he would take the ball and bring us home. And that was unbelievable. -via HoopsHype / November 1, 2024

NBA Communications: Other nominees... West: DeMar DeRozan (SAC), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC), Kyrie Irving (DAL) and Nikola Jokić (DEN) East: Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns (NYK), Jayson Tatum (BOS) and Nikola Vučević (CHI) -via Twitter / November 4, 2024

How many titles do you think your good friend Luka Doncic will win by the time he retires? Goran Dragic: I really don’t know. That all depends on the front office, how they are gonna surround him with players. Last year they were really good. I think nobody expect them to play in the Finals. The chemistry with him and Kyrie [Irving] was really amazing, and everyone followed. I do think that signing Klay Thompson, they are going to have a lot more firepower, but at the end of the day, are they going to be able to play defense? So you never know, especially with now in the NBA, there’s a lot of good teams. You have OKC, they gonna be good, you got Minnesota, you got Phoenix, you can never doubt Lakers with LeBron, then you have Denver with Nikola Jokic, Dallas is here, then you got Boston, you got Miami, Milwaukee is a team that disappointed last year, but we’ll see. I believe that Luka will win MVP because he’s such a good player. He’s putting up crazy numbers, but it all depends on the front office, how they gonna surround him with a team. I think they have a chance, but we’ll see. I definitely wish him to win one because he’s a good friend of mine, and he’s coming from Slovenia, we have actually five guys who won it, Rasho Nesterovic, Sasha Vujacic, Beno Udrih, Vlatko Cancar, and I wish him to be the fifth one. -via HoopsHype / November 1, 2024

StatMuse: Kyrie tonight: 35 PTS 5 AST 6-8 3P Mavs are undefeated when Kyrie has 35+ points and 5+ threes. pic.x.com/du61hRzJdE -via Twitter @statmuse / October 30, 2024

A game-worn Michael Jordan jersey from the Chicago Bulls’ 1996-97 season has sold for $4.68 million via Sotheby’s. The jersey was worn in at least 17 games during the season, including the game in which rookie sensation Allen Iverson crossed Jordan over. -via ESPN / November 5, 2024

But as Amrany recalled, when the Michael Jordan statute was publicly unveiled at a press conference on Nov. 1, 1994, it was not roundly greeted with praise. Rather, there were a number of initial complaints from the public and media over the way it portrayed Jordan’s face, including the decision to keep the Hall of Fame’s famously wagging tongue concealed behind his lips. “They didn’t like that his face wasn’t right off a cereal box,” said Amrany. “They didn’t want what (Jordan) said he wanted. And they didn’t know that, because they were not meeting him, they did not sit with him.” Mercifully, that experience long predated the era of social media and the current “world of algorithms,” as Amrany puts it. The peanut gallery is infinitely more critical and voluble in 2024. “I mean, after 20 articles (about Dwyane Wade’s sculpture) in the last three days,” Amrany said, “what you become is not famous, but infamous.” -via Sportico / November 4, 2024

Chris Webber: “To me, the greatest basketball player of all time is Michael Jordan… the time it was in my life, for beating my bad boys… like, when we used to watch SportsCenter every day, and Tiger [Woods] was winning one out of five… Jordan is giving you 45, Christmas, winning championships… I got to see him leave for baseball when his father passed away… watching him hug that trophy… Jordan definitely had the most impact.” -via YouTube / November 1, 2024