10 NBA preseason takeaways that provide insight into the regular season

Jalen Williams went mostly unnoticed at Santa Clara, but he wowed scouts in predraft workouts. Chet Holmgren’s season-ending injury means Williams will be THE rookie to watch in Oklahoma City. Williams’ workmanlike game won’t wow you, but he has been a stud in the preseason. In five exhibition contests, Williams shot 61 percent from the field and posted per-game averages of 14.4 points, 5.2 assists, 3.0 rebounds, and 1.8 steals. His impossibly long wingspan of 7-foot-2 enabled him to disrupt passing lanes and dislodge balls when defenders least expected it. In every preseason contest, he showcased a different aspect of his arsenal.

Williams was a 40 percent 3-point shooter in college and though he didn’t shoot well beyond the arc in the preseason, he should at least mimic a league-average 3-point shooting percentage during his rookie campaign. Williams’ 13-assist showing against Ra’anana Maccabi also previewed his underrated playmaking ability. The Thunder roster features a litany of rookies and sophomores who need to be developed, but Williams might be the most promising neophyte aside from Giddey, in the Thunder’s Nickelodeon Jr. lineup. The injured Lu Dort and Darius Bazley may eventually have to take a step back for Williams to take his rightful place in this crowded rotation.

Jabari Smith is the Rockets’ rookie most to cop a few Rookie of the Year, but Tari Eason was the big riser of the pre-NBA Draft evaluation period and his stock is still climbing. Eason is only 6-8, but he possesses a 7-foot-2 wingspan and resembles a dog chasing cars when he sees an offensive rebounding opportunity and his energy is hard to contain. He’s also an ideal fit beside center Alperen Şengün and his Jokic-lite game. In 24 minutes per game, Eason averaged 20.7 points, on 64 percent shooting, and 44 percent from three, 10 rebounds and 1.7 steals. He also corralled 14 offensive boards and made it clear that the Rockets won’t be able to keep him out of their starting lineup for long. In time, he may even evolve into an All-Defense caliber defender.

Last season, Giddey stepped on the scene and debuted his mature game. His vision, unselfishness, and creative passing took the league by storm. On the downside, Giddey shot 26.3 percent from 3-point land. During the offseason, he worked with legendary shot doctor Chip Engelland, who was hired away from the Spurs after 17 years on Gregg Popovich’s staff. The early results have been promising. Giddey drilled 8 of his first 15 treys in the preseason. It’s a small sample size, but his confidence should allay the concerns that he’s Ben Simmons redux.

Moses Moody has already demonstrated an innate ability to score in bunches. When Moody was awarded G League minutes, he poured buckets in droves and, on a Monday night regular season contest against the Denver Nuggets, Moody tallied 30 points in 36 minutes. That walking bucket mentality carried over into the preseason when he scored 20 points in his lone start against the Trail Blazers. Overall, Moody shot better than 40 percent behind the arc and might be the newest addition to the expanding Splash family.

James Wiseman joined in on the fun as well. In 19 preseason minutes per game, Wiseman averaged 14.8 points, shot 66 percent from the field, and six rebounds. Wiseman scored on an assortment of pick-and-pops, putbacks, and even flexed range beyond the arc. If Golden State adds its own DeAndre Ayton to the mix, the rest of the league has a problem on its hands. Kevon Looney is still the superior offensive rebounder, but Wiseman provides a scoring punch that Looney’s raw offensive game is incapable of providing.

After watching Bennedict Mathurin operate with the precision of a cardiac surgeon on the offensive end in the summer league, it was refreshing to see Mathurin continue ripping hearts out against higher caliber preseason comp. He can already absorb contact at the rim with his powerful frame and he reads the contours of the floor to discover angles to attack defenses from. He’s much more fluid in creating his shot than Houston’s Jabari Smith rather than relying on Tyrese Haliburton or other playmakers to find him when he’s open. He just transcends your average rookie and has the confidence to boot.

He is a smooth operator maneuvering around the court, consistent, and already built like an NFL tight end. If the eye test isn’t enough, here are his preseason numbers without commentary: 19.8 points, 48.2 FG percent, 85.2 FT percent, in 23.5 minutes. Mathurin’s 15.2 percent 3-point shooting rate was the only negative grade you could give Mathurin, but that looks like the result of a shooting slump. During his last two seasons at Arizona, Mathurin drained 38 percent beyond the arc.

Do you notice how the bullets from movie henchman are scripted to never hit the protagonist? That’s how safe the hoop is when Ben Simmons squares up. Simmons still misses the nylon like it has plot armor. In four games, Simmons averaged 4.8 points and 6.3 assists but was a menace defending Giannis. He might be the worst shooter in the modern NBA, but he provides immense value defensively and through his versatility. However, he can’t remain as inept as he was in the Nets preseason finale when he fouled out in 13 minutes. Simmons is going to be a rollercoaster ride to watch embarking on the most important season of his career.

Simmons has found his rightful place in the Nets small-ball 5 in the same vein as Suns coaches realizing Boris Diaw was a center and not a point guard. With any luck, Simmons’ career change also means he’ll be operating in the paint come playoff time. In the modern NBA, when we say a wing can’t shoot, we mean from behind the arc. Or they have a little midrange game, but it’s inconsistent. For Simmons, it means he might airball an open midrange jumper. More worrisome than his compilation of airballs is that he shot 16.7 percent from the free throw line in four preseason games.

The Bulls are going to be alright if Lonzo Ball misses extended time or the entire season. The Bulls 2021 second-round pick was one of the most productive players in the country during his final season at Illinois but fell in the draft to Chicago after his 3-point shooting percentages shrank from 39.6 to 26 percent between his sophomore and junior campaigns. Dosunmu flashed the stroke that made him a first-round prospect, making nearly 38 percent of his triples and all in all performed like a starting NBA point guard.

Maybe it’s an aberration, but is Andre Drummond going to start consistently shooting threes now? That appears to be the case. Against Toronto, Drummond made all three of his spot-up attempts from downtown. In his 11-year career, he’d swished 15 out of 114 treys, a 12 percent clip and in the process watched himself get phased out like an old fossil as teams began emphasizing bigs who could also space the floor. The last time he attempted more than three triples in a season was in 2020 when he took 35 in a pandemic-shortened season.

In three preseason starts, Damian Lillard looked out of rhythm. You have to take preseason struggles with a grain of salt. He missed most of last season to repair a recurring abdominal injury that limited him during the first half of the season. Prior to undergoing season-ending surgery, Lillard was in a rut. His 39 percent shooting and 33 percent clip-on triples in the preseason look uncomfortably similar to last season’s numbers.

The breakout star of the Lillard-less interregnum, Anfernee Simons has looked out of sync playing off-the-ball with a healthy Lillard in the lineup and after getting rolled up by the Warriors, the Blazers fell to 0-4 against NBA teams in the preseason. If the Blazers trot out of the gates slowly again, the front office brass might want to reconsider their plans, free Dame and move on to their youth movement.

Following the Bucks’ loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, Bucks assistant coach Charles Lee discussed the added emphasis being put on limiting their opponents’ 3-point attempts.

“We hang our hat on defense every night, no matter who is playing. It’s about us and our habits and just trying to build really good competitive habits,” Lee said. “And I thought, for the most part during the game, we limited them to 28 3s, which has been a little bit of an emphasis, well, not a little bit, it’s been an emphasis for us on how do we reduce team’s 3-pointers and make them have to shoot contested tough 2s. So I thought from that perspective, really good.”

This revision of Milwaukee’s philosophy is a dramatic change from the Bucks philosophy since Budenholzer was hired. Over the last four seasons, the Bucks have finished last in 3-point field goals allowed by design. Instead, the Bucks have been content to lock down scoring in the paint. That philosophy reared its ugly head when the Celtics made 22 3-pointers in Game 7 to eliminate the Bucks. Clearly, Milwaukee’s coaching staff got the message.