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1 month ago | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keerthika Uthayakumar
It's hard to imagine an NBA game in the regular season that gets much spicier than this:Jimmy Butler makes his return to South Beach on this Newsletter Tuesday. As a Golden State Warrior. We will obviously say the same — presumably even louder — when Luka Dončić returns to Dallas as a Los Angeles Laker on April 9.
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1 month ago | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keerthika Uthayakumar
Last week's Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza did not feature the usual Numbers Game section. The only suitable response, when that happens, is making sure the next Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza leads with Numbers Game. To the overdue digits:There have been 16 50-point games posted this season … four by Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
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1 month ago | 
statkeeks.substack.com | Keerthika Uthayakumar |Marc Stein
The two through five (& seven!) seeds in the West are about to be the most entertaining standings watch of the season. Just 1 win separates the five-seed Rockets & the two-seed Grizzlies. The Warriors & Wolves are the hottest teams in the West & they’re just 3 & 3.5 games back of the Rockets for fifth. 18th in offence (112.3), 17th in defence (114.3), 19th in net rating (-2.0), 18th in eFG% (53.8), won 4 straightLast few: W vs. IND, W vs. PHI, W vs.
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1 month ago | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keerthika Uthayakumar
Luka Dončić has been a Los Angeles Laker for 24 days. And with his first-ever game against the Dallas Mavericks falling on a Tuesday, it only seemed right to try to put together a souped-up edition of Numbers Game from The Stein Line exclusively devoted to that showdown. Yet even that didn't feel sufficient. To appropriately preview the occasion at the highest possible statistical level, I reached out to my pal — Toronto-based NBA researcher extraordinaire — to incorporate her expertise.
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1 month ago | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Iztok Franko |Keerthika Uthayakumar
Really couldn't believe it. So said Dirk Nowitzki last Friday in his first official statement in response to the big trade made by his beloved Dallas Mavericks. A trade stunner that turned Lakerland into Lukaland. Amazon's newly signed NBA studio analyst for next season pretty much summed things up perfectly. Even three full weeks and change later, Nowitzki speaks for a lot of people both based in Dallas and far, far beyond.
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2 months ago | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keerthika Uthayakumar
There is no dribbling around it: This cannot be the unreservedly upbeat dispatch I expected to post coming out of All-Star Weekend. Sudden news bulletins about San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama missing the rest of the season, soon after Milwaukee's Bobby Portis was hit with a 25-game suspension, certainly changed the tenor of a nine-game Thursday meant to signify the true launch of the regularr-season stretch run.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keith Smith |Justin Kubatko |Keerthika Uthayakumar
Maybe you saw the stat freshly circulated by ESPN's Bobby Marks. Come Sunday, when the calendar flips to Dec. 15th, 87% of the NBA will be trade-eligible through the Feb. 6 trade deadline. In other words: That time of year is really here. You can expect more Trade Season coverage than ever before from The Stein Lineafter the recent addition of Jake Fischer as a contributing writer.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Keith Smith |Keerthika Uthayakumar |Justin Kubatko
For those of you, post-election, who would like to think about professional basketball on this Wednesday ... Our election-delayed Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza leads off with an eight-is-enough burst of reactions to pressing NBA news items:🏀 A three-game suspension without pay for Joel Embiid sounds about right.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
statkeeks.substack.com | Keerthika Uthayakumar
The Raptors were not a fun watch last season. The numbers were not good. They lost 19 of their last 21 to close the season, ranked dead-last in the NBA in net rating after the break & second-last in defence. 14 of the franchise-record 30 players they used are not on opening night rosters this season. Outside of watching games & being entertained, one of my favourite stats to define “fun bad” is looking at how many games were decided in single digits.
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Feb 22, 2024 | 
marcstein.substack.com | Marc Stein |Justin Kubatko |Keerthika Uthayakumar
There are 1,230 games in a full NBA regular season. There are 410 left on the schedule entering Thursday night’s 12-game slate and the resumption of the 2023-24 campaign after the All-Star break. The Committee (of One) isn’t as good in math as we used to be in our youth, but we are more than capable of calculating what those numbers mean: Exactly two-thirds of the regular season is behind us.
