National Basketball Association

What to look forward to in the 2016-17 NBA season, Part 2

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

Another week has come and gone, and out there somewhere on the horizon beyond hurricane season, the NBA season awaits in those unnamed ripples that precede a tropical storm. Last week, I talked about a young Laker, a couple of big men, a quiet leader, a soon to be crumbling point guard and Dirk, the last of his generation. This week, other things.

Tropical Storm Andre

The personification of a rebound must look something like Kurt Rambis. Andre Drummond is not Kurt Rambis. Andre Drummond speaks like a man who has studied Will Smith movies in a laboratory in order to become less human and more like Will Smith. When Drummond speaks in aphorisms, he says things like: “Swagger is whatever you want it to be,” as he did in a video short for The Undefeated.

No one has ever looked so serious thinking up an answer to what is swagger, and perhaps no one besides a Smith clone could have offered such a convincingly vanilla answer. Then again, when Drummond rebounds, he grabs the ball like Smith hugging a dog infected by vampires. And at 14.8 rebounds per game, that’s a lot of dying dogs. Of course, Smith does so in silence, while Drummond yells and screams. Which is more relatable? Which is more real?

Over the summer Smith starred in Suicide Squad. Smith turned down the role of Django in Django Unchained because, according to Smith, “Django wasn’t the lead.” It seems Smith’s reasoning may have changed. At this point in his career, he may be comfortable playing as part of an ensemble. I don’t know if Drummond would turn down such a role. Part of me doesn’t think he needs to worry about such calculated career moves. He just signed a max deal with the Detroit Pistons. Did he discover a way to be both Django and Deadshot?

The Pistons clearly believe they have a leading man and a budding ensemble, but, at this point, there’s no telling who might let the other down — Andre or everyone else. What’s cool is that both the franchise and the man were willing to take a chance on one another. Maybe Smith could learn something from Drummond. And now, if Andre could just make some free throws in the fourth, he just might change the face of rebounding.

Tropical Storm Anthony

At 23 years of age, Anthony Davis will soon embark on his fifth year of NBA basketball, and one would be hard pressed to find a player from any era who by the same age had contributed so much already. And yet the year marking his half decade in the league is being met with much less fanfare than the apocalyptic forecasts that greeted the Brow just a year ago. Was his fourth year as good as year three? The answer is no. And while traditional stats suggest Davis did everything last year that he had done the year prior, a look at his per 100 numbers, his VORP rating and the team’s inability to make the postseason suggest a slight slacking of the line.

In many ways, the quiet surrounding Davis is due to the noise on other fronts — KAT, the Greek Freak, Boogie. Because his numbers and the team stalled in their hyperbolized ascent, many of us appear to have lost sight of them on the plateau, especially as other big men gather momentum and harness our imaginations with the promise of unlimited potential. At some point, all these prospects will settle. They will find better teammates. They will clash in the postseason. They will be written off and lose opportunities to be the best of a generation. But, until all that, maybe a 23-year-old is still on the rise. And, if not, then 24 and 10 is still pretty cool to see night in and night out.

Tropical Storm Bismack

Bismack Biyombo has never averaged more than 5.5 points per game in an NBA season. His highest per 36 points per game is 9.0. His highest average per 100 possessions is 13.0. Some of this is because he’s never been anywhere near the focal point of a team’s offense. And then there is that postseason series against Cleveland where Bismack blossomed into something beyond our wildest dreams. He rebounded, he blocked shots, he scored, he owned moments against the defending Eastern Conference champions and soon to be NBA champions.

Now, he’s no longer a Raptor, but a member of the Orlando Magic, where, once again, he’ll start the season coming off the bench, behind Serge Ibaka and Nikola Vucevic. That doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder if we’ll ever see playoff Biyombo again. Can that wardrobe be passed through still or is it closed forever? I wonder.

Tropical Storm Michael

In Charlotte, there are two Michaels. One is the basketball god Michael Jordan, and the other is his on the court avatar, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. While eclipsing Jordan in anything is a nearly impossible task, playing less basketball in an NBA season than his Airness these days is just as futile a feat. But Kidd-Gilchrist nearly accomplished such when a torn labrum last season limited him to seven games. Of course, having an invisible avatar defeats the purpose of substantiation and is further ammunition to those questioning looking to question Jordan’s basketball omnipotence.

And yet, while the selection of Kidd-Gilchrist at No. 2 overall in 2012 has yet to materialize into a lottery windfall for Charlotte, he has, when healthy, proven to be a solid NBA player. What’s weird, however, is that at age 23 he is about to complete a half decade in the league with the trajectory of his career still following the path of a question mark.

Moreover, the Hornets won more games last season than they have any other year in the 21st century, and they did so with Kidd-Gilchrist as a specter on the sidelines. Often times, if such an event occurs, the player sitting enters the realm of the dispensable. But that doesn’t quite feel accurate with Kidd-Gilchrist and the Hornets, especially since Jeremy Lin and Al Jefferson left the team via free agency. Whatever the team becomes moving forward hinges on the development of Kidd-Gilchrist.

At this point, the Hornets might settle for Kidd-Gilchrist turning into the second coming of Marvin Williams, but the ceiling still feels like it could be a lot closer to Kawhi Leonard, even if that feeling is forever fleeting.

When I was a kid, I remember checking out a book about classic horror films over and over again. Inside it were black and white pictures of Dracula and the wolf man. Frankenstein’s monster and the Creature from the Black Lagoon were also featured and so, too, was the Invisible Man. The great reveal in the Invisible Man film, at least as I remember it from the photo, is the unwrapping of bandages to reveal the absence of a visible body. Last year with Kidd-Gilchrist kind of felt like that, but wouldn’t it be just as revealing to see bandages form a human body where previously there was none?

That’s Kidd-Gilchrist improving his 3-point shot, becoming something of a playmaker, literally filling out the costume of his potential, becoming something like Kawhi, but, hopefully, something even more like himself.

Tropical Storm Myles

The oldest guy on this week’s list is Biyombo, at age 24. The youngest is Myles Turner, at age 20. These players are not rookies. Most are not second year guys, with the exception of Turner. However, they are all players who have shown in sparks and full on lightning bolts that their best years are ahead of them. Some have probably plateaued. Most of them likely have not. If they have peaked athletically, they will still grow wiser and more intense with time, even if they become more paced and measured.

The development of the Indiana Pacers and their standing in the Eastern Conference is directly tied to Turner. Yes, the team added Al Jefferson and Jeff Teague, but Turner is the potential running mate. What’s fun about him is that he can do a little bit of everything, and yet he could do a little bit of everything a little bit better. You want to see him push those limits. You want to see these guys go full hurricane, to seek and destroy, because that’s when the league gives itself over to the names of tomorrow. And, if they don’t quite fulfill the outer limits of our predictions, then these moments of anticipation become the last tremors of wilting potential and that too is enough to watch.