NBA: The struggling Rockets and 5 other eye-opening early observations
By Colin Cann
Exploring six of the most surprising, eye-opening observations from the first two weeks of the 2018-19 NBA season
We’re officially two weeks through the 2018-19 NBA season. And through the first few handful of games, we’ve seen some interesting storylines begun to form. From the new-look Los Angeles Lakers to the dominating Golden State Warriors.
Out East, there are few surprises at the top as the Boston Celtics continue to try and figure it all out.
We will explore six of the biggest surprises through the season, starting with the resurgent Detroit Pistons.
Detroit Pistons
The Pistons weren’t pegged to make much noise going into the season, either listed as a low seed playoff seed or missing the playoffs altogether. They then rolled off four straight wins to open the season including an exhilarating OT thriller against a Philadelphia 76ers team looked upon as one of the best in the conference. Blake Griffin dropped a career-high 50 points in the victory, adding to his career-best start.
He is currently averaging nearly 28/10/5 while shooting over 50 percent from the floor and a downright shocking 55 percent from beyond the arc. Sure most of these wins came against below average opponents, they also didn’t win those games by a large margin.
This is the best Blake we’ve seen to date, though. Which has overshadowed the fact that this is also the best Andre Drummond we’ve seen to date, upping his point totals to over 18 a game while maintaining his ridiculous rebound rate and his 60% free throw percentage. The Pistons are winning, and that’s pretty surprising.