After writing up the
Cade Cunningham, Pistons
Tyrese Maxey, 76ers
Jaylen Brown, Celtics
Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers
All stats and records entering Friday’s games.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks
Yes, the Bucks are crummy — 17-24, two games out of the play-in spots in the East, in the bottom 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Most of that crumminess, though, emanates from the time when Antetokounmpo isn’t available: Milwaukee is 14-13 when he plays, and just 3-11 when he doesn’t.
As it turns out, it’s pretty useful to have a dude who scores nearly a point per minute — 28.8 points in 29 minutes per game — while making two-thirds of his 2-point shots, averaging nearly 10 rebounds and six assists per game, creating more 3-pointers for teammates per 100 possessions than anybody but T.J. McConnell (!), and leading the NBA in points in the paint … despite missing 14 games.
With Giannis on the floor, the Bucks have actually outscored opponents by a very strong 7.2 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions in his minutes, according to Cleaning the Glass — the net rating of a 57-win team — and have scored at a clip commensurate with the Nuggets’ league-leading offense. The big fella still moves the needle to a degree unmatched by any other force in the Eastern Conference … which is probably why his relative satisfaction levels, contract status and prospective next moves are so closely watched and so often discussed by so, so many people.
Cade Cunningham, Pistons
Somewhat less frequently remarked upon than Giannis’ future: The present-tense excellence of the Detroit Pistons, who have firmly established themselves as the class of the conference. Cunningham has led that charge, building on last season’s All-Star and All-NBA breakthrough as the straw that stirs the drink for the East’s No. 1 seed.
Only Nikola Jokić is averaging more assists per game or points created by assist than Cunningham, who’s on pace to become just the seventh player in NBA history to average more than 25 points and nine assists per game in multiple seasons. His 3-point accuracy has dipped, but he’s counterbalanced that by getting to the free-throw line more often and curbing his turnover rate. He’s also become an even more active participant in a Pistons defense that trails only Oklahoma City in points allowed per possession: Cunningham is one of just eight guards in the NBA this season to snag a steal and block a shot on at least 2% of opponents’ offensive possessions.
One of the other seven guards on that list?
Tyrese Maxey, 76ers
Maxey’s uptick in defensive playmaking has come alongside a bona fide offensive leap that puts him squarely in the conversation for the best guard in the conference.
Amid preseason questions about how the Sixers could possibly stand a chance of competing given the ever-present injury concerns surrounding Joel Embiid and Paul George, Maxey presented a simple and compelling answer, one that has been by far the biggest reason why Philly is within hailing distance of a top-four spot in the East: Let me friggin’ cook, and never take me off the floor.
The 25-year-old leads the NBA in total minutes despite missing two games in mid-December, and in minutes per game by a country mile; the gap between him (39.4 minutes per game) and second-place Amen Thompson (37.1) is roughly the same as the gap between Thompson and 14th-place Mikal Bridges (34.9). Having him out there’s been vital for Nick Nurse’s crew: The Sixers have outscored opponents by 2.7 points per 100 possessions in his minutes, scoring and defending at near-top-10 levels, and have been outscored by 3.8 points-per-100 in his exceedingly rare moments of respite.
Maxey has made the most of all those minutes. He joins Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as one of three players averaging more than 30 points per game this season, and he’s doing so on career-best scoring efficiency, shooting a career-best 52.6% inside the arc, 40.5% beyond it on 9.1 launches a night, and 87.7% at the free-throw line while taking a career-high 6.4 attempts per game. He’s married that elite three-level scoring prowess with continued growth as a playmaker; only four players in the NBA this season have both an assist rate as high as Maxey’s and a turnover rate as low.
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One of those four players is Jalen Brunson. His name, as you might have noticed, does not appear on my ballot. Given both his high placement in fan voting results, his second-place finish among guards in both the player and media votes last year, and the fact that he has once again been awesome this season — eighth in the NBA in scoring at 28.2 points per game and 20th in assists at 6.1 per game, shooting 48.1% from the field, 38.8% from 3-point range and 85.2% from the free-throw line — it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he winds up getting a starting spot when all’s said and done.
As I looked at it, though, once I got past Giannis (the best player in the conference) and Cunningham (the best player on the No. 1 seed in the conference), the last three starting spots came down to four guards: Maxey, Brunson, Mitchell and Brown. (With apologies to Scottie Barnes, who deserves an All-Star spot for his fantastic two-way work in Toronto.)
Jaylen Brown, Celtics
Just as Maxey has carried the Sixers, Brown has assumed a mammoth offensive workload — the third-highest usage rate in the NBA this season, behind only Antetokounmpo and Luka Dončić — for a Celtics team missing not only perennial All-NBA First Teamer Jayson Tatum, but also championship mainstays Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford. He has proven more than equal to the challenge of becoming Boston’s No. 1 option, averaging a career-best 29.4 points and 4.9 assists per game on 49/37/79 shooting splits that rival the best scoring efficiency of his career.
Only five players who have commanded this high a share of an offense have ever scored this efficiently over the course of a full season: Giannis, Embiid, Dončic, James Harden and Bernard King. That’s the kind of company Brown’s been keeping, propelling the Celtics to the NBA’s second-best offense, fourth-best net rating and second place in the East — spots that precisely nobody outside TD Garden thought Boston would occupy halfway through what the rest of us thought would be a gap year, but has instead turned into an opportunity for Brown (and Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard, and Jordan Walsh, and Neemias Queta, and on, and on) to show everybody just how much they’re capable of when given the opportunity to strut their stuff.
Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers
While the Celtics have outperformed their humble preseason projections, the Cavaliers have struggled to meet vaulted expectations coming off a 64-win campaign. On one hand, the fact that Cleveland sits 2.5 games back of New York in the standings, in seventh place, feels like a dramatic disappointment. On the other, given the raft of injuries the Cavs have dealt with — only five teams have lost more player games this season, according to Spotrac, with Darius Garland rarely resembling his All-Star self and starting swingman Max Strus still yet to suit up — and the at-times-underwhelming performances of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, that they’re within striking distance of a top-four seed at all is something of a testament to just how damn good Mitchell has been across the board in what has been arguably the best all-around season of his career.
The ninth-year pro is averaging 29.7 points per game, shooting a scorching 58.9% on 2-pointers and 38.7% from 3-point land while taking more than 10 triples per game — all career highs. With Garland scuffling as he works through a persistent toe injury, with Mobley’s attempts to advance as a shot creator and offensive hub seeming to plateau, with key 2024-25 reserve Ty Jerome no longer on the team, and with offseason addition Lonzo Ball struggling mightily to make a positive offensive impact, Mitchell has been the lifeblood and bellwether of Cleveland’s attack. The Cavs score like a top-three offense with Mitchell at the controls, and like the Wizards or Haliburton-less Pacers when he’s off the floor; their net rating has been 13.3 points-per-100 better in Mitchell’s minutes, one of the biggest on/off swings of any player to log significant minutes this season.
Brown and Mitchell have scored more per-minute and per-possession than Brunson; Maxey has done so more efficiently. Mitchell and Maxey outpace Brunson in a number of advanced metrics — estimated plus-minus, LEBRON, value over replacement player, player efficiency rating, win shares, win shares per 48 minutes, box plus-minus, etc. Brown doesn’t — his game has never rated particularly well by advanced metrics — but he’s been nearly as efficient in an even larger role for a better offense while also adding value as a rebounder and multipositional defender … which wound up being the hair that I split.
As good as Brunson’s been, I found his role in the Knicks’ post-NBA Cup downturn difficult to overlook when stacked up against players carrying such significant burdens for teams that would likely be lost without them — especially considering all three of the other players under consideration dramatically outperform Brunson on the defensive end, which has been the most consistent pain point throughout New York’s slump, and where advanced metrics routinely grade Brunson as one of the most glaringly negative big-minutes performers in the league. In a situation marked by thin margins, that was enough to bump the others ahead of him, just barely, on my ballot.
