Five NBA early-season surprises: Lakers have a star in Austin Reaves; Ajay Mitchell is breaking out in OKC

We are officially one week into the NBA season and the level of competition across the league has been unreal. It seems like every national TV game has gone to overtime, if not double overtime. Victor Wembanyama is playing a brand of basketball never before seen. Stephen Curry is cooking up his regular dishes. Luka Doncic is averaging 46.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and 8.5 assists. 

But on some level, none of that is surprising. We knew the Knicks were going to shoot more 3s under Mike Brown (and indeed they are) and we knew the Celtics were probably going to struggle (and indeed they have). But what about the stuff we didn’t see coming? That could be a long list (are the Jazz good?), but I’m going to focus on five of the best first-week surprises. 

Austin Reaves is your total-point leader

Reaves’ legit card has long been stamped, but this is something else. Through four games, Reaves is averaging 35.8 PPG. His 143 total points are tied with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for tops in the league entering play Tuesday. He went for 51 on Sunday in a win over the Kings, missing a triple-double by one assist and becoming the first player in history to record at least 50 points, eight rebounds and eight assists on 80% true shooting in a single game. 

He then backed that up with 41 on Monday in a loss to the Blazers. 

Do the math, and that’s 92 points in about 30 hours for Reaves, who is making quite the bid for a max contract when he becomes a free agent this coming summer. The numbers speak for themselves, but it’s worth noting that Reaves did what he did against the Blazers, even though he was the clear focus of the defense with both Luka Doncic and LeBron James out. 

Reaves has racked up a league-leading 51 free throws so far and he’s not grifting. He’s way more shifty than you think and a true tough-shot maker. He’s one of two guys in the league averaging at least 35 points, eight boards and six rebounds (the other is Luka Doncic, who’s only played in two games), and his 57/43/88 shooting splits are scorching by any standard, let alone at the volume Reaves has activated. 

Reaves’ usage will surely dip when James returns, but playing like this, you can make a case that LeBron will be the one having to fit in around what might be the Lakers‘ new dynamic duo, both short and long term. A first All-Star selection could be in Reaves’ sights if he continues at anything close to this level. 

Jonathan Kuminga flipping script on Warriors saga

Kuminga and the Warriors have gone from an arranged marriage to basketball soulmates in the blink of an eye. Through four games, Kuminga, who went for 24 points on 9 of 14 shooting, 10 rebounds and four assists in the Warriors’ win over Memphis on Monday, is averaging career highs across the board: 18 points, eight rebounds and four assists with a through-the-roof 69.5 true-shooting percentage. 

Kuminga has never been anywhere near this efficient. He’s never rebounded like this. Passed like this. Defended like this. His sudden feel for the Warriors’ play-off-Steph’s-movement system, and his place within it, is palpable. Steve Kerr has glowed about Kuminga’s maturity, and understandably so. After the tension of his contract saga this summer, to come back to a team that seemingly only signed him because no one else would trade much for him, and likely with the intention of still trading him before the deadline, and play with this kind of commitment to, well, the team is extraordinary stuff. 

On appreciably lower usage than he’s required in the past, Kuminga is doing more than ever; gone are the solo-mission mid-rangers that he long shot at a paltry percentage. After a couple of bad shots in the season opener, he has played basically perfect basketball, and as such has seemingly cemented himself, at least for however long this keeps up, in both the starting and finishing lineup. 

Again, when the Warriors signed Kuminga to a two-year, $46.5 million deal this summer, with the second season being a team option, it was widely regarded as a contract priced to move. But if Kuminga keeps playing like this, barring some sort of superstar deal in which Kuminga is the central outgoing figure, Golden State might not be able to afford to lose him. 

The Bulls are undefeated!

Everyone’s favorite “what the hell is their plan” punchline has started the season with wins over the Pistons, Magic and Hawks — all teams widely considered to be fringe Eastern Conference contenders — by way of a 104.4 defensive rating that is tied with Oklahoma City for the class of the league. 

That won’t continue. But the Bulls look genuinely good with a deep roster quietly full of quality NBA players, six of which (Nikola Vucevic, Josh Giddey, Ayo Dosunmu, Kevin Huerter, Matas Buzelis and Tre Jones) are averaging 13 PPG or more. They contest every shot (even if there’s always shooting luck baked into early-season defensive metrics, this is evident), and they’re rebounding at a top-five rate to punctuate all those stops. 

In Monday’s win over Atlanta, eight guys scored at least 12 points, led by Dosumnu’s 21 off the bench. Vucevic has been on fire all year, albeit probably unsustainably. Giddey is playing like an All-Star. Dosumnu, a lights-out defender, has cashed nine of his 15 3-pointers. If you haven’t already scored a seat on the Buzelis hype train, sorry, no room left. 

Things are about to get tough for the Bulls, who face the Knicks twice, Sixers, Bucks, Cavs, Spurs, Pistons and Nuggets in eight of their next 10. We’ll see if this is something to really talk about or just a phony hot start from a team once again headed straight for the play-in, but something tells me this is a team that is going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of opponents this year. 

Ajay Mitchell is breaking out

Just when you thought the Oklahoma City Thunder, with their young championship roster and 11 potential first-round picks rolling in over the next seven drafts, couldn’t get any richer, here comes Mitchell and probably the breakout player of the young season. 

It hasn’t come entirely out of left field. You saw his ability last season in irregular/mop-up stints and he was a Summer League star, but there was just no room for him to get consistent minutes. He wasn’t part of the playoff rotation. But with Jalen Williams, Isaiah Joe and Kenrich Williams all sidelined to start the season, Mitchell has taken full advantage of his time to shine by scoring at least 14 points in all four games off the bench. 

And this isn’t supplementary stuff. He has been a legit go-to scorer in crucial stretches, almost impossible to guard at times with his elite balance, shifty/stop-start cadence and deft gray-area touch in traffic. 

MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander says Michell just “knows how to play,” and as generic as that assessment may sound, it couldn’t ring more true. Watch the footwork. The instructional-video perfection on his show-and-go drives. The craft of his pump fakes. His midrange pull-up bag is deep; he can do it going both ways, and his downhill acceleration hits like a punch. 

This is actually laughable that OKC, with all its talent and future assets, has a guy this good just hanging around in the depth-chart shadows. Every team in the league would kill for a backup point guard like this; the Mavericks, Rockets, Timberwolves, or a half-dozen other teams would jump at the chance to insert him as their starting point guard right now. This is not a fluke. This dude can flat out play. He’s going to be a major contributor for the Thunder even when all these guys get back, and he just may become one of the league’s hottest trade assets as the deadline nears. As if the Thunder need any more of those. 

A buffet of 50 pieces

The regular season is one week old and we’ve already had four 50-point performances. Aaron Gordon went nuts in Denver’s opener against the Warriors with 50 on 10 3-pointers. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put up a career-high 55 in a double-overtime win over the Pacers. Austin Reaves, as noted above, hung 51 on the Kings on Sunday. And on Tuesday, Lauri Markkanen gave the Suns 51. 

This marks just the second time in NBA history that we’ve had four 50-point games in the month of October (Wilt Chamberlain did it four times himself in 1962, and Blake Griffin, Stephen Curry, Derrick Rose and Kyrie Irving did it in 2018). That gives us four nights, beginning Tuesday, to break the record with one more 50-piece. 

Frankly, the record should already have been broken. Luka Doncic went to the line with 48 points against the Timberwolves but was only able to split the free throws before being pulled to end on 49.