BREAKING NEWS: NBA Season’s 1st Week Highlights Biggest Winners and Losers .giang

The NBA is doing what it can to raise the stakes on the regular season. It added the play-in tournament a few years ago and debuted what’s now known as the NBA Cup last year.

But we still need to view the first week of the campaign as a feeling-out process. It’s more of an extension of the preseason than a true indicator of what the next six months will bring.

With that said, we have to assess things fairly. Even at this early juncture.

The opening week of 2024-25 featured loads of standout performances from the likes of Anthony Davis and Chet Holmgren alongside some real duds from recent championship winners in Denver and Milwaukee. In addition to that, we got our first look at JJ Redick as a head coach and watched the Boston Celtics start what could be a full season of broken three-point records.

These are the winners and losers of the first week of NBA action.

The Los Angeles Clippers’ quest to devalue their 2025 first-round pick swap headed to the Oklahoma City Thunder is off to a tremendous start, as they won two of their three opening-week contests. The headliners were two victories in a brutal back-to-back set at Denver and at Golden State on Oct. 26 and 27.

Norman Powell showed out in the former, proving he’s perfectly capable of occupying a major offensive role as a starter with 37 points on 21 shots. Then, Ivica Zubac bludgeoned an undersized Warriors front line with 23 points, 18 boards and six assists the next night.

James Harden was inefficient (36.2 percent from the field, 19.2 percent from deep) through L.A.’s three opening-week games, but his return to an extremely high-usage offensive role seems to have produced results. Much like he did back in his peak Houston Rockets days, Harden is getting to the foul line 10.3 times per game and leads the league with 11.7 assists per game.

There’s plenty of time for things to get as grim in L.A. as many foresaw when the severity of Kawhi Leonard’s knee issues became clear. For now, though, the Clippers are getting what they need from their best offensive threats and have been able to put capable defensive units on the floor. Harden remains a sieve, but things look sturdier when head coach Ty Lue trots out Derrick Jones Jr., Kris Dunn and Terance Mann with Zubac anchoring the middle.

We should just assume every relevant three-point record in NBA history is going down this season.

The Boston Celtics tied the all-time mark of 29 made treys in their opener against the New York Knicks. They would have blown past the record if they hadn’t finished the contest with 13 straight misses from deep.

Boston is an outlier in some sense. It shot a league-high 3,482 triples last season, but that was only the fourth-highest total in NBA history. After watching the Celtics fire off 61 attempts from beyond the arc in that 123-109 win over the New York Knicks, it’s hard to imagine the 2018-19 Houston Rockets’ all-time mark of 3,721 attempts will survive.

If the Celtics trim 15 three-point tries off that total and sustain it for the full season—i.e., 46 three-point attempts per game—they’ll break Houston’s record for total attempts. Through four games, they’re averaging 50.3.

That won’t be the only milestone to fall. We should anticipate someone threatening or breaking Klay Thompson’s single-game mark of 14 made threes. Maybe it’ll be Thompson himself, feasting off pinpoint setups from Luka Dončić. Or perhaps former teammate Stephen Curry will add two to his personal high of 13 makes to take back the record.

After a consistent year-over-year climb starting in 2011-12, three-point attempt rates have held relatively steady at around 35 per game since 2019-20. That looks to be changing this season.

All it would have taken was a single run-stopping timeout, and JJ Redick would have done enough to endear himself to Los Angeles Lakers fans who spent 2023-24 begging former head coach Darvin Ham to do the same.

Redick took care of that on opening night, but his first-week wins didn’t stop there. He also presided over a Lakers team that looked completely bought-in and freshly energized en route to a 3-1 start.

Los Angeles has married that aggression with responsibility, turning the ball over only seven times in its opener against a Minnesota Timberwolves team that ran away with the league lead in defensive efficiency last season.

Anthony Davis is as heavily featured on offense as he’s ever been, and Redick is mixing up the ways in which he utilizes his superstar center on D. Davis has occasionally dropped in pick-and-roll coverage, played up to the level of the screen and is frequently allowed to switch onto guards in space. Considering how much Redick promised AD would be emphasized on both ends, these early results are beyond encouraging.

Davis had only one streak of at least three straight 30-point games during the regular season last year. He produced one of those in the Lakers’ first three games this season, then fell a single point short of extending the streak to four in LA’s only loss of the year at Phoenix on Oct. 28.

The pressure on Redick won’t relent. He’s in charge of a marquee franchise with an iconic superstar (whose son also happens to be on the roster) and faces massive expectations. Though the vast majority of the season remains, early returns look favorable for one of the most scrutinized coaches around.

The season’s first week validated every concern about the Denver Nuggets’ lack of depth and dearth of shooting, as the 2023 champs got off to an 0-2 start that featured a 28.8 percent hit rate from distance and some truly anemic production from the reserves.

They needed overtime to secure a two-point win over the Toronto Raptors on Monday.

Denver ranked dead last in three-point attempt rate last season and isn’t exactly firing at will to start 2024-25. Christian Braun, who’s now starting in place of free-agent departure Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, contributes as a cutter, defender and rugged rebounder. But he’s been hesitant to let it rip when left open on the perimeter (which is often), a tendency that interrupts the Nuggets’ offensive rhythm.

Russell Westbrook has been even less efficient as a scorer than expected, totaling 17 points and hitting only five of his first 25 shots on the year. Peyton Watson has been a zero off the bench, Julian Strawther registered more fouls (10) than made field goals (nine) across his first three contests, while Dario Sarić is showing Nuggets fans that the total lack of defensive impact he showed with the Golden State Warriors last year is still a problem.

For as long as Nikola Jokić has been a superstar, the Nuggets have struggled to keep pace with a three-heavy league and gotten crushed whenever bench units take the floor. Those issues aren’t just sticking around. They seem to be getting even worse.

Chet Holmgren averaged 23.7 points, 13.0 rebounds, 4.0 blocks and 3.0 assists per game across his three opening-week appearances, helping the Oklahoma City Thunder jump out to a perfect 3-0 mark.

While so much of the offseason attention paid to OKC fixated on its acquisitions—Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein—and the potential superstar leap of Jalen Williams, Holmgren’s strong start suggests maybe he should have been a bigger focus. He’s been one of the most impactful two-way forces in the game, and his three-point shot isn’t even falling yet. Assuming he can do better than his 3-of-15 start from distance, the 22-year-old has a shot to rate as one of the top rim-protecting, floor-spacing big men in the league.

When Hartenstein returns, the Thunder will be able to field supersized lineups with Holmgren at the 4. Spacing won’t be quite as good in those configurations on offense, but the presence of a conventional center on D should allow Holmgren to destroy opposing offenses’ plans as a roving free safety.

Oklahoma City is getting eye-opening efforts from players up and down the roster. Aaron Wiggins and even Ousmane Dieng have had hugely productive stretches off the bench, with the latter even logging some intriguing time as a small-ball backup center. But nobody has been more impressive in the early going than Holmgren, who’d be an All-NBA and All-Defensive shoo-in if voting took place today.

Outside of a season-opening 124-109 win over a Philadelphia 76ers team missing Joel Embiid and Paul George, the Milwaukee Bucks have looked nothing like the title threat they hope to be.

Giannis Antetokounmpo was his usual, productive self, posting averages of 28.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 6.3 assists while making 62.0 percent of his shots from the field. But Damian Lillard shot a combined 4-of-19 from deep in losses to the Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets after going 6-of-12 on threes against that depleted Sixers lineup. He’s at just 30.8 percent for the year.

No one else in the first unit or rotation has distinguished himself offensively, and that isn’t even the most pressing problem. Milwaukee allowed the Bulls to post a 126.9 offensive rating in a double-digit loss on Oct. 25 and the Nets to reach 122.0 two nights later in another double-digit defeat. Those two teams aren’t exactly among the league’s projected offensive powerhouses this season.

The Bucks aren’t forcing turnovers, got annihilated in transition against Chicago and have generally done little to suggest head coach Doc Rivers will incorporate major fixes to last year’s problems. At 1-3, Milwaukee is among the season’s biggest early disappointments.

Khris Middleton’s return from offseason ankle surgeries can’t come soon enough.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through games played Oct. 27. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale.