We’re closing in on a month into the 2025-26 NBA season, and that’s usually when teams feel like they have a great idea of where the league stands. Somewhere in that first 20 games or so of the season, people start feeling comfortable about which teams are good, which teams are bad and which teams need to make a move.

This week in the NBA Rewind, we look at the idea that there is a strategy to employ against Victor Wembanyama and how much clutch games are ruling the early standings. But first, we start with the extended version of the NBA Stock Report, a Monday staple in The Bounce. That’s our free NBA newsletter that you can sign up for and receive every day in your inbox. Let’s rewind!

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NBA Stock Report Extended

📈 **Houston Rockets (6-3) offense. **Last year, the Rockets had a shockingly efficient offense. They were 13th in the NBA in offensive efficiency, but it was a lot of smoke and mirrors. They ranked 21st in both field-goal percentage and 3-point percentage. They couldn’t make shots. But they could rebound their misses better than anybody. They led the NBA in offensive rebounding percentage by being bullies on the boards. Keeping those possessions alive allowed them to get enough buckets to allow their defense to put them over the top. It didn’t work for them in the postseason, but it was a great starting point. This season?

The Rockets have the best offense in the NBA. They’re still the best at offensive rebounding, so a lot of misses remain in their possession. However, the Rockets have shot up to seventh in field-goal percentage (from 45.5 last season to 49.4) and first in 3-point percentage (35.3 to 42.8). Kevin Durant has been a massive help, as you’d expect. He’s not the only one, though. Jabari Smith Jr. (35.4 to 37.2), Tari Eason (34.2 to 51.2) and Josh Okogie (34.8 on two different teams to 50.0) are off to tremendous starts. Even Alperen Şengün (23.3 to 39.3) is off to a great start shooting from outside. The 3-point shooting won’t hold, but even being around the top 10 in accuracy would make this scary Rockets squad even more frightening.

📉 **Dallas Mavericks (3-7) offense. **On the other end of that spectrum is the Mavs. They have been abysmal offensively, as they’ve tried to get by without Kyrie Irving and at times Anthony Davis too. This team was built for size and rebounding, but it can’t score in the slightest. You’d think maybe they could recreate some of that Rockets style from last season by just getting a shot up and crashing the offensive boards to keep possessions alive. It’s not happening. Dallas is 28th in offensive rebounding, opting for getting back in transition to stop fast-break points (tied for 10th in transition defense).

Dallas is 25th in field-goal percentage and 29th in 3-point percentage, shooting just 30.3 percent from downtown. The Mavs are also 19th in turnover rate, so they’re not taking care of the ball well either. They’re on pace (103.7 offensive rating) to have the second-worst offense of the last eight seasons (the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2020-21 had a 102.8 rating). And not to put all of this on Klay Thompson, but he’s shooting just 29.4 percent from 3 to begin the season. Even their shooters can’t shoot. Jason Kidd has opted to play Cooper Flagg out of position at point guard, which has brought a lot of criticism early. If you stop thinking of this as a good team and just one that’s developing their No. 1 pick, it makes a lot more sense for the future.

📈 **Detroit Pistons (8-2). **The Pistons are the hottest team in the NBA, with six straight wins to put them atop the Eastern Conference. It’s not like last season when they were a feel-good story. Now they’re on everybody’s radar, and they’re still stacking up wins. We haven’t seen the Pistons make strides offensively, as they’re missing the impact of Malik Beasley and Tim Hardaway Jr. from last season. But the Pistons’ defense has gotten a lot better. That was the key to their turnaround last year, and it’s there again for their current ascension.

The Pistons sit third in the NBA in defensive rating. They play a physical brand of basketball, allowing the highest free-throw rate in the NBA. And yet, it’s not hurting them, because they allow the second-lowest field goal percentage and the lowest effective field-goal percentage in the league. It gives Cade Cunningham plenty of opportunity to find his rhythm on offense and take them to victories most nights.

📉 **Washington Wizards (1-9)****. **It’s not that you should expect anything different from the Wizards this season. They are constructed to lose a bunch of games, but hopefully do it in a developmental and entertaining way. However, they’ve lost eight straight and are getting blown out way worse than last season. That last part is the concerning issue. The Wizards have one single-digit loss, and it just happened Saturday against Dallas (the Wizards’ only victory also came against the Mavs).

We have seen some good individual things from the Wizards. Alex Sarr looks fantastic in his second season. Kyshawn George is off to a great start. No. 6 pick Tre Johnson has been solid. But their backcourt of Bub Carrington and CJ McCollum has really struggled. This team has issues with throwing solid entry passes to Sarr when he has solid position in the post. Not to mention, Bilal Coulibaly is already struggling with his game and with injuries. You don’t need the Wizards to win a lot, but they have to look more cohesive and competitive as a unit.

📈 **Cleveland Cavaliers (7-3). **After the Cavs fell to Toronto a week and a half ago, they had lost two straight and were just 3-3. They definitely didn’t look like the Cavs that got off to a historic start last season. Now they’ve won four straight and put a couple of teams in their respective places over this last week. Just a nice little reminder of why the Cavs were so dominant in the East last season. They beat the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers at home. They blew out the Wizards, as you’d expect. And then the Cavs took down the Chicago Bulls, who were sporting the best record in the East through the first couple of weeks.

Cleveland isn’t throwing that historic offense out on the floor just yet, but it just got Darius Garland back into the mix after he missed months with toe surgery. Donovan Mitchell has been spectacular, even by his standards. He’s averaging 30.7 points to begin the season, but it’s not just coming from jacking up shots. He has an absurd 68.5 percent true shooting through his first nine games. He’s making 62.5 percent of his 2-pointers. And they will still get Max Strus back at some point. Cleveland looks like the regular-season beasts of the East, once again.

📉 **LA Clippers (3-6). **Rough week for the Clippers. They’ve lost four straight games, including a home-and-home to the Phoenix Suns. Kawhi Leonard has missed three straight games, and James Harden joined him in missing one of the games against the Suns. The Clippers just haven’t been sharp to begin this season. Losing to the Miami Heat or OKC or Phoenix isn’t the biggest concern. Dropping four straight and being horrendous on both ends of the floor is the problem. Although they loaded the roster with depth to mitigate Leonard missing time, the Clippers’ added depth hasn’t been particularly good.

John Collins is kind of like that spot starter in baseball who will eat up innings, post a 5.00 ERA or worse, and just try to keep you in it. He hasn’t taken advantage of opportunities to play with better teammates. Bradley Beal and Chris Paul have been brutal to start. Beal is shooting 37 percent from the field and giving them 8.0 points per game. CP3 is shooting 24 percent from the field and only playing 12.9 minutes per game. The biggest concern for the Clippers, though, has been the defense. They were one of the best in the league last season. They’re now ranked 27th in that category. Only the New Orleans Pelicans, Wizards, and Brooklyn Nets have been worse at defending. Yikes!

📈 **Taking souls. **The play of the year so far might be what De’Andre Hunter did to Josh Giddey’s ankles on Saturday night. Hunter is a good scoring option, but we don’t see him snatching ankles and taking souls like he did to Giddey as Cleveland took out its division rival. Watch how nasty this is.

THIS DE’ANDRE HUNTER CROSSOVER-SLAM COMBO 🤯🤯🤯

Watch on NBA League Pass: https://t.co/xob27Scjia pic.twitter.com/aQVaLqd62h

— NBA (@NBA) November 9, 2025

My goodness! Look at the screenshot of the moment Giddey started dropping to the floor. He looks like Darth Vader just used the force to knock him out of the way.

I don’t remember a defender looking like Shang Tsung just stole the spirit out of him.

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The Big Story: The league has ‘figured’ Wemby out

Did you know there is a strategy that completely neutralizes Victor Wembanyama? That’s the rumor after he had two games in which he didn’t score very effectively. Wemby started the year looking even more otherworldly than we’re used to from him. These were his numbers through the first five games, with the San Antonio Spurs starting 5-0 for the first time:

• 30.2 points, 14.6 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 4.8 blocks, 1.4 steals and 1.8 turnovers in 33.8 minutes.
• 56.3 percent from the field, 31.3 percent from 3 (3.2 attempts per game) and 79.2 percent from the free-throw line (9.6 attempts).

He dominated that first week and a half. Then he had a couple of bad games against the Suns and LA Lakers, and some eyebrows were raised. These were his numbers over those two games:

• 14.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 2.5 blocks, 1.0 steals and 5.5 turnovers in 33.5 minutes.
• 32.1 percent from the field, 14.3 percent from 3 (3.5 attempts per game) and 81.8 percent from the free-throw line (5.5 attempts).

That’s a big drop-off! What’s the strategy that renders him mortal? Put a smaller guy on him! This mostly came from a high-profile matchup against the Lakers in which Rui Hachimura defended Wemby well and Marcus Smart flopped his way into a couple of offensive foul calls against Wembanyama. We’ve seen this strategy with various transcendent tall players before. That was supposed to be the key to slowing Durant back in the day, because Tony Allen and Leonard both had success against him. Those were also world-class defenders. The Lakers also tried that strategy a couple of years ago against the Denver Nuggets and Nikola Jokić in the 2023 playoffs, putting Hachimura on him while Anthony Davis shaded heavily in help.

Durant eventually got past it, and Jokić swept those Lakers, despite the claims that they put a scare into the Nuggets in the second half of Game 1 of that series. With Wembanyama being 7-foot-5 or taller, you have no choice but to put smaller players on him. The difference here is, it’s more like trying to defend against Durant than Jokić. Both use their length, unlike Jokić, who uses his braun and touch. The idea of putting a physically strong defender on Wembanyama to take away the space he naturally creates and knock him off balance does make some sense.

Gilbert Arenas wants Wemby to stop trying to get so low when he attacks off the dribble and just rise to shoot over these guys. We’ve heard people asking him to develop the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sky hook because of his height, length and shooting touch. I, personally, do not believe this strategy is legitimate. I think it just happened to work in a couple of games. In the two games after those poor showings against the Suns and Lakers, these were Wemby’s numbers:

• 20.0 points, 13.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 2.5 blocks, 1.0 steals and 4.5 turnovers in 34.5 minutes.
• 45.7 percent from the field, 18.2 percent from 3 (5.5 attempts per game) and 100 percent from the free-throw line (3.0 attempts).

Those numbers land more in the middle between Wembanyama’s hot start and two-game skid. I think the key to those down games was foul trouble. Wemby fouled out against the Lakers, and he was in foul trouble against the Suns. He only had one other game with foul trouble, fouling out against the Pelicans in their first matchup. The majority of Wemby’s production is also tied to whether he’s creating contact, as you can see by the disparity in free-throw numbers between those three mini-slices of the season.

Everybody is going to be throwing pasta at the wall and seeing if it sticks when it comes to slowing down Wemby. We’re going to see a lot of zone and different matchups and different looks thrown his way over the next 15 years because he’s going to be virtually unstoppable at some point. The Spurs also just got De’Aaron Fox back into the mix, so there’s a lot more attention that can go away from Wemby on the floor to get him easier situations to score. The best strategy is still to hope and pray. Put small guys on him at your own risk. At some point soon, he’s going to make it look ridiculous, just like KD and Big Honey did.

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The Week Ahead: Clutch games ruling the standings

We have had an almost excessive number of clutch games to begin this season. While there are still plenty of teams getting blown out (see the Wizards and Pelicans), most games are within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime. Teams are being thrown into tight games, and lots of squads are figuring out if they will sink or swim in real time. It’s also heavily impacting the early standings, as teams try to stack victories early to make life easier toward the end of the season, when they’re chasing postseason goals.

Last year, the NBA had 39 clutch games in the first three weeks of the season. This year? There have been 74 clutch games in its first three weeks. This falls in line with the start of the 2023-24 season, when there were 77 clutch games in the first three weeks. The action on the court has been spectacular, and teams that are good in the clutch are reaping the benefits.

Look at the top seven records in the East:

**1. Detroit (8-2): **5-1 in clutch games.

**2. Cleveland (7-3): **4-2

**3. New York (6-3): **1-3

**4. Chicago (6-3): **4-1

**5. Milwaukee (6-4): **4-3

**6. Miami (6-4): **3-2

**7. Philadelphia (6-4): **5-3

Why are the Pistons and Bulls off to such great, surprising starts? Because the majority of their games have been clutch games, and they’re executing nearly flawlessly in those. Philadelphia is off to a way better start this season, despite still not being healthy with Joel Embiid and Paul George, because they are winning most of their tight games. In fact, it seems nearly impossible for them to be on either side of a blowout right now. The Knicks would be first in the East if they hadn’t struggled in clutch games so far.

Now let’s look at the clutch records of the top six in the West:

**1. Oklahoma City (10-1): **5-1

**2. San Antonio (7-2): **5-1

**3. Denver (7-2): **0-2

**4. Los Angeles Lakers (7-3): **5-0

**5. Houston (6-3): **2-3

**6. Minnesota (6-4): **2-1

Everybody expects the Thunder to win these games at this point. But the young Spurs being nearly perfect in the clutch? That’s been a pleasant surprise. The Lakers being unbeaten in clutch games without LeBron James playing yet? And while Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves have been in and out of the lineup? That’s a big shock.

Who is winning these clutch games and banking the early wins? When teams are fighting for home-court advantage or top-six seeds in their conference or even just trying to make the Play-In Tournament, this early-season execution in crunch time will provide a massive advantage or disadvantage. That’s what I’m watching for in the next few days. Who comes through when it matters, and how can they build on that success for the long haul of the regular season?