Elevator Doors: Emergency Luka edition
Elevator Doors: What is the full story? It was pitch black – 6 a.m., well before sunrise – when my son, Andrew, came into our bedroom to tell me the news. “Mom said Luka is on the Lakers!?!” I thought I was still asleep and that I was having one of those strange half-dreams where…
Elevator Doors: Do these games even matter?
If you spend a significant amount of time on this website, you have likely watched more Rutgers basketball this past year than at any other point in your life. Unless you’re a Rutgers alumnus, this team has been an object of fascination all season long due to the presence of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey…
Elevator Doors: The vibes-only midseason check-in
At Elevator Doors HQ, we love stats and analytics as much as anyone. We admire and appreciate new and inventive ways to measure basketball performance, and we constantly strive to incorporate these metrics into our rigorous analysis. But sometimes, we just go with our gut. For me, watching basketball is primarily an emotional experience. The…
Elevator Doors: Chemistry takes time
Bear with me for just a moment, but I am going to write about my son’s basketball team. I promise to keep it brief, but there is a larger point about what we’re seeing in both college ball and the NBA that I think can best be explained by watching youth basketball. Andrew is nine…
Elevator Doors: What is culture?
Jimmy Butler is a wrecking ball. It’s his best and his most destructive quality as a basketball player. Anyone reading this website is surely aware of Butler’s dissatisfaction with the Miami Heat. It follows a similar pattern of dissatisfaction with his stops in Philadelphia and (especially) Minnesota. Ever since Butler overperformed his draft status in…
Elevator Doors: Second-Year Stock Watch
A few weeks ago, we checked in with the 2024 draft class, and we found some encouraging trends and performances into what had been viewed as a potentially disastrous crop of rookies. Why were scouts so down on last year’s class? It’s likely a variety of reasons, but it didn’t help that it was preceded…
Elevator Doors: A Christmas Day Miracle? Almost.
People within NBA circles like to call the All-Star Weekend a showcase for the league, where the best of the sport’s past, present, and future come together and celebrate what makes it the best sport in the world. It is not successful in that regard. The game is a joke. The showcase events are (mostly)…
Elevator Doors: NBA Cup: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down
The second annual NBA Cup is in the books. How are we feeling about it? There seems to be a lot of handwringing and brow-furrowing in NBA circles about potentially waning interest in their product. With TV ratings in freefall ahead of a new multi-billion-dollar broadcast deal, events such as the NBA Cup take on…
Elevator Doors: As Bad as It Gets
When we first opened the Elevator Doors about a month ago, I started with almost 1,000 gleefully delirious words about the experience of watching Nikola Jokic play basketball. The best player in the sport has somehow elevated his game to another unprecedented, unforeseen level. He is currently either first or second in every major counting…
Elevator Doors: Rookie Watch Part 1
Remember how this was supposed to be the worst NBA draft class of all time? In the weeks/months/years leading up to the 2024 NBA draft, anyone with a platform went out of their way to let everyone know how much they hated this year’s crop of prospects. “No superstars.” “Worse than 2000.” “Trade out if…
Elevator Doors: Cooper Flagg is Better Than You Think
I can’t remember an elite NBA prospect quite like Cooper Flagg. Let’s not get into any kind of hyperbolic, pointless “best prospect since [fill in the blank]” debate. Let’s not try to make Flagg into anything he isn’t. Let’s just take a few hundred words to appreciate exactly what he could be – the best…
Elevator Doors: Coaching Remains a Mystery
We have access to more information about basketball than we’ve ever had at any point in the game’s 133-year history. Synergy, Second Spectrum, Cleaning The Glass, Basketball Reference, NBA.com’s official stats page – if you want to know some arcane piece of minutiae, no matter how obscure, you can track it down. An infinite series…
Elevator Doors: As Good as It Gets
Elevator Doors: As Good as It Gets I look at my son and tell him with all the sincerity I can muster: “It will never get any better than this.” Andrew is nine years old. He is obsessed with basketball. I passed my Denver Nuggets fandom onto him, never expecting that the burly Serbian center…
2024 NBA Draft: Instant Analysis
Click Here to Follow the draft pick by pick by our draft expert Nick Prevenas Instant Analysis By Nick Prevenas
Situational Analysis: Dalton Knecht
“Situational Analysis” is a series of articles that seeks to examine the circumstances that most often influence an NBA prospect’s success. Each player will be scored on a scale from 1-10 in four different categories: NBA-specific skill(s), fatal flaw(s), collegiate/overseas/pre-NBA environment, and ideal NBA ecosystem. is a 23-year-old wing from Fargo, North Dakota, who averaged…
Situational Analysis: Bub Carrington
“Situational Analysis” is a series of articles that seeks to examine the circumstances that most often influence an NBA prospect’s success. Each player will be scored on a scale from 1-10 in four different categories: NBA-specific skill(s), fatal flaw(s), collegiate/overseas/pre-NBA environment, and ideal NBA ecosystem. Carlton Kaleel “Bub” Carrington III is a 19-year-old guard from…
Situational Analysis: Matas Buzelis
“Situational Analysis” is a series of articles that seeks to examine the circumstances that most often influence an NBA prospect’s success. Each player will be scored on a scale from 1-10 in four different categories: NBA-specific skill(s), fatal flaw(s), collegiate/overseas/pre-NBA environment, and ideal NBA ecosystem. is a 19-year-old forward from Chicago who averaged 14.3 points,…
Situational Analysis: Bronny James
“Situational Analysis” is a series of articles that seeks to examine the circumstances that most often influence an NBA prospect’s success. Each player will be scored on a scale from 1-10 in four different categories: NBA-specific skill(s), fatal flaw(s), collegiate/overseas/pre-NBA environment, and ideal NBA ecosystem. LeBron Raymone “Bronny” James Jr. is a 19-year-old guard from Akron, Ohio, who…