Five Players Who Could Shock Everyone And Become First-Time All-Stars This Season
Do you know what’s better than talking about just the first week of the new 2022-23 NBA season?
You guessed it, it’s talking about the first two weeks of the new 2022-23 NBA season!
Most teams around the league are only four or five games into their schedules, but there is already so much to talk about and plenty of new names are beginning to emerge in this year’s All-Star conversation.
Obviously the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant will all be All-Stars once again assuming they remain healthy, but every single season, first-time All-Stars tend to make headlines.
Whether there is one of them or a handful of them, the NBA always tends to have at least one newcomer to the All-Star Game each and every season, which is why we should expect nothing less this year.
Anthony Edwards from the Minnesota Timberwolves and Tyrese Haliburton from the Indiana Pacers are two potential first-time All-Star candidates many are talking about early on this year, but what about some other players who may not be getting national media attention, but are secretly throwing their name in the mix as well through the first couple of weeks of the 2022-23 season?
Here are five players you need to begin paying attention to, as they are all putting up All-Star-like numbers right now.
Paolo Banchero - Orlando Magic
Expectations for Paolo Banchero were high entering the year given that the Orlando Magic drafted him first overall and Banchero has exceeded these expectations.
The Magic rookie has been fantastic through his first five games, as he is averaging 24.0 points, 7.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.6 blocks per game while shooting 44.8 percent from the floor. His three-point shooting is below average right now, but Banchero’s natural ability to score has made him the heavy favorite for the Rookie of the Year award and even though Orlando has struggled to get their first win, this should not take away from the season the rookie is having.
No rookie has made the All-Star Game in the NBA since Blake Griffin did so during the 2010-11 season and that was not a true “rookie year” for Griffin either, as he sat out the entire 2009-10 season with a knee injury.
Starting his rookie season with five consecutive 20-point games, Banchero has become the sixth rookie in NBA history to achieve such a feat, joining the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Elvin Hayes, Dominique Wilkins and Grant Hill. He is also the first rookie to record at least 120 points, 35 rebounds and 15 assists through their first five career games since Dominique Wilkins did so in 1982-83.
The Magic have been searching for a young star-like player to build around for quite some time and they now have that with Paolo Banchero.
De’Aaron Fox - Sacramento Kings
Going from one winless team to another, the Sacramento Kings are definitely showing signs of improvement and that is in large part due to the progression De’Aaron Fox has made from the offseason into the start of the 2022-23 regular season.
Fox has always been a terrific athlete and scorer with the ball in his hands and this season, we have begun to see flashes of what this team can look like with the young point guard as their leader. The 25-year-old is averaging 30.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game while shooting 59.0 percent from the floor and 42.3 percent from three-point range.
Never really known to be an avid three-point shooting threat, it is very clear to see that Fox has worked on his all-around game and he is beginning to look a lot more comfortable on the defensive-end of the floor as well under new head coach Mike Brown, who had been the defensive architect for the Golden State Warriors the last several years.
Scoring at least 26 points in every single game for the Kings so far this season, as well as recording at least five rebounds and a steal in every game, it is hard to deny that De’Aaron Fox has been one of the early stars of this season.
Success will come in time for the Sacramento Kings and getting their first All-Star selection since DeMarcus Cousins during the 2016-17 season would be a major morale booster for this organization.
Jalen Brunson - New York Knicks
The New York Knicks have lived at the bottom of the NBA standings for quite some time. They recently made the playoffs as the 4-seed in the Eastern Conference during the 2020-21 season, but they followed this achievement up last season by missing the playoffs and showing signs of regression offensively.
As a result, the Knicks finally went out and got themselves a true point guard in Jalen Brunson, who has been nothing short of fantastic for them this year. Brunson is averaging 20.0 points, 4.5 rebounds and 8.5 assists per game for the Knicks and his 51.7 field goal percentage and 41.2 three-point shooting percentage has given New York’s offense new life.
Brunson currently ranks seventh in the NBA in assists per game and perhaps his biggest contribution to the Knicks is giving them a sense of identity. He knows what it takes to win at the highest level due to his championship history at Villanova in college and taking a lot of pressure off of Julius Randle to have to do everything for this team, Brunson has elevated the Knicks to their 3-1 start this season.
Maybe Jalen Brunson is not the most talented player on this Knicks’ roster and maybe he cannot ultimately carry them to a win in the postseason by himself like other All-Stars in this league, but Brunson is proving his importance to the Knicks right now and it is not a coincidence that they find themselves at the top of the league standings since his arrival.
Desmond Bane - Memphis Grizzlies
Ja Morant is and continues to be the face of the Memphis Grizzlies. He will undoubtedly be an All-Star once again this season and who knows, maybe he will find himself in the running for the league’s MVP award!
However, the success of the Grizzlies has not been solely based on Morant’s success, as they went 56-26 as a team last year with their star point guard only playing in 57 of those games. Memphis has a lot of talent on their roster and with Jaren Jackson Jr. out to begin the year, Desmond Bane has looked extremely confident in his abilities to be a star alongside Ja Morant in the backcourt.
Bane is now in his third season with the Grizzlies and he is one of 18 players in the league right now to have recorded multiple 30-point games this season. Not to mention, his eight made threes against the Brooklyn Nets on October 24 are the most threes anybody has made in a game this season and Bane is just one of three players to have made at least six three-pointers in a game twice this year.
Through five games, Desmond Bane is averaging 22.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game while shooting 43.2 percent from the floor and 46.8 percent from three-point range. His ability to score from the perimeter and make plays for his teammates is what makes Bane a special player and he is one of the reasons why Memphis currently finds themselves 4-1 this year.
Lauri Markkanen - Utah Jazz
Trading away Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and Bojan Bogdanovic in the offseason, nobody thought the Utah Jazz would be successful during the 2022-23 season.
Well, so far so good for the Jazz, as they have begun the new season with a 4-1 record. Who knows if they will be able to sustain long-term success over the course of the 82-game season, but what we do know is that a lot of their success so far has been because of Lauri Markkanen’s emergence.
Markkanen is now in his sixth NBA season and now with his third different team, the young forward is finally beginning to look like the star the Chicago Bulls thought he could be when they took him 7th overall in 2017.
The seven-footer is averaging 22.0 points, 8.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game while shooting 48.8 percent from the floor and 24.2 percent from three-point range. The fact that Markkanen is scoring at a high rate and not making a lot of his three-point shots is what is very impressive about him because playing on the perimeter has always been a large part of his game.
Playing for Finland this summer in the EuroBasket 2022 tournament, Lauri Markkanen really worked on his craft and overall game. These improvements and slight tweaks have really proved to be useful early on in the season with the Utah Jazz and it is not crazy to think that Markkanen could sneak into the All-Star Game picture should Utah continue to find success.
Markkanen’s three-point shot is only going to get better as the season progresses and with the Jazz looking for a young star to build around moving forward, Lauri Markkanen could very well be the next face of this franchise in the aftermath of what was a downward spiral of an offseason.
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