We couldn't even settle in before the season went sideways, could we? After a relatively ordinary first few days, the entire NBA seemed to catch the injury bug in Week 2. A seemingly endless list of All-Stars went down in the past seven days with injuries that will keep them out for periods ranging from a few weeks to, potentially, the entire season, and after just 13 days of basketball, the league-wide landscape suddenly looks completely different.
So let's look back on the week that was and rank some winners and losers from the NBA's last seven days. Raise a glass for the NBA's last unbeaten team, the... Yes, the Memphis Grizzlies, one of last season's most egregious tankers, are running roughshod over the rest of the NBA.
As of Sunday afternoon, they rank... Even after cooling off following his preposterously hot start, Ty Jerome has still made more runners (19) than all but a handful of players have attempted. Jerome may be cooling off, but Cam Boozer is heating up: the No. 3 overall pick just shot 50-44-100 for the week and picked up his first career triple-double in a win over the then-unbeaten Portland Trail Blazers (and former Grizzlies star Ja Morant).
Zech Edey and Isaiah Stewart are almost completely walling off the rim. Grizzlies opponents are taking only 19 shots per game in the restricted area. The pick-and-roll-heavy scheme Tuomas Iisalo was known for abroad is finally coming together in the NBA.
Only the Cleveland Cavaliers have generated more shots out of pick-and-roll than Memphis. Only the Miami Heat and Houston Rockets are scoring more points per possession on those shots. After Iisalo's short-stint rotations caused so much of an uproar last season, Memphis has gotten off to this start with nobody averaging even 32 minutes a game.
Memphis won't be this good forever. They've played a Charmin soft schedule. Eventually, they'll start missing 3s, and Jerome will probably settle somewhere between the MVP frontrunner he was in Week 1 and the far less effective player we saw in Week 2.
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