Tom Brady and the Patriots vs. the Chiefs? Count us in. Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images
A spectacular Sunday is on deck for us, is London on deck for the Texans, how bad are the Giants, and getting you ready for the Bills. All for you to drink in on the Friday Stoots Six-Pack:
1. Oh my goodness will Sunday Night Football be a blast this week! Sure, Patrick Mahomes has passed every test he has faced to this point but this is the toughest task of all. The Chiefs defense is not good and Tom Brady and company got going last week and have had a long break to prepare. That also means the greatest coach in the history of football has had time to get his defense and their scheme ready for the "Showtime" second-year star. We will see greatness Sunday night. Either Bill Belichick takes down another promising quarterback or Mahomes continues to amaze.
2. I like the games in London but I prefer them to start early so we can have football all day on Sunday. Also, now we know going to Mexico City doesn't keep you from going to London. The Raiders have been to Mexico City twice in the past two years and now they play the Seahawks across the pond and lose a home game doing so. The Texans are one of the only teams to never play in London, with Green Bay and Carolina being the other ones. It's coming; the Texans are going to go play in England and I believe a game against the Jaguars could occur there next year. Just a guess, but they can't avoid the trip forever.
3. The Giants are one of the worst, and maybe the worst team in football. In large part thanks to Eli Manning's inability to play football at an acceptable level. The Giants should be set going forward though as they will surely have a top pick to spend on a quarterback which they can pair with Saquan Barkley who is just amazing to watch and Odell Beckham who will welcome the change at quarterback. Now, about their one win. It will likely be the last time Eli Manning has looked like himself in the NFL and the Texans should be very upset with themselves they allowed it to happen.
4. DeAndre Hopkins in the best wide receiver in football. Combining longevity of success, durability, and who has thrown him the ball he is the best. He is quarterback proof and not many pass catchers can say that. Earlier this week Bill O'Brien mentioned Hopkins had worked hard on his yards after catch since O'Brien arrived here. I put O'Brien's claim to test and sure enough, he's right. Hopkins has jumped from 13 percent of his yards coming after the catch to 25 percent of his yards coming after the catch last year. He's dipped a little this year, just 16 percent, but you can forgive him. He's on pace for 1,900 total. It doesn't matter how the yards come if he keeps this pace up.
5. The Bills are a bad team and if the Texans have truly turned this around found themselves they won't play down to the Bills level and allow Buffalo to muddy the game up and make it a close one. A good football team, a truly good one, would start fast against the Bills and not look back. Their offense can't score and their defense can't contain Deshaun Watson and Hopkins and company. The Texans can erase, or magnify, some doubts on Sunday.
6. DeShaun Watson has a target on his back and he can't let the opposing defenses get to him. It is OK to take a few hits in the pocket and maybe stand and deliver on a couple of throws but the big crushing hits have to stop. Defenses know when opposing quarterbacks are hurting and while they're heavily protected in the pocket, rushing the football is a different story. With the beating from Sunday night football fresh, Watson has to live to throw another day. Brandon Weeden should play on Suandy, but hopefully it is because the Texans have a huge lead, and not because the injury bug caught up with Watson.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”