The NBA launches its 82-game season on Tuesday night, a season that will be historical for many reasons.


What You Need To Know

  • Tuesday marks the start of the 2022-23 NBA season 

  • Some of last season's top teams face major challenges

  • The Lakers' LeBron James could become the all-time scoring leader

  • Nikola Jokic could win a third consecutive MVP award

Some of the main characters are involved in Tuesday's games as the mainstays of the defending champion Golden State Warriors will seek their fifth championship after a dramatic end to their offseason when tape leaked of Draymond Green punching teammate Jordan Poole in the face at practice.

Their opponents, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, missed the playoffs entirely last season for one of the few times in the franchise's history, and James is approaching his 38th birthday.

In the other game, the Eastern Conference champions from last season, the Boston Celtics, will try to navigate the season without their head coach Ime Udoka, who is suspended for the season for violating team rules.

Their opponent, the Philadelphia 76ers, are trying to take the Celtics' spot and capture their first championship with Joel Embid as their centerpiece. Embid has high-scoring forward James Harden on board for the entire season and a defense that was beefed up in the offseason.

If that's not enough, there are 10 other storylines to follow throughout the season.

Lebron climbing

Speaking of James, the forward is on target to become the NBA’s all-time scoring leader this season. He is 1,325 points behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and at his average career scoring pace, he would need about 49 games to move into the No. 1 spot.

He’s also set to keep moving up a bunch of other lists, including:

  • Assists: James is seventh right now with 10,045, behind No. 6 Magic Johnson (10,141), No. 5 Mark Jackson (10,334) and No. 4 Steve Nash (10,335). That would put him behind only John Stockton (15,806), Jason Kidd (12,091) and Chris Paul (10,977 entering this season).
  • Games: James has been in 1,366, currently 14th-most all-time. He needs to appear in 27 games to pass Tim Duncan (1,392) for 10th on the NBA career list and might catch Kevin Willis (1,424) for eighth.
  • 3-pointers: James is 11th in NBA history with 2,140, three behind Portland’s Damian Lillard and the retired Paul Pierce, who enter this year tied for ninth.
  • Seasons: James is entering Year 20. He’ll be the ninth player to appear in 20 seasons.

Three-peat for Jokic?

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic is about to start his chase toward something that hasn’t been accomplished in nearly 40 years.

A player winning back-to-back NBA MVP awards is rare, something that’s happened only 13 times in league history. And having done that last season, Jokic — the cornerstone of the Nuggets — is now trying for something even more unusual: winning it three years in a row.

The only players who have pulled off that feat are Bill Russell (1961, 1962, 1963), Wilt Chamberlain (1966, 1967, 1968) and Larry Bird (1984, 1985, 1986).

The Nuggets aren’t keeping that fact a secret from Jokic.

“No, I challenged him,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone, who flew to Serbia last summer to surprise Jokic with his second straight award.

Jokic is obviously among the favorites. Until this past season, there had never been a stretch of four consecutive international MVPs in the NBA. Jokic changed that, winning each of the past two awards after Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece) won in 2019 and 2020.

And right now, it would seem almost likely that the MVP streak for non-U.S.-born players goes to five in a row, with Jokic, Antetokounmpo, Dallas’ Luka Doncic (Slovenia) and Philadelphia’s Embiid among the favorites. Embiid was born in Cameroon and holds French and now U.S. citizenship.

FanDuel Sportsbook says Doncic is the favorite, just ahead of Embiid and Antetokounmpo. Jokic is fourth in terms of lowest odds, tied with Brooklyn’s Kevin Durant and just ahead of Memphis’ Ja Morant, Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Golden State’s Stephen Curry.

Pop stuff

San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich has faced 163 different coaches so far in his legendary career. That list should reach at least 166 this season, with him slated to oppose Lakers coach Darvin Ham, interim Boston coach Joe Mazzulla and former Spurs assistant Will Hardy — now the coach in Utah — all for the first time.

There have been 322 coaches in NBA history, not including Popovich, who have coached at least 10 games. Popovich, the NBA’s all-time wins leader, has faced more than half of them — 50.3%, or 162.

Popovich turns 74 on Jan. 28, and he’s the oldest active head coach in the NBA.

It’s no secret that Popovich enjoys talking about and, of course, sipping fine wine. But six of the players on San Antonio’s season-opening roster probably won’t have much to say about that topic; Jordan Hall is 20 and the Spurs have five other players — Joshua Primo, Blake Wesley, Dominick Barlow, Malaki Branham and Jeremy Sochan — who are still 19 as this season begins.. 

The Spurs’ group of 19-year-olds, incidentally, are five of the NBA’s 17 youngest players who made rosters or got two-way deals to start the season.

Zion watch

Zion Williamson, the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, has played in just 85 games since then. The 6-foot-6 forward has been hampered by a series of lower-extremity issues on his hefty frame, including a broken right foot that kept him out all of last season. But after an offseason of workouts to take off weight and get in better shape, Williamson says he is ready to go for the start of the season.

Without him last season, the New Orleans Pelicans made it to the NBA playoffs for the first time in four years before losing in the first round. If Williamson can stay healthy for much of the season, New Orleans could become a disruptive force in the Western Conference this season.

Fit to be tied

For only the second time in the past 23 seasons, the Western Conference didn’t win the season-long series against teams from the Eastern Conference.

In the regular season, the East went 226-224 against the West — bolstered by a 3-0 record on the final day with Chicago topping Minnesota, Boston rolling past Memphis and Atlanta defeating Houston.

Throw in Golden State’s 4-2 mark against Boston in the NBA Finals, and the final games-won tally for the full season was West 228, East 228.

The only other time since 1998-99 that the East won the regular-season series vs. the West was 2008-09, going 231-219. In the other 21 regular seasons over that span, before last year, the West had gone 5,149-3,910 vs. the East — a .568 winning percentage.

Age game

The youngest player in the league entering this season is Detroit’s Jalen Duren, who was born Nov. 18, 2003.

Yes, that means he wasn’t born yet when some current players were already in the league. James and the Heat's Udonis Haslem played their 11th career games on the day Duren was born.

That isn’t the only age quirk this season.

The 42-year-old Haslem is older than five current head coaches — New Orleans’ Willie Green, Memphis’ Taylor Jenkins, Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault, Utah’s Will Hardy and Boston interim coach Mazzulla. Golden State’s Andre Iguodala is older than the last four names on that list; James is older than the last three.

There are 19 players currently on rosters who are older than Hardy (including Jazz players Rudy Gay and Mike Conley) and 23 players older than Mazzulla (including Boston forward Al Horford).

Odds are

Oklahoma City has been favored in five games over the past two seasons. That’s the fewest games in a two-year span by any team over the past decade; Philadelphia was favored in a combined six games over the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons.

That said, the Thunder were a great bet last season. They covered in 63% of their games, just behind Memphis (64%) for the best such rate in the NBA. The worst was Portland, which covered 38% of the time.

This much is certain: The team that was favored in more games than anyone else last season won’t have that same distinction this year.

Last year, the Utah Jazz were favored in 73 of the 82 regular-season games, ahead of Phoenix (70), Milwaukee (66), Golden State (62), Boston (61) and Miami (59). With Donovan Mitchell now in Cleveland and Rudy Gobert now in Minnesota, the Jazz won’t be favored anywhere near that often this season.

20th seasons

Miami’s Haslem will be the 10th player to appear in 20 seasons, assuming that James gets into a game before Haslem does (a good bet, since the Lakers play Tuesday night).

Haslem is one of only three players to spend 20 years with one team, joining Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki (21) and the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant (20).

If Carmelo Anthony, who is unsigned, gets into a game this season, that’ll mark Year 20 for the former Syracuse great as well.

Remembering Russell

All players will wear Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell’s No. 6 on the right shoulder of their jerseys this season, commemorating the life of the 11-time NBA champion with the Boston Celtics and civil rights activist who died this summer.

Also, all courts in the NBA will have a “6” on the sideline near the scorer’s table. And no player who isn’t already wearing No. 6 will be allowed to wear it again. Russell is the first to have his number retired across the entire league.

Among those still wearing the No. 6 jersey because they were wearing them previously: James, Washington’s Kristaps Porzingis and Chicago’s Alex Caruso — who wanted to change numbers as a tribute to Russell this season, but said he had his request denied.

Points mark

The NBA is 26,324 points away from reaching 14 million all-time.

A record 291,912 points were scored last season, including playoffs. There have been years where more points were scored on average per game — 16 of them, actually. NBA games saw an average of 220.6 points last season, 16 points per game less than the record of 236.6 set in 1961-62.

At last year’s pace, the 14 millionth point would be scored roughly 120 games into this season, or sometime in early November.