NBA One-Game Awards: Victor Wembanyama goes wild, Draymond Green, Russell Westbrook in midseason form

What a start to the season. Since the 2025-26 NBA campaign tipped off on Tuesday, we’ve gotten two double OT thrillers from the Thunder–— including Thursday night’s win over the Pacers in Indiana where Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put up a career-high 55 points. It’s the first time in NBA history that a team started the season with back-to-back double OT games. 

For good measure, the Warriors and Nuggets followed that up with another OT classic in Thursday’s nightcap. Aaron Gordon posted a career-high 50 points with 10 3s, but the Warriors won after erasing a 14-point deficit thanks in part to Steph Curry scoring 33 of his 42 points after halftime while doing ridiculous Steph stuff. 

With the Nuggets and Pacers finally getting into the action on Thursday, every team has now played at least once. What follows are the After One Game Awards, a way-too-early collection of honors (some dubious) that we arrived at through the scientific process of watching a lot of basketball — and in one case reading through two surprising federal indictments. 

Overwhelmed Commissioner Medal

Before we get to the (mostly) fun stuff we have to address the bomb that detonated on the NBA’s opening week when Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were arrested on Thursday as part of two sweeping federal indictments involving illegal sports betting and gambling. Rozier and Billups were placed on immediate leave by the league, with Portland assistant Tiago Splitter tapped to be the Blazers interim head coach. 

Billups and Jones are accused of allegedly taking part in rigged illegal high-stakes poker games operated by organized crime figures. Jones also is reportedly being accused of selling info about LeBron James and the Lakers before it was public. Rozier is accused of being part of a sports gambling operation that used non-public information about NBA players to their advantage in order to net hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets in what federal law enforcement officials called “the insider trading saga of the NBA.” It’s worth noting that the Rozier indictment also features someone called “Co-Conspirator 8” — an as-yet-unnamed person whose biography matches that of Billups. 

The timing here is interesting. Earlier this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver appeared on “The Pat McAfee Show” and called for greater regulation on prop bets.

“We’ve asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have the same stake in the competition, where it’s too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score,” Silver said. “We’re trying to put in place — learning as we go and working with the betting companies — some additional control to prevent some of that manipulation.”

That’s a starting point, but it doesn’t get the league very far. Rozier isn’t a two-way player. He’s in the final season of a four-year deal worth $96 million. Billups is a Hall of Famer who earned more than $100 million over 17 years as a player, recently signed a contract extension with the Blazers, and reportedly made $4.7 million to coach Portland last season. Those financial profiles don’t fit Silver’s stated concerns about people associated with the league who might be manipulated into participating in illegal sports betting operations. The league’s exposure here on who might be susceptible is bigger than Silver let on during the McAfee interview. Add this to the NBA’s ongoing investigation into the Clippers potentially circumventing the salary cap in the Kawhi Leonard saga, and suddenly Silver has a lot of heavy stuff overloading his plate. This is his 12th full year running the NBA and he is tasked with handling two full-blown crises that will undoubtedly linger over this season and define his tenure as commissioner. 

And with that, we momentarily return to our regularly scheduled basketball nonsense. 

Best (and only) in Show Sash

With LeBron James still on the mend due to sciatica, Luka Dončić was forced to do much of the heavy lifting in an opening night loss to the Warriors at home. He just narrowly missed a monster triple-double, finishing with 43 points, 12 rebounds, 9 assists while shooting 63% from the field (despite going just 2 for 10 from beyond the arc). 

Of course the name of this award necessarily implies the rest of the Lakers weren’t great. Outside of Austin Reaves, who got hot late, they were not. The non-Austin/Luka Lakers were a combined 3 for 8 from deep. For a Lakers team that was middle of the pack in 3-point shooting a year ago, that’s not encouraging. 

Depth was a concern for L.A. coming into the season. Part of that is a consequence of design. The plan is to rebuild this thing on the fly around Luka, and to do so the Lakers front office has tried to steer clear of anything resembling long-term commitment. This coming offseason they’ll have Doncic, Jared Vanderbilt and Jake LaRavia on the books, along with DeAndre Ayton and Marcus Smart who both have player options that they’ll almost certainly pick up. Dalton Knecht, who they tried to ship to NBA Siberia last season in a trade that was eventually nixed, has a club option. Bronny James is partially guaranteed. And Reaves, who they hope to retain, has a player option that he will most definitely decline before signing a much fatter new contract. Everyone else, including and most notably LeBron, will be an unrestricted or restricted free agent. The offseason after next they could potentially say goodbye to everyone outside of Doncic and Reaves. But that long-term flexibility comes with some glaring short-term roster construction issues that head coach JJ Redick will have to solve for this season. It’s a strategy that already has our guy Sam Quinn asking questions about general manager Rob Pelinka and the front office. 

Le Prix Alien

I put that through Google translate which assures me it means “The Alien Award” in French; I’m sure the AI bot wouldn’t lead me wrong. Either way, Victor Wembanyama wasted no time putting the Dallas Mavericks in a stranglehold and the rest of the league on notice with a monster opening night double double: 40 points (15-21 FG), 15 rebounds, one steal and three blocks. He dominated Anthony Davis and had several outrageous dunks, including a reverse alley oop that shouldn’t be possible for someone 7-foot-4 or anyone else.

Webanyama came in at No. 5 in our Top 100 player rankings for this season. I was the highest on him among our staff, ranking him at No. 3. I think I might have been too low. After one game, Wembanyama (at +275) leapfrogged Nikola Jokić and Dončić for — [talks quietly through gritted teeth and waves hand at ongoing federal gambling investigations] — the best odds to win Most Valuable Player and now trails only reigning MVP SGA at Caesars Sportsbook.

Participation Trophy

Cooper Flagg played his first NBA game. It did not go how he wanted. The Mavs got stomped on their home floor by the Spurs. History will record that Flagg had a double-double, but those 10 points and 10 rebounds weren’t impressive. He looked tentative for most of the game and didn’t pad his scoring stats until later in the evening. Flagg shot just 30.8% from the floor and despite all the Point Cooper hype had no assists. He wasn’t even the best rookie in that particular game; Dylan Harper, the No. 2 overall pick, had 15 points on 50% shooting in 23 minutes off the bench for San Antonio. Asked about his performance, Flagg summed it up nicely after the game saying it was “not great.” Better days are surely ahead — perhaps as soon as Friday night when the Mavs play the Wizards. 

If I may take off my NBA columnist hat for a moment and replace it with my battered, well-worn Philadelphia native hat, watching the Sixers during my lifetime has not been easy. This is a gross understatement. The organization last won a championship in 1983. The team hasn’t been to the conference finals since Allen Iverson stepped over Ty Lue in 2001. That’s the last good moment I can remember. In fairness my brain has been poisoned by covering much of the Process Sixers saga for assorted Philadelphia and national media outlets. At some point the mind tries to delete all those memories as a natural protection mechanism. 

The Sixers went into last season with high hopes of potentially challenging for a conference title. It was an abject disaster instead. Joel Embiid played in 19 games. Paul George played in 41 and forgot how to shoot after coming off a career shooting season. Tyrese Maxey got shut down after 52 games. Even for a franchise that seemingly invents new miseries each season, it was a brutal campaign.

But. There is a giant BUT here. It led to them late-season tanking their way into keeping their first-round pick, getting lucky in the lottery, and selecting VJ Edgecombe third overall.

Edgecombe had 34 points, seven rebounds, three assists, five threes and shot 50% from the floor against the Celtics in his first professional basketball game. That’s the third-most points in a debut in NBA history behind Wilt Chamberlain (43) and Frank Selvy (35). He rattled off 10 straight Sixers points in the first quarter, earned a shoutout from the NBA Twitter account, and put his much-hyped athleticism on immediate display. 

Don’t give me hope. 

Acting Masterclass Medal

Marcus Smart. Perhaps the finest thespian of our time.

That Wasn’t the Plan Ribbon

The Clippers were a fashionable pick to be sneaky good in a loaded Western Conference. I had them fifth in our preseason predictions. That’s where they finished a year ago, but they beefed up a roster that won 50 games and took the Nuggets to Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs. This offseason they added John Collins and Brook Lopez to the frontcourt and Chris Paul and Bradley Beal to the backcourt. On paper the Clips came into the season looking like one of the deepest teams in the league.

And those things might remain true. They might be one of the deepest teams and they might end up sneaky good. It is only one game — but that one game did not go as they hoped. The Clippers — an experienced group of vets, which is a nice placeholder for just saying they’re the oldest team in the NBA — got throttled in Utah, losing by 21 to a Jazz team that figures to be snack food for the ravenous West all season. 

James Harden had a double-double and Ivica Zubac was an efficient 9 for 13 from the floor. Didn’t matter. The starting five with Kawhi Leonard (minus-25), Zubac (minus-21) and Harden (minus-21) got buried by the Jazz. I’m not a single-game plus-minus guy — it can be grossly misleading — but in this case it was a pretty accurate snapshot of an opening-night dud for Ty Lue and his guys. At least the Inside the NBA guys got to have a little fun with it. 

Midseason Form Medallion 

Draymond Green. It took him less than seven minutes into the first game of the season to get his first technical foul — and he wasn’t even on the floor. A classic of the genre.

Level Up Award

There was a lot of buzz about how well Alperen Sengun played at EuroBasket this summer. I’ll have to take everyone’s word for it because the competition was a tough find here in the states. It was ostensibly broadcast on something called Courtside 1891, which is supposedly a real thing. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t not catch much (any) EuroBasket. 

I did watch every second of the Rockets-Thunder game on Tuesday night, however, and Sengun was spectacular. He went for 39 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists, two steals and a block with 50/62.5/90.9 shooting splits. That’s an eye-popping line but it was the 3-point shooting that really stood out. Sengun shot 5-for-8 from deep. A year ago, he only had 21 threes all season.

Sengun became the first player in NBA history with at least 35 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and five 3s in a season opener. He made his first All-Star team last season. It’s only one game but if the distance shooting is legit, All-NBA could be next. 

Russell Westbrook has played in 1,238 NBA games and has won this award in every single one. He is incapable of turning off his Russ-ness. Indeed, his first game with the Kings went about as you’d expect. Here he is turning the ball over at one end, then racing down the floor for a chase-down block.

That sort of maddening Russ giveth-and-taketh-away default position is a big reason why he’s now on his seventh team in the last six seasons. Why he’s on this particular team has a lot of people confused, however. Surely he makes no sense on a roster full of heavy-usage ball dominant players including Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and newly acquired Dennis Schröder. That seems like a pretty awful fit however you mix and match them, especially at the defensive end. But then again, if you think about it, it’s also sort of the perfect fit, because where else would soon-to-be 37-year-old Russ make any sense but with a Kings organization that makes no sense to anyone outside of the Kings. Russ has to be Russ and the Kings can’t help but be the Kangz and actually I get it now and it’s beautiful. 

Chris Webber Prize

This frankly isn’t fair to Kevin Durant or Chris Webber for that matter. Webber made one (admittedly huge) mistake back in college and it has followed him around ever since. Unlike Webber, KD got bailed out by the officials failing to see him call for a timeout the Rockets did not have near the end of the first overtime even though all the Thunder players, coaches and fans in the arena clocked it.

That would have been a bad way to end a great game. Instead, it ended with an exhausted KD trying to guard SGA — a man 10 years his junior — as the reigning MVP danced with the ball toward the end of the second overtime. Durant steamrolled him, fouled out, and SGA nailed both free throws to win the game by a point. The Ball Don’t Lie Gods evidently demanded a sacrifice after the timeout snafu. 

Iron Men Medals

Joel Embiid, Zion Williamson and Ja Morant are on pace to play 82 games.