Congratulations to those of you who are reading this! It means that you’ve made it to the second-ever edition of “Cole’s Notebook.” There’s no prize coming your way, just a big thank you from yours truly to those of you who find my content entertaining here at The Athletic. In this week’s column, I give you a rundown of all the things that couldn’t escape my mind throughout the opening week of the NBA season, including thoughts on Bruce Brown’s playing time, some veterans who are getting it done early, and I even have a longshot 200-to-1 assists per game wager that might be interesting. Let’s get to it.
OPENING WEEK THOUGHTS
Thought No. 1 — Praise & Apologies & Chris Duarte
First things first, I have to give a shout-out to Stephen T., who hopped in the comments section of Cole’s NBA Notebook – Preseason and voiced his opinion. Hopefully, you are reading this week’s column after I failed to mention one specific potentially impactful rookie last week. But, I’ll have you know that I paid some additional attention to your comment and decided to do a deep dive into your claim.
You were right about Chris Duarte; he’s absolutely a rookie who will have an impact on his fringe-playoff team, which is easy to say now since I’ve gotten regular-season data to back my (your) (…our?) case. However, I didn’t expect Duarte to be so involved in Indiana’s game plan — certainly not this quickly.
