4 Players To Watch The Rest Of The NBA Season

With the All-Star Break mere hours away, the home stretch of the NBA season will kick off next week. A busy trade deadline, filled with plenty of current and former All-Stars finding new homes, could have major implications for the playoffs. Ahead of the postseason push, the Sportscasting crew identified a few players to keep an eye on the next couple months.

Let’s get to it.

Austin Reaves

Luka Doncic’s arrival in Los Angeles will only intensify the microscope its players sit under. This will be especially true for Austin Reaves, who’s playing some of the best basketball of his career these days. Across his last six games, Reaves is averaging 25.3 points, 6.8 assists and 5.8 rebounds on 64.6 percent true shooting. He’s playing like a bonafide offensive star, getting to the line, creating for himself and making plays for his teammates. Reaves dropped a career-high 45 points on an excellent Indiana Pacers team Saturday afternoon without the services of LeBron James or Doncic.

With Doncic and James on the floor, Reaves can feast as an overqualified third creator. He’s a phenomenal off-ball player, winning with his smarts, shooting and cutting. He’s proven himself capable of attacking set defenses and will carve teams’ third-best point-of-attack defenders.

When James and/or Doncic sit, his experience as a primary will help Reaves carry units. This flexibility will make him an incredibly valuable offensive piece for a Lakers team that should roll out an elite offense once everyone gels. Stars like Doncic and James are at the forefront, but complementary creators like Reaves are critical components.

If the Lakers make a deep playoff run this season, it will come on the merits of their unstoppable offense. At this point of the season, there aren’t any roster moves available to save their defense. Relying on elite offense, especially with two all-time initiators on the roster, can be a viable strategy and third scorers like Reaves are indispensable for Los Angeles’ hopes to win this season. –Ben Pfeifer 

Moses Moody

At long last, the Golden State Warriors have added a third star next to Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. And while a trio of Jimmy Butler, Stephen Curry and Draymond Green is damn near as formidable as it gets, they still need complementary pieces to wear the hats those three cannot.

For starters, lineups with Butler and Green on the floor need shooting around them. Curry is the greatest ever in this category, but even he can’t provide enough spacing to meet modern standards. 

Outside of him, the other players on the roster shooting over 36 percent from three are Quentin Post, Gui Santos, Moses Moody and Buddy Hield. In theory, all those guys should be options to fix the Warriors’ spacing quandary. 

Yet they also need one of their spacers to be their best on-ball defender. Green and Butler are both still great on that end of the floor, but the former is better in a rim protector/anchor role, while the latter is best served as an off-ball roamer.

Adding this qualification narrows down the playing field a great deal. Post and Hield both sit in the bottom 30th percentile in Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus. Santos fares pretty well in this stat (74th percentile Defensive EPM), but his defensive impact is overstated by the simplicity of his role; he has the second-lowest matchup difficulty on the team, per BBall Index.

According to Defensive EPM season (20th percentile), Moody isn’t enjoying a great season on that end, but he does own a history of being a good defender (79th percentile last season). The Warriors have had some poor opponent shooting luck in his minutes. This means that he’s probably the best man for the job.

Besides, it seems like the Warriors have already tabbed him as the one to fill this “three-and-D” role for them. During Monday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks, he’s the one who drew the Damian Lillard matchup. 

Is Moody ready to take on this position? Or will the team get burned in the playoffs for making him wear a pair of shoes he can’t fit? –Mat Issa

Mitchell Robinson

A massive part of the New York Knicks’ offensive success this season has been their five-out scheme with Karl-Anthony Towns starting at center. Towns’ shooting, playmaking and scoring from the position have turned the Knicks into the league’s second-best offense and he’s well on his way to an All-NBA selection because of it.

That said, another important part of the equation for New York will rejoin the team after the All-Star Break: Mitchell Robinson.

Recovering from an ankle injury he sustained in the 2024 playoffs, the seventh-year big man has missed the entirety of the season thus far. According to ESPN, he’s targeting a return to play before March. Robinson has been a starter for most of his career in New York. Does that trend continue, despite the Knicks’ success with Towns at the five?

Perhaps, this allows the Knicks to become more versatile in their approach defensively. New York is 18th in defensive rating and has struggled to contain the very best offenses all season. While Towns has improved as a rim protector throughout the season, he’s still allowing opponents to shoot over 67 percent on field goals within 6 feet, the second-worst in the league among bigs who defend more than five shots per game there.

Robinson gives the Knicks a boost in rim protection. He’s averaged more than a block per game every season of his career and will be the missing piece they’ve been waiting for all year. As a bonus, Robinson should only help fuel New York’s offense by generating extra possessions with his offensive rebounding.

But there will be a learning curve for Towns, Robinson and the rest of the team. After spending the last two seasons next to Rudy Gobert, Towns is no stranger to playing alongside shot-blocking, rim-running big men. How well these two mesh together could make the Knicks’ championship aspirations that much more legitimate. –Es Baraheni

Aaron Nesmith

In his second full season with the Indiana Pacers last year, Aaron Nesmith established himself as a high-end three-and-D wing. He shot 41.9 percent beyond the arc, showcased the ability to beat closeouts as a driver or pull-up scorer and regularly hounded premier offensive players. As the fifth starter alongside Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner, Nesmith looked the part of a copacetic complement.

But this year, a gnarly ankle sprain sidelined him for 35 consecutive games between early November and mid-January. He returned 3.5 weeks ago and hasn’t yet been the same tenaciously purposeful two-way weapon of 2023-24.

Indiana reinserted him to the starting lineup Feb. 11, completing the quintet which powered the Pacers to an Eastern Conference Finals berth last season (once Turner is back in the fold). Largely because of Nesmith’s extended absence (as well as injuries to Nembhard and Turner), that group has logged just 164 possessions this year after recording 922 together last regular season (per Cleaning the Glass), despite Siakam arriving midseason and only playing 41 games with the Pacers before the playoffs.

As the All-Star Break approaches and the final third of the regular season begins next week, I’m curious whether this mercurial 30-23 Indiana team can fully rediscover its Eastern Conference Finals mojo and how Nesmith factors into that. He’s down to 36.2 percent from deep this year, including 30.6 percent since returning a month ago. Is he bound to hover around league average all year or will 2023-24 prove to be his new baseline?

Having won 14 of 19 in 2025, the Pacers are generally playing very good basketball after a rocky 16-18 start. It still feels there’s another level this team can reach, though. Nesmith’s finding his form is crucial in those efforts.

The 4-6 spots out East (and even all the way down to ninth) are pretty jumbled. Nesmith asserting himself as the spunky, vivacious wing of last year could be massive in helping Indiana distance itself from that traffic jam. It would further make clear this 14-5 stretch is reflective of its true caliber rather than the 16-18 beginning and let the Pacers claim home-court advantage as a top-four seed. –Jackson Frank