NBA Star Power Index: Draymond Green is officially off the rails, why Joel Embiid is early MVP frontrunner

Welcome back to NBA Star Power Index: A weekly gauge of the players getting the most buzz around the league. Inclusion on this list isn’t necessarily a good thing — it simply means you’re capturing the NBA world’s attention. This is also not a ranking. The players listed here are in no particular order. This column will run every week throughout the regular season. 

I know you’re going to be shocked to hear this, but Draymond got ejected for behaving like a maniac, again, on Tuesday. This time for swinging around recklessly and connecting with Jusuf Nurkic’s face. 

This comes less than a month after Green, the same guy who punched his own teammate in the face last year, was suspended for five game for putting Rudy Gobert in a WWE-style chokehold and dragging him away. Green has always been a hothead, but he is officially off the rails. 

Green has been ejected three times already this season, and he’s only played in 15 games. Do the math, and he’s literally getting tossed in 20% of his games. Again, off the rails. 

The league said Green’s history of unsportsmanlike acts factored into that five-game suspension, and you can bet that it’ll be the case again. He’s definitely about to be missing more time for the Warriors, who have lost 11 of their last 15. 

Of course, Green tried to play the innocent card after the game, saying he was simply trying to sell a foul call and it wasn’t intentional and blah blah blah. 

“[Nurkic] was pulling my hip, and I was swinging away to sell the call and made contact with him,” Green said. “As you know, I’m not one to apologize for things I meant to do, but I do apologize to Jusuf. I didn’t intend to hit him. … A replay is never gonna look good, but I know my intentions, and my intentions were to sell the call. I also don’t think I’m an accurate enough puncher to do a full 360 and connect with someone. It’s unfortunate.” 

Please. Go watch the video again. Green fully swung his hand, at head level, knowing full well Nurkic was right behind him. Green is a smart guy. He might not have intended to smoke Nurkic in the face, but he certainly knew it was a possibility, given the vicinity in which he was swinging. 

Nurkic said of Green: “What’s going on with him? Personally, I feel like the brother needs help. I’m glad he didn’t try to choke me.”

That about sums it up.

Embiid, the league’s scoring leader and quite possibly the early MVP frontrunner (given the recent dip we’ve seen from Nikola Jokic), put a 50 piece on the Wizards last week. He is averaging 40.7 points over his last three games, all wins for the Sixers, who’ve now won seven of their last eight. 

There’s obviously a long way to go, but Embiid is currently on track to become the first center since Wilt Chamberlain to win three straight scoring titles, and the first player in history to average at least 33 points, 11 rebounds and six assists. 

The 6.4 assists per game are by far a career high for Embiid, who has become the 7-foot sun the Sixers are constantly revolving around with an array of dribble-handoffs and generally up-tempo actions. 

Doncic has scored at least 30 in eight straight games and the Mavericks, who will be trying to hold the fort down without Kyrie Irving for a while, have won four straight and five of their last six to move into the West’s No. 3 seed. 

On Tuesday, Doncic recorded his 12th career game with at least 30 points and 15 assists with 33 and 17 in a win over the Lakers. I argued on X (formerly known as Twitter) last week that a Doncic pass that was circulating was overrated, but this one is a honest-to-god joke:

Over his last two games, Doncic has recorded 68 points, 23 assists and 14 rebounds in 87 minutes. That’s a massive load, but in the short term, Luka is plenty capable of carrying that kind of weight while this Dallas team tries to get healthy. 

James took home the inaugural In-Season Tournament MVP after the Lakers won the first NBA Cup over the weekend. Over seven IST games, LeBron averaged 26.4 points, 8 rebounds, 7.6 assists and 1.6 steals in under 31 minutes per game. He shot 57% overall and 61% from 3. His 67 field goals led all IST players, as did his plus-116 total point differential over the seven games. 

James came out of the IST smoking, as well, going for 33 points, nine assists, eight rebounds, three steals and a block on Tuesday, albeit in a tight loss to the Mavericks. 

In between, LeBron got to watch his son, Bronny, make his college debut for USC. The Trojans lost to Long Beach State and Bronny finished with just three points. But the game was a footnote, as the real story was Bronny coming back to play some four months after going into cardiac arrest during practice. 

He got his highlight, too, following in his dad’s iconic chase-down block footsteps:

“He’s won at life. Everything else now is just extra credit,” LeBron said of Bronny. “…The first person out of the James gang to grace a college campus. … That was pretty cool.”

Randle is cooking, and the Knicks are going to need that to continue with Mitchell Robinson out for potentially 10 weeks (ankle surgery). 

Randle, the reigning Eastern Conference Player of the Week, is averaging 31.6 points on 65% shooting over his last three games, and 28 points on 57/41/81 shooting splits over his last seven. 

Over the last month, he is doing major work in his midrange office (45% overall, per CTG), bullying his way to his spots with equal parts power and precision. Face-ups, or back-downs into soft fade-aways, either way, Randle is in total control of the floor right now. 

Randle did everything he could against Milwaukee in the IST knockout stage, finishing with season-high 41 points on 14-of-19 shooting. He followed that with 34-8-5 in a win over Toronto on Monday. 

He bolted Scottie Barnes to the floor with this baseline shake and monster finish:

Haliburton took center stage in the IST despite the Pacers falling short in the championship game, and he entered back into regular-season play with 16 assists in a win over Detroit on Monday. 

Haliburton continues to lead the league in assists, assist points created (per PBP Stats) and assist percentage (per CTG), and his 138.6 points per 100 possessions, per CTG, leads all players. The guy is a flat-out superstar in charge of the most exciting offensive team in the league.