With the first week of the 2017-18 NBA season behind us, it’s clear that the league still provides a singular cultural experience. Unburdened by the hand-wringing of nationalist symbolism currently sinking the NFL and emboldened by new and alarming superstar alignment, the year has begun with a series of outsize shots of ecstasy, straight to the heart. A review:

- Patrick Beverley relishes the opportunity to break up any sentimental moment. Homegrown No. 2 overall pick and explosive basketball curiosity, Lonzo Ball, is meant to have a season-length coronation of sorts as he becomes the new face of the Los Angeles Lakers in his much-hyped rookie year. On opening night, the new Clippers point guard, Beverley, certainly did not care. In the first game of the year for both L.A. teams at the Staples Center last week, Beverley proudly stated that his intention was to “get in Lonzo’s ass.” The erstwhile Houston Rockets defensive specialist harassed Ball all night, setting the tone early with a blatant act of pure intimidation by fouling Ball at mid-court. Ball was ineffectual all night, notching just three points and four assists. Beverley, post-game, could be heard calling him a “weak-ass motherfucker.” Expert lip readers also caught Beverley calling Ball a “bitch” after his foul. When reporters asked him about this language, Beverley was as dismissive of their inquiries as he was of the whole Ball family narrative, and shut down his interview session early.  The Clippers are likely to regress in the post-Chris Paul era, but their fans can hold to the pleasure of soiling the re-growth of the Lakers’ goodwill. It’s hard to imagine someone better suited for the role of spoiler than Beverley.

- The Chicago Bulls are a disaster. Bobby Portis (a reserve forward who worked hard with the team all summer) punched Nikola Mirotic (a starting forward who had scant contact with the team all summer) right in the face. Mirotic went to the hospital and will miss action for at least a month. Portis was suspended for eight games. This was at a practice, before the team had played a game. The incident is not random: it cuts straight to one of the many demonstrative exhibits of the Bulls’ organizational incompetence. Mirotic was a pet import project of the Chicago front office for years, but since coming over from Spanish play in 2014, he has been inconsistent, to put it generously; there are times when he displays the sort of unmoored cluelessness on the court that we used to associate with new NBA champion JaVale McGee. Manifest in his delegation as a starter in his new two-year, $27-million contract, though, is the Bulls’ belief that he can still fulfill the myth that they made of him for years, inflating their future prospects. Portis punched a player who receives preferential treatment, because of a sunken cost fallacy. Long a favorite of intense Bulls followers, expect Bobby to become their folk hero as the dust of this incident settles. He has given violent motion to their frustration.

- McGee’s Warriors, meanwhile, played it something less than cool in their first week of action. Triggered by who knows what, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant got hyper-salty at the end of a bad road loss against the transitioning Memphis Grizzlies. Curry threw his mouthguard into the jeering crowd, Durant pointed to his ring finger rudely while swearing, and both were ejected from the floor. The question of what’s generally next for the champs is a tough one, especially in a league that’s come to be defined by ludicrous amounts of superstar movement across teams. The Warriors are now quite fixedly who they are: the best team in basketball, for now and maybe forever, if they can hunker down and prove the latter over the next several years. The novelty is gone, though, and staying at the apex is never as fulfilling as leaping your way up to it. Petty, yelling, and angsty; who would have thought that Golden State would come out of the gate looking like a Replacements song?

- What if Andrew Wiggins is better than Jimmy Butler? He probably isn’t—it’s hard to overtake a darkhorse MVP candidate overnight—but so far, on the 17-18 Minnesota Timberwolves, he definitely has been. Wiggins has been sensational as epic off-season acquisition Butler has found his footing with the upstart Western Conference contender. Wiggins has even provided us with the most iconic shot of the early season; his buzzer-beating game-winner in Oklahoma City gave us a taste of the outrageous medley of competition that the league’s superior conference promises to show us this season. Fresh off a $148 million extension, the wingman appears very encouraged by guaranteed money and a good new haircut. If he can keep this up and Butler can be what he was a season ago, the Wolves may have arrived to muck up the already impossible West much earlier than anticipated. 

- The West should get 10 playoff teams—maybe 12. The entire Northwest Division is more than postseason eligible, five teams deep with rosters that could push LeBron James’ default East champions in Cleveland to seven games and, possibly, extinction. There’s plenty beyond that, including the Warriors, the Spurs, and the Rockets who may have shown the most potent antidote to the champions’ formula to be *strength* in their opening night win at Oakland. What if the Warriors’ interchangeable pieces, high-IQ, perpetually hot-shooting, and domineering in their length, simply got ou- muscled over a seven-game series? Houston, energized in particular by Draymond Lite man P.J. Tucker, has the right balance and skill and brawn and experience to best test that hypothesis. And Gregg Popovich’s Spurs will, somehow, make anonymous men into Lee Harvey Oswalds, capable of undoing power with one fateful shot before you learn what their hyphenated name is. Western Conference basketball is the best show on TV, so please watch it.