A confession: the first two months of this NBA season have left me largely disenchanted. The constant injuries to star players, and the corresponding NFL-ification of the talent pool—in which well-paid veterans are progressively subjugated in favor of plug-and-play athletes on rookie contracts—have had the league looking bound for less familiar, less warm territory. Like any columnist, I am probably overstating the phenomena described here, in order to develop a more distinct viewpoint. But for me these shifts have been large enough that the sport has been hard to recognize for weeks at a time; has the bloat of the regular season gotten so bad that the doldrums of March are now here as soon as November?

I stopped worrying about any of this over the past week, because four of the Western Conference’s best teams loudly reminded everyone just how good this game can be. First there was the NBA Cup Semifinal matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs. It was an instant classic, no matter what you think of the broader mid-season tournament project. Oklahoma City entered the game at 24-1 on the season, chasing history on a relentless multi-year sprint. It was fair to wonder if they’d ever lose again, given their increased connectivity on both ends of the ball after their 2025 championship. The Thunder have super-charged an already impossible level of frenetic intensity, becoming together a weather system that can flood you out every day, every game, every quarter, every minute.

That applies to everyone, it seems, except for Victor Wembanyama. The 7’4” wunderkind (who is, let’s be real, probably even taller than that) made his return to action in this game after missing a month of play with a calf strain. On a minutes restriction, he was only able to play for a little less than half of the contest, but in those 21 minutes he was a +21 in the box score, proving himself quite definitively to be the difference in a two-point San Antonio victory. Wemby is a different kind of vector than we’ve ever seen before, bringing his length and coordination all over the floor with comfort, drawing and double and triple teams the likes of which you typically only see at amateur levels, where skill and body differences are more pronounced than in the NBA.

So it seems like a brand new sport, in a good way, when Wemby catches the ball just inside the arc and his dribble is attacked by three members of a historically good defense as he tries to do anything at all. The Thunder tested his balance, undercutting him and betting that his high center of gravity wouldn’t be able to take such pressure. They were both right and wrong: Victor wobbled and fell down a whole lot, but he also managed to make things work as he teetered, scoring 22 points with nine blocks and two steals despite his constant duress.

His teammates proved they’re ready to supplement the productive science experiment at the center of their roster, too; Stephon Castle is a tier-one athlete increasingly under control, De’Aaron Fox is a steady veteran ready to defer and control pace, Devin Vassell is a cold-blooded shotmaker, and Dylan Harper is the X-factor rookie Sixth Man here to accelerate the title-contention timeline.

The Spurs and Thunder will both have to reckon, this upcoming postseason, with one or both of the teams who played two nights later in Denver: the Nuggets and the Houston Rockets. Both teams came in a bit banged up, with the Nuggets missing two starters in Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon, and a replacement starter in Peyton Watson, who left the game with a stinger after playing just six minutes. The Rockets, for their part, were without bulky and tenacious wingman Tari Eason, and haven’t had Dorian Finney-Smith or Fred VanVleet all season. But even without either team at full strength, the Nuggets and Rockets delivered uncommonly compelling Monday night action, with both teams’ beguiling styles clashing in a mesmerizing display.

What the Nuggets are about is common knowledge, by now: along with the Boston Celtics, they’ve been the most regular winners of the league for nearly a decade now, with the singular two-man actions of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray—at times languid, forceful, graceful, sloppy, clever, plodding, and every other quality except unproductive—becoming one of the trademark visions of the modern NBA. They combined for 74 points in the overtime victory, fighting through a Rockets around-the-rim forcefield that, in its collective brawn, is every bit as historically eye-catching as what Wemby does on a court.

The Rockets feature a handful of players who could all be leading rebounders on good teams. On this night, all of Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson, and Alperen Sengun hit double-digits on the boards. When you watch the Rockets, you can expect not just domination on the glass, but a lot of pass-happy rotation punishments within a small parcel of court near the basket, reminiscent of 90’s-style interior passing. Kevin Durant is enjoying late-career perimeter bliss amidst all these skilled bruisers, and out there near the arc with him is Reed Sheppard, a young scoring spark plug who, like Harper, looks like he was born for the highest levels of action without having worked his way up to them in the expected, fearful way.

One of these two games was formally part of the NBA Cup but both, in my estimation, drew intensity and gravitas from the tournament, which in its third year seems to be clearly injecting life into a sporting calendar that’s overlong and in need of more stakes. Outside of Christmas Day, December has never been one of the strongest NBA months, but that looks to have changed. Both games were shown through new broadcaster partner outlets—Amazon Prime and Peacock—and those companies must be feeling good about the piece of action they’ve grabbed. There are still too many sagging parts of the season, but this sure isn’t one of them anymore.