NBA Night Wrap-Up: Giannis Flirts With a Triple-Double, Boston Stays Perfect and Detroit Rolls

MIAMI

Seven games, seven finals, and one clear message on the last heavy night of the NBA preseason: the teams that treated Wednesday like a dress rehearsal looked ready, and the teams that treated it like a rest day got run off the floor. Miami scored 144, Detroit and Chicago won by 22 and 21 on the road, Boston stayed perfect, San Antonio finally put its three guards on the floor together, and the Clippers closed their preseason by beating Denver at home. With most finales set for Friday and the regular season opening next week, this was the night the rotation questions started turning into answers.

Giannis, in Regular-Season Form Already

The loudest performance of the night came at Kaseya Center, where Miami's 144-128 win over Brooklyn turned into a track meet the Nets could not survive defensively. Antetokounmpo finished with 20 points, 15 rebounds, nine assists and three blocks in just 24 minutes, shooting 8-of-10 from the field, according to RotoWire's recap of the box score. He was one assist short of a triple-double, and Miami outscored Brooklyn by 15 points in his minutes.

Andrew Wiggins added 19 points for Miami, which put up 43 points in the third quarter to break the game open and won the paint 62-38, per the New York Post. Brooklyn got a game-high 27 points from Michael Porter Jr. and encouraging nights from its young guards — Egor Demin scored 17, rookie Mikel Brown Jr. had 15 in his preseason debut, and Nolan Traore added 12 points and five assists — but the Nets finished their preseason 3-1 with a defensive film session waiting for them. Miami rested Bam Adebayo and still scored at will, which is either a great sign for the Heat's depth or a loud warning about Brooklyn's defense. Probably both.

Boston Stays Perfect, and Charlotte Helps

Boston's 114-93 win over Charlotte at TD Garden was the night's most complete performance. Jayson Tatum led the Celtics with 19 points, eight rebounds and six assists in 29 minutes, Derrick White added 17 points and four steals, and the Boston bench bigs had a field day — Neemias Queta scored 16 and Mitchell Robinson finished with 12 points on perfect shooting, seven rebounds and three blocks, according to Celtics Wire. Boston is 3-0 in the preseason and closes Friday at Philadelphia.

The flip side was Charlotte's ball security. The Hornets turned it over 30 times, and Boston converted that sloppiness into steady offense all night. Brandon Miller led Charlotte with 16 points. The one concern for Boston: White got banged up in a collision with Dennis Schroder while contesting a drive, hurting his leg, per NBC Sports Boston. On a night when almost everything went right for the Celtics, that is the item that will bear watching before Friday's finale.

Duren's Fifteen Minutes, Chicago's Statement

We covered Detroit's 128-106 win at Minnesota in depth in our late recap, but it belongs in any account of this night: Jalen Duren, in his first action since signing a long-term deal, scored 24 points in 15 minutes on 8-of-9 shooting, Detroit dominated the paint 64-30, and Cade Cunningham ran the show with 14 points and nine assists. Anthony Edwards led Minnesota with 20 points, but the Timberwolves shot 38.2 percent and turned it over 20 times. For the full breakdown of that one, start with our live roundup of the evening slate.

Chicago delivered the night's other road rout, beating Milwaukee 125-104 at Fiserv Forum. Matas Buzelis hit five three-pointers on his way to 19 points, Leonard Miller poured in 18 off the bench with seven rebounds, and Josh Giddey handed out nine assists in 22 minutes, per the box score reported by Sportsnet and NBC Sports. The Bulls assisted on 35 of their 42 made baskets, knocked down 20 threes and built a 62-39 halftime lead against a Bucks team resting eight regulars. Kam Jones led Milwaukee with 23 points. Chicago's ball movement is the takeaway here — this is a team that has to win with passing and pace, and on Wednesday it did exactly that for 48 minutes.

San Antonio's Three Guards, Finally Together

San Antonio's 123-103 win over Phoenix was less about the score than the lineup. For the first time this preseason, the Spurs started De'Aaron Fox alongside Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, with Victor Wembanyama anchoring it all — and after a slow first quarter, it clicked. Wembanyama led San Antonio with 19 points, four rebounds, three assists, two steals and four blocks in 23 minutes. Castle scored 18, and 14 of them came at the free-throw line on 14-of-15 shooting. Carter Bryant added 16 off the bench, and Fox, playing his first preseason game after hip tightness, finished with nine points and a second-quarter poster dunk that woke the building up.

Phoenix sat six regulars — Devin Booker, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Miles Bridges, Oso Ighodaro and Collin Gillespie all rested — and still got perfect shooting from Ryan Dunn, who scored 15 on 6-of-6 from the field, and 15 points with eight assists from Jamaree Bouyea. The real Suns news was bad: Luke Kennard left in the second quarter with a left knee injury and did not return, as we reported in our Suns-Spurs recap. Phoenix coach Jordan Ott said Kennard was in good spirits and that a fuller update would come when the team returned home. For a rotation shooter Phoenix is counting on, that update matters more than anything that happened on the scoreboard.

The Close One, and the Clippers' Closer

The night's only tight finish came in Dallas, where New Orleans held off a late Mavericks charge, 101-97. Jeremiah Fears led the Pelicans with 16 points, three rebounds, five assists and three steals in 20 minutes, and New Orleans took a 75-63 lead into the fourth before Dallas's end-of-bench group nearly stole it, cutting the margin to three in the final seconds. Dallas played without Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving, Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford, among others, and got 16 points off the bench from rookie Tobi Lawal, who went 8-for-8 at the line. The Mavericks' starters did not produce a single double-figure scorer, which tells you exactly how much this team leans on the two stars who were sitting.

In Inglewood, the Clippers beat Denver 122-110 in their preseason finale, shooting 51.7 percent and hitting 15 three-pointers while piling up 35 assists. Denver got 22 points from Trevon Brazile on 8-of-10 shooting and 17 from Julian Strawther, but Nikola Jokic had an unusually quiet night — five points in 17 minutes — and Jamal Murray's 14 points led the Nuggets starters. Denver also shot just 17-of-30 at the free-throw line. It is preseason, and Jokic's minutes were managed, but the Clippers will happily take a wire-to-wire-ish win over a conference rival as their last tune-up. Keep an eye on the rest of the West in our sports section as the finales roll through Friday.

What It All Means

Preseason records will be forgotten by November, but Wednesday offered real information. Miami's offense works at full speed even without Adebayo. Boston's defense travels, at home or anywhere else. Detroit's Cunningham-Duren pairing looks ahead of schedule, Chicago's pass-first identity is real, and San Antonio's three-guard experiment is the most interesting lineup puzzle in the league. The concerns are just as clear: Brooklyn's and Charlotte's defenses and ball security, Phoenix's suddenly thinner wing rotation if Kennard misses time, and a wait-and-see on White's leg in Boston.

Most of these teams finish the preseason on Friday, and the regular season opens next week — Boston starts in Detroit on Tuesday, October 20, and Phoenix opens October 21 at Portland. The next scores will count. Based on Wednesday night, a handful of teams look like they cannot wait, and a few others should be glad they still have a few days of practice left. Catch up on the whole evening in the live roundup and tonight's other finals on Previously's sports hub.