NBA winners and losers: LaMelo Ball shooting at Kobe-like pace, Zion Williamson's bad news, an ugly ejection

Friday night, the Golden State Warriors became the first team to clinch a spot in the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup. Please try to contain your excitement. As much flak as the tournament formerly known as the In-Season Tournament gets, it actually has added some legitimate pomp and circumstance to ordinary November NBA games. The courts are weird. Joe Mazzulla's fouling up by 10 to try to extend the game and add to the Celtics' point differential. People who hate soccer are begrudgingly forced to understand the rules of soccer tournaments to see if their team has a shot to advance. Are there a few tweaks that can be made? Sure. But overall, it's hard to say the initiative hasn't been a success.

That being said, Saturday was WAY more eventful than Friday night's generally boring NBA Cup games. As you'll see, there were some strange goings on -- both good and bad -- over the last few days, so let's take some time and catch you all up.

Here are this weekend's NBA winners and losers.

Loser: Fred VanVleet

Pro athletes play at such a high level of intensity and competitiveness that it's only natural for emotions to occasionally spill over. What Fred VanVleet did on Saturday night during the Rockets' loss to the Trail Blazers, however, clearly crossed the line. Beyond calling all three refs a "b----" (which we saw Kelly Oubre Jr. do not that long ago, coincidentally) on his way off the floor, VanVleet stuck his fingers dangerously close to the eyeball of official John Conley. Oh yeah, FVV got ejected. Did we mention that?

Our Brad Botkin broke down the reasons behind VanVleet's outburst, and the referees' response. Oubre was fined $50K for his actions, and it seems like VanVleet's punishment will be significantly harsher, perhaps even resulting in a suspension.

Winner: LaMelo's right arm muscles

Say what you will about LaMelo Ball, but the dude can get up some shots. Ball had a prolific night in the Hornets' Saturday's loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, putting up a career-high 50 points, including a ridiculous 40-spot in the second half. 

And while 50 is a cool number, there's another number you should be aware of with Ball: 384.

That's how many shots he's attempted this season, a whopping 40 more than second-place Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has also played 16 games. If you're bad at math like I am, that averages out to 24 shots per game, and Ball chucked up 38 of them, the highest single-game total in the NBA this season, to get his 50-burger on Saturday (FYI, De'Aaron Fox scored 60 points on 35 shots last week). 

The last time a player put up 24 field goal attempts per game for a whole season was James Harden in 2018-19, and he averaged six more points than Ball on essentially the same number of shots (you history buffs out there will point out that old Max Zaslofsky averaged a meager 21 points on 24 shots per game for the 1947-48 Chicago Stags ... YES WE'RE AWARE). Here are the last five NBA players to average at least 24 shot attempts in a season.

NBA players to average 24 shots per game

For the season, Ball is shooting 43% from the field, the eighth-lowest mark in the league of anyone taking at least 15 shots per game, but it doesn't look like he's going to ease up any time soon.

Get some ice for that right arm, young man. It's getting a workout.

Loser: Trevor Booker

Everyone, rightfully so, is gushing over Nikola Jokic's 3/4-court volleyball spike that "almost went in" (not really). Give the man credit for tying something truly creative that also, by all known rules of physics, should be impossible.

Pretty cool. But now, take a trip with me back to 2015. "Uptown Funk" was the No. 1 song on the charts, "Furious 7" hauled in $350 million at the domestic box office, and the Utah Jazz were inbounding the basketball with 0.2 seconds left on the shot clock. The defending Oklahoma City Thunder were simply waiting for time to expire and a violation to be called once the ball touched someone's hands. Trevor Booker had other ideas.

The journeyman forward, who wound up playing eight NBA seasons, ran to his spot, took the bounce pass and busted out a smooth two-hand flick OVER HIS HEAD that went straight through the net. The best part is that he ran back on defense like it was no big deal despite later saying he had "never done it in a game situation or even practice, for that matter." Incredible.

So Booker is a loser this weekend because nobody seems to remember that -- while Jokic's attempt was spectacular -- Booker actually finished the job.

Winner: Self-promotion

We haven't seen someone named McCain campaign this hard since the 2008 presidential election (I'll see myself out). 76ers first-year sensation Jared McCain took a short break from annihilating the Brooklyn Nets on Friday to declare to the spectators, and to the entire world: "I'm the Rookie of the Year."

Who wore it better, McCain or Austin Reaves?

Gotta love the confidence. And at this point, McCain is right. He leads all rookies with 16.6 points per game on insanely efficient 46/40/94 shooting splits. A lot of season left, though. On Sunday he snapped a streak of seven straight 20-point games by scoring ... 18 points. Oh, and the game before he started that streak he scored ... 18 points. So why don't we just say he's scored at least 18 points in nine straight games? The streak is alive, baby!

Loser: Zion Williamson

Zion's not a loser in the sense of like, why isn't this loser coming back from an injury? He's losing, in this particular situation, because he's in danger of missing a huge chunk of yet another season to start his frustrating career after the report that he's not close to returning from a hamstring issue. When this guy's healthy he's one of the most dynamic basketball players we've ever seen, but's he's topped the 60-game threshold just twice in his six seasons, and fallen below 29 games three times including missing the entirety of the 2021-22 campaign.

It sounds like Williamson could be out until mid-December... which could end up meaning Christmas... which could end up meaning 2025. The Pelicans have been hit harder than most by the injury bug this season (at one point they had seven of their top players out and they recently signed Elfrid Payton off the scrap heap), but Williamson's absence not only affects the franchise and Zion himself. It also hurts the fans who are once again missing out on his singular talent.

Winner: Bizarre NBA history

Blazers rookie Donovan Clingan had himself a night on Saturday, pulling down a career-best 19 rebounds in just 25 minutes. The story would have ended there, had there not been another significant character in one of the stat sheet columns. Clingan scored zero points in the game, making him the first player since 2012 to pull down at least 19 rebounds in a game while going scoreless.

The 7-foot-2 UConn product absolutely dominated the glass as a fill-in starter for Deandre Ayton, and likely would have added to his board total were it not for some moderate foul trouble and a late knee injury. He's just the eighth player ever to accomplish the ... feat? The only players to do it more than once are Marcus Camby (2) and Dennis Rodman (7!), and Clingan definitely has a chance to join them with the way he cleans up the glass and his, let's say, limited offensive arsenal at this stage of his career.