March can be a sleepy month for the NBA, but it constitutes the last full month of basketball played before the postseason tips off in mid-April. As such, players up and down the hierarchy can get into a rhythm and really play well. Not all of it has an impact or is relevant to the championship race, the lens through which the modern sports world views nearly every achievement, but not all good basketball has to be.
Looking back to last season, Cam Thomas’s Brooklyn Nets failed to do anything of note past April. Yet that doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable to watch him put up 26.8 points per game in March. It was still fun to see Jalen Green average 27.7 ppg while shooting over 40% from three for the Houston Rockets this time last year, even if his progression has been inconsistent this season. You may not remember Dejounte Murray putting up 26.7 points and 9.2 assists per game for the middling Atlanta Hawks last March—but it happened. For 15 games, Murray played perhaps the best basketball of his life. He was traded a few months later, but what a stretch it was.
