8 NBA Stars Under The MOST Pressure This Season

A new NBA season means it's a fresh start for every team, player, and coach where they can change the narrative around themselves either for better or for worse. Last year went great? Prove that it wasn't a fluke this year. Last year went poorly? Bounce back this year and get back on track. Even the best players in the league go through rough stretches and based on the way that this upcoming season is setting up, there are quite a few stars that are coming in under some extra pressure and that brings us to today's video. Today we will be discussing the eight NBA stars that are under the most pressure this season for a variety of reasons ranging from last year's struggles, new context to the roster around them, maybe a little bit of or everything in between. Before we start though, it would be greatly appreciated if you could all utilize YouTube's new hype feature and hype this video up as it actually does help out quite a bit. Now with that being said, let's begin. The first star player we'll be discussing today that is under a ton of pressure this season is LaMelo Ball of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Timberwolves have been on the brink of a breakthrough over the last couple years, having made it to the conference finals twice, but their point guard position was a clear weak link in their lineup for a while, and this summer they addressed that hole by trading for LaMelo to pair with Anthony Edwards in the backcourt. LaMelo Ball has been one of the most fun and exciting players to watch in the whole league since he's been drafted, and he's a walking highlight reel, but he's also rightfully come under some scrutiny over how his playstyle hadn't translated to any kind of success while in Charlotte. The Hornets did not make the playoffs a single time during his time there, so now that he is in Minnesota, it's the first time he's going to be on a team with legitimately lofty aspirations, chasing something in a meaningful capacity. Ball's playmaking and creativity is going to be a breath of fresh air in their lineup, but teams that want to win at the highest level can't accept some of his weaknesses so he's going to have to reel it back for one ball is going to need to be more consistently locked in on defense as he has had a tendency to get a bit lazy on that and for stretches second he's going to have to peel back those crazy shot selections that he's prone to yes it is good to be a threat to pull up and shoot from anywhere on the floor but lamello more than others takes some wild low quality shots and last year his efficiency tanked a bit as he shot just 40% from the field and 36% from three. He has the pure talent that few others have, but the pressure is now on him to show that it can result in winning games. The next star under immense pressure this upcoming season is Paolo Banchero of the Orlando Magic. Paolo Banchero came into the NBA viewed as a potential franchise-changing prospect that could be built around as a pillar for future contention. He went number one overall in the 2022 NBA draft, and the beginning of his career looked exactly like a franchise pillar's career should. He won Rookie of the Year in his first season, then in Year 2 he was named an All-Star, and he led the Magic to the playoffs, so out of the gate, he was checking all the boxes. From there, though, more red flags have begun to pop up. Last year in particular, Banchero hit a stretch where he seemed to lose a lot of confidence, his production was very erratic, and the impact metrics showed that the Magic actually performed slightly worse per 100 possessions with Banchero on the court versus when he was on the bench, which is the last thing that you want to see from the guy who is supposed to be your best player. He's just way too prone to poor shooting nights, and it has a lot to do with his shot selection. Banchero is a strong, big-bodied forward who has the capability of abusing most defenders attacking the basket because they simply can't match him in that aspect. The problem is that Banchero loves to settle for pull-up jumpers and lower-quality attempts, especially in the mid-range, and statistically, he is one of the least efficient jump shooters in the entire NBA, so you can see why that's a problem. When he gets the ball, he dribbles the air out of it, he throws off the flow of the offense at times, and if his shot is not falling, then he can single-handedly tank the team's chances by shooting them out of it, like we saw him do in Game 6 of the playoffs against Detroit of this past postseason. This is the make-or-break year for whether or not he will actually prove that he is a legit number one option, because if he's not, then Orlando has a problem on their hands moving forward. The next star player under immense pressure this season is De'Aaron Fox of the San Antonio Spurs. De'Aaron Fox was kind of in a similar situation to LaMelo Ball for most of his career prior to arriving in San Antonio. When he was in Sacramento on the Kings, he led them to one playoff appearance in seven and a half years there, and otherwise was playing a lot of pressureless basketball. When he got traded to San Antonio, it was done for a very specific purpose, to get this team back into contention at the very top and to team him up with Victor Wembanyama and try to win a championship. It was the most expectations and pressure that Fox had faced at any point in his career, and in the regular season, things were going swimmingly. His individual production may have been down a little bit, but he was still named an All-Star, and they finished as the two seed with him being a big part of their success on both ends of the floor. In the playoffs, he was dealing with a sprained ankle early on, to be fair to him, but even still, he was so bad in both the Western Conference Finals and in the NBA Finals that he landed on today's list because of it. In those two series combined, De'Aaron Fox averaged just 12 points per game, shooting an abysmal 35% from the field and 23% from three. Sure, he had a couple good games in each series, but for the most part, he was actively sabotaging them, shooting them out games, making boneheaded mistakes in pivotal crunch time moments, and ghosting when they needed him the most. The Spurs already have this potential replacement in Dylan Harper waiting in the wings, so this is a big make-or-break year for Fox regarding his role on this team. The next star under immense pressure this season is Jalen Duren of the Detroit Pistons. Duren's season last year seemed like a picture-perfect breakout year about to set him up for a strong upward trajectory moving forward, but it unfortunately came to a screeching halt at the end, which then opened up more questions than ever. In the regular season, he was instrumental to the Pistons rising up the ranks and sitting atop the Eastern Conference standings in first place. Through three seasons of his career, Duren was a decent starting center who rebounded well and ran a fluid pick and roll, but last year he stepped up as a legit number two scoring option, averaging just shy of 20 points per game. He is admittedly a terrific finisher around the basket when he gets close touches around the paint, having shot 65% from the field, but he lacks individual creativity with the ball in his hands consistently, enough to be self-sufficient as a creator. That unfortunately led to him being exposed in a pretty big way in the playoffs. In the playoffs, the game plans tightened up, defenses locked more in on his weaknesses because of how much time that teams have to game plan for them, and both the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers completely shut Duren down for the entirety of their playoff run. Jalen Duren averaged just 10 points per game in the playoffs, seeing his output get cut in half compared to his regular season scoring output. Despite Detroit's best efforts not to, they did eventually cave and give Jalen Duren a $200 million contract extension this summer, and the only way that the Pistons can keep up in the East is if Duren bounces back, because if the playoffs end up being an indicator of defenses having figured him out, that could end up being catastrophic for this whole group. The next star that will be facing a ton of pressure this season is Ja Morant of the Portland Trailblazers. Ja Morant was once one of the most promising young point guards in the entire league on the brink of superstardom. Early in his career, he was electrifyingly quick in transition and explosive at the rim, making the Grizzlies one of the most dangerous fast breaks in the game, and his play quickly translated to winning with them having finished as the two-seed in the Western Conference back-to-back years in 2022 and 2023. Ever since that point, Ja Morant's scoring output has decreased every season, he's struggled a ton with injuries over the last three years, and last season he looked just about as washed up as humanly possible for a 26-year-old. His regression led to the undoing of that era of Grizzlies basketball, and he was then traded to Portland this summer, where he will now look to get his career back on track. Ja Morant is especially under pressure because now the ways in which he struggles are the exact things that have seen other guards around the league start to be phased out completely. Ja Morant last year averaged fewer than 20 points per game, shooting the ball just 41% from the field and 23% from three. He is still a crafty playmaker with good feel for setting teammates up, as he did dish out about 8 assists per game matching his career high, but that's one of the only things that he did well anymore. He's been a bad defender, he's now inefficient, and he's undersized. If his days as an athletic freak star guard are over, then things could go south fast, and in Portland, they have a crowded backcourt already. They obviously traded for him because they have confidence he can return to form and will be motivated to make it work, but now it's on him to actually do so. The next star under a ton of pressure this season is Kevin Durant of the Houston Rockets. Durant may not seem like a typical inclusion on today's list, but the rationale goes way beyond the surface here. Sure, when you look at Kevin Durant's production, it still looks pretty dang good and stacks up with the best scorers in the game, which is something he's been throughout his entire career, but beyond the basics of the box score, there is a worrying trend following Durant's career over the last few seasons. While the fact that he is still averaging 26 points per game, shooting the ball ridiculously efficiently making 52% of his shots and 41% of his threes is of course very impressive, he's still somehow managed to bring negative energy to his teams. Not to pin all of the blame on him by any means, but before he arrived on the Phoenix Suns, the team was a perennial playoff contender and then when he arrived they got swept in the first round of the playoffs in his first year on the team and then the Suns missed the playoffs in his second year there. Before Durant arrived in Houston, they were the two-seed in the West, and then last year after they traded for Durant, they finished as the five-seed and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Durant was banged up for that playoff series, but it's reaching a point where there is a weird energy wherever Kevin Durant goes, and it's been a very long time since he has been a part of any kind of playoff run. Is he still able to be the leader of legit contender threat, or are his scoring numbers becoming hollow as other parts of his game regress? We will see this year. The next star under pressure this season is Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers. Joel Embiid's career has been an epic rollercoaster ride, depicting an all-time great talent tragically held back time and time again by his body not being able to hold up. We all know the story by now, Joel Embiid still has yet to reach the conference finals, and the general public will not stop reminding him of it until he changes that. This summer changed everything for the 76ers team around him, and now he is all of a sudden surrounded by more talent than he's ever seen at any point in his career, so the expectation is that he and this group can finally put the years of prior shortcomings to bed and make a deep playoff run. Joel Embiid may not be the MVP caliber player he once was at his peak after all of the injuries that he's dealt with, but barring another unexpected random case of appendicitis like he dealt with last season, he is still very much a walking bucket. He also won't have to carry nearly as much of the load on offense now that he has guys like Tyrese Maxey, Jalen Brown, and LeBron James around him. Plus, this team's bench is deeper with options than prior years as well, so the hope is that with a lighter workload night after night, it can help preserve his health. If he's ever going to put together a run, this is the time for it, and the basketball world is waiting for him to finally overcome that hurdle. And finally, the last star under pressure this season is Trae Young of the Washington Wizards. Trae Young's reputation league-wide has never been more sour than it's been over the last year. It's gotten so bad that I legitimately think he might be one of the most underrated players in the league currently, but ultimately my opinion doesn't mean anything unless he actually comes out this year and proves that to be the case. Trae Young's tenure in Atlanta came to an end somewhat abruptly as he was struggling through injuries last season and was then traded to the rebuilding Washington Wizards, who hope that he can guide them out of the basement of the standings. Last year, Young was objectively bad when he was on the court, though. Trae averaged just 18 points and 8 assists per game, which were both career lows for him, and he shot the ball below league average efficiency-wise, so that, combined with the the fact that he's been one of the worst defenders in the league throughout his career and now has health concerns adding to it has resulted in a lot of folks completely writing him off. The thing is though, Trae is back healthy now and when he's right, he can be a one-man source of offense as both a scorer and a passer that very few others in the league can match. With so much youth, athleticism, and size around him in Washington, there's a chance he could lead the NBA in assists for the second time in his career. The Wizards also just extended his contract, paying him $212 million, so they need him to return to pre-injury form, otherwise they just set themselves back even further and created a waste of cap space that will be tough to clear off of their books, but the hope is still strong that he can get there. And with that being said, that's all I have for you today. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and comment down below what you think about these players for the upcoming season. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time.