Every year, it makes headlines.

The Top-Selling Jerseys of the First Half does more than show who’s rocking whose uni. It shows the biggest names in the game. Stars on the rise. Ballers having breakout years.

And tomorrow, Starting 5 subscribers like you will be first to find out who’s leading the way this season.

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THE LINEUP 🏀

🚨 Bey wins it in last second

🔥 Duren’s 20-20 sends DET over OKC

1️⃣ Thunder-Wolves for West’s top spot

⏪ Luka’s 73 & weekend rewind

📸 Photos of the Week

A packed, 12-game Monday features a showdown of the top teams in the West, as OKC and Minnesota meet to break a tie for the No. 1 spot in the conference. (8 ET, NBA App)

Clippers-Cavs sees two of the hottest teams over the past month meet in Cleveland, with Cleveland & LA combining to win 22 of their last 25 (7 ET, NBA App)

Bucks-Nuggets makes for a matchup between Giannis and Joker, two of the year’s top Kia MVP candidates, at 9 ET.

The second season of ‘Throw It Down With Bill Walton’ debuts for Bucks-Nuggets, with the Hall of Fame big man and legendary broadcaster bringing his singular style to an alternate game telecast on League Pass via the NBA App.

1. BEY SENDS HAWKS TO LAST-SECOND WIN

Trae Young knew it.

“When I turned it over, I knew I was going to get a chance to help my team,” Young said. “I felt bad. I was dumb for making a mistake at the end. I should have called timeout when I didn’t have anywhere to go. It is nobody’s fault but mine.”

Young’s turnover with nine seconds left led to a Scottie Barnes layup that gave the Raptors 125-124 lead.

One possession later, Young drove to the bucket for a shot at a game-winner, only to see it gently bounce off the iron … and Saddiq Bey grabbed the putback to win it with 1.1 left.

“We talked about it in the huddle,” Young said. “Just try to go create and go downhill, but we needed to crash because they were going to contest my shot. We were going to have a shot at a rebound and it worked out perfectly for us.”

• History for Young: Trae’s 30-point, 12-assist night made him the sixth player in NBA History with at least 75 career games with 30+ pts and 10+ ast
• Who Else? Oscar Robertson with 230, James Harden at 101, LeBron with 98, Russell Westbrook at 84 and Tiny Archibald with 76
• Hawks In 10th: Atlanta moved into Play-in position with the win

2. ROUNDUP: DUREN’S 20/20 SENDS PISTONS OVER THUNDER

🚗 Pistons 120, Thunder 104: Jalen Duren posted a 22-point, 21-rebound, 6-assist night, joining John Drew (1974) as the only player with 20-20-5 lines at 20 years old or younger, as the Pistons ended the Thunder’s five-game win streak. | Recap

• Duren: “I also had six assists. I knew 20 and 20 was bound to happen for me at some point. The game is slowing down for me tremendously.”
• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (31 pts) joined Kevin Durant as the only players in franchise history with 1400 points through the first 45 games of a season, and Michael Jordan and Rick Barry as the only players with 1400+ pts and 100+ stl through their first 45 games in a season

🏎️ Pacers 116, Grizzlies 110: Jalen Smith’s late, go-ahead 3-pointer and Bennedict Mathurin’s 24 points off the bench gave Indy its third straight win and snapped Memphis’ three-game streak. Playing without Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers got 19 from Smith and Pascal Siakam. | Recap

🪄 Magic 113, Suns 98: Despite Devin Booker’s 44 points, Orlando took over late in the game, outscoring Phoenix 31-13 in the fourth quarter to pick up the W. Paolo Banchero led the way with 26 points for the Magic. | Recap

• Suns coach Frank Vogel, on the Magic playing 6-foot-10 Banchero, 6-foot-10 Franz Wagner, 6-foot-11 Moritz Wagner and 6-foot-11 Jonathan Isaac: “A lot of teams aren’t built the way they are. They’re a massive team. You can attack them if you do it the right way. We didn’t do it well enough or handle their pressure well enough tonight.”
• Kevin Durant became the 10th player in NBA history with 28,000 points

🐂 Bulls 104, Blazers 96: Chicago got 20 from DeMar DeRozan, while Ayo Dosunmu closed with a big block and a clutch three to send the ninth-place Bulls to the win. | Recap

3. THUNDER. WOLVES. FOR THE TOP SPOT IN THE WEST

A night like tonight doesn’t happen often.

When the tied-for-first-place Thunder take on the Minnesota Timberwolves (8 ET, NBA App), the team knotted with them for first in the West, it’ll mark a whole series of rarities.

• 1-2 punch: Before this season, the Wolves and the Thunder had only met once before as the top two teams in the West. Sort of. It was 1 game into the 2013-14 season, after they both won their openers
• When’s the last time … that both of these teams were this high in the standings this late in the year? 2004 for the Wolves, who finished second in the West in 2003-04 season. For OKC, the 2013-14 Thunder also finished second in the West before losing to the eventual champ Spurs in the WCF
• On the rise: Both teams have jumped up in the standings this year, with the Wolves and Thunder leaping up from eighth and 10th, respectively. The last time two teams who saw .175 jumps in win percentage met this late in the year? Last February 26, when this Thunder team took on the Kings

What else is on the way tonight?

Giannis vs. Jokic: Bucks-Nuggets doesn’t just put together the East’s second-place team and the defending champs (9 ET, NBA App). It’ll see two of the greatest players of this era meet – Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Denver’s Nikola Jokic –  both ranked in the Top 4 of Michael C. Wright’s Kia Race to the MVP

On fire vs. on fire: January has seen three teams lose just two games. The Clippers. The Cavs. And the Knicks. Two of them, the Clips and Cavs, meet up tonight. LA’s won its last five, and 13 of its last 15, while Cleveland’s taken nine of its last 10. Find it in the App at 7 ET

Tap in for the full 12-game schedule.

4. WEEKEND IN REVIEW

Friday: 73 From Luka, 62 From Book

• Luka Scores 73, T-4th Most Ever: Luka Doncic had it going from the very start, becoming just the fourth player in history to score 73 points or more – and the only one to do so while shooting 75% or better
• Whoa. Tell Me More: Only Wilt (100 pts, 78 pts) and Kobe (81) have scored more. Doncic’s 73 ties him with Wilt, who did it twice, and David Thompson. Luka also became the second-youngest player to drop 73, and one of three ever to have 70, 10 reb & 5 ast (David Robinson, Joel Embiid)
• Didn’t Embiid, and KAT, and Book…? Yup, exactly. Devin Booker scored 62 on Friday, making it the second time this week two players scored 60+ on the same night. Embiid (70) and Karl-Anthony Towns (62) did so on Monday. That had only happened three times ever before last week
• The Scoring Run: Last week marked the first time since 1962 that a week featured four 60-point scorers. Already, 2023-24 has the third-most 60-point games in a season (five – Giannis has the other), and the largest number of players to reach 60

Saturday: Steph & LeBron Go Off In No. 50

• Bron, Curry, ‘How Does It Keep Getting Better?’ Two generational stars met for the 50th time (!!) overall, and gave the world another classic. LeBron’s FTs in the final seconds of double-OT – and the Lakers’ first 36-20-12 triple-double since Kareem in 1976 – answered Curry’s go-ahead three seconds before, along with Steph’s season-high 46
• Clippers, Knicks Stay Streaking: LA won big in Boston, answering a blowout loss to the Celtics in December with a 19-point win in Beantown – just the second loss in Boston for the C’s this year. The Knicks, meanwhile, surged ahead of the Heat to carry their win streak to an NBA-best six games
• Wemby Goes Viral Again: The shamgod’s tough enough to pull off. Now try being 7-foot-4 and doing it. Then finish with a little jelly over one of the best rim defenders in history. Wemby does it all here, and NBA social media went nuts for it
• The Bat’s Back: It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, the NBA world goes off. For the third time in recorded (* social media) history, a bat swooped into the arena in San Antonio. The first time, in 2009, Manu Ginobili swatted it down like he’d been training his whole life for it. The second time, the Coyote got it. On Saturday, the Coyote rose up again, quickly capturing the invader … while wearing a Batman suit

5. PHOTOS OF THE WEEK