NBA Season's Greetings: Get ready for Christmas with our 2016-17 crash course

We at Ball Don’t Lie have been knee deep in basketball since the 2016-17 NBA season’s start — previewing all 30 teams, tackling the top 25 storylines and covering everything else that’s happened since — but we understand casual fans don’t fully dive in until Christmas. That’s why we’ve spent the last two weeks bringing you a series we’ve called NBA Season’s Greetings: a refresher course on the free agents, coaches, trades, rookies and potential award winners that have shaped the league thus far.

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We’ve collected all that coverage for you here. If you’re looking for something to read while you’re traveling, or just need a break from wrapping gifts, let us bring you up to speed on what you might have missed over the first two months of the season so that you’re 100 percent ready for the five-game Christmas Day mega-slate.

• The year’s most (and least) valuable free-agent signings

Ben Rohrbach came up with an easily digestible new stat — Cost Per Win — to try to figure out which of the 75 free agents who changed teams this summer have provided the most bang for their new employers’ buck … and which ones already have their bosses feeling buyer’s remorse.

• Power ranking this season’s 11 new head coaches

Eric Freeman looks at how the 11 head coaches hired this summer have fared in their new gigs, from dispiriting disappointments (we’re looking at you, Scott Brooks) to stunning surprises (hey, it turns out Mike D’Antoni is pretty good!).

• Winners and losers of the NBA’s season trades so far

Dan Devine reviews some of the 33 trades made since the end of the 2015-16 regular season to find out which teams have gotten big boosts from shuffling the deck, and which ones haven’t gotten what they’d bargained for.

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• The 2016 rookie class isn’t great, but it’s a product of the system

Kelly Dwyer wrote about how, and why, rookie classes like the freshmen of 2016 don’t really get our engines revving like they used to.

• Ball Don’t Lie’s 2016-17 NBA awards ballots, so far

After the first two months of the 2016-17 NBA season, Ball Don’t Lie’s writers make their choices for the league’s top individual awards: Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Most Improved Player, Sixth Man of the Year and Coach of the Year.

• How to talk about the NBA, to those who haven’t been watching, on Christmas Day

Sure, you might be an NBA die-hard. But what about that family member who always decides to skip the first couple of months of the season, and tries to pick it up midstream when the eggnog and carols are flying? Kelly Dwyer helps you bring that rusty relative up to speed with a handy guide to talking through the season so far and how it’s set up the Christmas Day quintuple-header.

• Toasts of Christmas past: 27 of the NBA’s best Christmas Day moments

Christmas has been the NBA’s holiday for nearly 70 years. Dan Devine takes a look back through the league’s yuletide history to find some of the biggest performances, coolest moments and best matchups from the NBA’s history of Christmas Day epics.

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