2015-2016 NBA Game Thread
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Another big game by Noel since Ish's arrival.
In the 3 games since Ish Smith's arrival to resemble an NBA PG from an execution standpoint Noel has put up:
18/6/5/2 on 8-9 FG
20/9/4 on 8-12 FG
15/12/3/3/3 on 6-11 FG
There is no rush to move either but moving forward in 4-6 years when they presumably grow into a playoff team I can't really see them co-existing. Okafor is too talented to be a 2nd unit guy and Noel will play better as the talent around him improves.....that is what his skillet projects to do as history suggests.
Ish Smith - ha! The Association is amazing. I know the MLB has journeymen but nobody does journeyman into heroes better than the NBA. He has played for nine different teams and if you don't count his two stints in Philly, its ten, during his six year career.
Yeah I don't know it says as much about ish smith as it does about the point guards. Wait "point guards" on the roster before that.
It just looks more and more like Noel or okafor has to be moved. I think a healthy embiid can potentially play with either as he has real shooting and range. Noel though looks to be a potentially new prototype centre to me. Can guard the rim, can switch into smaller guys. Can run the floor and can dive to the rim on pnr all day. If he could shoot he'd be a superstar soon.
Okafor would need to change a LOT to play a up tempo game he's slow he's plodding. You have to think he will improve with conditioning and fitness levels but his game is all slow. He can guard the post but not as useful as he was. Can he learn help and rotation defence? The thing that gives you pause is his shocking improvement so fast in ft shooting. And his drives. He looks great driving to the rim vs a big with his footwork.
You don't have to decide today but you have to decide. If you are going to zig and play post up as the league zags Noel should really get you a good piece. What will okafor get you?
It just looks more and more like Noel or okafor has to be moved. I think a healthy embiid can potentially play with either as he has real shooting and range. Noel though looks to be a potentially new prototype centre to me. Can guard the rim, can switch into smaller guys. Can run the floor and can dive to the rim on pnr all day. If he could shoot he'd be a superstar soon.
Okafor would need to change a LOT to play a up tempo game he's slow he's plodding. You have to think he will improve with conditioning and fitness levels but his game is all slow. He can guard the post but not as useful as he was. Can he learn help and rotation defence? The thing that gives you pause is his shocking improvement so fast in ft shooting. And his drives. He looks great driving to the rim vs a big with his footwork.
You don't have to decide today but you have to decide. If you are going to zig and play post up as the league zags Noel should really get you a good piece. What will okafor get you?
Tiny sample, but Ish Smith has an Ortg of 88 and a DRtg of 108.
How can that (-20 pts per 100 possessions) be an improvement you ask?
Marshall: Ortg:80, DRtg: 111 net: -31
Wroten: ORtg: 70, DRtg: 110 net: -40
THAT'S INSANE!
How can that (-20 pts per 100 possessions) be an improvement you ask?
Marshall: Ortg:80, DRtg: 111 net: -31
Wroten: ORtg: 70, DRtg: 110 net: -40
THAT'S INSANE!
This is what it looks like when a coach loses his team then his best player to injury. Between Morris being a little bitch about his twin brother being traded and Brandon Knight being jealous of Bledsoe there are a handful of head coaches who could have survived this cluster......and Hornacek isn't one of them.
Tyson Chandler must be dying to get out of town.
Suns owner spoke out today and blamed it on millennial culture and social media.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14499523/phoenix-suns-owner-robert-sarver-rails-markieff-morris-millennial-culture
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14499523/phoenix-suns-owner-robert-sarver-rails-markieff-morris-millennial-culture
I luckily switched over from the Hawks/Knicks game where I was enjoying Eddy Taverez awkwardly running up and down the court in time to see Butler absolutely erupt.
Jimmy brought the ball up each time and to start his fire he used a couple screens to get to the hoop and it all fell in place after that. He didn't miss and no one could stop him from getting to his spot. Gasol was instrumental in getting him his looks very often. Tony Snell looks like a decent NBA rotation(bottom of one) player and Bobby Portis looks like he has the motor of Russell Westbrook. He plays hard.
Butler was amazing too bad he and Rose just don't work well together.
My main question about the game is why Hoiberg wasn't calling plays in the huddles towards the end of the game. Whoever his bald assistant coach is was the guy who was talking to all the players during timeouts, drawing up plays, and who the players were going to for leadership. I haven't searched who he is, but he certainly looked like the coach in charge, not Hoiberg.
Jimmy brought the ball up each time and to start his fire he used a couple screens to get to the hoop and it all fell in place after that. He didn't miss and no one could stop him from getting to his spot. Gasol was instrumental in getting him his looks very often. Tony Snell looks like a decent NBA rotation(bottom of one) player and Bobby Portis looks like he has the motor of Russell Westbrook. He plays hard.
Butler was amazing too bad he and Rose just don't work well together.
My main question about the game is why Hoiberg wasn't calling plays in the huddles towards the end of the game. Whoever his bald assistant coach is was the guy who was talking to all the players during timeouts, drawing up plays, and who the players were going to for leadership. I haven't searched who he is, but he certainly looked like the coach in charge, not Hoiberg.
No way is he above Curry, Westbrook, Durant, Leonard or James. Is he in the next 5? Possibly, but no way top 5.
He is 25th in PER if you were curious.
Butler's 19th in RPM, fwiw, behind among others Channing Frye and Ricky Rubio. All these stats come up with some surprising and confounding results, but RPM seems better than PER.
Top 10 has 3 PG, 3 SF, 3 PF and 1 C. Harden is the top SG at 16.
Top 10 has 3 PG, 3 SF, 3 PF and 1 C. Harden is the top SG at 16.
This is the new direction many teams are taking with one Assistsnt running the offense and another the defense not too dissimilar to how NFL Head Coaches operate their staff. One example was in Oakland last year with Gentry hired to implement and run his offense.
There is a MAJOR flaw with PER in how it values backup bigs and this has been the case forever. The love consistently shown to the Chuck Hayes of the world by the formula used has to be taken with a grain of salt when discussing backup bigs who play primarily against second unit bigs.
Out of curiosity, has there ever been an NBA season with 3 teams as good as the Warriors, Spurs, and Cavs? The Warriors are on-pace to have the best record of all-time, the Spurs are on pace to have the best point differential of all time, and over the last calendar year (which uses the Mozgov acquisition as the start) that Cavs are 42-5 when all of LeBron, Kyrie, and Love play which is a 70 win pace.
Is there any precedent for this?
Is there any precedent for this?
Not that the current crop of teams are not great, but I think the inflated records are also part of a particularly less-balanced league, especially in the West. Maybe they didn't have the crazy W-L records of the current teams but the mid-80s Lakers, Celtics and Pistons were every bit as good as the top three teams now.
Leonard is a joy to watch: he seems to be good at absolutely everything, even ballhandling. Could Jae Crowder develop into a Kawhi Leonard lite (or, in Crowder's case, heavy)?
Crowder just seems to be lacking the fluidity of a great player like Leonard. He does keep exceeding expectations though, so who knows.
I would love to see DeMarcus in a C's uniform. Averaging 33 points, 13.4rpg in the month of January over 7 games. Shooting 45% from 3 point range too.
Reggie Miller is the fucking worst. The last 10 minutes of the Warriors-Lakers game has (predictably) been a Kobe sploogefest and no one can do it in more nauseating fashion than Reggie. I honestly lost track of all the insane quotes I was planning to cite in this post because they were coming in by the dozen.
Right now there are 23 teams that either currently would have a playoff spot, or are within a game and a half of a playoff spot. That feels like a very well-balanced league to me. I'm not sure why it's less balanced than it was in the mid-80s.
Apparently, the Spurs decided to go after Kevin Love and that resulted in plays such as this one.
http://video.businessinsider.com/f3b23b34-2aa0-4483-85f7-095cd6fa3669.mp4
Still glad the Cs didn't end up with him.
(Can't figure out how to post this video, but it basically ended up with
I wasn't paying close attention. Were the Cavs switching on pick and rolls?Apparently, the Spurs decided to go after Kevin Love and that resulted in plays such as this one.
http://video.businessinsider.com/f3b23b34-2aa0-4483-85f7-095cd6fa3669.mp4
Still glad the Cs didn't end up with him.
(Can't figure out how to post this video, but it basically ended up with
Having a lot of teams in contention for a playoff spot can just mean their is a certain level of mediocrity in the league. There are plenty of teams hovering around .500 that are contending for playoff spots, but that doesn't mean they are any form of challenge for the really good teams. Even teams that are 10 games over .500 like Toronto and Atlanta, would you really give them that great of a chance at beating Cleveland in a playoff series? How many teams outside of the Big Three would you consider have a greater than, I don't know, 20% chance of beating one of the Big Three teams in a playoff series if they were fully healthy? Certainly OKC and probably the Clippers. Other than that?
Compare that to the mid-80s when outside of LA, Boston and Detroit there was Philly, Houston, Atlanta, Milwaukee, teams that gave the really good teams really tough playoff series. Younger teams like Chicago and Portland were in the mix as well.
Kyrie also is an absolute turnstile on D. It's hard to win a title when your 2nd and 3rd best players are so bad defensively, although it's a lot easier to get to the Finals when the 4 best other teams are all in the other conference.
I dunno. I think there's a weird tendency to put the NBA on the 80s on a but of a pedestal. Were the Hawks of the 80s an exceptionally good team? They won 50ish games a year and never made the conference finals. Were they any better than this current iteration of the Rockets, who did make a conference finals? Are the Rockets an easier out in the playoffs for a team like San Antonio than the Hawks were for the mid 80s Celtics? Or the Bucks of the mid-80s who were swept out of the playoffs in consecutive years by the Celtics and Sixers? Were they a good team? Of course. Were they so good that they'd run this year's Raptors off the court? This year's Bulls team? The Rockets?
I don't agree with this at all. Who were the teams that have the Celtics and Lakers tough playoff series when they were healthy and peaking in the mid-80's?
The parity in today's game I don't recall ever being seen outside of the top 2-3 teams before. There isn't much of a gap at all from teams 4 through say 20-22.
I think Atlanta was definitely better then THIS season's Rockets team. In 85-86 they beat a good Detroit team in the first round and while they lost 4-1 in the second round it was to arguably the greatest team of all-time, and if the Celtics didn't win the Bird/Dominque duel the series would have been tied 2-2 going back to Boston for Game 5.
I don't know how today's teams vs 80s teams would play out because the game is so different. I do know that the Bucks in the 80s were a good franchise that made the E. Conf semi finals 5 times and the Conference Finals twice during the 1980s and were supported by two underrated stars in Terry Cummings and pre-injury Sidney Moncrief (how good was that guy) and at different times Jack Sikma and Marques Johnson. I think they would be seen as a bigger threat to Boston than Toronto or Chicago are to Cleveland right now.
Houston of course, straight up beat the Lakers in '86 and did it handily, despite the fact that Magic was in his prime and then went on to lose to the Celtics in six games.
Parity doesn't equal high-quality teams. GMB originally asked if there has been a time in history when there were three teams as good as Cleveland, San Antonio and Golden State, and I argued the LAL/Boston/DET triumvirate was because they dominated the championship scene during that time frame. Before that, the early 70s had the Lakers, Knicks and Bucks who all went at least three HOF's deep (I'm counting Bobby Dandridge as a HOF, if Dikembe Mutombo gets to be one Bobby D should to) and ripped of long, long winning streaks.
In regards to Atlanta, you're giving them credit for beating a 46 win Pistons team (that was Dumars rookie year and pre Rodman, well before the Pistons became the Bad Boy Pistons) and losing 4-1 to an all-time great team, and discounting every team out there now for having less than a 20% chance of beating other all-time great teams in a series. So a 4-1 series loss counts in 86 Atlanta's favor, but being unable to beat Golden State is a mark against Houston (or whoever). Not sure I follow the logic there.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable argument to say that the Celtics, Lakers, and Pistons of the 80s were as good or better than this year's big 3 (though, for what it's worth, I asked has there ever been a season and none of those teams in the 80s peaked simultaneously), but I don't think the notion that the league was way better back then and that's artificially inflating what GSW, Cleveland, and San Antonio are doing this year holds much weight.
I was referring to Atlanta in regards to this seasons Houston team, who I don't believe would play GS or SA as well as Atlanta played Boston. It is all hypothetical and not really worth anything in the long run, but that is just the way I see things.
Houston made the Conference Finals last year by beating the team who beat the Spurs. They've obviously had a lousy first half but all that matters is that they get into the playoffs, they'll be easily the most dangerous of the 5-8 teams in the West and possibly the 6th best team in the league by the time the playoffs start (behind CLE and the top 4 West teams).
1997/98 is an interesting one to look at in answer to Grin's original question. CLE is on pace for 60-22 right now, that year had four teams at 61 or 62 wins, and a ridiculous 8 at 55 wins or better.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1998.html
1997/98 is an interesting one to look at in answer to Grin's original question. CLE is on pace for 60-22 right now, that year had four teams at 61 or 62 wins, and a ridiculous 8 at 55 wins or better.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1998.html