2023-2024 General NBA Season Thread
- Thread starter BigSoxFan
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Did he? The story of this game (other than the obvious), is how the hell did the Bucks lose when Giannis missed just TWO shots in 37 minutes? Good teams lose to garbage teams all the time, but can you imagine Tatum going 15-17 from the field and losing to anyone, let alone a G league team like the current Grizzlies roster? It's not like he was completely awful at the line (5-9 is bad, but missing 4 free throws is just a typical night for him), nor did he turn the ball over a bunch (just 1 turnover). Giannis had arguably his most efficient scoring night of the season, and they lost to perhaps the worst team in the league, immediately after getting blown out by the Heat without Butler.
Remember when the Bucks had a statement win over Denver? That was just this week.
The +/- head-scratcher to me tonight is Giannis at -14 and Dame at +10. I didn't catch a lot of the game but the Bucks must have done a minimal overlap of their minutes together to be that far apart. More fun with +/-: Pat Bev with a -16 over 14 minutes of action.
Other fun fact is 5 of the 9 rotation players on Memphis are from Atlantic 10 schools. A10 represent!
By my quick math, Lillard is now shooting .341 from 3, a cool 99 points worse than Jrue Holiday. Don't ruin my fun by pointing out that their shot profiles are totally different, and Holiday is the 5th option on the Celtics while Lillard is #2 on the Bucks.
Vince Williams Jr 2.2 million
Santi Aldama 2.2 million
Trey Jameson 2-way
Ziaire Williams 4.8 million
Jordan Goodwin 10-day
GG Jackson 2 million
Lamar Stevens 2.1 million
Jacob Gilyard 2-way
Yuta Watanabe 2.3 million
Those are the 9 guys who played tonight for Memphis. Combined, they make 6 million less than Brook Lopez. Or nearly the same as Portis + Connaughton
Santi Aldama 2.2 million
Trey Jameson 2-way
Ziaire Williams 4.8 million
Jordan Goodwin 10-day
GG Jackson 2 million
Lamar Stevens 2.1 million
Jacob Gilyard 2-way
Yuta Watanabe 2.3 million
Those are the 9 guys who played tonight for Memphis. Combined, they make 6 million less than Brook Lopez. Or nearly the same as Portis + Connaughton
View: https://twitter.com/BrickMuse/status/1758346401275425061?s=20
John Collins spent his first few years looking like a super athletic 6'9 PF who could shoot 40% from 3, now he looks just like a guy enjoying the biggest contract he'll ever get. Yuck.
John Collins spent his first few years looking like a super athletic 6'9 PF who could shoot 40% from 3, now he looks just like a guy enjoying the biggest contract he'll ever get. Yuck.
I remember a couple non-calls where Giannis just bowled him over, but yeah, Giannis was efficient. I think, though, as he was left on an island for the most part, it was at least credible enough for Memphis to keep from double-teaming and leaving someone open.
I just had a really low expected baseline for Stevens all alone on an island against Giannis, I sort of expected Giannis to be challenging 70-something, while the Grizzlies were busy trying to cover everyone else. Sort of a "Let Giannis tire himself out one-on-one while preventing easy shots for everyone else".
Collins was a menace tonight (18/14) and has had a pretty good year. His effort down the stretch was off the charts….so much so that he threw trust pass into the 5th row.
Meanwhile in Portland, KAT just had a :30 second sequence where he got abused in the paint on two possession then jacked up an ill-advised 3 with no ball movement early in the clock that barely got rim. Timeout Minnesota. What a flipping dog…..and not the MMA type dog.
True but even without the 70 something he was great, and it's baffling to see a team's best player play so well, and still lose to an awful team. Quick comparison, the Celtics are 27-1 over the last 2.5 years when Tatum shots .600 from the field or better. The cool thing about Giannis has been that he's harder to tire out than just about any other player in the league (off hand, really the only time I can remember it happening was game 7 in the 2022 semi finals). No excuse here, the Bucks didn't play yesterday and are now on break. Just crazy to see.
Lopez was going nutz as they walked off the court. Bucks are past the teetering stage. The Dame/Giannis Show may get canceled quicker than Breaking Boston
Tatum did put up 45 in our only loss to a sub .500 team this year (albeit on a road back-to-back)
Jesus, talk about a Coach of the Year performance. It's like if prime Bill Belichick decided to challenge himself by sending in a line of entirely undrafted free agents and seeing if he can coach them into credible performances. "how about I take 9 guys making basically the minimum, and go up against a perennial contender led by a 2-time MVP and see how it goes?"
We should send him more of our bench guys if this is what he's going to do with it. Probably could've had Tacko Fall defending like Mutombo.
Yeah his quote is just another way of saying "I didn't have all my guys ready to play." They've got time (if not the personnel) to turn it around, but it's impossible to view the first few weeks of Doc's tenure in Milwaukee as anything other than an abject failure. It's easy to say he's better than Adrian Griffin, but the Bucks are 3-7 under Doc after going 30-13 with Griffin. There is always context, but wtf.
Doc will see more focus and intensity on defense when coaching on Sunday in the All-Star game than last night.
I just rewatched the 4th quarter and the Beasley-Lillard combo is just not competitive on that side of the court.
The defensive transition on missed shots or turnovers was horrible!
Didn't see much PatBev, but his -16 in 14 minutes with 1 point scored was probably not the solution either.
I just rewatched the 4th quarter and the Beasley-Lillard combo is just not competitive on that side of the court.
The defensive transition on missed shots or turnovers was horrible!
Didn't see much PatBev, but his -16 in 14 minutes with 1 point scored was probably not the solution either.
While Doc busies himself with All-Star pomp & circumstance, Joe will be in the lab tweaking offensive/defensive sets.
Meanwhile Dame is shooting 40.5% from the field and 30.7% from 3 over his last 26 games.
He has also been a negative since January by o-rating / d-rating:
Nov 126 / 119
Dec 128 / 119
Jan 117 / 121
Feb 110 / 116
He has also been a negative since January by o-rating / d-rating:
Nov 126 / 119
Dec 128 / 119
Jan 117 / 121
Feb 110 / 116
LeBron has won a Title at every stop. If he’s the GM he’s done pretty well. Those LeBron/Giannis All-Star Game drafts have been legendary in how bad Giannis values players in this league.
Most overrated “superstar” player in the league. I have never been a Lillard fan. He always reaked of “good stats, bad team” and his performances in the playoffs and international ball have been underwhelming.
This article - https://www.brewhoop.com/2024/2/15/24072810/damian-lillard-shooting-milwaukee-bucks - does a detailed breakdown on Dame. Conclusion? He's just not shooting well - if he was shooting his shots at his career rates, he'd be much better. ("There is no grand solution, no big action item here. The answer is simple. The great shooter just has to shoot better.")
The big question is why is he not shooting better? Just a slump? He should be getting better looks with MIL than he did in PDX. Will be something to watch post ASB.
Is it obvious he should be getting better looks with Milwaukee? Definitely when Giannis is on the floor, sure. But with Giannis off, the Bucks don't have many guys who can compromise a defense, so that's up to Lillard in the primary action. I don't watch them tons though, so my opinion could be dumb.
Dame’s lack of awareness and effort on the alley oop and one to Williams with about two minutes left to make it 117-112 was ghastly.
To be fair, as GM he has usually started out with his roster having the league MVP in the top spot, or at worst the #2 / #3 player in the league - so he's gotta be judged against the expectations that would come with that scenario, not the average GM who doesn't have such a player.
I was wondering the same thing while I was watching. The only thing I can think of is that, while Giannis doesn't tire easily, he does tire. You can't make every possession "go bullrush the basket, Giannis."
When he does attack, against a team with G-League players, he's going to score or get an assist. The problem is what happens in the other possessions.
He doesn't have much off-ball gravity, and he doesn't have much value initiating the action as a passer, because he's not threatening unless he's using energy down low. So those other possessions are pretty empty, and don't have much to threaten the defense, especially when Dame isn't shooting well.
If you compare that to someone like Steph, or Luka, even Tatum, they're a lot more threatening when they're not expending tons of energy, because you're paying constant attention to them to not let them get an open shot off. That, in turn, makes their teammates lives easier even when the star isn't directly attacking.
I've seen this pattern a lot in close games with Giannis: he puts up tons of points on good to great efficiency, but the team doesn't score as much as you'd expect. You'd expect a big Giannis night to always mean "great for the Bucks' offense", but there are reasons it doesn't work out like that as often as you'd think.
There is a Sliding Doors moment, after the Lakers won a Championship in the Summer of 2021, where the LA could have kept Caruso, KCP, Kuzma, and signed DeRozan. Instead, they traded for Westbrook & signed THT, etc
Who knows how many ChiPs they would have won?
LeBron catches the blame for that BUT the Laker brain trust has to own some of that.
and for as much as we stress about Tatum's step backs, Giannis takes 1.7 3s per game at a blistering 25% clip. last year he took 2.7 per game lollll
I wanted to mention one thing while I'm thinking about it: schedule-wise, I love the same-team back-to-backs. Whether double-home (like @ Indy earlier this year, or @ATL next month)) or home-and-away (like Brooklyn this week), the setup really takes away the inherent unfairness that's present in nearly all other back-to-backs. You and your opponent are playing the exact same opponent in their previous game, having the exact same amount of travel, and the exact same amount of rest. Yeah, in theory, just for the sake of variety you'd like your rematches to come later in the season to see if teams have grown / evolved... but for in-division opponents where you're playing them 4 times a year anyway, having 2 of those consume one of your b2b windows is pretty optimal, as far as I'm concerned. Get them out of the way, and get rest for the games that are likelier to have rest really come into play.
Yep, at the time we were mocking the Lakers for their supporting cast of KCP, Kuzma and Lonzo Ball. But they bet on experience over youth / development and have paid the price since. Struck a bit of gold with Reaves, but not enough to matter, the die is cast.
Sidenote: Washington signing Kuzma to a ~$90M 4-year deal, AAV ~$22M, has got to be one of the worst deals in the league. He is a credible NBA player who can defend size and shoot the 3, but in terms of value for money that's absolutely awful. If you're going to overpay those guys to get to a salary floor and try to preserve some flexibility to build talent via having sizable contracts to trade, at least make the deals short.
Other than being effective as a front man for Lebron/Klutch to do what they want, Rob Pelinka has shown to be incredibly out of his league.
The Lakers scouting infrastructure pre-dates him and has been very good for a while---Kuzma, Reaves, etc.
Pelinka has made numerous cap errors, overpaid for every asset he's acquired, and while Lebron's influence is a complicating variable has also shown absolutely zero ability to build a coherent roster. I get that Jeannie Buss randomly makes calls, and Lebron is the actual GM, but Pelinka should catch a lot more heat for the overall mess.
The Lakers scouting infrastructure pre-dates him and has been very good for a while---Kuzma, Reaves, etc.
Pelinka has made numerous cap errors, overpaid for every asset he's acquired, and while Lebron's influence is a complicating variable has also shown absolutely zero ability to build a coherent roster. I get that Jeannie Buss randomly makes calls, and Lebron is the actual GM, but Pelinka should catch a lot more heat for the overall mess.
The easy answer would be: Dame has played 51 of Milwaukee's 56 games, compared to a total of 29 games in 21-22 and 58 games in 22-23. A deep playoff run and he may have more minutes played than the previous 2 seasons combined. He may just be hitting a wall with not getting enough legs into his shots.
More difficult to prove: Dame's "short guy" window may be closing. The NBA has a history of score-first shorter guys losing effectiveness late in their career, and being out of the league by 35 y.o. The one hope for Dame is guys like AI, the "General" Sherman Douglas, Kenny Anderson, etc. relied a lot on driving the ball inside, and not outside shooting.
However, contesting outside shots has become so much more of an emphasis in the past 10 years. To the tune of guys occasionally being in your landing zone or doing a "side swipe", as well as altering the arc on your shot if your lift decreases (to avoid hands from the defenders running out).
It'll be interesting to see if the C's prioritizing youth on the bench pays off.
You would think that Dame would get better looks just by Giannis being on the floor and attracting attention. I would love to see Dame's shooting percentages with him and Giannis together as opposed to him and Giannis out.
This Reddit post compares his shot quality of this year versus last year. A couple of comments suggest that one of the issues for Dame on MIL is that with Portis and Giannis (and sometimes Lopez), the paint is always clogged. One comment says: "23% of Dame's shots this year have been between 3'-16' from the basket and he's only making 37% of these shots. This is the most middies he's ever shot in his career and it's killing his efficiency. Only 20% of his shots have been at the rim which is the LOWEST he's ever shot in his career. Over his career he's averaged 27% of his shots at the rim." (No idea if this is accurate.)
At any rate, if I am coaching MIL (and I am glad I am not), I would spending this entire ASB trying to unlock Dame. I agree that as Dame goes so will MIL.
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Laker brain trust + LeGM LA recap:
1. Lonzo, Ingram, Hart, & Picksapalooza were sent to Nola in the AD deal, which got them a Disney Tournament victory. Fair deal for both sides.
2. A Bron/AD injury-plagued season in 2020-21 led to a #7 seed + early playoff exit
3. In the Summer of 2021 the infamous Westbrook trade happened. KCP, Kuzma + a First were sent to the Wizards.
4. In the Summer of 2021, Laker's mgmt decided to pay THT (3/31M) & sign Kendrick Nunn (2/10M) while offering Caruso 2yrs/$15M. Alex wanted 3/30M from LA, they never countered their original offer. Alex signed with the Bulls (4/$38M)
5. DeMar desperately wanted to return home & play for the Lakers in the Summer of 2021. He thought it was a done deal & went on vacation. He was in Mexico when Kyle Lowry told him the Lakers had made a deal for Westbrook and DeRozan was out.
A lot of their recent failures can be pinned on the Westbrook BIG3 concept, instead of running a BIG2 (hope for health) & surround AD/LBJ with very high-end role players. BUT Laker Mgmt should have been able to convince Bron that DeMar would have been just as good a fit as Russ, at a much cheaper price without losing assets.
But it sort of makes sense, when you see how much energy his more efficient attacks take. He shouldn't be taking them, but I get the human inclination to be like "yeah, this 3 is way easier, I'll just take that."
I think this goes back to the challenge of making Giannis work on offense. He doesn't attract attention unless he's directly involved in the play, and that takes energy, and so you are right back to the Bucks' initial problem: they want Dame to initiate and conserve energy for Giannis, but Dame needs Giannis involved in order to really get an advantage, so you're back to square 1.
Under Bud, the Bucks really went out of their way to control Giannis' minutes and keep him fresh in-game, even attracting criticism for doing so. Now we might be seeing why they did that.
I know this is backtracking on the thread a bit, but it was *crazy* to me that every time the Cs lost in the Doc Rivers era, he blamed the players. Every. Single. Time. If I was KG especially, working my ass off only to lose because of something Doc did (or didn't) do, I would have gone nuts. I can see blaming the refs, or the "we need to coach better" nonsense that no coach actually believes but says to try to protect the players from scrutiny... but with Doc it was always the players' fault. I have no idea how he continued to get jobs on teams with largely loaded rosters and kept that schtick up.
The Celtics bench was heavily criticized to open the year (& still is by NBA media)
PP (26), Hauser (26), Luke (28), Al (37) aren't puppies but they are incredibly reasonable for the production they are providing.
I'm not a fan of using 2nds on one-and-done players like JDD/Walsh instead of older draftees like AJax/TJD.
BUT it's really a nothing-burger since they can add guys like Tillman or Springer for 2nds.
Ultimately using future 2nds at the trade date, instead of driving JDD/Walsh off the lot, is probably their best use of 2nds for a contender.
Another play from the article I initially posted is below.
I haven't watched a lot of MIL but something seems off with Dame's game. I know he's going through personal problems and has said that this year is the "hardest transition" of his life and changing coaches I'm sure doesn't help so maybe it's a mental thing and he'll rekindle something for the stretch run/playoffs.
View: https://twitter.com/rcon14/status/1757791740063338510
Disagree here big time. There is no world where his deal is anywhere near one of the worst in the league. It's a descending deal (25.5, 23.5, 21.5, 19.5), and is a highly tradeable contract. They would definitely receive positive value if they were to trade him.
It might just be his age. He's almost 34 and playing alongside a bunch of other older guys. The NBA schedule is just brutal, so he might just not be able to handle it the way he used to. Doc might need to try someone else an extra 5 minutes a game to get him down around 30 minutes.
The Celtics bench is criticized because they don't have the sort of guy that wins 6th MOY awards - a microwave scorer that creates his own offense at a high volume, usually a guard. We had that last year in Brogdon (15 ppg), but our 6-8 guys this year all average about 8 ppg. That's fine because all of our starters score plenty, and the real strength of our bench (particularly Horford) is how well they complement the starters. If any of our starters are out, we can just plug in Horford without missing a beat. Another point of comparison with Brogdon, he didn't start a single game last year while Horford has started 22/45 games this season. I suppose Pritchard is the closest thing we have to the typical bench scorer, but he's not quite that guy.
Here are the leading scorers off the bench for the top 8 teams in each conference:
Boston: Pritchard (8.1)
Cleveland: LeVert (14.4)
Milwaukee: Portis (12.7)
New York: Trades and injuries make this hard to figure, but either Quickley (15.0) or DiVincenzo (13.6)
Philadelphia: Same as the Knicks, but likely either Melton (11.8) or Payne (10.8)
Indiana: Mathurin (14.1)
Miami: Robinson (13.3)
Orlando: Anthony (11.9)
Minnesota: Reid (12.2)
OKC: Joe (8.5)
LAC: Powell (13.4)
Denver: Jackson (10.9)
New Orleans: Murphy (12.7)
Phoenix: Gordon (12.6)
Dallas: Hardaway (17.3)
Sacramento: Monk (15.1)
Boston has the worst top scorer off the bench of any contender in the league, and only OKC is even close (and that comes with an asterisk because Hayward probably does better than Isaiah Joe). We can't blame it on the quality of the starters forcing bench guys to sacrifice - both Pritchard and Hauser are averaging career highs in ppg, and nobody thinks 37 year old Horford could be a volume scorer off the bench. We just don't have that guy who can put up points in a hurry off the bench, although in a slightly different time I guess that would have been Derrick White.
Not to say the bench is bad or lacking depth (anyone still saying that at this point is just being lazy), it's just geared more towards supporting the starters than providing any real punch or change of pace. It's a potential weakness, maybe the only sort of player we're missing, but nobody is perfect. Given how good the starting group is, I really can't complain.
Paid the price with a Championship? I know everyone hates the Lakers but good grief, they accomplished the same goal we did in ‘08