2023-2024 General NBA Season Thread
- Thread starter BigSoxFan
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My man Toumani Camara is done for the season. Dude had quite the rookie season:
View: https://twitter.com/trailblazers/status/1774099361388957746
View: https://twitter.com/trailblazers/status/1774099361388957746
PatBev opting for cortisone shots, tape & off-season surgery.
a hobbled 50% PatBev is probably a really bad player, it's almost a better result
I think he’s a pretty giant scumbag and someone I will never root for but there’s no denying that Ime is a hell of a coach
It remains to be seen if Ime has any kind of sustainable approach. Obviously didn't give himself a chance in Boston. (Would have been fun to find out.) He's great at whipping a team into shape, but that's hard to maintain, and once a team gets to a certain level he'll need to evolve.
The VanVleet signing was a great great move. He’s the leader of that team on the floor.
For sure, going from KPJ to VanVleet is massive,
It's kind of ironic that I used the terms "discipline/accountability" when describing IME
I meant it regarding his style of coaching, not his personal life.
Apologies if anyone was offended
Couldn't agree more. The glass-half-empty projection is that he's the second coming of Thibs. Being a hard-ass with young players can have a transformative effect, but it's unclear whether you can keep yelling at the same guys as they age and as they experience more success without them tuning you out. With Ime, we just don't know yet...
Edit: it feels like there's four types of successful NBA coaches:
1. The cerebral coaches who excel at the X's and O's (Mazzulla seems to fit this mold)
2. The guru/leadership coaches who try to build up their players' confidence and agency and turn them into coaches-on-the-floor
3. The hard-ass coaches who try to whip teams into shape
4. The crony coaches who are liked by the superstars on the team and don't have to do much else (aka most Lebron coaches)
It seems like the most highly-regarded and successful coaches combine some degree of (1) and (2)— Pop, Spolestra, Kerr, etc. Then there's guys like Phil Jackson who were clearly excellent at (2) but whom the jury is still out on b/c nobody knows if they were good at anything else. Path (3) is Ime's, and the question is whether it can be exercised as more than just shock therapy.
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Honestly, he did end up being quite accountable in his personal life. Lost his long term relationship, and his "among the best coaching jobs in the league" gig. Said about as many contrite things as he was allowed to publicly. Was kept on the shelf for a year and kept his yap shut. If there's one thing he wasn't, it's unaccountable.For sure, going from KPJ to VanVleet is massive,
It's kind of ironic that I used the terms "discipline/accountability" when describing IME
I meant it regarding his style of coaching, not his personal life.
Apologies if anyone was offended
i think we read different public statements. he phrased this as happening *to* him and let’s not forget his attempts to get out ahead of this story, which were embarrassing.
Ummm…. I’m not too sure about some of this. He (or his representatives) did an awful lot of leaking details and planting stories to make him look like the victim. So when he finally decided to keep his yap shut, it was probably forced. As was his “contrite things”. Losing his relationship and his job were other peoples decisions, not his. We will probably never know the whole story, but I think that if the whole story had come out, Ime would be a lot less employable.
I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, got any particularly egregious examples / links in mind?
We still have no idea what he got fired for. All we got were extremely generalized statements with no details. The city of Boston has no idea whether to be happy or angry with their team for firing their coach in the manner they did, and the city of Houston has no idea if they should or shouldn’t feel morally compromised when they cheer him on. The women in the Rockets organization have no idea of his past behavior. Honestly can’t think of an equivalent story like this where the media unanimously agreed to basically not report on it. He had to take a year off and… that was about it for professional consequences.
If there’s one thing that defines the last two years of Ime Udoka, it’s being unaccountable, and the NBA media has energetically permitted him to never own up to his actions.
Yes and yes. Knicks have a tough remaining schedule though, they really need Anunoby back soon.
Didn’t realize he got hurt again.
Cs game will be interesting. It might not matter for Boston, but they might want to go undefeated against East at home.
Mazzulla has some of #2 in his game as well. At least he tries to by letting them play through issues and figure things out on the fly.
I think Mazzulla is almost more of a #2 than a #1, and that this is the primary reason to be bullish on him.
Rockets had a nice run lol:
View: https://twitter.com/bleacherreport/status/1774594675246047445?s=46&t=11SXTvIYT-tl8b6e7iEUVQ
View: https://twitter.com/bleacherreport/status/1774594675246047445?s=46&t=11SXTvIYT-tl8b6e7iEUVQ
some fun games right now. the spurs have lost a ton of close games and looks like their comeback against golden state will be just short. they had a 9-0 run in a minute to close it to 2 points with 40 seconds left. and we got a good one in New York with the Knicks and the thunder
trading like 6 different horrible turnovers in this last minute
Jalen Williams is so, so, so good.
Edit: As I say that, he misses two huge FT’s lol.
I’ve discovered I’m a pretty epic jinx.
Edit: As I say that, he misses two huge FT’s lol.
I’ve discovered I’m a pretty epic jinx.
Was just about to post that even after his FT misses. He feels like a superstar player in the making as he can really do a bit of everything. Including free throwing.
knicks had a 10 point lead going into the 4th and then were down I think 8 at some point. crazy final quarter
Brutal loss. Hate to blame refs but that last 30 seconds fucking sucked. Brunson reminds me a lot of Aaron Judge in how he handles himself because a lot of players would have flipped out.
That looked like a foul on the drive, but the ball looked to be gone before the body hit that whacked him to the floor. And lately they seem to have decided that contact after the ball has left the hand is inconsequential. The Celtics have had multiple overturns against them on that basis.
edit - what I mean is that all my life until a few months ago I would have been sure that was a foul. Now I have no idea.
Periodic reminder that the Wizards went ahead and casually picked Johnny freaking Davis in the ‘22 draft over Jalen Williams. Yeah, other teams passed on him too (including the Knicks) but the ‘Zards’ ability to botch every personnel move is special. At least they’re staying in DC, for better or worse…
wouldn't have mattered as much if they'd just hit their free throws. that goes for both teams, what was it 8 total misses in the 4th?
In the last month, Giddey has been on a tear. Anyone still arguing that he's a bad fit for the Thunder?
Is this like "Thanks, Obama!", or more like "...here's why that's bad news for Joe Biden"?
He’s saying it’s better if the Knicks slit into the three seed. Which it probably is.
Both the Cavs and Knicks have been injured so much this year that it's hard to picture what they'll look like healthy, or even if they are healthy. The Knicks still look like a team with a hard 2nd round ceiling - they are a Thibodeau coached team, with major injury concerns about their 2nd and 3rd best players, and whose best player probably is 6'2 and probably isn't a top 15 guy. I'd be more than fine playing either the Cavs or the Knicks in round 2.
I don't think the 2nd round is a hard ceiling at all when their possible opponents include Milwaukee and Cleveland.
Yes 100%….he’s still a terrible fit as his full skillset isn’t able to be displayed when the team is at full strength. He’s also still really good which is beginning to show more. He also had two big games in his last two when the ball was in his hands with SGA out of the lineup.
That's me
Presti should build around SGA + J-Will + Chet.
The idea is to package Giddey + picks to a rebuilder for a more experienced All-Star level player who can help now.
Markkanen was suggested (if he wants to win now). OKC could use size upfront
This is fair but to be clear, the only team that I think has any more than a punchers chance against Boston is Milwaukee. I don't see much of a difference between the Knicks and Cavs when it comes to potential playoff opponents. The general media and public are really excited about the possibility of a healthy Knicks team in the playoffs, but three things:
-Thibodeau teams always always always overachieve in the regular season, and are unable to rise to another level in the playoffs.
-Anunoby can't seem to stay healthy, and there's still no sign that Randle is coming back this year.
-Even if Randle comes back, why do we think he's the one that raises their ceiling? It's a small sample, but he has been absolutely awful in the playoffs, shooting .344 from the field and .283 from 3 over three playoff series.
It's a real bummer for Knicks fans (and basketball fans in general), but the Knicks as this scary playoff opponent is really just an idea. They're 11-8 since the all-star break, and 18-27 against teams .500 and above (and 1-7 against Boston and Milwaukee). Maybe they get a couple of guys back, but for this year at least, it's looking like this is just who they are. A big time hot streak from January 1 to February 1 (when they went 15-2) seems to have made everyone forget the rest of the year, when they were just 29-28. The Cavs went through a similar monster stretch (also with guys hurt), but for whatever reason, nobody worries about them. Maybe it's just because they lost to the Knicks last year.
They have changed the personnel a few times over the course of the season, but they are 15-2 when Anunoby plays (14-1 with both Brunson and Anunoby, they lost at the end in DAL when Kyrie went nuts) including some very impressive wins. Of course if he can't come back, that doesn't matter, but he drastically changes them.