A 2 player team? What's that make the Knicks roster? They don't have 2 players who can sniff the jocks of our top 2.
I do think Tatum shoulders a fair share of the blame here, and those Ainge comments read like a direct criticism of him. He's shooting .357 from three since coming back from COVID-19. This team can't win with him shooting like that. He shot .438 before getting sick on 8 attempts a game, they were 7-3. They basically need Tatum to shoot 40 percent (which he did last season) on a high number of attempts to win games. It seemed like he could impose his will more and just generally had a greater impact last season on both ends (he was amazing in that 41 point game @LAL last season in a way that he hasn't been consistently this year), and the Bubble playoff roster isn't really any different, Kemba is probably healthier than he was in the playoffs.
They have cap space and a couple players who should get significantly better going forward. What do we have?
The Heat's record with Jimmy Butler in the lineup is 20-13. When Tatum is playing? 21-21.
The Knicks don't have anyone nearly as good as pre-CoVid Tatum, nor anyone with as much upside.
Why? If you say athletic ability, Jaylen should be one of the best players in the NBA.
Thibs notoriously overplays his main guys to the point where they break down, this seems to be starting to happen. Robinson is hurt again (not sure this is on Thibs), their other two big men are banged up, Randle has been playing through a thigh thing. If your goal as a team is to peak in February, Thibs is your man, but he is not the man for a team with genuine hopes of a deep playoff run.
I mean, this was an argument that was made about the Hawks and their cap space turned into Bogdanovich and Gallinari. Who is the difference maker that's going to sign with Charlotte next season? Likelihood is that cap space turns into like Daniel Theis and other roleplayers, and they'll have only mid-round picks to get better moving forward.
I don't know but Charlotte got Hayward last summer and they have good young players in Ball, Washington, Bridges, Monk, Rozier, Graham.
I don't know what you're expecting from 14th picks, but they're usually not difference-makers in this league. Danny has fucked up plenty of things in the last few years, but 14th picks isn't at the top of the list.
While valid, there's always some excuse for this team. The excuses are always legit but it's always something. Basically since Gordon Hayward got injured.
There's a lot of room between difference makers and playing a combined 749 minutes in 2 years. I see that Nesmith passed RL in minutes played a couple games ago.
Not sure if this is related to his knee or not but he certainly looks lazy about half the time on defense. He's been a matador this year.
Brown was better than Randle last year, and appeared to make a leap earlier this season when the team was going well.
What good is making adjustments if your established players blow them off and do whatever they want, i.e. Tatum playing selfishly and Smart jacking up bad threes.
Oh I agree. Not saying that those were great picks. But a contending team takes flyers on perceived ceiling guys and also grabs high floor guys. When you miss on the former, it looks stupid. But how much would we love more Semis and Grants floating around too.
And surround them with wonderful players like Semi Ojeleye, Grant Williams, Jeff Teague and an unbalanced roster for the first chunk of the season and here we are.
Looks like Time Lord might turn into a Rozier. One of the few bright spots this season along with PP. PP was for more exciting earlier in the year though.
We tanked/sucked that year and ended up with Billups and Ron Mercer. And Billups sucked for like the first 7 years of his NBA career.
They're 6.5 games ahead of the Magic in terms of getting into the Top 4. Not sure even this team has it in them to get down that far with only 14 games to get there.
We all remember.
With the new odds, the team with the 9th worst record has a 20% chance to end up with a top 4 pick. 10th and 11th are over 10% too. 13th is 5%, 14th is 2.4%.
That's part of it. To me though a big part isn't just Tatum not shooting well it's 2 other things..
Hornets are the best of the teams you mentioned, and I can see the case that they are in a better long term position. Short term, the Celtics have more talent right now.
With this team's luck, do you go with the 20% chance of something better than the default option happening? Or the 80%? IOW, I would bet on the side of 95% certainty they end up with the 80% outcome.
I don't think past luck effects future luck. I also don't think they should tank but there is considerable value finishing 9th instead of 14th. Even in the 80% outcome, they end up with the 9th or 10th pick which is a bit better than the 14th.
I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but I think some variant of this is quite possible.
I remember during the Rondo years, posters would complain about Rondo's maturity. Which necessitated a reminder that Pierce and Ray Allen and KG all had maturity issues of their own when they were young. So far, Tatum hasn't done anything as egregious as Pierce's head bandage.
I'm not going to defend Tatum with respect to anything he's doing right now (that possession last night where he pounded the ball into the floor for 22 fucking seconds and then missed a shot, and then followed it up with a brick from deep about 2 seconds into the shot clock on the next possession made me truly insane), but this is something I've followed and talked about in the game threads for years.
I think it's confirmation bias. You see them get no calls and remember it but don't all the no-calls other teams get. Jaylen has a decent FTr, he gets calls because he goes hard. Tatum has an abysmal FTr for a star and a big part of it is that he pulls up and doesn't go hard. He's taking 19% of his shots inside 3 ft and 22% from 3-10. He does not go hard to the rim often and so he gets less calls. He doesn't create hard contact, and when he doesn't get 1-2 calls he sulks and stops going to the rim. Say Jimmy Butler as a comp... he gets no calls several times a night, but he also gets calls because he's going to the rim many more times.
I agree a lot of 23 year olds would feel this pressure and the urge to sulk, and it’s a very human reaction, but this is where coaching actually matters.
I'm with you on Randle, and I'm a big fan of Jaylen. Randle is a beast, and he brings it every night.
I agree with all of this. For lack of a better term, I think Tatum might be a little soft. He doesn't seem to like taking it hard to the hoop with the intention of drawing hard contact. Most of his drives are either him driving with the intention of falling away or driving and then trying a fancy layup attempt that he doesn't really have in his bag because he wants to avoid the contact. Quite frankly I have no idea what the hell he's complaining about 90% of the time. It's like he thinks he has reached superstar status and doesn't need to actually earn the calls, but that the referees should just blow the whistle every time a defender breathes on him because he's a star.
This feels like mostly a maturity issue for me. Reminds me of how Antoine referred to himself as a "veteran all-star" after being named to the team in his 2nd season. He then failed to make it for the subsequent 3 seasons. To put it simply, I don't think Tatum was ready to alpha dog a team. He looked very close to it in the bubble but he's regressed. I'm confident he'll eventually get there but there will be more growing pains than I was anticipating a few months ago.
Yep. I know I got sucked into thinking "holy shit, this guy is making the superstar leap right in front of our eyes" in the period between the all star selection and the season getting paused last year. I think he'll get there too, but it's going to take more time.
This is the biggest factor for me, more than learning the dark arts of seeking out contact. Tatum is simply not a very skilled finisher around the hoop, and he isn't explosive like some other premium finishers. Defenders don't need to foul him like other stars. If you see Giannis around the hoop as a defender you know you have to get aggressive and use your body to alter his shot. Tatum? Just go straight up and let him try to finish, he's not even average near the hoop for a guy his size. This is why it frustrates me the extent to which he will avoid his left hand around the hoop. I think a small increase in finishing ability would lead to a proportionally greater increase in calls.
