NBA Cup 2024 discussion & gamethread: It's On. We'll Watch.

lovegtm

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Apr 30, 2013
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Yeah, even if you assume they don’t shoot 3s as poorly as they did it’s still like 105 points in a game there against a defense that has been pretty shaky. Not great
They run into this thing we see a lot now on teams with one hyperefficient scorer: you can let that guy get his, and as long as other efficient stuff doesn't happen around that, the team ends up with a pretty meh offensive rating.

Boston avoids this because they're built to exploit any advantages once a team is in rotation, which lets them get away with primary scorers whose job is to create that rotation, rather than to be hyperefficient on possessions they use themselves.

Concretely: it sort of doesn't matter that JB has a meh TS%, because
- he consistently gets the defense in rotation and makes the right read at that point
- if you DON'T send help and let him play 1-on-1 jn space, his TS% goes wayyy up
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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AJax was mine & others draft binky, after a Championship run at UConn. Nice 2nd round pickup. He can easily play the Corner3 role on offense for MIL

AJ Green is the young guy Milwaukee Media loves. Plays decent defense and is a confident bench shooter.
Green’s insertion into the rotation was a catalyst to the Bucks turnaround. He shot something like 17-27 3-pt FG in his first couple games which really opens up the floor for Giannis and Dame.
Ran across this article that has some stats on AJax and Green since they've been playing more (which is, not coincidentally, what Adrian Griffin was doing before he got fired): Unexpected Sources Keying the Milwaukee Bucks’ Turnaround | Opta Analyst

As for AJax, below is a graphic with some of his defensive stats (spoilered for size). Starting AJax and letting him guard the other team's best player allows Trent to come off the bench and focus on offense, and Green taking Connaughton's minutes - both huge upgrades for MIL IMO.

93414
 

jon abbey

Shanghai Warrior
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Jul 15, 2005
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Some of you try really hard to shit on this thing. It's weird.
This has been an overwhelming success regardless of how Doc and team want to celebrate it.
To me it's a misstep, just because there are 'haters' for something (there are haters for everything) doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It can be tweaked to be better but in general IMO the concept is not needed, and IMO it devalues the surrounding regular season games and messes up the schedule. I would say I watch about 10 games a week league-wide and my impression this year was that the average Cup game was less intense than the average non-Cup game at this time of year. This doesn't really make sense since they all count in the standings, but I absolutely don't think these games are more intense on average than other November/December games.

What makes it an 'overwhelming success' exactly? Wasn't the arena half full last night with zero intensity from the crowd?
 

Mystic Merlin

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Sep 21, 2007
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I’m sure the players care about the money, but no NBA fan I personally know gives a shit about their team winning the Cup. The most I hear about it is grousing over how it fucks up the schedule.

Maybe my circle isn’t representative of the typical NBA fan, at least those who actually watch games, I am certainly open to that possibility.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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I’m sure the players care about the money, but no NBA fan I personally know gives a shit about their team winning the Cup. The most I hear about it is grousing over how it fucks up the schedule.

Maybe my circle isn’t representative of the typical NBA fan, at least those who actually watch games, I am certainly open to that possibility.
Last year on this board we were all (or most of us) kind of invested in watching the Cs beat the Bulls by 30 (or whatever they needed to get) to get into the tournament and we were all a little bummed out (not a lot but a little) that the Cs lost to IND in Vegas.

To me, that in and of itself shows that we cared just a little bit more about the Cup games than we would have cared about an ordinary game in November.

It's not supposed to be a big deal. But if any one game garners 10% more interest than a typical NBA November game, it's probably served its purpose. And from what I understood, at least local ratings were up.

So yes, it's a success. I mean it had a really low bar to clear.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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Jun 26, 2006
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I’m sure the players care about the money, but no NBA fan I personally know gives a shit about their team winning the Cup. The most I hear about it is grousing over how it fucks up the schedule.

Maybe my circle isn’t representative of the typical NBA fan, at least those who actually watch games, I am certainly open to that possibility.
My 18yo is a Celtics superfan and he was salty the Cs didn’t make the knockout round and we watched the Knicks-Bulls game very closely. And we watched the semis and finals, which were matchups we never would have sought out in regular season. I think younger people are more win-loss binary focused and another cup grabs their attention.
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
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One reason to root for this to fail is that if it succeeds there is a chance that Rob Manfred would think a MLB version would be great fun to have in May.
 

InstaFace

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One reason to root for this to fail is that if it succeeds there is a chance that Rob Manfred would think a MLB version would be great fun to have in May.
Yeah, that World Baseball Classic with the championship match coming down to Ohtani vs Trout in the 9th inning with everything on the line, what a bore that was. Who would ever want more of that?
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
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Yeah, that World Baseball Classic with the championship match coming down to Ohtani vs Trout in the 9th inning with everything on the line, what a bore that was. Who would ever want more of that?
Well, you are correct that THAT was fun. But I’m not sure how you’d replicate that.

I suppose if you followed that model and paused the season and had a separated tournament it might work. And it would probably be more interesting in the NBA if they formatted it that way as well. But if you have some MLB thing where the Friday night games are special group play games leading to Thursday knockout rounds etc. I have my strong doubts.
 

tims4wins

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Jul 15, 2005
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The thing about baseball is that you can’t really play “harder” the same way that you can in basketball, so I don’t think an in season tournament would generate any more intensity to random May games.