NBA Regular Season & Playoffs 2018-19 Thread

ButtersSuki

Interesting Ringer podcast where they variously blame Magic, Palinka, LeBron and Chris Paul over the failed AD trade. Worth a listen.

Also interesting take on last night's game where Barkley again hammered all of the above and Davis himself. I agree btw.

OKC blowing yet another game they really should win. If they were .500 on those games they'd be the 1 seed. They can look so good, and then so bad.

jonok28

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Interesting Ringer podcast where they variously blame Magic, Palinka, LeBron and Chris Paul over the failed AD trade. Worth a listen.

Also interesting take on last night's game where Barkley again hammered all of the above and Davis himself. I agree btw.

OKC blowing yet another game they really should win. If they were .500 on those games they'd be the 1 seed. They can look so good, and then so bad.

They are to blame but you gotta go all in for a top 5 talent and it flew up in their face, nothing that can be done about it and they really need to move on from this debacle at this point.

I love how Barkley keeps crapping on Super Teams and players and teams trying to get themselves onto different teams when in 96 he joined Olajuwon and Drexler in Houston!!. He wanted one last chance at winning a ring and Houston were able to get him after a summer long pursuit of him. Hakeem was still averaging 23 a game and Drexler 18. Yes everyone was a bit older but its the pot calling the kettle black when he openly made a move to get to a team so he could win a ring.

kmart6

Lol... ridiculous....

https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1096452803734712320?s=19

jonok28

kmart6 wrote: »

Lol... ridiculous....

https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1096452803734712320?s=19

Not that surprising he was heading out the door before the Anthony Davis trade request happened. I wouldn't be shocked if Danny Ferry gets the job.

ButtersSuki

No win situation.

Great line from Barkley last night clearly aimed at Rich Paul/AD - you need to realise your agent works for you, not you for your agent.

Osmosis Jones

Dell Demps wasn't a particularly good GM anyway

chopperbyrne

Orlando are on a five game winning streak, and looking at the next three games, could get to eight before playing Golden State.

Hitting form at the right time. They could conceivably make the playoffs if they can keep some level of consistency.

ButtersSuki

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Orlando are on a five game winning streak, and looking at the next three games, could get to eight before playing Golden State.

Hitting form at the right time. They could conceivably make the playoffs if they can keep some level of consistency.

They discussed this on The Lowe Post this week and said it was a joke they're in contention as if they were ion the West they'd be 13th in the conference. They'd actually be worse as they'd have had a much tougher schedule playing West teams all the time.......yet they have an outside shot at the 8th seed in the East. Bonkers.

Not sure they get there unless someone above them collapses or tanks.

ButtersSuki

Went under the radar a bit but the Knicks had a historical franchise worst 18 game losing streak that ended last night against the mighty Hawks. James Dolan should send LeBron, AD, Magic, Palinka, etc. some nice wine and champagne as a thank you for keeping them out of the news.

Hitch2222

This obviously means nothing but I suspect Simmons is working pretty hard on his jump shooting. I can't quite imagine anyone who was as poor as Simmons who got to a respectable shooter from deep.

Perhaps Blake early on, that seems like the best model to win for, mechanics will never be super smooth but once it's repetitive and simplistic he should be able to make some inroads.

Till then, catching while running from the baseline and pivoting on his right foot, the mechanics look awful but spotting up in the corner doesn't look too bad. His lower body actually looks quite like Lonzo's with the base quite narrow and flicking forward quite a lot.

https://youtu.be/EbHjlza74gg

Osmosis Jones

The craziest shot improvement I've seen is Brook Lopez, He attempted 31 3s in his first 8 seasons and made 3 of them, since then in his last 2.5 seasons he has attempted 1083 and made 384, making him a 35% shooter from 3 on over 5 attempts a game.

ButtersSuki

Hitch2222 wrote: »

This obviously means nothing but I suspect Simmons is working pretty hard on his jump shooting. I can't quite imagine anyone who was as poor as Simmons who got to a respectable shooter from deep.

Perhaps Blake early on, that seems like the best model to win for, mechanics will never be super smooth but once it's repetitive and simplistic he should be able to make some inroads.

Till then, catching while running from the baseline and pivoting on his right foot, the mechanics look awful but spotting up in the corner doesn't look too bad. His lower body actually looks quite like Lonzo's with the base quite narrow and flicking forward quite a lot.

https://youtu.be/EbHjlza74gg

Make it stop! It hurts my eyes!

ButtersSuki

Osmosis Jones wrote: »

The craziest shot improvement I've seen is Brook Lopez, He attempted 31 3s in his first 8 seasons and made 3 of them, since then in his last 2.5 seasons he has attempted 1083 and made 384, making him a 35% shooter from 3 on over 5 attempts a game.

It's insane alright. I've seen him in both iterations. I think he's probably the biggest-looking human I've ever seen in the flesh. He's so tall, and so wide he just looks enormous, and way more so in person than on TV. The first time I saw him play was for Brooklyn in the 2012-13 season and I literally could not believe the size difference between him and everyone else on the court. He was strictly a post player then. Saw him play for LA last year and he looked like a different player. It still looks kinda weird to see him shooting from 30 feet but when he's on fire like he was say in the Denver game earlier this year it's compulsive viewing. Haven't seen the Milwaukee Lopez experience in the flesh but thinking about a Play Off visit to Boston so I may just yet.

Osmosis Jones

Watching the Rising Stars game on Sky at the moment and they're playing the exact same feed as ESPN, only for some reason they're not broadcasting the commentary so it's just court/crowd sounds and nothing else and it's great

Hitch2222

Osmosis Jones wrote: »

The craziest shot improvement I've seen is Brook Lopez, He attempted 31 3s in his first 8 seasons and made 3 of them, since then in his last 2.5 seasons he has attempted 1083 and made 384, making him a 35% shooter from 3 on over 5 attempts a game.

Most scouts use college FT% as the metric for assessing future 3pt shoot ability even if player doesn't shoot a high %. Hence why Lonzo even though his shot was weird looking was not viewed as surefire to transfer his college % to the NBA.
That said, Lopez has always been a good FT shooter generally in around 80% give or take.
Obviously it's not a perfect metric as if it was Rubio would be ridiculous from deep as he's an excellent FT shooter.
Two people I suspect to be close to leading the NBA in 3pt% in the coming years is Markkanen:https://youtu.be/14N8fOJLivA and/or Tatum: https://youtu.be/7V8CQTlNlnc both have fantastic mechanics

ButtersSuki

Hitch2222 wrote: »

Most scouts use college FT% as the metric for assessing future 3pt shoot ability even if player doesn't shoot a high %. Hence why Lonzo even though his shot was weird looking was not viewed as surefire to transfer his college % to the NBA.
That said, Lopez has always been a good FT shooter generally in around 80% give or take.
Obviously it's not a perfect metric as if it was Rubio would be ridiculous from deep as he's an excellent FT shooter.
Two people I suspect to be close to leading the NBA in 3pt% in the coming years is Markkanen:https://youtu.be/14N8fOJLivA and/or Tatum: https://youtu.be/7V8CQTlNlnc both have fantastic mechanics

Hadn't ever seen (or indeed heard of) NBA2K TV before, wow she's cute.

Just watched part of the Tatum video, not sure I agree he's as fundamentally sound as you technique wise....his elbow placement and general arm alignment are angled, when they should be a perfect 90 degrees to the floor...his shooting hand should be over his elbow...it's off to he side. I've drawn In black, sorry, only colour available) where his arm should ideally be on the screenshot to show what I mean.

He can look good and smooth, but some times he reverts to old habits and shoots from above his head and that can look very weird - he had a few of them in the Rising Stars game last night.

Haven't watched the Lauri vid., will try and get to it later.

irishguitarlad

I really like Barkley, the only reason I watch the tnt coverage, he comes out with some great one liners.

liamoreilly

...All star Saturday night currently on, Harris wins the 3 point comp beating Curry...

kmart6

For some reason I stayed up to watch tonights competitions, thought the dunk contest was pretty bad, 3 point was more entertaining but still had some pretty poor shooting.

ButtersSuki

kmart6 wrote: »

For some reason I stayed up to watch tonights competitions, thought the dunk contest was pretty bad, 3 point was more entertaining but still had some pretty poor shooting.

3 point contest is it favourite event of ASW. The final was good, the rest meh.

The dunk contest has been awful for donkeys years.

Hitch2222

ButtersSuki wrote: »

3 point contest is it favourite event of ASW. The final was good, the rest meh.

The dunk contest has been awful for donkeys years.

Aaron Gordon & Zach LaVine rejuvenated the competition a tad but it's not as good.
I'm not a fan of lots of the gimmicks, that jumping over the plane was terrible.
I think a change of format would be interesting. Perhaps they could do a team event either within the NBA or an NBA elite vs pro dunkers

Osmosis Jones

I don't think a format change would do anything, the best dunk contests have been ones with the current format, any time they've tried to change it up it's been so much worse. The big problem to me is that stars aren't participating anymore, most of the greatest dunk contest moments have come from star players (Jordan, Vince, Dominique, Dr. J, Howard), nobody cares about 4 decent first and second year players.

It also seems that 90% of dunks now involve either jumping over a random celebrity from the crowd, or wearing some sort of tribute/throwback jersey.

Hitch2222

Osmosis Jones wrote: »

I don't think a format change would do anything, the best dunk contests have been ones with the current format, any time they've tried to change it up it's been so much worse. The big problem to me is that stars aren't participating anymore, most of the greatest dunk contest moments have come from star players (Jordan, Vince, Dominique, Dr. J, Howard), nobody cares about 4 decent first and second year players.

It also seems that 90% of dunks now involve either jumping over a random celebrity from the crowd, or wearing some sort of tribute/throwback jersey.

Well all dunk contests have essentially been in this format so we have nothing to compare.
The change in format may entice the star players to compete. Perhaps there could be some type of additional contract based incentive to win an award.

Also, in many ways I question what else can players really do, we seem to be relatively close to the peak of human capacity so where the dunks go from here I don't know.

Osmosis Jones

Hitch2222 wrote: »

Well all dunk contests have essentially been in this format so we have nothing to compare.
The change in format may entice the star players to compete. Perhaps there could be some type of additional contract based incentive to win an award.

Also, in many ways I question what else can players really do, we seem to be relatively close to the peak of human capacity so where the dunks go from here I don't know.

They did a "wheel of dunks" thing back years ago and in 2014 they had dunk teams and timers and stuff and both were shìte.

I still think there's more to be seen, 2016 had AG and Lavine pulling out dunks no one had ever seen before.

Also as long as there are guys doing things like this there is still room for NBA players to do more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO9N10UL46o

Osmosis Jones

And as weak as the contest was this is still a fantastic picture

ButtersSuki

Hitch2222 wrote: »

Aaron Gordon & Zach LaVine rejuvenated the competition a tad but it's not as good.
I'm not a fan of lots of the gimmicks, that jumping over the plane was terrible.
I think a change of format would be interesting. Perhaps they could do a team event either within the NBA or an NBA elite vs pro dunkers

That and the Vince Carter years aside the Dunk Contest has been very poor for the last 25+ years. There’s much better and far more creative dunkers out there. I know he divides some but some of the dunks done by the likes of Jordan Kilganon etc., are insane, much better than what you typically see in the NBA Dunk contest. It’s just become the same old same old, and it’s very tired.

Osmosis Jones

Watching the ASG and I can't believe Marv Albert still has a job, he gets so much wrong, won't stop calling KAT Anthony Davis.

jonok28

Next years Dunk Contest could be really good but they need to convince the best dunkers to take part. I'd have:
Zion Williamson
Zach Lavine
Aaron Gordon
Giannis Antetokounmpo.

That would be exciting.

Gwynplaine

I know he's a great player an all, but I just do not like Kevin Durrant.
The dunk contest is a joke at this stage.

ButtersSuki

Bill Simmons on the Dunk contest this morning - it's for kids and middle aged white guys.

He (and Ryen Russillo - who I like) also came down hard on AD, Rich Paul and LeBron on the failed trade and basically said they handed it very badly. Simmons went so far as to give the Lakers a bit of a pass on it and said they probably had very little to do it with in reality as it was primarily a Klutch move and that they (Klutch) judged the whole thing very badly. He did though describe LA as a terrible franchise over the last few years from a management perspective. Hard to argue with that given the evidence.

Lowe Post and Windhorst (again) heavy on the criticism of Klutch and co. I'm surprised with Windhorst given his LeBron connections but fair play he's calling it as he sees it.