***2021-2022 NBA Season Thread***

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

 

[PeterMP]

9 hours ago, Hersh said:

 

Why do you think that is? Seriously, and this isn't aimed at you, in general people think officiating is easy because we see a certain angle on TV or from the stand. However, it's much tougher being on the field of play, making split second judgments and having a limited number of officials trying to cover a lot of players. Officials don't have the luxury of replay and slow-mo and if they called every foul or every hold or every it of contact on pass plays or basketball screens, games would be unwatchable. 

 

The league is rolling in so much money, they could easily afford to add one more ref to each game, and I think that would help.  I've always believed that they should have a ref that stands in the back court.  That person would have a different perspective and be in a better position to make calls on fast breaks.

 

The other things is actually calling every foul.  That's not true over time.  The players/coaches would adjust.  You'd have to make it a point of emphasis over the off seasons and pre-season, be consistent with it through the season (and playoffs), and be willing to foul people out.  There used to be a lot less contact in the game in the early 1980s, and it wasn't because the players care less or anything.  It was because the refs called  more fouls.

 

Those two things don't happen simply because the league doesn't want them to and that's the NBA's fault.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

19 hours ago, Destino said:

By this standard every team in the NBA should trade away their stars right now for draft picks.  Why bother trying at all?  Just the Warriors and 29 teams trusting the process. 

 

 

John Wall is 27 and has a game that is probably not going to age terribly well.

 

Ask McQueen if the Wizards should trade Wall since they can't currently beat the Warriors and most likely can't beat the Cavs.

[Destino]

4 hours ago, PeterMP said:

There used to be a lot less contact in the game in the early 1980s, and it wasn't because the players care less or anything.  It was because the refs called  more fouls.

Are you sure it's not the new NBA offense mixed with the verticality rule?  With players told to shoot only at the rim and three, offensive players are less likely to avoid contact by merely pulling up for a jump shot.  Defenders at the rim are all jumping to avoid blocking fouls, and offensive players are jumping into them to get shots off and draw a foul call.  That could explain an increase in contact. 

[Renegade7]

39 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

John Wall is 27 and has a game that is probably not going to age terribly well.

 

Ask McQueen if the Wizards should trade Wall since they can't currently beat the Warriors and most likely can't beat the Cavs.

Why do you say that?  There may be a point where he can't regularly blow past people like he does now, but he's still one of the better passing PGs in the league.  If he can improve his three point shooting, should be a wash versus being ineffective in his 30s.

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, Destino said:

Are you sure it's not the new NBA offense mixed with the verticality rule?  With players told to shoot only at the rim and three, offensive players are less likely to avoid contact by merely pulling up for a jump shot.  Defenders at the rim are all jumping to avoid blocking fouls, and offensive players are jump into them to get shots off and draw a foul call.  That could explain an increase in contact. 

 

There was even more contact allowed in the early 1990s (think Riley Knicks and Miami) before the focus on the rim and three.  They could certainly clean up the contact even more (and if needed, the could change the verticality rule).

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Going Commando]

2 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

John Wall is 27 and has a game that is probably not going to age terribly well.

 

Ask McQueen if the Wizards should trade Wall since they can't currently beat the Warriors and most likely can't beat the Cavs.

 

I've been considering it.  I'd also consider trading him 1:1 for Davis.

 

It's a different situation from Boston's though because:

 

1 - John is on a DPVE contract.  He's not easy to trade, especially not to a team that would have the #1/#1.  The necessary ballast is going to make it extremely hard to work out a deal unless that team has a ton of cap room and can make an unbalanced trade.

 

2 - John's a lot better than Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, and Jayson Tatum are, and he's locked up long term.  He's a transcendent talent and a real PG that can take a Scott Brooks paint by numbers offense and turn it into an upper echelon one even without playing with another All Star, while also being a disruptive force on D.  He's harder to give up on than what Boston has.

 

3 - John is the best player from his draft class and the best player left in the East taken from 2004 to 2013, when Giannis was picked.  He's younger than Curry and Durant, and has played far fewer minutes than Durant.  There might still be a year or two from when Golden State's dynasty ends and before Giannis/Embiid/Porzingis take over the conference where you can contend with Wall.  A similar window to what the Pistons got between Celtics and Bulls dynasties.

 

4 - While Boston has no one asset that is more valuable than Wall, they have a collection of assets with cheap cap numbers that are far easier to package together and deal.  You can't trade Wall + Otto to anyone, or Wall + Beal.  It'd be trying to move 45 million in cap commitments.  Boston can hit this reset button that allows them to rebuild immediately, and likely do so while keeping at least one of Hayward/Irving/Tatum.  Potentially two.  And they'd still have Horford.

 

If Beal or Porter could get a deal for Ayton done, then I would pull the trigger on it.  Especially Porter.  But I don't see them being enough to get Ayton.

Edited January 8, 2018 by stevemcqueen1

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

John Wall is 27 and has a game that is probably not going to age terribly well.

 

Ask McQueen if the Wizards should trade Wall since they can't currently beat the Warriors and most likely can't beat the Cavs.

 

I argued like 2 years ago that they should trade Wall and start a re-build (and people said I was crazy), but I agree with Steve above now.  They are too locked in with the max to Beal and Porter.  They may as well ride Wall out and have an era of "good" Wizards basketaball and maybe they get lucky somehow and get a really good player late in the draft, or an unexpectedly good  FA/trade, or there is a post-season where there are some injuries and they can get lucky.

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Going Commando]

I don't see the Wizards realistically being in the Ayton game.  The Lakers and Magic might be willing to work out a deal with us if they get #1.  Same for the Grizzlies, although a Wall trade doesn't make sense for them so they'd probably have to take a haircut in value for Ayton by building a deal around Beal.  But I don't really see the Hawks, Bulls, Kings, or Mavs having a natural deal for us.

 

I think our true go for broke move is a 1:1 swap of Wall and Anthony Davis.  But the issue for New Orleans is going to be that impressively stupid Jrue Holiday contract.  Whatever, they can figure out how to clean up that mistake later.

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Why do you say that?  There may be a point where he can't regularly blow past people like he does now, but he's still one of the better passing PGs in the league.  If he can improve his three point shooting, should be a wash versus being ineffective in his 30s.

 

1.  Offense, especially 1/2 court offense, is only 1/2 the game.  A slower and less explosive Wall also means fewer steals, which means few transition baskets.  It also means he gets beat more and is less valuable as a help defender, which is especially problematic as the Wizards don't have a good rim protector (unless they happen to luck into one somehow, which would require luck).  There are plenty of cases where you see players that can still be + offensive players (partly because they are very good shooters and passers) that are unplayable because of defense (not claiming that's going to happen to Wall magically in his early 30s, but there will be a decline).

 

2.  It isn't at all clear if he will become a better shooter, especially as it isn't like he's bad now.  He's just not elite.  If you can sit here and say in 3 years Wall is going to be a 40% 3 point shooter, yeah that changes things, but that's a gamble.

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Predicto]

You think you can get Anthony Davis for John Wall in a 1:1 trade?   

 

I'll have some of whatever you are smoking.  

[PeterMP]

And just to add, with Celtics, I can see 50-50.  Right now, there are too many variables in play to really consider (Do the Celtics even get the Lakers pick?  Where is it?  How much to get up to  #1?), and then there are judgements that have to be made (How good is Kyrie really?  How good is Tatum going to be and how fast is he going to get there?  How is Heyward going to come back and how fast?)

 

There's just too much there to make a good decision.

On 1/7/2018 at 1:33 AM, stevemcqueen1 said:

Peak LeBron is better than Peak Durant and the totality of LeBron's career is better than Durant's, but right now Durant is better than LeBron.

 

LeBron is a masterful offensive player and he's having a great season on that end plus he's one of the best leaders in the league.  But so is Durant, and right now, Durant is a much better defensive player than LeBron.  It used to be the other way around, but LeBron isn't a consistently good defensive player any more and defense is the team weakness for the Cavs.  Meanwhile Durant grew into a high end defensive player and the Warriors are awesome on that end.

 

Durant has about five seasons less mileage on him than LeBron because he's missed a year's worth of games, and he's about where LeBron was in 2012--at his absolute peak.  Not quite as good as LeBron was in that moment, but close.  And playing on a far better team.  Durant will probably start a gentle decline like LeBron did in the next year or two.  He'll be 30 and have around 34,000 minutes on his legs.  That's about the point LeBron began declining (that final season in Miami), and the first and most dramatic sign of his decline was in how he went from being a first team All NBA defender to a mediocre one that season.  He could no longer compete full tilt on that end.

 

I'm not going to get bogged down in this, but Lebron isn't a consistently great defensive player because he has to put so much effort in on the offensive end.  He coast on defense so that he can play offense, and it isn't like the Cavs would be a good offensive team without Lebron being the focus on the offense.

 

And you have to pick where you have to expend your energy, it makes much more sense to do it on offense where you can be assured (against good teams) to be much more of a factor in the plays.  Good teams can't scheme you out of the play when you are on offense the way they can on defense.

 

The interesting thing will be assuming IT continues to be healthy, play more, and a real factor on offense, how does Lebron shift his energy and what does that do to the Cavs defense?

 

But IMO anybody that can sit here and say Durant is clearly the better player (as in the Cavs would be better with Durant) is crazy.  Lebron still does too much every possession to say that.

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Going Commando]

16 minutes ago, Predicto said:

You think you can get Anthony Davis for John Wall in a 1:1 trade?   

 

I'll have some of whatever you are smoking.  

 

I'm not sure the Wizards say yes to that deal.

[Renegade7]

52 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

1.  Offense, especially 1/2 court offense, is only 1/2 the game.  A slower and less explosive Wall also means fewer steals, which means few transition baskets.  It also means he gets beat more and is less valuable as a help defender, which is especially problematic as the Wizards don't have a good rim protector (unless they happen to luck into one somehow, which would require luck).  There are plenty of cases where you see players that can still be + offensive players (partly because they are very good shooters and passers) that are unplayable because of defense (not claiming that's going to happen to Wall magically in his early 30s, but there will be a decline).

 

2.  It isn't at all clear if he will become a better shooter, especially as it isn't like he's bad now.  He's just not elite.  If you can sit here and say in 3 years Wall is going to be a 40% 3 point shooter, yeah that changes things, but that's a gamble.

 

I think saying "there will be a decline" is very different from saying "his game won't age well". 

 

Even if he does slow down, it will take a while before he's not still one of the fastest guards in the NBA.  I mean, he's already shooting .342 (finished as high as .351 twice) from three, so I can totally see him hovering around .400 at some point in his career before his eventual decline.  I wish his stats showed a steady increase versus going up and down, but his shooting inside the arc has improved over his career in a way that I see that as less of a gamble then trading him away and see if we can somehow be better without him.

 

I'd be terrified of trading Wall, this team is completely dependent on him, built around his skillset in terms of guys running with him in fast break and sitting in the corner for his assists, and we've yet to have a coach be able to consistently run an offense without him.  Our bench has improved from a ball movement standpoint, but this isn't the first year I've seen us borderline inept with Wall injured.  If we let what the Warriors have built force us to get desperate the whole thing could blow up in our face.

[Destino]

13 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I think saying "there will be a decline" is very different from saying "his game won't age well".

His game relies on athleticism more than skill.  Those sorts of players do no age as well as skilled players.  Old guys can shoot, old guys can not generally out run defenders to the rim.  If Wall is to stay as effective he'll need to learn to score in ways that are not so dependent on his ability to storm the rim as he does now.   

[Predicto]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I'm not sure the Wizards say yes to that deal.

 

True.  There are a lot of genuinely stupid front office people in the NBA.  Ernie Grunfeld might be one of them.

[Renegade7]

7 minutes ago, Destino said:

His game relies on athleticism more than skill.  Those sorts of players do no age as well as skilled players.  Old guys can shoot, old guys can not generally out run defenders to the rim.  If Wall is to stay as effective he'll need to learn to score in ways that are not so dependent on his ability to storm the rim as he does now.   

I can see where you're coming from with this, just adamant about his passing ability keeping him relevant even if he does start to slow down from a quickness standpoint (which I still believe is going to stay elite for a while).  Getting older will effect his scoring ability if he doesn't improve his shooting, but his passing game is pure skill.

[Destino]

8 minutes ago, Predicto said:

True.  There are a lot of genuinely stupid front office people in the NBA.  Ernie Grunfeld might be one of them.

That's very kind and generous of you Predicto. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I wish I felt about my wife the way McQueen feels about John Wall.

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I think saying "there will be a decline" is very different from saying "his game won't age well". 

 

Even if he does slow down, it will take a while before he's not still one of the fastest guards in the NBA.  I mean, he's already shooting .342 (finished as high as .351 twice) from three, so I can totally see him hovering around .400 at some point in his career before his eventual decline.  I wish his stats showed a steady increase versus going up and down, but his shooting inside the arc has improved over his career in a way that I see that as less of a gamble then trading him away and see if we can somehow be better without him.

 

I'd be terrified of trading Wall, this team is completely dependent on him, built around his skillset in terms of guys running with him in fast break and sitting in the corner for his assists, and we've yet to have a coach be able to consistently run an offense without him.  Our bench has improved from a ball movement standpoint, but this isn't the first year I've seen us borderline inept with Wall injured.  If we let what the Warriors have built force us to get desperate the whole thing could blow up in our face.

 

Okay, but his game relies heavily on his speed as compared to other characteristics.  He's a good defensive player because he's very quick and fast.  That he'll lose over time.  Other people are good defensive players because they are long (have abnormally long arms).  That isn't something that they lose as they age.  Those people will age better.

 

Shooting within the arc is as much decision making as it is actually being a good shooter, but other than his first few years (when his 3pt% shooting was also awaful), he seems to have reached a plateau too in terms of general shooting.  He's just up and down.  2013-2014, he was a better shooter 16ft-3 point then he is this year.

 

It isn't just the Warriors.  There is no real reason to believe any time soon the Wizards are jumping over the Cavs or the Celtics in their own conference and that's ignoring whoever will come out of the West if the Warriors do slip.

 

And yes, if the team trades him, it is going to be bad, but that would be the point.  You have a team that on the current track is unlikely to win a championship and you are going to have to go backwards to go forward to win one. 

 

I've said this before, but if you are going to try to do a normal rebuild (not accumulate draft picks through taking or trading players) you can't get nothing out of a 6th pick unless you are going to get very lucky somewhere else.  The Vesely pick has killed the Wizards.  From the minute it became clear he was going to be essentially worthless, they were going to have to get lucky in order to win a championship during this rebuild and that hasn't really happened.

 

Now again, it is too late to do anything about that.  There is no good way out of this track now so they might as well let it play out.  The time to do something was 2 years ago when Wall was younger and before the commitments to Beal and Porter were made.

 

(If you are the Wizards, you have to start to look at players as FA and trade options where you can get lucky.  People that for some reason haven't seemed to work out.  I've Noel's name come up in the Wizards thread.  I really don't know what happened to him, but that's somebody I'd look at if I was the Wizards.  Noel seemed like he was on a trajectory to be a DPOY candidate and now he's fallen off a cliff.  Can you figure out what went wrong and get him back on track?

 

The problem is if you take those sorts of gambles and they go bad, they hurt your ability to be very good (which the Wizards are now).)

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Going Commando]

2 hours ago, Predicto said:

 

True.  There are a lot of genuinely stupid front office people in the NBA.  Ernie Grunfeld might be one of them.

 

I'm not sure I make that deal.  Having a star at PG > a star at PF and Davis misses 20 games a year.

[Bozo the kKklown]

3 hours ago, PeterMP said:

I'm not going to get bogged down in this, but Lebron isn't a consistently great defensive player because he has to put so much effort in on the offensive end.  He coast on defense so that he can play offense, and it isn't like the Cavs would be a good offensive team without Lebron being the focus on the offense.

If you say so.

 

I say dude is 33 years old and can't defend like he used too.

3 hours ago, PeterMP said:

But IMO anybody that can sit here and say Durant is clearly the better player (as in the Cavs would be better with Durant) is crazy.  Lebron still does too much every possession to say that.

Would the Warriors be better with Lebron?

[Going Commando]

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

Noel seemed like he was on a trajectory to be a DPOY candidate and now he's fallen off a cliff.  Can you figure out what went wrong and get him back on track?

 

I'm the Noel booster in that thread.  I think he'd be a great fit for us, and that he no longer fits well in Dallas.  Salah Mejri took his spot in the rotation.  Truth be told, Mejri is probably better and Carlisle definitely trusts him more.  Noel is probably always going to be a tweener whereas Mejri is a true center.  Noel's hand injury is also pretty serious, he couldn't play even if Carlisle wanted to play him.

 

One of the issues with Noel though is I think the Mavs lost his Bird Rights when he signed his qualifiying offer this summer.  Under the cap, I think Bird Rights reset when you sign a new deal, and because he'll have only played for the Mavs for two seasons when he hits FA this summer, a team that trades for him before this deadline won't get any Bird Rights transferring with him.  That means he could very well be a short term rental.  And he's not even healthy right now.  Another issue: the Wizards are pretty far over the cap right now.  We might have only the MLE available this summer.  It's going to be hard to retain Noel without Bird Rights and without making moves to clear up space if he is able to resuscitate his market value via a change of scenery.

 

I think the player fits, but the money might not.

[PeterMP]

11 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

Would the Warriors be better with Lebron?

 

I'm certainly not sure they'd be worse.

 

(We went through this already looking at things like catch and shoot stats and the like and am not doing it again.)

Edited January 8, 2018 by PeterMP

[Going Commando]

4 hours ago, PeterMP said:

And just to add, with Celtics, I can see 50-50.  Right now, there are too many variables in play to really consider (Do the Celtics even get the Lakers pick?  Where is it?  How much to get up to  #1?), and then there are judgements that have to be made (How good is Kyrie really?  How good is Tatum going to be and how fast is he going to get there?  How is Heyward going to come back and how fast?)

 

There's just too much there to make a good decision.

 

This is a reasonable take.  I was working on the assumption that the Lakers picked 2-5.  But the absolute earliest you can determine whether or not this trade is worthwhile is after the lottery ceremony.

 

By that point you'll have a season of Kyrie and Tatum to evaluate, you'll have a good idea of the value of the prospects from 2-5, and you'll get a feel for the playoff ceiling of this construction.

 

The team that wins the Ayton sweepstakes might not be willing to trade him for any return though.  Philly and Utah might.  Chicago is a little front court heavy too but I think they'd pick him.  For everyone else, Ayton is a no-brainer.  He'd be a God-Send for the Lakers and Cavs and Hawks and Mavericks.