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

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

Testimant to Jrue's defense on Lillard.  

[Renegade7]

1 minute ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

6/18 - 7/23 Dame

9/21 - 7/18 McCollum

 

 

Ya, I came in late dealing with the Caps.  

 

I knew they lost the first game, but losing the first two at home is inexcusable.  I smiled a little about the "We're the best backcourt" thing.  I have my feelings, obviously, but end of the day, its about who gets the job done when it matters most.  

 

Right now Portland's backcourt is losing this series for them, that's supposed to be their strength, that's not going to cut it.

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

Wall is a beast, saw that block he had today. Beast, would be nice to see him win a ring. Always liked him. 

[Mr. Sinister]

Chitlins. ?

 

Nope. I'll have the electric chair. 

[Renegade7]

I tried and almost died.

 

I love DeRozan as much as I hate Lowry.  Both they haircut game is f'd up though.  They don't have black barbers in Toronto?

Edited April 18, 2018 by Renegade7

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

I like DeRozan. Lowry is a scrub. 

[Kosher Ham]

@Renegade7 , 

 

The Bulls of old that won 6 rings. Were not a serious threat until the addition of Grant and Pippen. 

I'll give you that Atlanta, Boston and Detroit were a hard road to face. 

Jordan and the Bulls... Folks often forget/dismiss that Jordan in his 63 point game against the Celtics lost. 

 

The addition of Coach Jackson and Tex...paid huge dividends for all of them. 

 

I don't see this Wizards team as one that can knock off Toronto, yet alone face the top teams from the West in a series. 

[Kosher Ham]

@Mr. Sinister , do you think Wade and Shaq could have still won without Jason Williams ( somewhere around 06-07? 

I think he is an under appreciated player for this younger generation. 

 

 

[PeterMP]

15 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

The Noel trade?  Or the MCW trade?  I wouldn't point to either of those trades as instances of Philly getting good value from their draft resources.  They were lousy for a season and traded away an All Star PG and all they came away with for that in the end was the 10th overall pick four years later.  They also wasted the Okafor pick, and may have done the same with Fultz.  I wouldn't call hitting on two high draft picks out of many evidence of some sort of innovative and inevitably successful team building strategy.  And it got their FO fired and replaced.  AND it could have failed utterly and they'd still be uncompetitive right now if they'd gotten the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th pick in 2016 instead of the first.

 

Every team who gets a transcendent #1/#1 has the chance to rapidly improve when they start surrounding him with good players.  Philly is only notable because they sucked so hard for so long and wasted so many other high draft picks before this guy turned out for them.  And even still an awful lot of their projected dominance is resting on the unsteady legs of Embiid.

 

The MCW trade.  Michael Carter Williams is not an All Star.  He's not even a starter.  How is turning a guy that isn't a starter into lottery pick not a good move?  The waiting was actually a benefit for them.  It allowed them not to have too many young guys on the team at once, assess the current state of the team, and make moves accordingly.  It gave them flexibility to see these players together and make decisions based on that knowing that they had assets that they could fuel into another round of rebuilding if they had to.

 

The fundamental thing that Hienke and the Sixers understand is that you are going to have bad picks.  It is unavoidable.  That's why you have to accumulate assets.  It isn't enough to simply take the assets that you are given from being bad, you have acquire other ones so that you have lots of chances to get it right.

 

It isn't like they took Okafor well before or after his expected draft position.  It just turned out that he either has no clue how to, no interest in doing it, or has health problems that prevent him from playing anything other than awful defense at an NBA level (it isn't clear to me, if he's just really bad at defense, just doesn't care, or his knees really are that bad that they've wrecked his ability to move and jump).  That's a function of drafting 19-20 year olds.

 

The difference between the Wizards and the Sixers is that missing on one pick (Jan Vesely) essentially ruined their chances of ever contending for a title unless they get extremely lucky elsewhere in acquiring a player (e.g. they get a guy in the late 1st round or 2nd round that turns into an all star caliber player) where they don't have many picks to even get lucky with that sort of thing.   What Hinkie did was help ensure that wasn't going to happen to the Sixers because they have enough picks that they can get unlucky and miss with picks, and still have more picks in the pipeline to recover.

[PeterMP]

10 hours ago, Warhead36 said:

The process worked because they happened to get the #1 pick when Simmons/Embiid were there. Those could have easily been Kwame Brown or Anthony Bennett.

 

They got busts.  They got Noel and Okafor.  At some point in time, you have to look at the probability.  The key thing is to have enough picks and the capability to acquire picks that you can be good despite that.  Again, the key thing that Hinkie understood was that bad picks are going to happen.  You have to have a rebuild that can be successful even with (a reasonable number of) bad picks.

Edited April 18, 2018 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

5 hours ago, Kosher Ham said:

@Renegade7 , 

 

The Bulls of old that won 6 rings. Were not a serious threat until the addition of Grant and Pippen. 

I'll give you that Atlanta, Boston and Detroit were a hard road to face. 

Jordan and the Bulls... Folks often forget/dismiss that Jordan in his 63 point game against the Celtics lost. 

 

The addition of Coach Jackson and Tex...paid huge dividends for all of them. 

 

I don't see this Wizards team as one that can knock off Toronto, yet alone face the top teams from the West in a series. 

 

For clarification, are you saying we can't win this series, or that our current core is pointless and no matter what we add to it can't compete for a ring?  Those are two completely different questions that deserve different answers.

 

I agree, Jordan could not do it by himself, he needed help.  I believe in our core, I don't believe in our coach or our front office to finish building around our core to compete for rings.  That doesn't mean our core is useless and we need to start over.  We'll just run into the same problem again 5 years from now (and that's if we come close to what we already have, since the draft doesn't always work, we got lucky).

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, PeterMP said:

 

The MCW trade.  Michael Carter Williams is not an All Star.  He's not even a starter.  How is turning a guy that isn't a starter into lottery pick not a good move?  The waiting was actually a benefit for them.  It allowed them not to have too many young guys on the team at once, assess the current state of the team, and make moves accordingly.  It gave them flexibility to see these players together and make decisions based on that knowing that they had assets that they could fuel into another round of rebuilding if they had to.

 

The fundamental thing that Hienke and the Sixers understand is that you are going to have bad picks.  It is unavoidable.  That's why you have to accumulate assets.  It isn't enough to simply take the assets that you are given from being bad, you have acquire other ones so that you have lots of chances to get it right.

 

It isn't like they took Okafor well before or after his expected draft position.  It just turned out that he either has no clue how to, no interest in doing it, or has health problems that prevent him from playing anything other than awful defense at an NBA level (it isn't clear to me, if he's just really bad at defense, just doesn't care, or his knees really are that bad that they've wrecked his ability to move and jump).  That's a function of drafting 19-20 year olds.

 

The difference between the Wizards and the Sixers is that missing on one pick (Jan Vesely) essentially ruined their chances of ever contending for a title unless they get extremely lucky elsewhere in acquiring a player (e.g. they get a guy in the late 1st round or 2nd round that turns into an all star caliber player) where they don't have many picks to even get lucky with that sort of thing.   What Hinkie did was help ensure that wasn't going to happen to the Sixers because they have enough picks that they can get unlucky and miss with picks, and still have more picks in the pipeline to recover.

 

I meant Jrue Holiday.  He was an AS and they traded him for Nerlens Noel on draft night.

 

Getting unlucky with picks and having them not pan out as well as you hoped is one thing.  Drafting pure centers with consecutive with 6th, 3rd, and 3rd picks thereby ensuring that two will bust is flat out stupid, wasteful drafting.  It was clear evidence that Hinkie was building with zero plan beyond accumulating draft picks and the result was he shuffled talent, got nowhere, and was ultimately fired and replaced by someone who immediately started filling in the roster around a core foundation of two guys and instituting a culture of competitiveness.

 

The difference between the 76ers and the Wizards is draft luck and Jan Vesely didn't make or break our rebuild.  If Milwaukee or Cleveland aren't fools and take Embiid (the no-brainer #1 that year) and Philly had been forced to settle for Wiggins or Parker, then they would be the Wizards.  Or if they had moved down instead of staying at 1 in 2016 and had to settle for Jaylen Brown or Brandon Ingram, then they would be the Wizards.  Conversely, if the Wizards had gotten lucky in 2012 and moved up from 2 to 1 instead of down to 3 OR if New Orleans and Charlotte had been stupid like Milwaukee and Cleveland were and Anthony Davis fell to three, then they would be Philly and they would be playing the Warriors in the Finals last year and this year.

 

All of the bull**** branding about processes and tanking aside, Philly's projected success entirely comes down to the fact that they got lucky and got two transcendent talents, one in 2014 and one in 2016, and it assumes that they will reach their potential together, in Philly.  There is nothing innovative about this.

[Mr. Sinister]

5 hours ago, Kosher Ham said:

@Mr. Sinister , do you think Wade and Shaq could have still won without Jason Williams ( somewhere around 06-07? 

I think he is an under appreciated player for this younger generation. 

 

 

 

Who knows. Sort of operated like them hockey line things, with a lot of guys putting in work, but he was probably our 3rd or 4th best player at times, during that stretch. Could get his own shot, get to the line, good 3 pt shooter, could create for other players, etc. Had some big games for us. But then he would miss like a week with injuries. But when he was right, and locked in ,  we were definitely better. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

The Blazers will win this thing in 7 somehow.

 

Why do I think that? It's the first round. We don't know the path we are going to take to go chalk. But we are going to go chalk.

 

The NBA first round is like the NCAA tourney if the higher seeds won every game every year and somehow we kept watching.

[Mr. Sinister]

I want to say that this isn't curtains, because as badly as Lillard and McCollum have struggled they still had a chance in the end to make something happen.

 

But they are getting worn out. The Blazers kept pushing the ball up and down the court but by the end of the game, they were gassed, and Jrue and co. just kept putting it on em. They showed little resistance on any rebounds, loose balls, etc. I don't see how they can play any other way. Rondo, for all the **** he's gotten over the course of his career, is a master tactician at the PG position. Any other style would likely play to NO's advantage anyway.

 

All this supposed to magically improve on the road? Even with a split, they really gonna win 3 straight? This series is over. Just a matter of how many games.

[CrypticVillain]

It's over. It won't be a sweep, but it's over.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

 

All this supposed to magically improve on the road? Even with a split, they really gonna win 3 straight? This series is over. Just a matter of how many games.

 

And now they are going to win in 6. I hope you're proud of yourself.

[PeterMP]

56 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I meant Jrue Holiday.  He was an AS and they traded him for Nerlens Noel on draft night.

 

Getting unlucky with picks and having them not pan out as well as you hoped is one thing.  Drafting pure centers with consecutive with 6th, 3rd, and 3rd picks thereby ensuring that two will bust is flat out stupid, wasteful drafting.  It was clear evidence that Hinkie was building with zero plan beyond accumulating draft picks and the result was he shuffled talent, got nowhere, and was ultimately fired and replaced by someone who immediately started filling in the roster around a core foundation of two guys and instituting a culture of competitiveness.

 

The difference between the 76ers and the Wizards is draft luck and Jan Vesely didn't make or break our rebuild.  If Milwaukee or Cleveland aren't fools and take Embiid (the no-brainer #1 that year) and Philly had been forced to settle for Wiggins or Parker, then they would be the Wizards.  Or if they had moved down instead of staying at 1 in 2016 and had to settle for Jaylen Brown or Brandon Ingram, then they would be the Wizards.  Conversely, if the Wizards had gotten lucky in 2012 and moved up from 2 to 1 instead of down to 3 OR if New Orleans and Charlotte had been stupid like Milwaukee and Cleveland were and Anthony Davis fell to three, then they would be Philly and they would be playing the Warriors in the Finals last year and this year.

 

All of the bull**** branding about processes and tanking aside, Philly's projected success entirely comes down to the fact that they got lucky and got two transcendent talents, one in 2014 and one in 2016, and it assumes that they will reach their potential together, in Philly.  There is nothing innovative about this.

 

Noel and Embiid both had serious injuries, and there were questions whether either one would play for very long in the NBA.  Even in this thread, there are people questioning whether they are going to continue to do well based on Embiid's long term health.  Embiid didn't even play Okafor's rookie year and Okafor had plenty of playing time last year with Embiid on minute restrictions and then ending his season early with the knee issues.  If they had taken Porzingas instead of Okafor, he would have shown enough that rookie year to see they had an NBA caliber player and to figure things out (either play a twin towers lineup or move one of them).  There is no evidence that taking them ensured anything.  Noel appeared to at least be a useful player when he left the Sixers.

 

Jrue Holiday made one All Star game as a reserve.

 

But here's what the Sixers did.  They turned Holiday and a guy that never really played in the NBA into Noel, the Pelicans 2014 1st round pick, and a 2nd round pick.  With that 1st round pick, they took Elfrid Payton, whom they turned in Dario Saric, who is at least a useful NBA player (maybe not as good as Jrue, but still useful), a 2nd round pick, and another first round pick from Orlando.

 

They turned Holiday, into Saric, a 2nd round, and another first round pick.

 

(With the 2nd round pick, the next year they take Guillermo Hernangómez, whom the turn into 2 more future 2nd picks (you see the accumulation of picks in case the current set of players don't work out).)

 

And then the other thing that trading Holiday does is it allows them to draft and show case MCW, which they then turn into the Lakers pick.

 

That trade was a win for the Sixers.

 

The fundamental point you are missing is that every team has bust.  They had a big one in Okafor and no, he didn't bust because they had Noel and Embiid.  He bust because he can't play functional NBA defense.  The key is to have the assets to over come that bust.  The Sixers do/did.  The Wizards didn't.

 

(If I were a Sixers fan, the tank wouldn't bother me at all.  The thing that would be upsetting is that they are now selling some of those 2nd round picks rather than pushing them back even further into the future.  Given that Embiid and Simmons appear as if they are going to work out (and Saric and Covington (and even the like of McConnell has a future an backup NBA point guard).  They were really set up a decade+ run where the could trade pick and collect 2nd round picks and then use them to move up and around the 1st round occasionally and bring in some young players.  Ownership has forsaken setting up being a truly dominant team for the extended future for lining their pockets (more).)

[Mr. Sinister]

46 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

And now they are going to win in 6. I hope you're proud of yourself.

 

Proud? My playoff pick'em was torpedoed immediately, and LeBron is probably going to slam dunk Lance Stephenson  into a nuclear shadow tonight and crush the Pacers by 20, eliminating the very last thing I had to look forward to. And even if that somehow doesn't happen, I still rooted for Lance Stephenson.

 

I have nothing to be proud of. ?

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Here's the problem with "The Process."

 

There is no process. It was simply a gathering of assets, which is exactly what Ainge and Morey and most smart GMs do, except the Sixers' approach to gathering assets was "Flush five seasons down the toilet and hope we get lucky." What Ainge and Morey and even Pat Riley do is largely repeatable.

 

Riley looked at the free agent landscape and made sure that he had all the money in the world available when 2010 came.

 

Ainge refuses to put any sentiment on his players. He trade Pierce and Garnett without a moment's hesitation when he saw that they no longer had a long-term future with the Celtics. He shipped off Isaiah in a frankly brutal manner. "Thank you for two historic seasons and possibly crippling yourself for me. There will be no reward at all."

 

Morey actually creates assets seemingly out of thin air. We all know that he's going to trade Capela in two years for a lottery pick and Capela is never going to be good again, right?

 

I guess you can repeat "The Process" but you just may end up the Sacramento Kings instead of the Sixers.

[PeterMP]

9 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Here's the problem with "The Process."

 

There is no process. It was simply a gathering of assets, which is exactly what Ainge and Morey and most smart GMs do, except the Sixers' approach to gathering assets was "Flush five seasons down the toilet and hope we get lucky." What Ainge and Morey and even Pat Riley do is largely repeatable.

 

Riley looked at the free agent landscape and made sure that he had all the money in the world available when 2010 came.

 

Ainge refuses to put any sentiment on his players. He trade Pierce and Garnett without a moment's hesitation when he saw that they no longer had a long-term future with the Celtics. He shipped off Isaiah in a frankly brutal manner. "Thank you for two historic seasons and possibly crippling yourself for me. There will be no reward at all."

 

Morey actually creates assets seemingly out of thin air. We all know that he's going to trade Capela in two years for a lottery pick and Capela is never going to be good again, right?

 

I guess you can repeat "The Process" but you just may end up the Sacramento Kings instead of the Sixers.

 

The Kings are the antithesis of what the Sixers did (which is why the Sixers had the ability to swap with the Kings) and still have a Kings (or Lakers) first round pick coming.

 

If you are making that comparison, you have a bad understanding of what the Sixers did.

 

Ainge got lucky.  The Nets were trying to make a splash to push the development of the stadium in Brooklyn.  They mortgaged their future (to the Celtics) for a longer term potentially better economic out come (a stadium in Brooklyn).

Edited April 18, 2018 by PeterMP

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

12 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

The Kings are the antithesis of what the Sixers did (which is why the Sixers had the ability to swap with the Kings) and still have a Kings (or Lakers) first round pick coming.

 

If you are making that comparison, you have a bad understanding of what the Sixers did.

 

Ainge got lucky.  The Nets were trying to make a splash to push the development of the stadium in Brooklyn.  They mortgaged their future (to the Celtics) for a longer term potentially better economic out come (a stadium in Brooklyn).

 

The point is that just being bad alone is not an approach.

 

Ainge got lucky in that he found a team willing to overpay. But it wasn't luck that he was willing to part with two beloved legendary players in that way. He could have been Dallas that held onto Dirk until the end of time for purely sentimental reasons. It also wasn't luck that he didn't trade them for a bag of donuts like so many other teams do. He's also very tight with the assets once he gets them. He had a lot of chances to trade one of those Nets' picks and did not do it until Kyrie made it clear that he wanted out.

 

Here's the thing about the NBA. A superstar eventually always wants out. Jerry West made a career out of that. Ainge is following suit.

 

By the way, the Sixers seem to have it together but this is still a team built around a social-media lover who has had several terrifying injuries, a point guard/forward that can't shoot, and a young guard who apparently had some kind of mental breakdown in the off-season. I like their future, but I wouldn't exactly bet my life on it. We've seen this movie before with the Wizards and the Magic and the Thunder and any other number of teams.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Lombardi's_kid_brother

[PeterMP]

@Lombardi's_kid_brother

 

The other thing is what Riley did is also not really sustainable and more to do with luck.

 

It isn't often that a HOF player ends up with the 5th pick and that player becomes good friends with the best active player and is able to recruit him to your team.

 

That sort of thing isn't sustainable.

 

1 minute ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

The point is that just being bad alone is not an approach.

 

Ainge got lucky in that he found a team willing to overpay. But it wasn't luck that he was willing to part with two beloved legendary players in that way. He could have been Dallas that held onto Dirk until the end of time for purely sentimental reasons. It also wasn't luck that he didn't trade them for a bag of donuts like so many other teams do. He's also very tight with the assets once he gets them. He had a lot of chances to trade one of those Nets' picks and did not do it until Kyrie made it clear that he wanted out.

 

Here's the thing about the NBA. A superstar eventually always wants out. Jerry West made a career out of that. Ainge is following suit.

 

By the way, the Sixers seem to have it together but this is still a team built around a social-media lover who has had several terrifying injuries, a point guard/forward that can't shoot, and a young guard who apparently had some kind of mental breakdown in the off-season. I like their future, but I wouldn't exactly bet my life on it. We've seen this movie before with the Wizards and the Magic and the Thunder and any other number of teams.

 

The point is that the Sixers approach was not just being bad.  It was actively trading for (future) assets.  It was things like the Jrue Holiday trade, and the trade for Nik Stautakus.  

 

The Thunder and the Magic both competed for a championship, and the difference between all of those cases is the Sixers have more picks coming (though again, managements selling of 2nd round picks last year hurt that).  This version of the rebuild could fail and if they stuck with Hinkie's vision, they still would have been okay.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Riley's done it twice in Miami. And he came from a team that did it three times in the Lakers.

 

If this version had failed, we would be in something like Year 7 of the process. Any approach that takes ten years to implement is a bad approach.

 

Morey rebuilt the Rockets from a Championship contender with Yao to a Championship contender with Harden while never going below .500. Ainge did it with one bad season.

 

My biggest problem with this is that they sold tickets during the Process years. If you are going to lose intentionally, make the games free.

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Riley's done it twice in Miami. And he came from a team that did it three times in the Lakers.

 

If this version had failed, we would be in something like Year 7 of the process. Any approach that takes ten years to implement is a bad approach.

 

Morey rebuilt the Rockets from a Championship contender with Yao to a Championship contender with Harden while never going below .500. Ainge did it with one bad season.

 

My biggest problem with this is that they sold tickets during the Process years. If you are going to lose intentionally, make the games free.

 

I don't think the Rockets with Yao Ming were a championship contender.  Did they even ever make it out of the 2nd round or finish as a top 3 seed?

 

The Lakers historically had an advantage of being in LA and that being a place that people want to play.  Certainly, I think everybody can agree the likes of Shaq and Kobe weren't forcing trades to Philly or the large majority of other NBA cities.

 

With Mourning, the Heat made one conference finals.  (I'm not sure if you were counting the Wade-Shaq and then Wade-Lebron has 2 different times or whether Mourning Heat as one and Wade as one).

 

To me, Reilly is the argument of "the process".  He's a clearly competent person that's ended up in what should be places that are attractive to free agents (NYC and then Miami), and other then despite the fact that he got lucky and got a no doubt HOF player with the 5th pick and that the player turned into good friends with the best active player, he's got two championships.

 

It isn't hard to argue that if somebody else had taken Wade (drafted him 1-4 where he certainly should have been) or Wade would have had a major injury, in all of Reilly's time time NYC and Miami, he'd have 0 championships and one championship appearance.  If I'm in that situation, there's no way I'm leaving my success to that sort of dumb luck.  That's what the process is about.

 

But saying, I'm going to be pretty bad for on year, get lucky and get a sure thing HOF player with 5th pick, and then that player ends up being friends with best active player is NOT sustainable.  That's lucky.

 

**EDIT**
Looking at it, it is even worse.  Riley isn't even there the year they draft Wade.  They get bad.  Riley quits.  Pfund is running the team.  SVG is coaching.  They get good again.  And the Riley comes back.

 

The sustainability of Riley is that he has been able to pick good landing spots.

Edited April 18, 2018 by PeterMP