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

[Bozo the kKklown]

No chance Golden State loses to Boston in a 7 game series. 

 

 

 

 

But Boston's defense was really impressive on him. The biggest thing is that LeBron was guarded 1v1 until they collapsed on him in the paint.

2 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Golden State versus anyone is always the same story: They always have one more horse than you.

 

I don't think this is over by any stretch. I thought it would go to GSW 1-1, but Game 2 being a "must win" is not ideal. Houston's second-tier guys played the way second-tier guys usually play on the road. Houston can beat GSW, but it can't get "meh" games out of anyone to do it.

Its the hope that kills you...,.

Edited May 15, 2018 by BenningRoadSkin

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

6 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

 

 

Its the hope that kills you...,.

I'm a die-hard Celtics' fan. Things are going very well for me right now.

 

General question for the room: When Klay has a game like that, what does a team have to do to stay within 10 of Golden State?

 

That's the frustrating thing about trying to beat them, they have two MVPs on the roster. They also have two guys who are more than capable of playing like MVPs in any given game. Klay is obviously not as good as Steph. But he can be that good once a series.

 

Weirdly, you want him to be that hot in a game where Steph and/or Durant is going nuts. I'd rather lose by 30 and be able to say, "Well, they can't stay THAT hot" than lose by ten and think, "Jesus Chirst....they weren't even that good."

Edited May 15, 2018 by Lombardi's_kid_brother

[CrypticVillain]

15 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

I'm a die-hard Celtics' fan. Things are going very well for me right now. (Man... )

 

General question for the room: When Klay has a game like that, what does a team have to do to stay within 10 of Golden State?

Match them? Seriously, that's all you can hope for is to get as hot as they are... Which is a problem in itself because:

A: You can't get hot as them because you just aren't that good.
B. People still haven't realized that the thing that makes the Warriors really special is their defense. They can get stops.

[The Evil Genius]

The way you beat the Dubs is you hope they come out flat and unmotivated.

 

Or you hope there there is a joke suspension of (or injury too) one of their starting 5 from the death lineup.

 

Then, it's a tossup.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Durant could get hit by a bus, I suppose.

 

The fact is that they were damn near unbeatable with Harrison Barnes and they replaced Barnes with Durant.

 

I think Houston needs to play twice as fast. I know that's not their game, but if you win with volume, you have to create volume. Trying to be more efficient than them is insane.

[Mr. Sinister]

15 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

The way you beat the Dubs is you hope they come out flat and unmotivated.

 

Or you hope there there is a joke suspension

 

Still had a gm 7 on your floor in  a 73-9 season. C'mon son ?

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

Still had a gm 7 on your floor in  a 73-9 season. C'mon son ?

I blame Harrison Barnes. Bum 

Also LeBron doing goat things. 

[CrypticVillain]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

Still had a gm 7 on your floor in  a 73-9 season. C'mon son ?

That suspension destroyed their momentum. You know that's the reason they won... Regardless if they had Game 7 at home or not.

[TradeTheBeal!]

10 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Durant could get hit by a bus, I suppose.

 

The fact is that they were damn near unbeatable with Harrison Barnes and they replaced Barnes with Durant.

 

I think Houston needs to play twice as fast. I know that's not their game, but if you win with volume, you have to create volume. Trying to be more efficient than them is insane.

 

This.  You have to put pressure on the Dubs halfcourt defense with cuts and ball movement and eliminate the 24 second violations.

 

If you lose 122-120, so be it.  But you need that 120 to have any chance at all, if you’re Houston.

[CrypticVillain]

1 minute ago, Dr. Do Itch Big said:

I blame Harrison Barnes. Bum

This too. Bamma had to throw the series. He missed so many shots.

[Mr. Sinister]

5 minutes ago, CrypticVillain said:

That suspension destroyed their momentum. You know that's the reason they won... Regardless if they had Game 7 at home or not.

 

You're breaking my heart

[PeterMP]

Houston can't try to play up tempo with GS.   Unless GS got sloppy, they'd get killed.  GS's transition defense is better than their half court defense, and GS certainly has more people that can make more plays in the open court.  Maybe they want to play a little faster to avoid some of the issues with the shot clock, but by and large, that's what they have to do on offense.

 

(Somehow) they have to be better on defense.  On the iso, people have to be tasked with getting back and slow the ball down, and then too many times if it is Harden that misses the layup, he doesn't even really try to get back.  The Rockets would have a good primary defensive response, but then they end up playing 4 on 5, and the Warriors are going to find the open shooter.  Everybody has to buy into getting back as fast as they can every possession against GS.  They also can't give up the back door cuts. I know people are scared of them going on a run with a string of 3s, but you can't give up easy layups on back door cuts.

 

(The other is the Rockets have essentially played the same way all year.  It just isn't realistic than in the conference finals to make big changes.) 

Edited May 15, 2018 by PeterMP

[Destino]

1 hour ago, The Evil Genius said:

The way you beat the Dubs is you hope they come out flat and unmotivated.

 

Or you hope there there is a joke suspension of (or injury too) one of their starting 5 from the death lineup.

 

Then, it's a tossup.

The only way to slow down the dubs is to grab and cheap shot their three scorers while they are moving without the ball so that none of them are standing in wide open passing lanes.  Then you have to force the Warriors to dribble and try to pass on the move.  They should start turning it over at that point.  

 

The problem with this is that while Steph and Klay can be manhandled into less efficient and sloppier play, no one exists that can ball deny Kevin Durant.  He's too big and too good.  Once the Warriors added Durant, the door closed on everyone else.

[Bozo the kKklown]

The Warriors should have won that series and would have won despite the BS Draymond suspension, Bogut breaking his leg, and Curry not being 100% if Harrison Barnes didn’t go 5-32 the last 3 games on mostly wide open shots.

[Mr. Sinister]

1 hour ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

The Warriors should have won that series and would have won despite the BS Draymond suspension, Bogut breaking his leg, and Curry not being 100% if Harrison Barnes didn’t go 5-32 the last 3 games on mostly wide open shots.

 

Damn... You wanna throw in "If it wasn't for those meddling kids!" too?

 

Apologist asses, all of y'all. So disappointing.

[Going Commando]

LOL, Houston can not beat the Warriors.  There is not a team capable of beating a healthy Golden State in a series.  It's that simple.  And there probably won't be for a few more seasons unless LeBron figures out how to team up with one to two more top ten players on a team with a good coach.  And they need a rotation with good role players like Iggy and Bell too.  Best of luck to him in finding all of that.

 

This year, the Rockets and Cavs are going to get crushed.  In the unlikely event that Boston actually knocks off Cleveland, they will get swept.

 

Ultimately, I think the Warriors 4, or maybe even 5-Peat.  I think Curry has two, maybe three more seasons of first or second team All-NBA caliber play in him.  I think Klay is just now entering his prime.  And, as much as we marvel at LeBron's longevity, I think KD's will be just as impressive.  He's already played 30 K minutes, but he doesn't turn 30 until just before next season.  And he doesn't look aged at all.  This guy is going to play forever.  Draymond Green has already declined fairly significantly as a night-in night-out defender.  But he can turn it on for a playoff series.  And offensively, he's a below the rim player who relies on court vision and he's only 28.  He's going to play forever too.  Probably the only significant member of their core who is going to age out soon is Iggy, and he's got good genes and, if he keeps taking paycuts, then he can keep winning rings.  And Jordan Bell is a keeper who will become a significant role player for them as he continues to develop.  He'll pick up a lot of the defensive slack from Draymond and Iggy.

 

They are going to be utterly unbeatable for a few more years, and then somewhere down the line, they're going to be merely dominant and Philly is going to have a hard with them Heatles vs Spurs style until they grow into an overwhelming team in their own right.

[Mr. Sinister]

I hate that name so much

[Mr. Sinister]

7 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

LOL, Houston can not beat the Warriors.  There is not a team capable of beating a healthy Golden State in a series.  It's that simple.  And there probably won't be for a few more seasons unless LeBron figures out how to team up with one to two more top ten players on a team with a good coach.  And they need a rotation with good role players like Iggy and Bell too.  Best of luck to him in finding all of that.

 

This year, the Rockets and Cavs are going to get crushed.  In the unlikely event that Boston actually knocks off Cleveland, they will get swept.

 

Ultimately, I think the Warriors 4, or maybe even 5-Peat.  I think Curry has two, maybe three more seasons of first or second team All-NBA caliber play in him.  I think Klay is just now entering his prime.  And, as much as we marvel at LeBron's longevity, I think KD's will be just as impressive.  He's already played 30 K minutes, but he doesn't turn 30 until just before next season.  And he doesn't look aged at all.  This guy is going to play forever.  Draymond Green has already declined fairly significantly as a night-in night-out defender.  But he can turn it on for a playoff series.  And offensively, he's a below the rim player who relies on court vision and he's only 28.  He's going to play forever too.  Probably the only significant member of their core who is going to age out soon is Iggy, and he's got good genes and, if he keeps taking paycuts, then he can keep winning rings.  And Jordan Bell is a keeper who will become a significant role player for them as he continues to develop.  He'll pick up a lot of the defensive slack from Draymond and Iggy.

 

They are going to be utterly unbeatable for a few more years, and then somewhere down the line, they're going to be merely dominant and Philly is going to have a hard with them Heatles vs Spurs style until they grow into an overwhelming team in their own right.

 

This playoffs has shown just unbalanced the league is, and will continue to be. 

 

90's tech bubble

[Going Commando]

19 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

This playoffs has shown just unbalanced the league is, and will continue to be. 

 

90's tech bubble

 

This year has been fascinating to me.  Not the stuff happening on the court, but the discourse about it from fans and media.  There is a general sense of denial about how uncompetitive the league is.  I enjoyed people telling me about how good Houston and Toronto were.  How things were different this year.  I'm fascinated by seeing people latch on to Boston now.  I find Stephen A Smith to be an oddly good bellwether for following NBA world narratives.   Whoever he deems deserving of respect and conversation is the flavor of the moment and the basketball world is absolutely there with him. 

 

It's been fun seeing NBA fans lie to themselves and flail around for some other team to pin their hopes of competition and uncertainty on because they can't accept that the league is a noncompetitive farce.  It almost always has been, and it's worse than any time since the merger right now.  NBA fans need Houston to be for real, ugly and imperfect vessel that they are.  They hoped Toronto was.  And now they need Boston to be for real, because they need to believe that a cleverly managed team can pull off some great moves within the intended structure of the league's player acquisition system and compete with invincible super teams that were built by power-broker elite players, flukes, and shameless efforts to game a broken system.

 

Personally, I've accepted that we've been in the darkest timeline since Durant made his choice in 2016, and that it's going to be a while before the NBA is actually interesting again.  In the meantime, I'm going to watch to see what the DPVE does to the future of the league.

[Mr. Sinister]

I think what has made it popular in people's eyes is the dramatic reality tv pop culture expect of it, that really hasn't been at this level probably since the mid 90's in terms of marketability. But its unsustainable, and I honestly hate watching it when mediocre to bad teams do it.

 

It is a 1% league. And for some reason, that is how it is best sold to the public, because people are dumb.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Mr. Sinister

[Going Commando]

I think the DPVE might have been a reform whose significance has been largely unrecognized.  Its creation was essentially an acknowledgement by the owners that the superstar players run the league, and that teams needed a special tool to be able to offer an overwhelming bribe to the real movers and shakers of the NBA so that they would remain with the teams that draft them throughout the entire duration of their prime basketball years.

 

And unless players can figure out an alternate way to make such massive amounts of money off of their talent, I think the DPVE will effectively end superstar player movement and power-broker elite players forcing team ups over the course of their first three contracts.

 

If you're counting on players like Giannis or Davis forcing their way out of their drafted homes in order to mix things up, they've each got like 60+ million riding on staying with their original teams.  I wouldn't count on it.

 

It's also why I think Kawhi Leonard is going to work things out in San Antonio.  If they want to keep him, they're going to be able to do so.

[The Evil Genius]

When has there ever been parity in the NBA?

 

The 80s saw the Lakers and Celtics win 8 of the 10 titles.

 

The 90s saw the Bulls win 6 of the 10 (and probably would have won 8 of the 10 has Jordan not "retired" for baseball).

 

The 2000s saw the Lakers win 5 of 10 and the Spurs win 2 more.

 

At least this decade has had 6 different teams win.

Edited May 15, 2018 by The Evil Genius

[Mr. Sinister]

20 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

When has there ever been parity in the NBA?

 

The 80s saw the Lakers and Celtics win 8 of the 10 titles.

 

The 90s saw the Bulls win 6 of the 10 (and probably would have won 8 of the 10 has Jordan not "retired" for baseball).

 

The 2000s saw the Lakers win 5 of 10 and the Spurs win 2 more.

 

This isn't "Not parity". Not parity would be awesome. This is Dothraki conquest. 

 

[Destino]

Parity in the NBA is a series going to six or seven games.  So long as the loser appears to have had a chance, there's nothing to worry about.  After the Warriors first championship the league was in a great place.  It seemed destined that the league's best player would battle the best and most exciting team in the finals for a few more years and no one really knew how those series would end.  They'd split the previous two. 

 

Worst case scenario was that the Thunder, who had come so close, would supplant the Warriors and Durant would face Lebron again.  What happened instead is that Durant joined the Warriors and they killed the NBA.

[Going Commando]

Kyrie Irving forfeited his ability to sign a DPVE by getting himself traded.

 

Maybe he's counting on an Uncle Drew movie franchise making up that lost income.