Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Came down to defense IMO. Raptors played great D and the Warriors didn't get matched up in transition. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman Spiff Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 57 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said: We the Nawth. You're in Richmond, no you're not. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llevron Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Set up for the Slim Reaper to be the hero and save the series for the Warriors. Which I hate. But it is gonna be fin to watch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 9 hours ago, Destino said: Was Looney the primary defender on Kawhi tonight? It seemed like he was whenever he was on the floor. They were forcing switches with screens. I think they were mostly trying to defend him with Klay or Iggy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeTheBeal! Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 22 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said: You're in Richmond, no you're not. Shut up and get in the car, Spiff. We’re going ice fishing! 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman Spiff Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 2 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said: Shut up and get in the car, Spiff. We’re going ice fishing! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer_FFX Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 And Kawhi Leonard didn't even have a monster game, and the Raptors pulled it out. I'm with @stevemcqueen1, Toronto's defense was the main difference. If Toronto can get game 2, then it shapes up to be a competitive series. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeTheBeal! Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 (edited) For your consideration. Hmm, not sure why my tweets have stopped embedding. Edited May 31, 2019 by Destino Because I want to get invited icefishing. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sticksboi05 Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Raptors D is legit. Wish we knew what that was like in D.C. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 32 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said: For your consideration. That was a pretty egregious moving screen. Screening on a handoff from a dribble should basically be an automatic moving screen call. There is virtually no way to set a clean pick in that situation. But Draymond wasn't even trying to hide the movement on that one. I love the way Toronto and Milwaukee were built. No soft defenders. Not a single one at any spot in the rotation. That is the way a championship caliber team should be built. When you start compromising and trying to hide people for their offense, the whole thing eventually collapses. This is why I've been harping on and on about defense in the Wizards thread, and begging for us to purge all of the soft ass ****ing no-D gunners from our team. Losers don't play defense. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Sinister Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 42 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said: Hmm, not sure why my tweets have stopped embedding. Because nobody likes you 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 25 minutes ago, Sticksboi05 said: Raptors D is legit. Wish we knew what that was like in D.C. Yeah man. It's a product of culture and talent. My man Brave has been arguing that Tommy Sheppard would be an OK GM hire on the basis that he's not Ernie Grunfeld because he embraces an empirical analytical approach to the game. We agree on almost everything, but we diverge on this. I like advanced metrics for basketball because of their ability to contextualize and sum up offensive and rebounding contributions. But I've never gone whole hog on them because they're pretty bad at weighting the value of shot creation and they aren't very good at capturing individual defensive performance. Defense is half the game. That's half the game that basically goes unaccounted for, and it's why eyeballs on film scouting is always going to need to be the primary tool for player evaluation and projection. Anyway, back to Sheppard, he's been a part of **** ass basketball culture in DC for 16 years, a span where we might have had one or two seasons total of playing pretty good defense. Defense is why we always suck. Defense is why you could put Bradley Beal on the Heat and they'd rocket up into 50+ win territory. It's why putting Kawhi on the Raptors turned them into a contender. It's the foundation for a winner. When you've got such a drastic problem with it as we do, I think you have to start by making an ironclad commitment to not drafting, signing, or playing anyone who is a soft defender. Good defensive culture is fragile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 One last thing about Kawhi dicking over the Spurs that I feel has gone unrecognized--it set a bad precedent. The Spurs were the most visible player-friendly organization that successfully competed at the highest level of the league. Teams will use the Spurs getting dicked over by Kawhi as an excuse to be ruthless with their players, and the player-team relationship will continue to deteriorate in ways that are bad for the league. There have to be checks on this, and ways to incentivize healthy player-team collaboration. Teams need to punish players for acting in bad faith with their teams, and players need to punish teams for doing the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Sinister Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 The best way to have good relationships with players is to treat them like humans, not carney attraction that they can prop up and monetize their misery with no real intention of seriously competing. Build an organization based on trust and communucation, and don'r sell your players out to the media. Things like that go a long way towards players leaving to explore other opportunities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 24 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said: The best way to have good relationships with players is to treat them like humans, not carney attraction that they can prop up and monetize their misery with no real intention of seriously competing. Build an organization based on trust and communucation, and don'r sell your players out to the media. Things like that go a long way towards players leaving to explore other opportunities. There are a lot of teams in the NBA that don't play the meta-game, so to speak. A lot of it is just stupidity and incompetence and rampant unprofessionalism in NBA front offices. But a lot of it is self-aware. Not giving a ****, using other teams' star players to market your games type of ****. That's not mutually exclusive with taking care of your players though. The Wizards take care of their players but they don't compete. There is a way to do both. But I think a little bit of fear in the relationship between player and team (going both ways) is productive. You do need a solid relationship based on mutual good faith and the best organizations seem to take the lead and establish these relationships with their players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destino Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 4 hours ago, TryTheBeal! said: For your consideration. https://mobile.twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1134303735637786624?ref_url=https%3a%2f%2fdeadspin.com%2fajax%2finset%2fiframe%3fid%3dtwitter-1134303735637786624%26autosize%3d1 Hmm, not sure why my tweets have stopped embedding. Delete “mobile.” before copying and pasting the link and it should embed. Not sure why it doesn’t otherwise, but I had the same issue. I fixed it for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destino Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 4 hours ago, Sticksboi05 said: Raptors D is legit. Wish we knew what that was like in D.C. They have Marc Gasol and Kawhi, both former defensive player of the year award winners. Kyle Lowry and Danny Green are both very good on the defensive end. Siakam is proving to be an extremely capable defender himself, he certainly has the outstanding physical tools. Combine that talent with a good culture, a capable coach, and a ton of post season experience... and you’ve got a great defense. The wizards have absolutely none of that. They’re bad defensively everywhere, Scott Brooks is an empty suit, and they have a culture of zero accountability. You know it’s bad when Jeff Green is playing long stretches at center. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barry.Randolphe Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Scott Brooks is an incapable coach....I remember watching him with KD, RW, and Harden - no offense, just 1v1 matchups all game. Hero ball doesn't work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Momma There Goes That Man Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 I just never thought Toby Flenderson would be so successful as a coach but he has the Raptors playing great right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 1 hour ago, Destino said: They have Marc Gasol and Kawhi, both former defensive player of the year award winners. Kyle Lowry and Danny Green are both very good on the defensive end. Siakam is proving to be an extremely capable defender himself, he certainly has the outstanding physical tools. Combine that talent with a good culture, a capable coach, and a ton of post season experience... and you’ve got a great defense. Ibaka is also a hell of a defender and VanVleet and Anunoby are good too. Even Norman Powell is strong and fast and he only gets so much PT so he plays hard. He's real quality for an end of the rotation guy. The Raptors slowly traded off their crap defenders like DeRozan and Terrence Ross and Cory Joseph. Valanciunas wasn't bad, but he was a headcase who frequently got himself benched and he's certainly not the reliable anchor that Gasol is. The net result is they've become vastly more experienced, confident, and consistent, and they've built a culture of playing reliably excellent defense. They went from finishing 11th in DRtg in '15-'16 and '16-'17, to 5th the past two seasons. Meanwhile the Wizards have one guy who I would call a good defensive player on the entire roster--Sato. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destino Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Weird bit of sports trivia. Marc Gasol won defensive player of the year in 2013, outside of that season he’s somehow never made any all nba defensive teams. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destino Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 2 hours ago, Destino said: Weird bit of sports trivia. Marc Gasol won defensive player of the year in 2013, outside of that season he’s somehow never made any all nba defensive teams. This shows how worthless those teams are. They should be made up of centers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman Spiff Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Clips fined 50k cause Doc Rivers said that Kawhi is the closest thing to MJ? WTFever, the NBA is a joke when it comes to a few things, this being one of them. If Rivers wants to do some TV in the offseason and give his opinions and talk positively about players and make comparisons, hows that tampering? How's that ANY worse than the NBA superstars that are all friendly with each other hanging out and planning to team up together? I'm not even sure why I'm annoyed by this. I guess cause I clicked on the article half expecting to see Rivers say something like "Damn, I'd love to have him on the Clippers next year!" His comments were complimentary. The NBA can be so damn stupid. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrypticVillain Posted June 1, 2019 Share Posted June 1, 2019 Game one is just screaming Outlier at me... I need to see the Raptors do it again before I take them seriously. Siakam went for 32 shooting 14/17. The Warriors need Iggy as much as they need Durant though. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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