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That was the Bledsoe that had the 22 PER in the playoffs, apparently he can do it then preseason sometimes as well, but the big question is whether he consistently do it during the regular season and whether Del Negro will give him enough minutes on the court at the same time as Paul to find out.
Absent the italicized part, you have just summarized Simmons' next 12 Lakers columns, the next 40-50 Hardwood Paroxsym posts about the Lakers, several 2012-13 ESPN NBA staff Tweets, and several future Abbott posts.
Given this skill you have for neatly summarizing and predicting future behavior of people, feel free to email me off the board with your 2012 Election predictions. ;-
Very much looking forward to this season, although I think the Lakers will be slow out of the gate.
Yeah, I went ahead and changed the time to Monday. Cool that you signed up for it.
As we've seen with Bud Selig, it's not real until it happens
And the next 150 robin posts....
Heh. I hope you'll be more chipper when Rose comes back. But the the Nash/Kobe stuff, well, saw that coming a long time ago, like I said. And it is just getting started. But, if you find my pointing it out bothersome, I will post about it less. But we will see plenty of it here and elsewhere.
I can't imagine anyone liking Dwight Howard more than they like Kobe. Kobe has grown in my estimation simply because of his new teammate; he is the Derek Jeter to Howard's ARod (ignoring the actual talent and skill part of the analogy).
I assume this is sarcasm, although from the rest of the post, I admit I am not sure what you are getting at.
Back when Nash came to LA, I noted that I had called Nash the "anti-Kobe" many times, and Maxwn pointed out that much of the the NBA blogosphere intelligentsia, as he called it, would be very verbose about their "cognitive dissonance" about Nash and Kobe being on the Lakers together, as they in fact already have--and the team hasn't even played a game yet.
But the Laker fanbase is worried about other things.
As much as people hate Kobe, Dwight has really increased his hateworthiness over the last 12 months so you throw a Laker uniform on top of that and it's hard to believe Kobe will be the most hated Laker. Similar to how once A-Rod came aboard, Jeter was hated less just because there was someone else on his team so perfectly (sports)hateworthy.
Yeah, this. I used to be a big Dwight fan, now ... not so much (even before the trade). I think what pisses me off so much was that he just kept smiling/smirking through the whole thing like some kind of supervillain.
Then again, West said in his Twitter rant this AM he's not off his meds, so there's a non-zero possibility he's a sane jerk.
David Stern at the draft smiles/smirks like a super villain. Dwight smiled/smirked like a douche - especially when he came out and put his arm around SVG right after Dwight had asked to have SVG fired.
There's also a possibility that he's lying or his meds have stopped working.
Or, as you said, he's just an #######
My take has been (with all the requisite caveats about the impossibility of knowing an athlete from their public persona) that Dwight has comported himself like nothing as much as a spoiled child. I don't just mean the reports of his hotel room in LA being stocked with candy, legos, and cartoon movies, though that is part of it, but also how throughout this whole saga he has seemed to act in a way that was both completely short-sighted and concerned only with himself at all turns. He's hardly the only athlete to act like that, but he's done a particularly good (bad) job of it, while publicly enjoying cartoons, candy, and fart jokes.
Now, does that mean that SVG is right about Dwight, or even has a particularly keen eye for the human condition? I have no idea. Still, it is interesting to me in the sense that he is someone who has the sort of unfiltered, up close exposure to him that the rest of us lack.
That said, I'm rooting for Kobe to break plays at the end of games for the same reason I'm rooting for Tebow to get subbed in at QB: chaos muppetry.
Heh. I hope you'll be more chipper when Rose comes back.
It's a joke. We all have our windmills. I'm plenty chipper, I'm sticking with my Bulls as a 2 seed prediction even with everything else I read causing me to question myself.
RR: I honestly meant it; NJ said it better in 511. People who can't enjoy watching the Lakers because of their Kobe-hatred are idiots. But Dwight-hatred, that is something I can get behind.
Unsustainable? Life is gonna be this great forever!!!!!!
(seriously, as a person with manic depression, this sounds right to me -- the hardest part is that the transition periods are unpredictable so it's not like in the downs it is just like, wait a week and things will be back to normal, could be a day, could be a month, could be 5 years -- it's like a 1 in 20 chance that you will snap back every day or something but if you don't do it one day that doesn't increase your chance for the next day. I tried drugs and not for me partly for the reason above but also for other reasons.)
As to Howard, some of the feelings expressed are news to me as well.
"Cognitive dissonance" is a negative term, but I didn't really mean it as a putdown per se. I think it's quite understandable that many people:
a) Would really like to see Nash get a ring
b) Would really not like to see Kobe get another ring
As for me, I would settle for the Lakers simply winning a game.
Eric Bledsoe is better than John Wall.
on a related note, i don't see denver as being very good. a lot of people seem to be calling the difference between nene and afflalo, and mcgee and iguodala a wash, but i think there's more of a difference than people realize. nene had a .57 TS% last year and afflalo was at .58, while mcgee was at .55 and iguodala was at .54. in addition, iguodala's usage % was at 17 while afflalo's was at 19, and mcgee's was at 21, while nene's was at 23.
and w/r/t defense, while nene isn't a very good defender, javale mcgee isn't a very smart defender. and while iguodala is an excellent defender, aaron afflalo was pretty decent there, too. there's some potential for improvement, but it's not as if these substitutions put denver in the top 10 on that end of the floor; they're still gonna be pretty awful.
and in addition, they've also lost/jettisoned al harrington. there were 7 players on last year's nuggets roster that averaged 10+ PPG. of those, 3 -- harrington, afflalo, and nene -- are now gone, and since javale mcgee was one of the other 7, the only player they've really added to replace that lost offensive production is iguodala, and while i'm still a fan of his, he's not exactly the most prolific scorer.
-Iguodala will likely be more efficient in his role in Denver than he was in the ill-fitting long 2 Philly offense.
-Gallinari is likely to contribute more than he did last year.
-Faried played more later in the season. Having him in a major role all year will help.
-They have 3 separate centers with non-zero breakout chances. If one hits, they're much better.
-Lawson may not have hit his ceiling.
Double edged sword. He looked (and from what Twitter says, still does) totally lost on defense.
Are you going to start the head-to-head league?
Are you going to start the head-to-head league?
Tripon posted one yesterday that's pretty much the same rules and needs owners. Not to discourage the other one.
I think Nene is pretty good defensively and Afflalo is really overrated.
I'd recommend going for that one. I am co-managing in another league and it still seems like 5 or fewer people are really committed to the thread league, so I'm going to pass this year. Hopefully we can drum up more interest for next year. With the basketball smarts on this board, I think we could have a really fun league.
Oh absolutely. He's right up there with Favors and Hayward as the players I'm most interested in seeing how they've developed this offseason. Kanter was already a very good rebounder in limited minutes last year, but I'm hopeful that he's done some work on his jump shot and post game as well and will be a reliable scoring option off the bench too. I'm predicting some double doubles in games where Al's just not feeling it and Enes gets some good minutes.
Sounds good. Tripon's league looks good.
you can say the same thing about basically every team, in every sport, coming out of training camp. dorell wright will be more efficient. evan turner should contribute more. lavoy allen had a bigger role later in the season. they have multiple players with non-zero breakout chances (turner, holiday, hawes, young, allen). and andrew bynum may not have hit his ceiling.
You can say it, but it doesn't make any of those things true.
GS has an offense built around three point shooting. Philly has designed its offense to avoid that. Maybe it will change this year, but there is not hard data on that like there is on Denver's fast break offense and Iggy's mediocre midrange shooting.
Gallinari played below a previously established level of performance last year and battled injuries. That is different than expecting Turner to play better than he has ever played because the team wants him to.
Lavoy Allen played more partially because Hawes (who was above his head by all rational evidence) got hurt. Faried was not replacing someone playing unsustainably well.
The reasons for optimism for Denver's centers are based in performance- McGee's improvement after the trade, Mozgov's play in the Olympics, Koufos' crazy rebounding- while none of the guys you listed did anything that would make their ability could exceed their prior performance. I like Holiday, Young, and Allen quite a bit for what they are, but I did not see anything in their games or the team's changes to make me think they are going to be different players.
Andrew Bynum, same as it ever was.
and the NHL is a ####### black hole collapsing upon itself. there's always cause for optimism. well, except if your team is owned by michael jordan.
You literally have said every single one of these things, multiple times, plus more. I'm surprised we haven't gotten a Mikki Moore prediction out of you (speaking of, is he going to make the team? I've always liked him more than he deserved).
The reason I like Denver (although not at much as some of the super high projections like Hollinger) is because I see a team that slightly underachieved last year partially due to fit and injuries. I think Iggy is such a perfect fit on that team, and I don't see the Afflalo loss as significant. Also, they're going to be hella fun to watch (basically, the exact opposite of the Bulls).
I guess I just don't see a huge difference between NJ and Booey's posts on this page (541 and 550 respectively), but NJ likes the Nugs and Booey doesn't. I put them 4th in the West in my predictions, losing in the 2nd round.
How the Bobcats could be good this year:
-Michael Kidd Gilchrist posts the best wing debut anyone has made since Brandon Roy.
-Bismack Biyombo develops an offensive game
-BJ Mullens has a Ryan-Anderson-2011-12 type season
-Kemba Walker becomes John Wall at the least
-Ben Gordon is revived after getting out of the toxic atmosphere of Detroit and posts his best season since he was in Chicago
-The Hawks, Knicks, Nets, Bucks, Raptors, Wizards and Pistons all implode
There is a difference between saying, for example, Gallinari is likely to contribute more this season than he did last year because he got hurt and came back early and his performance sucked while doing so and...Gallinari is likely to contribute more this season because he's going to suddenly become prime Dirk and develop the type of mid-range game he's shown no evidence of having to this point of his career. Your examples tend to fall closer to the latter.
(On Galinari, I'm optimistic that he's going to get his long range game back - which Denver needs pretty badly.)
we are living in a world where the baltimore orioles and oakland A's are playoff teams, but the boston redsox, tampa bay rays, and los angeles angels are not.
there's a whole lot more uncertainty here than most people realize.
The issue isn't uncertainty - it's rational expectations.
I think they're going to have a really awesome regular season. 50 wins, and probably a few more. I just don't see them getting out of the second round of the playoffs. Their personnel and style is perfectly built for the regular season.
and what i'm talking about here is not expectations, so much as possibilities. when you buy a lottery ticket, you don't expect to win, but you dream on the possibilities of it. sports are very much the same thing.
I'd be pretty surprised if this happened. Top heavy teams with a few great players and not much else generally do better than all around teams filled with very good but no great players. Regardless of the makeup of the rest of their rosters, the difference between four superstars (even old ones) and none is huge and will be tough for Denver to overcome, IMO.
***
And all of that is fine - I'm glad you post here. All I'm (and others are) saying is that there's a difference in the likelihood and reasonableness of these possibilities - these aren't equally likely tickets and shouldn't be treated as such.
***
Booey, Jimmy describes my Nuggets feelings to a T - and the Lakers are the oldest team in the league with one of the worst benches. If I'm running the team, I'm trying to win the war, not the regular season battles (mind you, I'm not sure that that's Mike Brown's style).
I see Denver as like Indiana / Philly last year...
Too lazy to look it up, but does anyone have Denver's W% since the Melo trade? I'm thinking that projected to 82 games it would be comfortably 50+.
Eh. I'm just not seeing Denver anywhere close to LAL in the regular season or the playoffs. But feel free to gloat next spring if I turn out to be horribly wrong. I won't be offended (in fact, I'd be happy to be wrong about how good I expect the Lakers to be). :-)
Me too. And in the west, I think both those teams lose in the first round. Didn't Philly have an identical record to the Jazz last year? The difference between coming one win away from the conference Finals and getting swept in the first round was almost entirely a matter of conference strength and the Bulls injuries, IMO.
I get 50.5 wins and 31.5 losses.
I was thinking more like a slightly upscale Indy (prorated 52 win season). Indiana lacks stars, but has a solid lineup, weak bench. Denver has a better bench - the big issues I have with them are: - will they hit threes + what McGee will showup?
They were 38-28 last year, which is a pace for 47 wins. They were better in 2011 post-Melo, but I'm not sure why that span should be given equal weight to last season. I suspect that was more of a peak than an established ability level.
This got me thinking: Who would you rather have this year: Ty Lawson or Steve Nash?
I'm taking Lawson. I still expect Nash to be very good - PER & Roland Rating from last year both give the edge to Nash on performance. But, I think Lawson will improve enough to make up the difference. Nash's age has to catch up with him at some point, right?
Our bigger difference, I think, is in how we forecast LA. Incidentally - and I know that I've said the preseason results mean very little - it is interesting that the Lakers are 0-fer. Only one winless in the preseason team in the last several years has gone on to make the playoffs, a Mike Brown coached Cavs squad (obviously, I think the Lakers will make it).
I a going ever so slightly lower at 49 because I think some of those injury issues are fairly probable to either have a lasting impact or come back up again. Perfectly healthy, I would put them in the low to mid 50s.
I'd still probably take Nash for this season. Probably Lawson for every year beyond this one.
Well, two of those losses happened because they were unfortunate enough to run into the unstoppable, soon to be 82-win juggernaut that is the 2012-2013 Utah Jazz. :-)
Seriously though, I didn't see any of the Lakers other games this preseason, but Howard didn't play in either of the Jazz games, and Gasol didn't play in the 2nd one either (and Nash only played 12 minutes). Once their stars start playing big minutes - thus giving their bench many fewer opportunities to screw things up - I suspect the Lakers will be a very tough team to beat.
As you might guess, wide variation in reactions to this among fans. My take is I am not really worried, but I don't think it's totally meaningless, either. Preseason is different, but it's still basketball, and the issues:
age/health
depth
Brown
Do appear as if they will, in fact, be issues. I will be paying a bit more attention to the first two games (at home against Dallas, a "home" game against the Clippers) than I normally do for these reasons. Regular season or no, I expect that the team will want to win these games.
As to Denver, I have talked about them already. I think most statheads are probably a little too bullish on them, but given their personnel and the HCA they normally have, they are certainly capable of having a very good record.
That said, I think DK, like Hollinger, may be selling the Lakers a little short in spite of the repeated disclaimers. In simple terms, they have Howard and Nash now. Last year they didn't. That will presumably override a lot of other problems.
- selling the Lakers short?
- selling their bench short?
- or overestimating how much energy they'll conserve in the regular season?
All three are possible, but I want to be clear that I definitely think the Lakers are super talented (duh) and staffed by some competitive guys. Plus, they should have a better roster in two months than they do now. In no way would I be surprised if they won the title + I bet I'll pick them to win the Pacific.
Is Morrison going to retire now? He'd hinted that he might.
Lawson/Nash: Good question! I'm not sure and will hedge - I think Lawson will "produce more value" during the regular season and that Nash's highs will be more impressive.
Wow, that's downright brutal. How could ESPN ever have hired ... that?
I think the Lakers have a lot of variance in that it is easy enough to picture the whole thing going wrong and Paul and Howard ending up together in Atlanta or Dallas, and it is easy enough to picture them beating Miami in 6 games in June, with Howard raining dunks on the Heat while Nash feeds him and cans 3s as Kobe works the midpost. Handicapping those possibilities is not easy, but I think any analysis of their chances should fully acknowledge both scenarios.
The overly optimistic/excessively entitled types in the fanbase have had a little cold water thrown in their faces with the zip-8 preseason. I hope Hollinger's drink is on the way, but we'll see.
As to the bench, FBG ran a good, if perhaps optimistic, piece on the bench. The Lakers don't have guys who can step into a breach, and given the age and health concerns around the starters, that may be an issue. OTOH, I think that Meeks, Hill, Jamison and even Blake each do a couple of specific things well enough that if used inteligently with the starters, they can contribute. For example, Jamison, as you correctly pointed out, has seen his EFF numbers drop off quite a bit the last couple of years. At the same time, his MPG has stayed high and his USG has gone up--tough to do at that age (ask Kobe). But his 3p% has held right at his career numbers.
In preseason, Jamison has just looked like an old guy who can't do jack anymore. But ISTM that spotted 15-20 MPG with Nash and Howard out there with him, he could hit enough shots and serve as a floor spacer such that he could contribute in that specific role, and extraopolating, as such the bench will not kill the Lakers.
But in preseason, it has looked like I am wrong and the bench is too weak even with the four-man core--and the core is too old anyway. We are about to start finding out for real.
People seem to forget that Howard is probably the 3rd best player in the league behind LeBron and Durant. Most players of that caliber can lead their teams to 50 wins even without much of a supporting cast. Hell, Dwight had back to back 59 win seasons in Orlando with a group of teammates much worse than Kobe, Nash, and Gasol.
Centers:
2004 Shaq = 2013 Howard
PF's:
2004 Malone < 2013 Gasol
PG's:
2004 Payton < 2013 Nash
Kobe:
2004 Kobe > 2013 Kobe
The bench was probably better on the 2004 team, but I don't remember it being anything special either. Also the current team might have better...um, team chemistry, we'll call it.
If the current team falls well short of the 2004 squad, I'm guessing it'll most likely be for the following reason:
Coaching:
Phil Jackson >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mike Brown
and holy ####### ####. there have been 126 games in the last 3 years where a player has attempted 10+ FTs and missed more than half of them. of those 126 games, 43 belong to dwight howard. thats...something.
The superman name and the teams he's played for aren't the only similarities between Howard and Shaq...
Didn't Shaq once set a record with an 0-12 night at the line, or something?
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8555451/lebron-quest-immortallity
Unless the Rockets gave up the Raptors pick as well, seems like a good deal for them.
Houston has to waive some dudes quick like, if true. Already need to cut 3 for the deadline.
(So, I'm streaming New Pornographers videos as I do some work fooferall. After submitting that, it's recommending Jeremy Lamb's Draft Express interview along with the previous music stuff ... technology is creepy)
The hilarious thing was that Slava was probably our 5th best player that year. That team was the epitome of top heavy.
I really, really like Lamb but that trade probably had to be done by the Rockets. I'm a bit of Harden Truther but the Morey needs to get some results soon or he's probably out the door. This is good for the Lakers this year, but I think next year's OKC is going to be stacked especially if PJIII turns into anything.
Yeah. It may work big-picture/long-term, but Harden is a tough guy to lose when you are as close as they are.
scoring-wise, kevin martin can match harden. shooting-wise, kevin martin can match harden. defensively, lamb can match harden. and when it comes to facilitating/playmaking, they have eric maynor coming back from injury, and also reggie hamilton coming in as a rookie.
tony dileo is pretty lucky that he wasn't the official GM at the draft, because if he was, he'd be on the hook for having passed on perry jones to take arnett moultrie. if those were the only two choices, i'd have taken moultrie too, but that could look really bad if moultrie can't get off the bench, and jones plays well for a contending team.
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