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Friday, April 15, 2022
2022 NBA Playoffs thread
I estimate the NBA thread only had 10-12 years of content so we’re in reruns already.
Moses Taylor loves a good maim
Posted: April 15, 2022 at 11:59 AM | 1518 comment(s)
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Tags: narratives, nba, off-topic, playoffs
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I'm not sure who I'm rooting for.
For his 4th...but they called an offensive foul on the other end to even it out (even though it cost the C's a basket and was Tatum's 4th).
Holiday, Connaughton, Matthews, and Allen have combined to go 0-15 from three.
Wes was actually fine/good. The real issue was giving 25 minutes per game to Grayson Allen because you desperately need offense and him going 5 for 29 from 3.
What do you expect against Brad Stevens' vaunted three-point defense?
Great win the Celtics.
Barkley did the prediction contest bit, where the question was "who is going to score more points than Luka." So far, if you had picked all of the Suns combined, you would have still been wrong. Luka's 27 equalling the entire Suns team.
"...your season is at stake. So that adds a good pressure to it, an exciting pressure and I think we have the guys in this gym that embrace that. Embrace it, take it in and are ready to perform up to it." -Devin Booker, before game 7
And now they are losing by 41.
When does Kidd pull his starters? End of the third, I guess?
Weirdly, I think the Suns were going to beat the Warriors, but the Mavericks are not there yet. Luka is the baddest man in the NBA now.
I mean, it's just one game, but on the other hand ... Ayton didn't deserve the max anyways, CP3 has had 4 awful games in a row. What do you do?
Like obviously the Mavs are a bit hot and the Suns are a lot cold, but #######.
Logically, sure - just one game. Sort of. The expectations were pretty high after 65 wins and a finals trip.
They are playing a team which the public had pretty low expectations for, and was up 3-2… not only could they not put them away but no showed at home in game 7. Didn’t just lose but no showed… and in a historic way.
Normally, you’d fire your coach - but that ain’t happening. So changes will have to happen on the roster… but nothing is obvious besides maybe letting your overrated but still good center go, with no real replacement. Just fascinating - are you going to run if back in the biggest collapse since the 04 Yankee’s?
Luka is great, but he had like zero to do with this win. You could replace him with Abdul Nadar and the Mav’s are still up 20..
Seems obvious to me: trade Paul for Russell Westbrook.
One sidelight to this is Kidd and Williams and narratives thereof. Williams's coaching record was not very good until this Phoenix team that is an analytics fave due to how they play, how they are constructed and the metrics, and Williams has gotten a lot of credit. Kidd ofc has been seen by many as being sort of in a group with Mark Jackson but with worse off-court baggage. I remember a lot of Lakers fans being pissed off when Kidd got a job as an assistant with the 2020 team. I said at the time that there seems to be a pretty big delta between how a lot of people inside and outside the game see Kidd.
I mean, the line "Everyone acts tough when they're up" is pretty amazing given how things turned out.
I have been slightly mystified by the excellent press that Monty Williams gets.
Edit: also none of the surviving teams won more than 53 games in the regular season (or fewer than 51).
it seems to me that the synergistic nature of basketball as a game, and the contract/cap structure of NBA basketball as a league, makes looking for equivalency here a fool's errand.
I would also say that this thread is more than a decade old, and AFAICR discussions of historical greatness here have been almost completely without reference to the Hall of Fame, which is not really something that most basketball fans care all that much about....
paul is old and injury prone.
booker is an unrepentant gunner.
ayton is overrated.
bridges barely touches the ball on offense.
the rotation is full of random journeymen like torrey craig, javale mcgee, cameron payne, jae crowder, landry shamet, bismack biyombo, and that list could still go on...
maybe their success is not specifically due to monty williams, but he sure as hell didn't #### it up, and that's more than you could say about a lot of other "good" coaches who walk into similar situations.
Interesting thought. I was skeptical about Boston and Phoenix; Boston so far is making that look dead wrong--Phoenix, ofc, the opposite.
In any case, I tend to look at postseason both in historical terms and in terms of what is going on at the moment, and as I have said, the majority of the time, the league champion has a guy who is seen as a Top-5 player and in many cases, has the guy who is seen as the best in the league at the time. Hence my skepticism about Phoenix and Boston.
Looking at the league just since 2011, James has won four times with three different franchises. Curry has won three times and had Durant with him twice. Leonard and Antetokounmpo each have won once. The 2011 Mavs and the 2014 Spurs were the outliers; if you go on the metrics, Nowitzki was about the 10th-best player in the league in 2011. PJ's 1466 speaks to this in terms of right now.
So, this year, is, I think an anomaly in some ways, both in terms of parity at the top of the league and who is coming out on top. Doncic, who was 4th in VORP and 7th in PER, is probably the best player left, although you could also argue for Tatum or even Curry in a short series. Butler was 11th in PER FWIW. Philadelphia, with Embiid and Harden, fit the traditional model best on paper, and Morey was no doubt aware of this when he made the trade. For many reasons, it didn't happen for them.
As we have discussed, teams that win it without a Keltner Test guy (was he considered to be the best player in the league or one of the very best is the NBA Keltner question) tend to be awesome defensive teams with very good players who blend at the top and no big weak spots: 1970 and 1973 Knicks, 1989-90 and 2004 Pistons, 2014 Spurs. (Some people put the 2008 Celtics in this group but Garnett was still probably a Top 5 guy in 2008 IMO although Boston did lose a lot of playoff games before winning it).
This year, Golden State and Boston were 1-2 in DRTG as per Bask Ref. Miami was 5th and Dallas was 6th. Phoenix was 3rd and fit this second model perfectly on paper, although no one cares about that right now.
To me, the Suns are a system team, and can only really run the system. That has value! Utah is another system team. Back in the day, the Spurs were a system team and won championships. For me, to be coach of the year, you have to be more than just a system. The Suns tried to adapt to the Mavs, and they just couldn't do it.
Bucks, it’s a bummer but writing was on the wall without Middleton. Don’t really trust their front office much though. Allen deal was weird and they need to do better with the MLE and the FRP. Need more athleticism on the wing. Like I guess everyone.
Trade Machine
Yep:
Pritchard made as many 3's yesterday as the Bucks. The Bucks got almost nothing out of any of their role players all series. It was Giannis, with moments of Jrue, then nothing (well, Portis and Lopez both had their moments).
For the life of me, I cannot figure out what happened to the Suns.
CP3 legally died on his 37th birthday.
Luka is the baddest man in the NBA now.
He's the best player left, and I guess he's more than capable of winning a series on his own. I wouldn't expect the Mavs to beat the W's, but the W's are far from invincible and I think the Mavs kinda match up with them about as good as you can.
I have never, ever changed my opinion on a coach faster than I have with Kidd this season.
The guy playing point guard for New Orleans in that game was...you guessed it: Chris Paul.
This was either the 5th or 6th time a CP3 team has blown a 2-0 series lead.
To me, the Suns are a system team, and can only really run the system. That has value! Utah is another system team. Back in the day, the Spurs were a system team and won championships. For me, to be coach of the year, you have to be more than just a system. The Suns tried to adapt to the Mavs, and they just couldn't do it.
Like I'm not really arguing with you here, but the system is the coach's, right? So that's why Monty gets credit.
This one gets it own post, because I couldn't disagree more. I mean, Allen was awful too, but just because there are zero expectations doesn't mean he was ok. He was absolutely torched over and over and his only defense is falling down, which just kept endangering everyone else on the court.
On offense, Dallas doesn't have the size to punish the Ws in the same way an Ayton, JJJ or Joker could. I expect the Warriors to put Wiggins and maybe even Kuminga on Luka, count on Draymond to play free safety on the back line and and then just dare the other Mavs to beat them. I think Steph can compete with Brunson, Klay can compete with Bullock.
One thing I did see is that the Mavs are one of the slowest paced teams left in the playoffs while the Ws are one of the faster. I think the pace will be one thing to watch. I can see a lot of 125-118 type shootouts where the winning team just slowed the other team enough or one team was slightly colder from 3.
You could argue that the Ws are a system team. Every year Kerr forces the team to move the ball and cut instead of just spamming PnRs, and I definitely think it limits the Ws regular season success, but I think the Ws ability to play two styles on offense helps in the playoffs. Maybe without the system they'd be the Harden Rockets or the Jackson Warriors.
when we look at what happened with milwaukee against boston, i think it's easy to underplay what lopez did. he made the milwaukee defense work respectably in a scheme that saved more of giannis' energy for o - which they desperately needed. what awful wing play milwaukee got.
i also like dallas as a matchup more for the w's than i would phoenix. doncic, though, oh my goodness.
(some analysis there, i know)
yeah, I think maybe Poole is not very playable against Luka.
Yeah, but while a system delivers results in the regular season, it limits a team in the playoffs.
"I don’t give a damn about how this kid in Europe looks, I understand he’s a 6’8 point guard, he’s surreal, he’ll probably be the number two overall pick...(but) You have to take Deandre Ayton with the number one overall pick because you are the Phoenix Suns."
That was from a 2018 pre-draft show. A bad take, but not crazy or anything. As a side, I did see that ESPN ranked Mo Bamba and Marvin Bagley ahead of Trae on that show.
Speaking of, the Luka/Trae thing been done to death. I am happy to see whenever anyone mentions that the Hawks actually got a lottery pick in the deal, seems 95% of the internet thinks Luka was traded for Trae straight up. Unfortunately, Reddish was a bust. Heck, the whole 2019 draft was kind of a bust outside of Ja and maybe Zion.
Trae for Luka, even straight up, is basically fine. They're both great players, you got an extra piece, the extra piece didn't work out, oh well that's life.
Marvin Bagley over Luka? Now that's a franchise killer.
TIL that Al Horford is listed at 6'9". Adebayo, too.
ECF and WCF look like very different series. Going to be interesting adjustments for whichever teams make the Finals. On paper, Dallas is surely the weakest team remaining so advantage W's, but after what we all just watched Doncic continue to do... still feels like an early career Jordan (or James!) where he just doesn't have enough help yet, but you never know.
Who is the worst second best player on a champion? Like, whoever the Mavs' #2 is is way, way worse than that, right? (At least in recent memory.)
Probably the 2011 Mavs, whose second best player was either Tyson Chandler, Jason Kidd or Jason Terry.
Edit: I should add that I think the 2022 Mavs' second best player is probably roughly equivalent to the 2011 Mavs.
Probably a 37-year-old Jason Kidd or Jason Terry on the 2011 Mavs. More recently, Kyle Lowry or Pascal Siakim on the 2019 Raptors. At least one of those two is clearly better than Brunson (Siakim was a clear max player/borderline All NBA). Brunson's probably better than old man Kidd and Jet though.
If Dallas pulls this off then Doncic has got to be best player in the game -- this Warriors core has only lost to Lebron while fully healthy since Kerr showed up, and even Lebron only went 1 for 2 with Kyrie and Love as sidekicks along with the Bill Belicheck of the NBA as coach. Granted the Ws are older, but they probably have a good a supporting cast since they lost all their depth to fit in KD, assuming OPJ is healthy.
I think it's a testament to how impressive Luka is that despite all that I'm still nervous going into the series. I wouldn't put anything past Doncic.
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