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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 | 4354 comment(s)
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Tags: narratives, nba, off-topic, playoffs
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If this enables OKC to draft Wemby, they should rename the team the Oklahoma Thinder.
Do we see a 60 game season from Kawhi ever again? Before missing last year he played 57 (of 72) and 52 (and 9 his last year in San Antonio, 60 his only year in Toronto).
PG is 48 (of 72), 54, and 31.
Kawhi and Westbrook have been my two favorite players over the past 15 years, and yeah, it's painful to see them at this stage of their careers.
2) I actually had just been thinking about how weird it is that basketball players play in these leagues from a liability standpoint. I don't think anything equivalent happens in any other sports?
3) It seems to disconfirm one of my more speculative beliefs, that Chet's skinniness might actually have the significant upside of a lower risk of foot injuries (it seems like big men always have a ton of foot injuries, which I'd attributed to putting so much weight on them).
I don't believe it was a factor buttttt have any thoughtful people suggested that the condition of the court may have played a role here? (After all, they did cancel the game in q2 because of a wet floor.)
a not insignificant number of MLB players participate in various caribbean winter leagues, and those are a much more competitive environment than pro-am summer camps.
oh ffs; now someone else is going to start doing it.
I don't believe it was a factor buttttt have any thoughtful people suggested that the condition of the court may have played a role here? (After all, they did cancel the game in q2 because of a wet floor.)
I was thinking about that. You can outlaw the pro-ams but these guys are always going to scrimmage/workout together some, especially if one player booms another in the playoffs. Chet sounds like he was cleared to play in this game.
But the court situation doesn't sound good from what I've heard. The folks involved should probably be lawyering up, if they hadn't already (hopefully they already had with the amount of liability involved).
I think this means the Lakers are trading Westbrook. Niether Beverley nor RWB seem like guys who would be able to get past their previous beef.
given that it's texas, it's worth waiting to make sure the "dangerous drugs" in question aren't just birth control pills, or HRT, or 3/4 of an ounce of marijuana. even though he went to college at baylor (where, let it be noted that he did this), i still think he deserves more benefit of the doubt than any unnamed texas cop/judge/prosecutor.
oh and btw, fun fact:
texas's attorney general (that's ted cruz's previous job) is now on year 7 of dodging a felony indictment for securities fraud.
Texas!
If it is wrong, I don't want to be right.
I'm still sort of convinced that good NBA "role players" are underpaid and non-elite NBA "first and second option guys" are overpaid, but I've thought that for a while now and people that know more than me keep giving out checks so guess I'll take their word for it.
It's not clear to me that he is yet, but I haven't watched him closely enough yet to form a strong opinion on whether he will be.
That has to be happening to some degree, right? It might be tough to convince sellers to take less for what they perceive to be comparable talent.
I was a bit surprised they didn't get anything more than THT for Beverly. I thought Beverly could have fetched a FRP from a team wanting to be good. Maybe there just aren't that many teams that are good with FRPs to trade.
Throughout their history, teams have found that dealing with the Timberwolves is a great way to get a steal...
Well, he's no Royce O'Neale. And technically they also got Stanley Johnson.
Guess based on nothing: The Wolves wanted Gobert more than Jazz wanted him gone. So they overbid to get the player.
This feels right to me. Also, what Mouse said above, about Connelly being new and wanting to make a splash.
It is, yeah. They were going to be interesting before the trade, and it just made them flat out fascinating.
Woof.
Sure, except the main person talking about Ant Edwards taking that leap is Ant Edwards. Your expectation is way more reasonable, but I can dream.
I think people are a little too low on Lamelo. He was a fringe all-star last year (actually made the team as well), and the list of 20 year olds who give you 20/7/7 is a who's who of superstars.
I think most of his bad habits on defense are fixable with coaching.
***
I don't think the Timberwolves are particularly interesting. They remind me of the Lakers last year.
Selling the farm for an unusual player where conventional wisdom hates the fit?
I'm starting to wonder if it's intentional to keep me clicking/wasting time.
LaMelo Ball +6.1
Ja Morant +4.6
Anthony Edwards +4.5
Scottie Barnes +3.8
Cade Cunningham +3.1
Evan Mobley +1.8
538 is designed for people who read about sports on the New York Times.
***
A team that gets talked up in the pre-season due to the talent with multiple players who have to have the team designed around them and all fit questions are ignored.
Caught me, too. My guess when looking at their numbers is his offensive number last season (via their system, whatever is behind it) was extremely low and that's capping his ceiling.
FWIW their take on his offense seems lower than the take at other various all-in-one sites.
(Scheduled yearly post)
I think the thing I'm most curious about with the Twolves is how the Gobert fit will be. I'm in the camp that thinks part of Gobert's rep for being a tricky fit is an unfair side effect of Utah's roster, but I've never been sure how much. Minny isn't surrounding him with a bunch of lockdown wings, but I'm still very interested to see how he does in a different environment and scheme, and also if he and KAT can coexist.
Also on the Minny front, I try not to care overmuch about the financial doings of team owners, but ARod's team failing to make their payments leading to Glen Taylor keeping the team does feel like it would be a very Wovles tragedy.
QFT:
Also this: is a great burn.
I don't think this is correct at all.
The Lakers don't have any players that need the team designed around them. LeBron and Davis make any team better. They either fit well with rest of the roster, or they are better than whoever they duplicate/displace. They also fit well with each other, evidence the 2020 championship with a mediocre supporting cast. Westbrook needs to dominate the ball, but that's not unusual for a PG. He fits easily on a lot of teams (or did, before he was washed). The problem is that he duplicates with LeBron, and isn't as good as LeBron, so he doesn't add value to a LeBron team, and that mediocre supporting cast got gutted to acquire him, so now it's basically a G-league team outside of the big 3 (or big 2, really). But there were no fit questions. There was a Westbrook/LeBron fit *problem* there was no chance it was going to work.
The Wolves on the other have a fit question. I can see the Gobert/Towns pairing working very well, and I can see it working badly. The rest of the roster is made of normalish guys that fit around either one of the Twin City Towers. I don't think either Gobert or Towns is particularly difficult to build a team around, any more than any other good but flawed big would be. The question is if they can play together, and I think the answer is yes, even if the pairing is not ideal. But I see the possibility of synergy and the possibility getting in each other's way.
Basically I just look at each of these "all-in-one" stats as a decent guess at an individual players value. Not a perfect guess and certainly not omnipotent or precise, but just an individual useful piece of information. (edit to add - I tend to think less of the 538 version of this than what I find at dunksandthrees or Darko, for whatever that's worth, probably not much since I'm making this judgment based on nothing concrete.)
Maybe that's giving them too much value, but I don't think so.
Kawhi's #1 comp is Paul George, while Ben's is every Hawk fan's favorite player - Danny Manning.
Yeah, I know this all doesn't mean much, but it's still fun to hit 'Random Player' over and over.
I like them, too, if nothing else they're good thread fodder for us. That's why I wish the site was easier to navigate!
Maybe this is semantics.
I think there were definite questions about how Westbrook was going to play. Zach Lowe talked about it a ton--were we going to see Houston Russ? There was the notorious game early season where Westbrook set like 8 screens and then he basically set 8 more the whole rest of the season. So I sort of disagree that there was no chance it was going to work.
I think AD actually does have a lot of fit issues with most teams. He insists on playing PF on defense and C on offense. I think that's just who he is at this point, and it actually does cause fit issues on most teams because there are only so many Myles Turners to go around.
I think that Towns and Gobert basically have the same obvious fit issues that Westbrook and LeBron had. They both play the same position, and they both have had significant amounts of success playing that position. It is possible, of course, that one or both of them completely changes their game to accommodate the other, but I don't think it's very likely and I think if they did change their game, it would make them a worse player. Gobert can't roll to the rim while Towns posts up, and Towns can't guard 5 out the same way that Gobert can't guard 5 out.
Maybe if they put him as a 2 guard (which is where he will be playing for the foreseeable future) they might not have his height in the "bad" category. He could absolutely not break out, injuries happen and such, but the Wolves had such weird small roster construction last year it has hit both players I looked at. Interesting toy though and fun thread bait.
Think the system might have missed he's 35 years old and has played 37 NBA minutes since 2019.
So, in other words, it's 538.
I looked at 6-8 players yesterday and although I didn't dig too deeply into the numbers or if I thought they made sense, I did notice that it didn't seem to account for aging arcs like I'd expect. Several of the players were pre-25 and none had what I would consider normal aging curves to their projections, just decline. Shrug emoji.
In the 2016 NBA draft, basically half the first round is out of the league or replacement level. The second round is more like 80%.
So those data points will drag down your expectations unless you specifically build your model to ignore washouts.
Not saying that their list is good or bad or whatever compared to average list, but at least it seems like something they've put out year after year for a while now and it'd be interesting to see history of it in one place.
Or if anyone's put a list like that together with some consistency.
I like the one Seth Partnow does at The Athletic but that's only going back to last year, I think.
I mean this trend of giving up, like, the moon in first round picks and swaps is hilarious. But within those confines, like, Cleveland probably projected to be mediocre in the near future so not adding any premium pieces through the draft. If your championship scenario is predicted on Mobley making a leap, you could do a lot worse than Mitchell as a plausible second banana.
Mitchell + Garland will be interesting from a height standpoint on D especially, but I suspect it's not a terminal flaw.
I like this significantly better than the all-in moves the Wovles and Hawks made.
Downsides: none of their perimeter guys (Garland, Mitchell, Levert, Rubio) are much better than "average" from deep. Even an improved Cleveland is still bottom half of a strong East, and could easily be back in the play-in with some bad luck.
Edit: Put more succinctly, I guess, this seems like an overpay to lock in the best case scenario for Sexton and maybe accelerate their timeline. I may be underrating the value in that certainty, though.
Gobert returned more equity than Mitchell. Wow.
Still thinking about what I think about this deal.
2. Weird trend this off-season with play-in teams trading multiple first round picks.
3. I kinda get this trade for Cleveland in that if Mobley develops, they have four all-star level players, which at least in theory makes you a contender. That said, seems like an overpay.
4. I don't know who won this trade, but Minnesota lost this trade.
Thinking about the trade for the Cavs ... I think it is OK. A reasonable trade, but, I don't know how much it advances them in the East. They got fair value, but I don't think much surplus value and they were more than one part away. They need more before they are a contender IMO, but I suppose it might happen with internal improvement.
Having said that, the Cavs made a much, much better trade than Minnesota and are absolutely better off than the Wolves today *and* the next couple of years. It's not close, IMO (and that's also thinking ANT has a chance to be a great player). Some of that is the ages here - Rudy is 30 and I think the downside of his contract is going to be BAD (I don't completely agree about him getting played off the court in Utah, but in 2 years...) - and Mitchell is now the old guy in Cleve at 25. But I also like Mobley and Garland more than Towns and ANT (mainly I'm infatuated with Mobley's future), plus is it crazy to think that Allen can be more valuable than Rudy sooner rather than later? I defended the LaVert trade before; I would like the Cavs much more if they hadn't use those bullets for him and could use them to find a better fit at the 3.
Of course, all I really care about here is looking at this from the Bulls perspective. The Cavs have clearly separated themselves from the Bulls now in that division. Not that it made any sense for the Bulls to try and beat any of the offers for anyone traded this offseason, but their summer of inactivity keeps looking worse and worse.
* If Mobley becomes a top 5 player, do you want Garland and Mitchell as sidekicks?
* If Ant becomes a top 5 player, do you want Gobert and Towns as sidekicks?
* If Trae becomes a top 5 player, do you want Murray as one of a few sidekicks?
The first one seems a lot more like a clear yes than the others. Well, I'm all out on Trae, so maybe that's clouding my judgment, a D first backcourt mate is not a bad fit. But I'll take the approach from the Cavs over the Wovles.
Obviously this is very reductionist.
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