2018-19 NBA Thread

Dell Curry talking about how hard it's been for the Warriors. Come on, Dell. No one's buying your boo-hoo baloney.

 

Jackson went 121-109 in three seasons with a young Warriors team, he won 47 and 51 games in his final two years as they grew and developed. They weren't bad, they made the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time in a couple of decades and managed to win playoff series with a 3rd year Steph Curry, 2nd year Klay Thompson and rookies Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes. Jackson did a good job developing those guys and getting them through their early NBA appearance.

They weren't bad under him.

 

You have a different perspective?

 

They had "circumstances" that stood in their way of winning a third straight title.

I don't know what "circumstances" they had that stood in the way of making five consecutive finals.

In fact, I can think of a couple of "circumstances" that greatly helped their cause.

 

They weren't bad, but it was clear that some weird shit was going on organizationally - it's been a while, so I can't remember if it was Jackson with the weirdo spy assistant coaches, or if that was upper management above him. Jackson also strikes me as a basketball "traditionalist," so I don't know if he would have embraced the "hey shoot it from anywhere!" green light that Kerr seemingly gave Curry, which in turn opened up the rest of the offense.

 

Jackson for first time in a long time got the Ws to play defense hard. Plus.

Minuses, he trusted Jarrett Jack more than Curry at end of games, told Curry to stand in corner, had no O other than hunt mismatch on block; and oh yeah was a huge hypocrite, talking minister (mail order) in locker room while being extorted by a “self employed model”. That’s what turned Bogut off.

 

Fair point.
They were far better than I realized. Truth be told, I didn’t feel like looking up records because I was using the phone rather than computer. Bad error on my part.
Can we agree that going from the least frequent passers to the most frequent passers, a move inspired by analytics, probably made them better than they would have been?

 

Analytics taught everyone that passing the ball on offense makes you better?

God fucking damn. Who the fuck knew?

I guess the 86 Celtics and Walton's Blazers were time travelers from the future with this wonderful knowledge.

It will really fuck with my brain if throwing strikes in baseball and not turning the ball over in football helps you win.

Sorry if I am laying it on thick, but people did know how to play the game before a spreadsheet.

 

The Rockets are spreadsheet basketball taken to its fullest realization.

 

I just don’t see how you can offer the max to Durant given the nature of his injury.

 

The short answer is, he's totally worth the risk.

Before the injury he was arguably the best player in the world. He's not going to be the same player after this, but he's very likely still... top 10 maybe?

Chiefly he's going to lose explosiveness, but that's not a huge part of his game anyway. He's still going to be seven feet tall and he's still going to have that shot. He'll still be able to defend.

Ultimately, if you have a shot to get him you have to take it, even in this state.

Needless to say, it would be the most Knicks thing in the world if they sign him to a max and he's never any good again. I think that's a relatively low risk.

(It's different from someone like Boogie Cousins, because Boogie's game is much more dependent on being explosive around the basket. Teams really needed to wait and see what he could do when he returned.)

 

I just wonder that a guy that tall with so much mileage is going to recover fully. No one ever seems to fully comeback and as a wise man once said, ball don’t lie. I see him more likely turning into late stage Dirk at this point.