2018-19 NBA Thread

Ingram is kind of a weird case. He was amazing after the deadline. Like, if he played like that before the deadline the Pelicans may have pulled the trigger.

But yeah, that injury is concerning. Supposedly he's fine, but I'd want to see him in action first.

 

I’ll ask the same question, how many raptors games have you watched from beginning to end with Leonard and Siakam playing together?

 

Beginning to end? Maybe five. Seen parts of a hell of a lot more.

Siakam is terrific. Most improved player in the league by a wide margin. And Leonard is Leonard.

I'll still go Embiid/Simmons. And I would bet Leonard is a Clipper next year.

 

I’ll guess we’ll probably see next round.

 

So Jared Dudley and Butler get tossed and fined for shoving (on what looked like almost a clean block by Embiid) but has anyone seen any explanation for why D'Angelo Russell got off completely scott free? Not even a fine? He looked like he was the guy shoving Ed Malloy (yeah I know what he looks like) and others into the fans/patrons.

 

I haven't seen any explanation. It's weird, because you're right, he appears to be the guy who pushed the scrum into the crowd.

The Embiid play was funny. It looked like a brutal play -- borderline flagrant 2 -- and I totally get why Dudley went after him, particularly given the angle he had of the action. But when you see the replay it's barely even a foul. It was almost perfectly clean.

 

Simmons, kind of like Westbrook, strikes me as a great regular season player. By that, I mean in the playoffs, I wonder if "smart" teams with good coaches can kind of gameplan around them, because they have some severe limitations. I'm a Celtics fan, so you'd see it with Rajon Rondo plenty of times - He could fill a stat sheet, but then he'd have infuriating games because defenses would sag 10 feet off him, knowing he couldn't hit an 18-footer. It doesn't matter if you surround them with enough good players, but hey, that's easier said than done. It seemed liked the Celtics did that to Simmons in last year's playoffs, but that's obviously a sample size of like six games.

 

Yeah, Simmons has to be an odd one to plan for. You don't have to sweat an outside shot -- and in his case "outside" means 4 feet from the basket -- but if you give him room he'll drive on you relentlessly. Not a lot of precedent for a guy that big who can play point guard and steadfastly refuses to shoot... who still drops 18 a game in the playoffs.

(One thing that really impressed me about Embiid: last year Boston figured out how to defend him in the postseason and he seems to have fixed that part of his game. His post moves were all too slow to develop and Horford ate him alive. They can't do that anymore.)

 

Pistons set the NBA record tonight -- 14 straight playoff losses
The Pistons will have the 15th pick in June's NBA draft. Last time that happened, they selected Austin Daye in 2009.

 

Luke uses the force?

Luke Walton accused of sexual assault by former SportsNet host Kelli Tennant

 

I don't know who their next coach is going to be, but I know this:

He's a fucking idiot for taking that job.