ATL - Road teams now up 5-0 (Indy, NYK, Den, GSW)

[Iheartfootball]

I would argue this shows they aren't afraid being down one. Isn't there a video of Khris and Jrue laughing being down 2-0 to the Suns and winning? This gives me no reason to think they won't win in 6.

Absolutely! I think you and me are vibin' on a different frequency.

I'm so out of the loop with lingo I have no idea what it means, and the "absolutely!" to start has me even more confused

Vibe on my friend, vibe on!

I'm just being a weirdo. My point is, I have no idea who's going to win the series. My original post was 96.876% tongue planted firmly in cheek.

[Dick Tate]

Video ended too soon. I wanted to see how much JW took for his next sip.

[BigO]

Giannis was the best player in the opening round, but it still felt like he hadn’t had a masterclass game yet. It absolutely blows that we were only able to dip our toes into the playoffs.

I felt like the further we got, the more and more we would have seen from him, and it would have been awesome.

Also, so many people talking about Giannis as a top-3 player is a joke. It’s him and Jokic at the top, and then there’s a gap to the next grouping. People having Shai or Tatum (really just Simmons wishcasting) is laughable.

Shai is shooting like 40% from the field to this point, and I think he’s a pretty clear case of being propped up by his teammates. Jokic and Giannis take an entire team to stop. Shai doesn’t garner near that attention.

Giannis averaged a 2.1 ast/to ratio in the regular season & 1.43 in the playoffs. He averaged almost a 7:1 in April after Dame went out, & the ball ran thru Giannis. 15 asts/2 TO's at Detroit in a meaningful game.

So it was a sub-par playoffs for him. More of that regular season brilliance as a playmaker has to maintain. He can't revert to ball hog mode the moment a teammate misses or the lights are brightest. That evolution was a reason I thought we'd win the series & it was a letdown.

I think Giannis had a great series.

Things are always harder in the playoffs.

Especially when your assists are contingent on teammates like Kuzma and Prince making shots.

[tydett]

I still think the Bucks could have been one of those underdog teams with the Giannis and guard lineup. Instead we get Doc throwing random lineups out there with zero chemistry. Pretty sure he had Sims, Brook and Giannis for a stretch in a game and I just about pulled my hair out. We're never winning with this doofus.

Kuzma was at the 2 in this lineup, and I think maybe KPJ? Bozo ran out a KPJ-Kuzma-Giannis-Sims-Brook lineup. In meaningful minutes. In a do-or-die game.

Should be fired for that alone but guess we're rolling with him again.

[tsamo]

Giannis was the best player in the opening round, but it still felt like he hadn’t had a masterclass game yet. It absolutely blows that we were only able to dip our toes into the playoffs.

I felt like the further we got, the more and more we would have seen from him, and it would have been awesome.

Also, so many people talking about Giannis as a top-3 player is a joke. It’s him and Jokic at the top, and then there’s a gap to the next grouping. People having Shai or Tatum (really just Simmons wishcasting) is laughable.

Shai is shooting like 40% from the field to this point, and I think he’s a pretty clear case of being propped up by his teammates. Jokic and Giannis take an entire team to stop. Shai doesn’t garner near that attention.

Giannis averaged a 2.1 ast/to ratio in the regular season & 1.43 in the playoffs. He averaged almost a 7:1 in April after Dame went out, & the ball ran thru Giannis. 15 asts/2 TO's at Detroit in a meaningful game.

So it was a sub-par playoffs for him. More of that regular season brilliance as a playmaker has to maintain. He can't revert to ball hog mode the moment a teammate misses or the lights are brightest. That evolution was a reason I thought we'd win the series & it was a letdown.

I think Giannis had a great series.

Things are always harder in the playoffs.

Especially when your assists are contingent on teammates like Kuzma and Prince making shots.

Also, in our last 10 games in the regular season, after Dame went down, Giannis averaged 10.4 assists on 15.5 potential assists.
In these 5 games against the Pacers he averaged 6.6 assists on 14.4 potential assists.

We missed so many wide open shots it was ridiculous. Again!! Meanwhile they were making theirs and even making higly contested ones. It is what it is.
MAYBE we would have a chance if we rolled that lineup the whole series and did not start essentially 10 points down every game.

[Bernman]

Also, in our last 10 games in the regular season, after Dame went down, Giannis averaged 10.4 assists on 15.5 potential assists.
In these 5 games against the Pacers he averaged 6.6 assists on 14.4 potential assists.

We missed so many wide open shots it was ridiculous. Again!! Meanwhile they were making theirs and even making higly contested ones. It is what it is.
MAYBE we would have a chance if we rolled that lineup the whole series and did not start essentially 10 points down every game.

What does any of this have to do w/ repeatedly looking off Green when he was wide open and shot over 50% from the series (must have been about 70 on open looks)? That's just purely a bad process.

The lineup, to a degree, is a red herring when it comes to this convo. I separately acknowledged its problems, like everyone else.

[BigO]

Giannis averaged a 2.1 ast/to ratio in the regular season & 1.43 in the playoffs. He averaged almost a 7:1 in April after Dame went out, & the ball ran thru Giannis. 15 asts/2 TO's at Detroit in a meaningful game.

So it was a sub-par playoffs for him. More of that regular season brilliance as a playmaker has to maintain. He can't revert to ball hog mode the moment a teammate misses or the lights are brightest. That evolution was a reason I thought we'd win the series & it was a letdown.

I think Giannis had a great series.

Things are always harder in the playoffs.

Especially when your assists are contingent on teammates like Kuzma and Prince making shots.

Also, in our last 10 games in the regular season, after Dame went down, Giannis averaged 10.4 assists on 15.5 potential assists.
In these 5 games against the Pacers he averaged 6.6 assists on 14.4 potential assists.

We missed so many wide open shots it was ridiculous. Again!! Meanwhile they were making theirs and even making higly contested ones. It is what it is.
MAYBE we would have a chance if we rolled that lineup the whole series and did not start essentially 10 points down every game.

Amen brother.

[BigO]

Also, in our last 10 games in the regular season, after Dame went down, Giannis averaged 10.4 assists on 15.5 potential assists.
In these 5 games against the Pacers he averaged 6.6 assists on 14.4 potential assists.

We missed so many wide open shots it was ridiculous. Again!! Meanwhile they were making theirs and even making higly contested ones. It is what it is.
MAYBE we would have a chance if we rolled that lineup the whole series and did not start essentially 10 points down every game.

What does any of this have to do w/ repeatedly looking off Green when he was wide open and shot over 50% from the series (must have been about 70 on open looks)? That's just purely a bad process.

The lineup, to a degree, is a red herring when it comes to this convo. I separately acknowledged its problems, like everyone else.

The lineup is irrelevant in regard to making shots and how they affect assists??

If your takeaway is that Giannis didn't have a good series because he missed Green on some open shots, your standards are different from mine.

[emunney]

We didn't lose this series because of shooting disparities. We lost because the Pacers playing 5 out opened up all sorts of lanes due to our insistence on playing Prince and Lopez, and because Kuzma was generally atrocious to a degree I don't think even his biggest haters would have anticipated.

Consider that in the 114 minutes that none of Kuzma, Prince, or Lopez were on the floor, the team was +11.5 in net rating.

In lineups that included one of these 3 players, we allowed over 60% on 2 pointers. That's catastrophic, and it *was* catastrophic. When all three were on the bench: 50.43%.

[Bernman]

We didn't lose this series because of shooting disparities. We lost because the Pacers playing 5 out opened up all sorts of lanes due to our insistence on playing Prince and Lopez, and because Kuzma was generally atrocious to a degree I don't think even his biggest haters would have anticipated.

Consider that in the 114 minutes that none of Kuzma, Prince, or Lopez were on the floor, the team was +11.5 in net rating.

In lineups that included one of these 3 players, we allowed over 60% on 2 pointers. That's catastrophic, and it *was* catastrophic. When all three were on the bench: 50.43%.

We can talk about more than one issue. I also acknowledge we may (or may not) have won the series w/ better rotations.

But we also have to note there are ways we didn't maximize our advantage, like finding open shooters. In addition our late game execution stinks compared to the Pacers, regular season and post. That came together in running the ball thru Giannis in an end game situation and him not passing to Green wide open. The prior game Green started 3/5 from 3 in like the 1st 8 minutes, then didn't take a shot his next 15, w/ Giannis looking him off repeatedly. We had the D breakdown between Dame-Kuz-Bobby in game 2 to kill our run.

If people want to make everything about Kuz, we had 1 d breakdown after another at the end of game 5. We weren't close enough to have many late game situations that even mattered this series. But regular season we have that breakdown in Indy. At Orlando multiple guys were inside the 3 pt line when they needed a 3 w/ .4 secs. Against Brooklyn Bobby didn't peel off when Green was covering a drive allowing an open 3 to Cam Johnson.

We were having late game breakdowns, most which didn't involve Kuz or the lineup. We sucked against very good teams, which Indy were the 2nd half. Those are things we need to acknowledge that, yea, maybe it wouldn't have mattered what we'd have done either, as far as winning the series. Just would have been nice to have given ourselves a real shot.

[emunney]

We didn't lose this series because of shooting disparities. We lost because the Pacers playing 5 out opened up all sorts of lanes due to our insistence on playing Prince and Lopez, and because Kuzma was generally atrocious to a degree I don't think even his biggest haters would have anticipated.

Consider that in the 114 minutes that none of Kuzma, Prince, or Lopez were on the floor, the team was +11.5 in net rating.

In lineups that included one of these 3 players, we allowed over 60% on 2 pointers. That's catastrophic, and it *was* catastrophic. When all three were on the bench: 50.43%.

We can talk about more than one issue. I also acknowledge we may (or may not) have won the series w/ better rotations.

But we also have to note there are ways we didn't maximize our advantage, like finding open shooters. In addition our late game execution stinks compared to the Pacers, regular season and post. That came together in running the ball thru Giannis in an end game situation and him not passing to Green wide open. The prior game Green started 3/5 from 3 in like the 1st 8 minutes, then didn't take a shot his next 15, w/ Giannis looking him off repeatedly. We had the D breakdown between Dame-Kuz-Bobby in game 2 to kill our run.

If people want to make everything about Kuz, we had 1 d breakdown after another at the end of game 5. We weren't close enough to have many late game situations that even mattered this series. But regular season we have that breakdown in Indy. At Orlando multiple guys were inside the 3 pt line when they needed a 3 w/ .4 secs. Against Brooklyn Bobby didn't peel off when Green was covering a drive allowing an open 3 to Cam Johnson.

We were having late game breakdowns, most which didn't involve Kuz or the lineup. We sucked against very good teams, which Indy were the 2nd half. Those are things we need to acknowledge that, yea, maybe it wouldn't have mattered what we'd have done either, as far as winning the series. Just would have been nice to have given ourselves a real shot.

It's not all on Kuz (though he was terrible; I assume you're not contesting that). We have breakdowns without Kuz, sure, and we have at least as many with him, and his problems on defense in this series were minor compared to his struggles on offense.

I'm not really even going in on Doc/rotations with my post, tbh. We discovered a coherent and unique team identity with 8 games to go but we only had 7 (8 if you count Dame) guys who fit into it, and 5 (6) of them were guards. We didn't have enough dudes. We should have leaned into it more, and earlier, but it would have been extraordinarily bold even for a great coach to sit all three of those guys for the whole series from the first tip. Again, just not enough in the way of alternatives.

If the organization recognizes what they stumbled into, the way Doc did in game 5, we could have a meaningful makeover this offseason that uses what we learned and builds on it. I could see Kuzma theoretically playing a role in the remade team, but we can't have him out there as a wing if he can't shoot, and we can't have him out there as a big if he can't anchor.

Also, I'm not saying we can't talk about shooting disparities because we need to talk about this other thing. I'm saying there wasn't a shooting disparity.

[Bernman]

It's not all on Kuz (though he was terrible; I assume you're not contesting that). We have breakdowns without Kuz, sure, and we have at least as many with him, and his problems on defense in this series were minor compared to his struggles on offense.

I'm not really even going in on Doc/rotations with my post, tbh. We discovered a coherent and unique team identity with 8 games to go but we only had 7 (8 if you count Dame) guys who fit into it, and 5 (6) of them were guards. We didn't have enough dudes. We should have leaned into it more, and earlier, but it would have been extraordinarily bold even for a great coach to sit all three of those guys for the whole series from the first tip. Again, just not enough in the way of alternatives.

If the organization recognizes what they stumbled into, the way Doc did in game 5, we could have a meaningful makeover this offseason that uses what we learned and builds on it. I could see Kuzma theoretically playing a role in the remade team, but we can't have him out there as a wing if he can't shoot, and we can't have him out there as a big if he can't anchor.

Also, I'm not saying we can't talk about shooting disparities because we need to talk about this other thing. I'm saying there wasn't a shooting disparity.

I'm saying we had 2 elite shooters who shot like it in the series. But in 2 of the games 1 got up 2 & 5 shots. The other got up 4 & 6. Then in the most crucial moment of the series, neither were passed to when open. So what I'm saying is:



When it comes to the near future w/ Giannis, all we have due to our cap restraints and in-house players, is the approach you're talking about. That's why I suggested maybe we draft Koby Brea in the mid 2nd rd. Then we re-sign KPJ & hope what we saw in the playoffs was over-exuberance & not exposure. Also that he keeps his nose clean. It's not hopeless, but (imo) not as hopeful as if we got the Flagg & friends return, for example.

[ReasonablySober]

Read on Twitter

Holy ****.

[PG Graveyard]

Indiana has caught some amazing injury luck the past two years.

[blazza18]

That’s **** brutal for the Cavs.

[Bernman]

Well, Cleveland's lineup w/out Mobley & Garland last year had the #1 net rating in the NBA. And that was pre-Atkinson. So they may well be fine.

[engelmartin]

Ty Jerome is out here doing his best Jalen Brunson impersonation and the refs aren’t buying it at all

Cleveland is content trading dunks for threes, just like we were

The difference is that they have Dean Wade and we don’t

[engelmartin]

Sam Merrill, ladies and gentlemen

[Matches Malone]

[Bernman]

Sam Merrill, the pedigree of a champion.