Around the NBA - 2024-25 Season Continued Continued

[GettinitDone]

Inexperience caught up with Houston

Kerr starting a rookie C ?? Thibs would never

[Guano]

Blessed to live in a time to watch Curry hoop

[Guano]

Also all the kawhi 2nd chip talk is a lil premature when he is paired with Jim Harden.

[Chanel Bomber]

The talk about this team is weird, you'd think this wasn't year 1 of it. Not only that, but some of the teams being named are going to get suplexed by the the luxury tax worse than us, it needs to be repeated over and over again the Celtics are set to be the most expensive team in American sports history, beating the previous record by nearly $170 million. Their luxury tax bill is going to be more expensive than our actual team

The Cavs are also going to lose Ty Jerome, he's an unrestricted free agent, that may not seem like much but he was a huge reason why they could scale back on Mitchell's minutes. The other teams, Clippers, Lakers, Warriors are either old or have a critical core player that is old. The Thunder are obviously the best set up team, but there's a window here where we will have a chance with 2-3 real cracks at it.

well who knows what happens in the future. some teams get worse and some teams get better. that doesn't guarantee that we will. boston is going to lose someone eventually. that's true. but the spurs will get better. the rockets will probably make a trade and get better. it doesn't mean we're going up in the rankings.

sometimes, i'm disappointed in you because unlike a lot of people on here i know you know what you're talking about. but you cosign these guys who don't. you know this isn't a top 5 roster. boo this man

All we need is one year for things to break our way, that Nuggets team that won a title didn't beat a single 50-win team, they went through a murderer's row of mid. Next season, we have to get the 1 seed to avoid the 2-3 matchup.

I'm not co-signing a top 5 roster, I'm just not negating anything they say Why would I go against my political base? No new taxes and all that jazz. Couple moves around the edges, a better coach and things breaking our way? It could happen.

My political base

[ctorres]

Inexperience caught up with Houston

Kerr starting a rookie C ?? Thibs would never

Our rookie C is injured, otherwise I know for sure Thibs would play Huk if he was healthy, lol

[ctorres]

Read on Twitter

[HopelessKnick]

It just feels like we are betting against ourselves if we are hoping we can win with multiple bad defenders and their offense isn’t good enough to make up for it (besides Brunson).

But we’re wasting Brunson’s prime right now by being locked in a core that isn’t going to win a chip. We just wasted our assets. It’s really to me about using all of our assets and it didn’t even make us really better. I personally would’ve just stuck with what we had from last year and traded for a rim protector like Kessler. Then save the rest of your assets for someone else when they become available. Hell we actually even had the opportunity to get Donovan Mitchell a couple years ago, who would’ve been a major help for us. It’s puzzling to me that after all these years of us “waiting on that big fish” we used all of our assets on two players that didn’t do anything to make us a championship contender.

Personally for me, I think hiring a new coach is just trying to put a band aid on something that needs surgery. The roster needs to be fixed no matter who the coach is. We are probably gonna fire Thibs after we lose to Boston so I hope we make that leap that you guys think we will under a new coach.

its tough for me to reconcile you saying wasting away brunson prime of his career but also saying he is the reason we will never be in the tier because we acknowledge he isn't a good defender. The best player on a team being 6'1 just typically doesn't win historically in the NBA. So we were always going to have a uphill battle no matter what for the top of top teams.

We built this team around brunson (for better or worse). Is it at "peak form" no...do i thnk we played as well as we should have this year "no". Lets see if last night sparks some things because the team played with the most fire and desire (shout out clyde) pretty much all season. Just attacking the glass, being physical ect...

I also think people in CLE thought there roster was capped out as well and didn't think a coaching change would matter and that was huge for them. Also just meshing and building chemistry matters. I know we all think in that "video game" mindset where you make a trade(s) they all of a sudden everything clicks. Especially when you are going against fine tune teams like BOS and OKC who have been together for years.

Even Miami when they brought the big 3 in had ups and down there first year...because playing together and developing chemistry takes time. Now we are talking different levels to this because certainly our teams is not Lebron/Wade/Bosh ect...but the point remains. Chemistry takes time with players. And the coach thing is what it is...I will hold judgement until our final results in the playoffs before I make the call completely on Thibs for next year but I do think he is holding us back in some ways which you are overlooking the impact.

Where did I say we will never be in that elite tier because of Brunson? I said we will never be in that tier because we have multiple bad defenders in the lineup where their offense doesn't outweigh their negatives on defense (besides brunson). You can win with brunson, but if you're putting a bunch of awful defenders around him you're setting yourself up for failure.

You guys are forgetting that the Cavs has a bunch of young players. They were bound to get better regardless. And they also have great two good defenders in their front court which puts them at a major advantage over us. We have zero good defenders in the front court.

The Heat went to the finals in their first year. I watched a bunch of their games that season because I live in fl. We are not even close to being on their level. And they had 3 hall of famers. So I don't really get the comparison. A better comparison for us is being the Toronto Raptors when they had lowry and derozan. Good enough to beat up on bad teams in the regular season, but we get exposed against the elite contenders.

I don't really care if we fire Thibs. Honestly, I might be on that hire JVG train anyways. But even then, no matter who the coach is you aren't going to win a chip if you have a bunch of trash defenders in the starting lineup. That's where I stand on this. So we will prob never see eye to eye on this.

Heres to hoping we look better next year lol

Essentially the bolded. I completely agree with that. To me I was looking forward to see if two elite offensive players in Brunson and KAT can outweigh the defensive shortcomings but as of today it does not seem so. Part of it has been KAT being too passive at times but a bigger part of it is that having two defensive liabilities puts a great burden on your defense and it seems close to impossible to play great defense for long stretches. You can get a couple good stops here and there and put together some ok defense but I doubt we can realistically be better than a fringe top 10 defense with both of them. For us to be a top 8-10 defense and then really compete for a title, we'd have to be the best offense in the league hands down. I don't see it.

There is still part of me thinking that KAT could potentially be a guy that can get you 28/12/5 type of numbers if you put maximum trust in him and run much more offense through him. However I do think that if you have JB at the 1 the "easiest path to a real contender is having everyone else be a good defender with a defending C orchestrating the defense. Especially if This was to remain coach. Of course you would have to turn KAT into a 2-way PF/C that can score 18-20 points as well (think Adebayo type level or JJJ).

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch......of course that would all be contingent on Mitch staying healthy and getting back to where he was before the injury.

[spree2kawhi]

Also all the kawhi 2nd chip talk is a lil premature when he is paired with Jim Harden.

Kawhi missed two three-pointers in the clutch including an open one down the stretch. He’s such a useless bum.

[spree2kawhi]

Read on Twitter

But the hands need to be off the ball while the buzzer is still off.

[spree2kawhi]

Spoiler:

its tough for me to reconcile you saying wasting away brunson prime of his career but also saying he is the reason we will never be in the tier because we acknowledge he isn't a good defender. The best player on a team being 6'1 just typically doesn't win historically in the NBA. So we were always going to have a uphill battle no matter what for the top of top teams.

We built this team around brunson (for better or worse). Is it at "peak form" no...do i thnk we played as well as we should have this year "no". Lets see if last night sparks some things because the team played with the most fire and desire (shout out clyde) pretty much all season. Just attacking the glass, being physical ect...

I also think people in CLE thought there roster was capped out as well and didn't think a coaching change would matter and that was huge for them. Also just meshing and building chemistry matters. I know we all think in that "video game" mindset where you make a trade(s) they all of a sudden everything clicks. Especially when you are going against fine tune teams like BOS and OKC who have been together for years.

Even Miami when they brought the big 3 in had ups and down there first year...because playing together and developing chemistry takes time. Now we are talking different levels to this because certainly our teams is not Lebron/Wade/Bosh ect...but the point remains. Chemistry takes time with players. And the coach thing is what it is...I will hold judgement until our final results in the playoffs before I make the call completely on Thibs for next year but I do think he is holding us back in some ways which you are overlooking the impact.

Where did I say we will never be in that elite tier because of Brunson? I said we will never be in that tier because we have multiple bad defenders in the lineup where their offense doesn't outweigh their negatives on defense (besides brunson). You can win with brunson, but if you're putting a bunch of awful defenders around him you're setting yourself up for failure.

You guys are forgetting that the Cavs has a bunch of young players. They were bound to get better regardless. And they also have great two good defenders in their front court which puts them at a major advantage over us. We have zero good defenders in the front court.

The Heat went to the finals in their first year. I watched a bunch of their games that season because I live in fl. We are not even close to being on their level. And they had 3 hall of famers. So I don't really get the comparison. A better comparison for us is being the Toronto Raptors when they had lowry and derozan. Good enough to beat up on bad teams in the regular season, but we get exposed against the elite contenders.

I don't really care if we fire Thibs. Honestly, I might be on that hire JVG train anyways. But even then, no matter who the coach is you aren't going to win a chip if you have a bunch of trash defenders in the starting lineup. That's where I stand on this. So we will prob never see eye to eye on this.

Heres to hoping we look better next year lol

Essentially the bolded. I completely agree with that. To me I was looking forward to see if two elite offensive players in Brunson and KAT can outweigh the defensive shortcomings but as of today it does not seem so. Part of it has been KAT being too passive at times but a bigger part of it is that having two defensive liabilities puts a great burden on your defense and it seems close to impossible to play great defense for long stretches. You can get a couple good stops here and there and put together some ok defense but I doubt we can realistically be better than a fringe top 10 defense with both of them. For us to be a top 8-10 defense and then really compete for a title, we'd have to be the best offense in the league hands down. I don't see it.

There is still part of me thinking that KAT could potentially be a guy that can get you 28/12/5 type of numbers if you put maximum trust in him and run much more offense through him. However I do think that if you have JB at the 1 the "easiest path to a real contender is having everyone else be a good defender with a defending C orchestrating the defense. Especially if This was to remain coach. Of course you would have to turn KAT into a 2-way PF/C that can score 18-20 points as well (think Adebayo type level or JJJ).

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch......of course that would all be contingent on Mitch staying healthy and getting back to where he was before the injury.

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch Is not a contender either.

It’s a nice idea to turn Towns into a two-way player but in sum, Adebayo and JJJ aren’t really that much better players. They may very well be better players overall, I don’t know, but the player to propel us past Boston, you know, does not exist. It’s a crybaby mentality to keep faulting our players (or bringing up Julius Randle as if he was some type of difference maker )

I’m certainly not talking about you when I say posters will merely trash our product and act like we’re wasting Brunson’s prime, but they don’t know any alternatives at all. These posters are basically just grumpy haters who love to say the easy things. For instance, they’ll trash Mikal Bridges after an otherwise good game for missed three-point shots down the stretch. The same dudes can’t even notice when the same happens to Kawhi and he’ll (rightfully) get a pass. They can’t even notice a good game by Bridges, because in order to do so you’d have to understand basketball and pay attention to a lot of off the ball action on both sides of the floor. Needless to say, they don’t want to see it anymore. They are haters. It is sad.

Dominant two-way players, or perfect basketball players for that matter, simply don’t grow on trees and IMO the depressed around here need to understand that or **** go cry somewhere else. Rose has done what was possible with what was available. We do have a great big-3 to build around and then we also have Hart, Bridges, Deuce, Mitch. Not many other teams have a big-3 like KAT-Brunson-OG or better. There, I’ll say it again, good luck finding five …

[spree2kawhi]

why do you always talk like its some kind of certainty that Giannis becomes avalable?

The writing is on the wall. He was quoted recently as saying he really wants to get a 2nd championship. He has pressured them to make deals in the past by lowkey talking about leaving. There are no more deals to make. Half the bucks team are free agents, that team cost a fortune and they have no assets to make trades. They’re ****. I actually think that they might be relived if Giannis asks out. They’ll want picks though since they traded away all of theirs.

Even if he shakes loose, there’s no certainty the NY deal would have got done. Say we offered the same 5 picks for him, OKC could have offered the truckload of picks with young talent. Okc would have beaten any offer we could have

Also who’s to say he doesn’t force himself to another team such as Denver with Jokic?

You’re right but it won’t register. Same with Durant btw. Imagine Boston offering Brown for Giannis… why wouldn’t they? Dudes don’t even think that far. It’s basically, “But Mommy, I wanted more ice-cream.”

[Reign23]

The talk about this team is weird, you'd think this wasn't year 1 of it. Not only that, but some of the teams being named are going to get suplexed by the the luxury tax worse than us, it needs to be repeated over and over again the Celtics are set to be the most expensive team in American sports history, beating the previous record by nearly $170 million. Their luxury tax bill is going to be more expensive than our actual team

The Cavs are also going to lose Ty Jerome, he's an unrestricted free agent, that may not seem like much but he was a huge reason why they could scale back on Mitchell's minutes. The other teams, Clippers, Lakers, Warriors are either old or have a critical core player that is old. The Thunder are obviously the best set up team, but there's a window here where we will have a chance with 2-3 real cracks at it.

thats a point that doesn't get talked often enough. the top 7 seven are under contract long term (I am sure Bridges will get extended) and nobody is over 30.
While I agree with sham that this isn't a top 5 roster, I don't think we are miles away from that.

[spree2kawhi]

The talk about this team is weird, you'd think this wasn't year 1 of it. Not only that, but some of the teams being named are going to get suplexed by the the luxury tax worse than us, it needs to be repeated over and over again the Celtics are set to be the most expensive team in American sports history, beating the previous record by nearly $170 million. Their luxury tax bill is going to be more expensive than our actual team

The Cavs are also going to lose Ty Jerome, he's an unrestricted free agent, that may not seem like much but he was a huge reason why they could scale back on Mitchell's minutes. The other teams, Clippers, Lakers, Warriors are either old or have a critical core player that is old. The Thunder are obviously the best set up team, but there's a window here where we will have a chance with 2-3 real cracks at it.

thats a point that doesn't get talked often enough. the top 7 seven are under contract long term (I am sure Bridges will get extended) and nobody is over 30.
While I agree with sham that this isn't a top 5 roster, I don't think we are miles away from that.

I brought up our big three as an indicator for the quality of our outlook a couple posts earlier. If it isn’t top 5 for you or whoever else, fine, but it certainly isn’t far off and still among the youngest cores. It already finished top 5 this year, what’s so terrible about all that?

Tatum, Brown, KP
Shai, Williams, Chet
Kawhi, Harden, Zubac
Curry, Jimmy, Draymond

then from here on out it’s really a crapshoot if you’re honest and dudes are flat-out wrong for selling low on our guys like that…

Brunson, KAT, OG
Mitchell, Garland, Mobley
Morant, Bane, JJJ
Jokic, Murray, … Gordon?
Haliburton, Turner, Siakam
Edwards, Rudy, …?
Giannis, Lillard, …?
Banchero, Wagner, …?
Luka, LeGrandpa, Reaves

[HopelessKnick]

Spoiler:

Where did I say we will never be in that elite tier because of Brunson? I said we will never be in that tier because we have multiple bad defenders in the lineup where their offense doesn't outweigh their negatives on defense (besides brunson). You can win with brunson, but if you're putting a bunch of awful defenders around him you're setting yourself up for failure.

You guys are forgetting that the Cavs has a bunch of young players. They were bound to get better regardless. And they also have great two good defenders in their front court which puts them at a major advantage over us. We have zero good defenders in the front court.

The Heat went to the finals in their first year. I watched a bunch of their games that season because I live in fl. We are not even close to being on their level. And they had 3 hall of famers. So I don't really get the comparison. A better comparison for us is being the Toronto Raptors when they had lowry and derozan. Good enough to beat up on bad teams in the regular season, but we get exposed against the elite contenders.

I don't really care if we fire Thibs. Honestly, I might be on that hire JVG train anyways. But even then, no matter who the coach is you aren't going to win a chip if you have a bunch of trash defenders in the starting lineup. That's where I stand on this. So we will prob never see eye to eye on this.

Heres to hoping we look better next year lol

Essentially the bolded. I completely agree with that. To me I was looking forward to see if two elite offensive players in Brunson and KAT can outweigh the defensive shortcomings but as of today it does not seem so. Part of it has been KAT being too passive at times but a bigger part of it is that having two defensive liabilities puts a great burden on your defense and it seems close to impossible to play great defense for long stretches. You can get a couple good stops here and there and put together some ok defense but I doubt we can realistically be better than a fringe top 10 defense with both of them. For us to be a top 8-10 defense and then really compete for a title, we'd have to be the best offense in the league hands down. I don't see it.

There is still part of me thinking that KAT could potentially be a guy that can get you 28/12/5 type of numbers if you put maximum trust in him and run much more offense through him. However I do think that if you have JB at the 1 the "easiest path to a real contender is having everyone else be a good defender with a defending C orchestrating the defense. Especially if This was to remain coach. Of course you would have to turn KAT into a 2-way PF/C that can score 18-20 points as well (think Adebayo type level or JJJ).

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch......of course that would all be contingent on Mitch staying healthy and getting back to where he was before the injury.

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch Is not a contender either.

It’s a nice idea to turn Towns into a two-way player but in sum, Adebayo and JJJ aren’t really that much better players. They may very well be better players overall, I don’t know, but the player to propel us past Boston, you know, does not exist. It’s a crybaby mentality to keep faulting our players (or bringing up Julius Randle as if he was some type of difference maker )

I’m certainly not talking about you when I say posters will merely trash our product and act like we’re wasting Brunson’s prime, but they don’t know any alternatives at all. These posters are basically just grumpy haters who love to say the easy things. For instance, they’ll trash Mikal Bridges after an otherwise good game for missed three-point shots down the stretch. The same dudes can’t even notice when the same happens to Kawhi and he’ll (rightfully) get a pass. They can’t even notice a good game by Bridges, because in order to do so you’d have to understand basketball and pay attention to a lot of off the ball action on both sides of the floor. Needless to say, they don’t want to see it anymore. They are haters. It is sad.

Dominant two-way players, or perfect basketball players for that matter, simply don’t grow on trees and IMO the depressed around here need to understand that or **** go cry somewhere else. Rose has done what was possible with what was available. We do have a great big-3 to build around and then we also have Hart, Bridges, Deuce, Mitch. Not many other teams have a big-3 like KAT-Brunson-OG or better. There, I’ll say it again, good luck finding five …

Keep in mind that in above hypothetical scenario you would also have at least Hart and Deuce coming off the bench with some big signed for the exception. Decent bench IMO. The thing is I wouldn't look at that team through today's lense. If you look at that team and envision a more engaged offensive version of Bridges and OG (think when Brunson was out) along with what would likely be a top 3 defense in the league, then I think we could contend with that. Like that team, if coached right, could be the best defensive team in the league while remaining in the top 8 on offense. Outside JB, every potential matchup would be hard to score on for the opposition. If you had say JJJ and Mitch there along with OG help defense in the paint, that would be absolutely elite. No team has that level of defense out there. The team with Bridges at the 2, OG at the 3 and JJJ at the 4 would also be long as ****.

And on offense it seems everyone could maximize their touches. For me at the moment one of the bigger struggles is that it always seems like a struggle to come up with longer stretches of good defense. It seems like we always need to have good shooting games to have a chance against good teams. If we have an off night, it is an automatic loss because we'll be giving up 110+ points against basically any good team. This is my eye test but I'm sure the number bear it out. And essentially, with Brunson and KAT in there you can't realistically improve upon that.

[spree2kawhi]

Spoiler:

Essentially the bolded. I completely agree with that. To me I was looking forward to see if two elite offensive players in Brunson and KAT can outweigh the defensive shortcomings but as of today it does not seem so. Part of it has been KAT being too passive at times but a bigger part of it is that having two defensive liabilities puts a great burden on your defense and it seems close to impossible to play great defense for long stretches. You can get a couple good stops here and there and put together some ok defense but I doubt we can realistically be better than a fringe top 10 defense with both of them. For us to be a top 8-10 defense and then really compete for a title, we'd have to be the best offense in the league hands down. I don't see it.

There is still part of me thinking that KAT could potentially be a guy that can get you 28/12/5 type of numbers if you put maximum trust in him and run much more offense through him. However I do think that if you have JB at the 1 the "easiest path to a real contender is having everyone else be a good defender with a defending C orchestrating the defense. Especially if This was to remain coach. Of course you would have to turn KAT into a 2-way PF/C that can score 18-20 points as well (think Adebayo type level or JJJ).

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch......of course that would all be contingent on Mitch staying healthy and getting back to where he was before the injury.

JB-Bridges-OG-Adebayo or JJJ-Mitch Is not a contender either.

It’s a nice idea to turn Towns into a two-way player but in sum, Adebayo and JJJ aren’t really that much better players. They may very well be better players overall, I don’t know, but the player to propel us past Boston, you know, does not exist. It’s a crybaby mentality to keep faulting our players (or bringing up Julius Randle as if he was some type of difference maker )

I’m certainly not talking about you when I say posters will merely trash our product and act like we’re wasting Brunson’s prime, but they don’t know any alternatives at all. These posters are basically just grumpy haters who love to say the easy things. For instance, they’ll trash Mikal Bridges after an otherwise good game for missed three-point shots down the stretch. The same dudes can’t even notice when the same happens to Kawhi and he’ll (rightfully) get a pass. They can’t even notice a good game by Bridges, because in order to do so you’d have to understand basketball and pay attention to a lot of off the ball action on both sides of the floor. Needless to say, they don’t want to see it anymore. They are haters. It is sad.

Dominant two-way players, or perfect basketball players for that matter, simply don’t grow on trees and IMO the depressed around here need to understand that or **** go cry somewhere else. Rose has done what was possible with what was available. We do have a great big-3 to build around and then we also have Hart, Bridges, Deuce, Mitch. Not many other teams have a big-3 like KAT-Brunson-OG or better. There, I’ll say it again, good luck finding five …

Keep in mind that in above hypothetical scenario you would also have at least Hart and Deuce coming off the bench with some big signed for the exception. Decent bench IMO. The thing is I wouldn't look at that team through today's lense. If you look at that team and envision a more engaged offensive version of Bridges and OG (think when Brunson was out) along with what would likely be a top 3 defense in the league, then I think we could contend with that. Like that team, if coached right, could be the best defensive team in the league while remaining in the top 8 on offense. Outside JB, every potential matchup would be hard to score on for the opposition. If you had say JJJ and Mitch there along with OG help defense in the paint, that would be absolutely elite. No team has that level of defense out there. The team with Bridges at the 2, OG at the 3 and JJJ at the 4 would also be long as ****.

And on offense it seems everyone could maximize their touches. For me at the moment one of the bigger struggles is that it always seems like a struggle to come up with longer stretches of good defense. It seems like we always need to have good shooting games to have a chance against good teams. If we have an off night, it is an automatic loss because we'll be giving up 110+ points against basically any good team. This is my eye test but I'm sure the number bear it out. And essentially, with Brunson and KAT in there you can't realistically improve upon that.

I could easily get behind such a team without bitching and pouting and crying for months.

(Yet I can’t help but notice you’re playing Bam and JJJ at the 4 though… we could at least try that first… just saying)

[Reign23]

Blessed to live in a time to watch Curry hoop

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarriors.
(can't believe Houston lost this w/o Butler...)

[LookToShoot]

I was hoping the Rockets won last night. The offense is lackluster, they should trade VanVleet’s expiring contract for Trae Young.

[Guano]

Blessed to live in a time to watch Curry hoop

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarriors.
(can't believe Houston lost this w/o Butler...)

[3toheadmelo]

Well, I am objectively right

I'm butthurt this team has not lived up to it's expectations so I continue to lash out and attack anyone that doesn't agree with me. I also have a really big ego so I won't admit this team is not a top 5 roster so I'll act delusional about it even if it makes me look dumb. I'm delusional.

Fixed it for accuracy.

[3toheadmelo]

the only team i'd probably argue with is the pacers. the clippers with a healthy kawhi, the lakers with luka, the warriors with jimmy. i'm pretty sure all those teams have better records than we do since those trades/kawhi's return. if you want to be strictly objective.

You mean when objectively we haven’t had Brunson for a month? Personally, I wouldn’t even bet on us against the Clippers, but it is what it is.

put our record with brunson against all the rest i mentioned. see the result.

edit. i did it for you -

knicks winning percentage is 61.54 with brunson this year
lakers with luka 64.29
clippers with kawhi 70.27
warriors with jimmy 76.67

objectively, we're worse. in an easier conference.

edit 2 - by the way, since you want it all this way, objectively it's an easier conference. that's not an opinion. the combined record of all the east teams win-loss is worse than the west. and head to head the west is better also.

How fitting he had no response to this objective post