PC Board OT thread

[ceiling raiser]

Damn...

http://mobile.philly.com/blogs/?wss=/philly/blogs/deep-sixer/&id=313812061&

[sp6r=underrated]

Jason Kidd over Spo as a head coach is completely unjustified by Kidd’s performance as a Head Coach. The 2014 Nets should be regarded as large underachievers given that they made significant roster improvements and finished the season with a significantly worse record.

The defense for the Nets is that got out of the gate slow and performed better over the second half of the season and post-season. This is partly inaccurate and the accurate part is an indictment of the Head Coach. Running a training camp is an important part of a Head Coach’s job. It is the one opportunity all year in which the coach can spend an extended period of time with his players and develop a strategy for the team. Kidd failed on both camps. The Nets entered the season as a contender and were well on the way to missing the playoffs. They would have missed the post-season if the conferences were balanced. The 2013 Nets actually had slightly better point differential in the first round against Chicago than the 2014 club but lost primarily due to bad luck.

The 2014 Bucks made a large improvement over an awful previous season. That is impressive and to Kidd’s credit but it should be remembered the 2009 Heat made an even larger improvement. The reason Miami was able to attract Lebron in the first place is the great job Spo did of keeping the Heat competitive while Riley gutted the roster in 2009 and 2010. When the Heat acquired Lebron and Bosh they became instant competitors. The 2011 Heat's season is a lot more impressive than the 2015 Cavs season and most season in NBA history the first year after a super star is acquired. 2015 Heat had a drop off of about 7 SRS which while large is far smaller than the drop off Cleveland suffered after 2010. In addition to losing Lebron they also lost the following players and minutes to injury

Ray Allen 1,936 minutes played
Bosh: 975 more minutes played in 2014
Battier: 1,468 minutues played

They lost key contributers at all position to injury or retirement besides Lebron with the only key acquisition being Deng and Dragic after Bosh was done. Wade played a little more in 2015 than 2014 but that isn't that important considering Wade has been on a steady decline since 2011. I find the 2015 Heat's season to be a lot more impressive than 2014 Nets.

[sp6r=underrated]

Damn...

http://mobile.philly.com/blogs/?wss=/philly/blogs/deep-sixer/&id=313812061&

That sucks a lot.

[E-Balla]

Jason Kidd over Spo as a head coach is completely unjustified by Kidd’s performance as a Head Coach. The 2014 Nets should be regarded as large underachievers given that they made significant roster improvements and finished the season with a significantly worse record.

Did they really? Deron was clearly not in his prime unlike in 2013 and he only played 64 games, Brook Lopez (the best player on the team the previous season) played 17 games, and they lost Reggie and GW. They got back Shaun Livingston, 50 games of KG, Mirza, Alan Anderson, and Mason. Looking at those players and how they performed this season without Kidd I wouldn't say he was bad at all. Those Nets players were way better in name then in play. And when did 5 wins and going deeper into the playoffs become "significantly worse"?

The defense for the Nets is that got out of the gate slow and performed better over the second half of the season and post-season. This is partly inaccurate and the accurate part is an indictment of the Head Coach. Running a training camp is an important part of a Head Coach’s job. It is the one opportunity all year in which the coach can spend an extended period of time with his players and develop a strategy for the team. Kidd failed on both camps. The Nets entered the season as a contender and were well on the way to missing the playoffs. They would have missed the post-season if the conferences were balanced. The 2013 Nets actually had slightly better point differential in the first round against Chicago than the 2014 club but lost primarily due to bad luck.

The Nets weren't contenders. People saw them as contenders only because of the big names. I said before the season they weren't hitting 50 wins.

The 2014 Bucks made a large improvement over an awful previous season. That is impressive and to Kidd’s credit but it should be remembered the 2009 Heat made an even larger improvement. The reason Miami was able to attract Lebron in the first place is the great job Spo did of keeping the Heat competitive while Riley gutted the roster in 2009 and 2010.

You can't be serious. I don't know maybe adding a top 15 player ever to a team will make them win more. Maybe having more players than Ricky Davis play more than 70 games will make them win more. The 2008 Heat were the most injured team in the league by far. If Kidd had 2009 Wade magically added to the Bucks I'm sure he would've done way better but as it is he took a 15 win team and took them to 41 wins by adding Jared Dudley.

When the Heat acquired Lebron and Bosh they became instant competitors. The 2011 Heat's season is a lot more impressive than the 2015 Cavs season and most season in NBA history the first year after a super star is acquired.

The Heat had the 2 best players in basketball of course they were better than Cleveland this year which had one top 5 player.

2015 Heat had a drop off of about 7 SRS which while large is far smaller than the drop off Cleveland suffered after 2010. In addition to losing Lebron they also lost the following players and minutes to injury

Ray Allen 1,936 minutes played
Bosh: 975 more minutes played in 2014
Battier: 1,468 minutues played

They lost key contributers at all position to injury or retirement besides Lebron with the only key acquisition being Deng and Dragic after Bosh was done. Wade played a little more in 2015 than 2014 but that isn't that important considering Wade has been on a steady decline since 2011. I find the 2015 Heat's season to be a lot more impressive than 2014 Nets.

Seriously? He couldn't take Miami to the playoffs and Kidd took the Bucks to 41 wins I don't really think it's comparable. You can call the 2015 Heat more impressive than the Nets but the Nets made the playoffs and had a worse roster than Miami did.

[HeartBreakKid]

The Nets if anything were underrated and most people did not think they were contenders.

The Nets underachieved because they were an old and injury prone team. Deron Williams never played like a star.

Even with D-Will being ****, AK-47 not really playing, and KG being past it - the Nets still could have beaten the Heat IF they had Brook Lopez. The Nets lost their real best player that year, so naturally they were not serious contenders. If the Nets had Brook Lopez, there's a good chance they make the NBA finals despite being a pretty meh team.

The Nets were a much rougher team to beat in the 2nd half of the season than the first half, that is not a strange thing from teams that have many new core pieces like the Nets did.



Spo never did anything like Kidd has done with the Bucks. The Bucks were the worst team in basketball, and all that really changed was that they got Jason Kidd and they broke even (and would have had a much better record if they had kept Brandon Knight instead of trading for Michael Carter-Williams). What Kidd did with that team is amazing, they're a team of young players and journeymen who no one really wants. They didn't even get to benefit from the most ready rookie in Jabari Parker since he was injured 1/4th into the season. Players like Khris Middleton improved a lot which helped also, but Kidd did an amazing job and you could see his imprint on the Bucks team.

Spo is a solid coach, but he's not a great one. Jason Kidd is only in his 2nd year of coaching and he looks like a much better coach and the gap will probably continue to widen.

Spolstra is like Frank Vogel and Lionel Hollins tier. Someone like Hornacek seems like a much better coach to me.

[PaulieWal]

The Nets if anything were underrated and most people did not think they were contenders.

The Nets underachieved because they were an old and injury prone team. Deron Williams never played like a star.

Even with D-Will being ****, AK-47 not really playing, and KG being past it - the Nets still could have beaten the Heat IF they had Brook Lopez. The Nets lost their real best player that year, so naturally they were not serious contenders. If the Nets had Brook Lopez, there's a good chance they make the NBA finals despite being a pretty meh team.

The Nets were a much rougher team to beat in the 2nd half of the season than the first half, that is not a strange thing from teams that have many new core pieces like the Nets did.



Spo never did anything like Kidd has done with the Bucks. The Bucks were the worst team in basketball, and all that really changed was that they got Jason Kidd and they broke even (and would have had a much better record if they had kept Brandon Knight instead of trading for Michael Carter-Williams). What Kidd did with that team is amazing, they're a team of young players and journeymen who no one really wants. They didn't even get to benefit from the most ready rookie in Jabari Parker since he was injured 1/4th into the season. Players like Khris Middleton improved a lot which helped also, but Kidd did an amazing job and you could see his imprint on the Bucks team.

Spo is a solid coach, but he's not a great one. Jason Kidd is only in his 2nd year of coaching and he looks like a much better coach and the gap will probably continue to widen.

Spolstra is like Frank Vogel and Lionel Hollins tier. Someone like Hornacek seems like a much better coach to me.

Right, Spo is in the same tier as Hollins a coach who has openly detested advanced analytics vs. a guy who opened up LeBron's game by seeing how much better he could be offensively at the 4 and heavily incorporated analytics into his coaching. I think Hollins had a few good years in Memphis but he's been overrated since and he was pretty bad with the Nets last year.

I mean if you rank Spo in that tier then that's your opinion but somehow all the good Spo did gets credited to LeBron and to an extent Wade/Bosh but I never see him getting credit for all the good he did like other great coaches do with their superstars.

I think you can argue for Kidd as a better coach but there's no way he looks like a much better coach to me. Also, I am pretty sure I remember reading that the vaunted Bucks defense has actually been designed by one of his assistants (not that it discredits Kidd somehow).

[sp6r=underrated]

To make the discussion easier, I’ve summarized the key points of your critique of my anti Kidd argument.

1. The 2014 Nets were an improvement over the 2013 Nets.

That isn’t true. The 2013 Nets expected win total was 46. The 2014 Nets had an expected win total of 38 games. The 2013 Nets had a greater 1st Round PD than the 2014 Nets and were just unlucky to have gotten knocked out. Overall by the numbers the 2014 Nets should be considered inferior to the 2013 Nets despite significant roster improvement.

2. The 2014 Nets failure to contend is not a negative reflection of the coach due to injuries and decline of players the year before. The following factors are the reason

- Deron Williams suffered a big drop off.
- Lopez suffered an injury
- They lost Reggie Evans and Gerald Wallace.

The Deron Williams part is correct but overstated. He declined but it wasn’t a massive drop off.

Kidd was never able to use Lopez successfully. He struggled all season integrating Lopez into the club and the team actually improved without him. Kidd’s failure to utilize Lopez, a player with some ability, is an indictment of his performance that year.

Evans and Wallace were replaced by Pierce and Garnett who were both superior to those players by a large margin. They also added Livingston.

The 2014 Nets were a more talented club than the 2013 Nets and performed worse when you look at their season as a whole.

In short the only impressive thing on Kidd’s resume is the 2015 Bucks turnaround. The thing is turning around awful clubs is both common and relatively unimportant.

Many coaches have shown an ability to turn around bad clubs. Skiles pulled it off twice in Milwaukee and Chicago. In 2014, Steve Clifford did it in Charlotte. In 2001 Gentry pulled it off in Los Angeles.

IT is far more difficult to turn an average team into a good club and a good club into a contender. Spo has done both.

[sp6r=underrated]

I mean if you rank Spo in that tier then that's your opinion but somehow all the good Spo did gets credited to LeBron and to an extent Wade/Bosh but I never see him getting credit for all the good he did like other great coaches do with their superstars

I think you are too generous to Kidd but I cannot agree with this point more. Spo performed an excellent job getting Lebron to buy into a very complex offensive scheme. By comparison Lebron utterly ignored and forced the Cavs to dumb down the offensive system which Blatt wanted to put into place. This resulted in Love being underutilized all year.

[PaulieWal]

I mean if you rank Spo in that tier then that's your opinion but somehow all the good Spo did gets credited to LeBron and to an extent Wade/Bosh but I never see him getting credit for all the good he did like other great coaches do with their superstars

I think you are too generous to Kidd but I cannot agree with this point more. Spo performed an excellent job getting Lebron to buy into a very complex offensive scheme. By comparison Lebron utterly ignored and forced the Cavs to dumb down the offensive system which Blatt wanted to put into place. This resulted in Love being underutilized all year.

Well, I think he's a good coach but certainly not as good as HBK thinks he is. Even if someone can tell me Kidd is better than Spo there's no way that he's a "much better coach" than him and/or that the gulf between them will continue to widen.

I agree that he did get his superstars to buy into his complex offensive scheme and somehow that doesn't get credit at all for LeBron's historically efficient seasons on incredible volume no less. LeBron was always efficient even in Cleveland but he was never THAT efficient and I feel fairly comfortable giving Spo a lot of the credit for LeBron's efficiency. He hit the 60% TS once in Cleveland in 09 and 3 times in Miami including 65 in 2014.

The only way Spo will earn some credibility as a coach around here it seems is that if the Heat have a few more good seasons post-LeBron and I think in due time they will. To me his case was solidified after watching the ugly but effective Cavs offense this entire year.

[sp6r=underrated]

Sacramento's strange off season got a little more odd by signing Caron Butler to a two year contract. The second year is a player option but it is almost a certain guarantee he'll opt in based on how poorly he has played the last few years.

[SactoKingsFan]

Sacramento's strange off season got a little more odd by signing Caron Butler to a two year contract. The second year is a player option but it is almost a certain guarantee he'll opt in based on how poorly he has played the last few years.

It's OK for the vet minimum and better than signing Bargnani. Butler can still shoot the 3 and provide some vet leadership. I just hope they don't sign Josh Smith.

[sp6r=underrated]

This is the contract status for all of the 2015 34 year old players and older who played a single game last year.

Code: Select all

Rk   Player         Age Contract
1   Tim Duncan        38   2017
2   Andre Miller      38   No Contract
3   Kevin Garnett     38   2017
4   Vince Carter      38   2017
5   Paul Pierce       37   2017
6   Manu Ginobili     37   2017
7   Jason Terry       37   No Contract
8   Pablo Prigioni    37   2016
9   Kenyon Martin     37   Retired
10   Nazr Mohammed    37   No Contract
11   Dirk Nowitzki    36   2017
12   Chris Andersen   36   2016

Code: Select all

Rk   Player             Age   Contract
13   Shawn Marion       36   Retired
14   Kobe Bryant        36   2016
15   Rasual Butler      35   No Contract
16   Hedo Turkoglu      35   No Contract
17   Elton Brand        35   No Contract
18   Jannero Pargo      35   No Contract
19   John Salmons       35   No Contract
20   Brendan Haywood    35   2016
21   Pau Gasol          34   2017
22   Luis Scola         34   2016
23   Matt Barnes        34   2016
24   David West         34   2016

Code: Select all

Rk   Player             Age Contract
25   Mike Dunleavy       34   2018
26   Jamal Crawford      34   2016
27   Tayshaun Prince     34   No Contract
28   Caron Butler        34   2017
29   Richard Jefferson   34   2016
30   Nick Collison       34   2017
31   Steve Blake         34   2016
32   Matt Bonner         34   2016
33   James Jones         34   No Contract
34   Udonis Haslem       34   2016
35   Reggie Evans        34   No Contract

Code: Select all

Rk   Player            Age    Contract
36   Kirk Hinrich       34   2016
37   Mike Miller        34   2016
38   Jason Richardson   34   No Contract
39   Dahntay Jones      34   No Contract

EDIT: I am going to repost this at the end of the summer to see how many players voluntarily walked away rather than being unable to find a team

[penbeast0]

So, of all the players 34 or older, only Mike Dunleavy has a contract running past 2017, though 3 38 year old all time greats have contracts running through that year.

[sp6r=underrated]

Someone on the GB said there is a provision that makes it incredibly difficult to give a long contract to players over 35.

[Texas Chuck]

Someone on the GB said there is a provision that makes it incredibly difficult to give a long contract to players over 35.

http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q56


Essentially the idea is to prevent teams from giving a player a deal longer than he is likely to play which would enable them to give him more money without an increased hit on the cap. So the NBA "assumes" that the player will retire and will actually label the money from the end of the contract as "deferred" and increase the cap hit at the beginning of the contract. This then creates a $0 year at the end. However, if the player actually plays out the contract, they put that money back on the team's cap even tho its been accounted for the previous years.

So this is why teams don't sign old players to long-term deals. But read Coon's stuff which is way better than mine.

[sp6r=underrated]

Someone on the GB said there is a provision that makes it incredibly difficult to give a long contract to players over 35.

http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q56


Essentially the idea is to prevent teams from giving a player a deal longer than he is likely to play which would enable them to give him more money without an increased hit on the cap. So the NBA "assumes" that the player will retire and will actually label the money from the end of the contract as "deferred" and increase the cap hit at the beginning of the contract. This then creates a $0 year at the end. However, if the player actually plays out the contract, they put that money back on the team's cap even tho its been accounted for the previous years.

So this is why teams don't sign old players to long-term deals. But read Coon's stuff which is way better than mine.

thank you

[Doctor MJ]

Blows my mind that Kanter goes from being a guy who didn't deserve to start on a lottery team, to getting a max offer based on what he showed on another lottery over the course of 26 games. I know big men with actual coordination are always in short supply, but this off-season has been amazing.

Hey doc what do you think about the heat this upcoming season. They seem to have a lot of quality if they stay healthy

Whiteside/Amare
Bosh/Roberts
Deng/Green
Wade/Winslow
Dragic/Chalmers or Napier

I see a lot of the general board thinking theyll just be a mid tier team aka 43-47 wins but if they all click I can see them being a pretty damn strong team, maybe the best ECF challenger to a lebron led team since the 2011 Chicago Series

Spoiler:

(who had a differential of only -2.2, said lowest number of all their eastern opponents)

What do you think about the Heat?

Well, in the weak east, it seems like a healthy Heat team ought to be a lock for the 2nd round.

The obvious big question is Whiteside. To me that could go in any number of directions, but yeah, being the #2 team in the east seems totally plausible.

[E-Balla]

Quick question: Would you guys be happy if you found out your team traded a future first for Ty Lawson. Just settling an argument (I wouldn't want him).

[bondom34]

Quick question: Would you guys be happy if you found out your team traded a future first for Ty Lawson. Just settling an argument (I wouldn't want him).

No. I'd want a first back and I'd be happy.

[Quotatious]

Quick question: Would you guys be happy if you found out your team traded a future first for Ty Lawson. Just settling an argument (I wouldn't want him).

Quite honestly, I think an established borderline All-Star PG like Lawson is a better choice than a first round pick. Even a guy chosen #1 overall may turn out to be a bust. I'd rather have Lawson. He's easily a top 15 PG, quite possibly top 10.

No. I'd want a first back and I'd be happy.

Well, you guys have Westbrook. . Almost everyone is a clear downgrade compared to him.