2020-21 NBA Season Discussion

[Colbinii]

How does everyone see Ayton now compared to every other big? Im only taking Jokic and Embiid over him and Jokics defense is a real problem in the playoffs. They had to rally from b2b 3-1 deficits last year and that was with Jamal Murray playing like Steph Curry in the playoffs.

Embiid is always hurt and his defense and onball creation has issues himself. Ayton might be the best playoff defender even over Draymond IMO. How he was able to stay on the floor and dominate the Clips small ball VS how helpless and borderline useless Rudy Gobet was eye opening

you could make a REAL case Ayton has been Suns best player in their western conference run

Well Ayton has the benefit of playing off of Paul and Booker with solid wing defenders in Jae and Bridges. I would have him clearly below Embiid and Jokic. I dont want to overreact but I think his skill-set is more conductive to winning than Gobert but they are similar tiers.

Jokic/Embiid

Towns/Bam/Ayton/Gobert/Capella

Vucevic/Sabonis/Wood/Turner/Valanciunas/Porzingis/Allen(Healthy)

No particular order with Jokic a comfortable #1 for me. Most of these players have never been in a situation as perfect as Ayton currently is, sans Bam last year.

[penbeast0]

And there are generally two responses to losing your best player. (1) The team can pull together and play over its head, or (2) they can start pressing, trying to do too much to take up the slack, and have their cohesion fall apart.

Wouldn't it be sort of insane to have a Suns/Hawks final? I sure didn't see that coming last offseason.

[parsnips33]

Clippers were super resilient this year after having a really entitled vibe to them last season. I like that

[parsnips33]

Who was more hampered by injuries in the playoffs - Nuggets or Clippers?

[RCM88x]

It has generally been pretty good in the regular season, or at least plays above expectations I guess. Same can be said for the whole team IMO, thats the Bud effect to me.

However in the playoffs, yeah... not really a group that has proven to be resilient or accomplished much of anything.

[Doctor MJ]

So many people talking bout Lakers, nets and now bucks possibly missing a golden opportunity. What about **** Philly. They really blew it.

Well, people are talking about those other teams having a championship taken away from them because of injuries.

Philly with Simmons just got exposed. The idea they had a golden opportunity was always an illusion.

[Dr Positivity]

Very impressive run for the Suns despite facing some hurdles themselves in Paul injuries and covid, they proved they’re a finals worthy team when they demolished the Nuggets who are still good in their current form. I think the key is the perimeter 3 and D guys like Bridges, Crowder, Johnson (+Craig). Booker is probably still overrated, the team would probably be better with someone like Middleton on it imo, but with the rest of the roster they need his volume scoring I guess. It isn’t quite a Derozan situation since Booker is better both ends.

[Doctor MJ]

So watching the game last night I had two thoughts:

1. Y'know how sometimes a game becomes known as the <player name> game? Last night was the Chris Paul game. It's the game that sums up his greatness. Incredible moment, and felt like the climax of a movie, definitely a big deal.

2. I can't tell you much I hate that the NBA's officiating culture has allowed Chris Paul's non-basketball play to become essentially sanctified. You can argue that Harden or Young deserve to be the faces of this and I won't really fight you, but it matters that "institution of the game" CP3 plays like this and the refs just feel trained to give him the benefit of the doubt. The greatness of none of these players is truly dependent on manipulation like this - they are just the smart ones, and they'd be smart in whatever landscape you present - but encouraging them to become this brazen about it just makes the game smell rancid to me at times.

[Doctor MJ]

It isn’t quite a Derozan situation since Booker is better both ends.

It isn't a DeRozan situation because the Suns are better when Booker plays.

Just so everyone is clear, this isn't a situation where Booker's merely assumed to be valuable because he scores a lot, here are the Suns +/- numbers for the year:

Booker +431
Bridges +395
Paul +383
Ayton +347

DeRozan on the other hand has only had a positive On/Off once in his entire career, and in that year ('11-12), the team was still a net negative when he was on the floor.

It's important that people realize that Booker's situation is nothing like someone like DeRozan.

[Doctor MJ]

How he was able to stay on the floor and dominate the Clips small ball VS how helpless and borderline useless Rudy Gobet was eye opening

It helps when:

1. Your guards can give you the ball.
2. Your guards can stay in front of Reggie Jackson.

That said, Ayton is fantastic in the playoffs and I'd argue that he's their most important player when you look at Paul missing games and Booker's inconsistent scoring. He's definitely a great talent and I hope he'll improve from now on. His mobility is outstanding, you can't score on him one on one unless you have massive size advantage down low.

Yeah I really don't see any evidence that Ayton's defense would have prevented a Terrence Mann situation if he had crippled perimeter players like Gobert had.

Ayton's superior offense is an argument that he may have already surpassed Gobert in playoff potential.

Additionally, Ayton's physical strength I think makes him a better one-on-one matchup against Jokic. So while I can't say I think Ayton's a better defender overall than Gobert, he does has defensive advantages.

[eminence]

Folks are aware that it was the superior bench/depth that won this series for the Suns right?

[bondom34]

Yeah, Ayton was good. But the Suns won on the bench minutes, and he's still a bit behind a bunch of big men in terms of the overall pecking order. This sounds a bit like a year ago when Adebayo was getting a lot of talk in terms of being a top tier big man as well (and he's better than Ayton but even there putting him in the Embiid/Jokic/Gobert group is tough).

Edit: Blatant bad use of stats but Ayton's defensive on/off was worst on the Suns this series. Now that's clearly not telling the whole story but the series kinda swung on the depth I'd say overall.

[Texas Chuck]

Ya'll do anything to not give Chris Paul any credit lol.

[PaulieWal]

Ya'll do anything to not give Chris Paul any credit lol.

Credit for what? He had a great game last night but was also quite terrible in 3 of the 4 games he did play.

Like you expect that to be just brushed aside because they won the series?

[eminence]

Ya'll do anything to not give Chris Paul any credit lol.

How much credit do you think he deserves in this series? He misses the first two games, team goes up 2-0. Is decent but not great (to his current standard) in games 3-5, team goes 1-2. Has a great game 6 to close 'em out. Overall it's not a particularly impressive series from CP3.

Now his Denver series, that was impressive.

[bondom34]

On CP3 though, pretty wild last night tied his playoff career high and looks like was 2nd in career game score in a playoff game, I haven't looked at all games but looking at highs in a single run looks like he only had 1 year with a higher high if that makes sense. At age 36.

He's 13th in playoff BPM. 10th in VORP (tied for 6th though). 5th in WS and tied for 5th/6th in WS/48.

He's posting his 3rd best career playoff assist:TO ratio (2nd if you exclude the 4 game series in 2016) at 5.55:1.

Think there's a balance between "CP3 is MVP" and giving everyone but him credit. The whole team is just a bunch of quality players.

[Texas Chuck]

Ya'll do anything to not give Chris Paul any credit lol.

Credit for what? He had a great game last night but was also quite terrible in 3 of the 4 games he did play.

Like you expect that to be just brushed aside because they won the series?

The entire team deserves credit. From the FO all the way to the bench. But that also includes their best player, Chris Paul. I think a couple of posters got really upset with the lazy narrative that Paul is the sole reason they are here that they've over-corrected and speak almost as if the Suns win despite Paul and not because of him.

[Doctor MJ]

Folks are aware that it was the superior bench/depth that won this series for the Suns right?

Hmm. Here's what's interesting to me about that to me:

I've been saying for months that the Suns weren't strong contenders for the title because their success seemed to have a lot to do with their bench mob reliably outperforming the guys they were going up against.

But that's not really what happened in this series.

In this series, bench player Torrey Craig was the lead +/- guy, however he was only a net positive in +/- in 2 of the teams 4 wins, whereas Booker was a positive in every win.

Moreover, much of Craig's numbers come in the last game where, while he played big minutes, he also benefitted from being out there while Chris Paul was having his all-time signature moment.

I think what I'd say is that the Suns are benefitting specifically from depth in terms of weather injury.

But they were also benefitting in terms of matchup variability. Payne is not a worse version of Paul, he's a lesser overall player, but he can do things old man Paul cannot. Same for Saric, and I'd imagine same for Craig to an extent though I'd emphasize a lot of that was probably just being n the right place at the right time.

Not pushing hard back against the idea that the Suns won with depth because it's literally true, but it's also I think more true in terms of letting the coach adapt during the series where the guys who get added to the lineups that prove successful then tend to have an outsized apparent impact by +/-.

[cpower]

On CP3 though, pretty wild last night tied his playoff career high and looks like was 2nd in career game score in a playoff game, I haven't looked at all games but looking at highs in a single run looks like he only had 1 year with a higher high if that makes sense. At age 36.

He's 13th in playoff BPM. 10th in VORP (tied for 6th though). 5th in WS and tied for 5th/6th in WS/48.

He's posting his 3rd best career playoff assist:TO ratio (2nd if you exclude the 4 game series in 2016) at 5.55:1.

Think there's a balance between "CP3 is MVP" and giving everyone but him credit. The whole team is just a bunch of quality players.

this is not against CP3 himself but i hope there is a new stat to replace today's assist number. guys like Westbrook having 3 OBPM while shooting like 46%TS..there is a lot of broken stats in the box scores. In today's league everyone is so good at shooting, giving assist for someone making a jump shot does not make more sense anymore.

[bondom34]

On CP3 though, pretty wild last night tied his playoff career high and looks like was 2nd in career game score in a playoff game, I haven't looked at all games but looking at highs in a single run looks like he only had 1 year with a higher high if that makes sense. At age 36.

He's 13th in playoff BPM. 10th in VORP (tied for 6th though). 5th in WS and tied for 5th/6th in WS/48.

He's posting his 3rd best career playoff assist:TO ratio (2nd if you exclude the 4 game series in 2016) at 5.55:1.

Think there's a balance between "CP3 is MVP" and giving everyone but him credit. The whole team is just a bunch of quality players.

this is not against CP3 himself but i hope there is a new stat to replace today's assist number. guys like Westbrook having 3 OBPM while shooting like 46%TS..there is a lot of broken stats in the box scores. In today's league everyone is so good at shooting, giving assist for someone making a jump shot does not make more sense anymore.

That's...what an assist is.

TS% and assists are not related. Steph would have a lot less assists if he didn't play with Klay. Jokic would have a lot less if he didn't play with Porter and Murray and Barton. The measure of an assist depends on players scoring too.

Also, not sure what BPM has to do with any of it but that's an aside (its not really a normal box score stat that's listed everywhere). Just like WS tend to skew toward efficient scorers and at times big men, different stats value different things.