2021-22 NBA Season Discussion

[falcolombardi]

Would be very funny for Steph to get WCF MVP given his history

Even funnier if we win it all and Wiggins gets FMVP

if somethingh like that happened just embrace the meme at that point lol

[falcolombardi]

but honestly i think the most hilarious scenario is curry winning fmvp in a warriors loss (somehow)

[tsherkin]

Would be very funny for Steph to get WCF MVP given his history

Even funnier if we win it all and Wiggins gets FMVP

if somethingh like that happened just embrace the meme at that point lol

but honestly i think the most hilarious scenario is curry winning fmvp in a warriors loss (somehow)

In either of these cases, we will never hear the end of it, lol.

[parsnips33]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

[70sFan]

Is this the first time when you can argue that Klay is the worst player of the Warriors starting 5? He is still valuable of course, because he knows Kerr system better than anyone not named Curry/Green, but he's been very underwhelming in the postseason so far. I'd take Wiggins over him easily right now and Poole also has a case, even with poor defense taking into account. Hell, even Looney has been more solid after the first round.

There's certainly a case to be made for that. It's quite glaring when Klay's shot is so inconsistent and he is habitually overconfident and takes tough shots when better ones are available. But for the Warriors to reach the level of play that it will take to win a title, they need Klay to space the floor and hit key shots, which he does. There's also the subtle benefits of chemistry that he has with the rest of the core.

Telling him to stop shooting when he's off is counterproductive to that goal. To be good Klay, he needs the mindset that he can make anything, which means you have to put up with stretches of bad shot selection Klay.

Yeah, in no way I tried to suggest that Klay should stop shooting. I also think that he's important for Warriors offense, because of shooting threat he brings on the court and off-ball movement.

I just don't find him that dangerous anymore. His solid, though forever overrated defense gets considerably worse as well. I just don't think he can play on all-star level anymore. It doesn't make him useless though.

[Outside]

Is this the first time when you can argue that Klay is the worst player of the Warriors starting 5? He is still valuable of course, because he knows Kerr system better than anyone not named Curry/Green, but he's been very underwhelming in the postseason so far. I'd take Wiggins over him easily right now and Poole also has a case, even with poor defense taking into account. Hell, even Looney has been more solid after the first round.

There's certainly a case to be made for that. It's quite glaring when Klay's shot is so inconsistent and he is habitually overconfident and takes tough shots when better ones are available. But for the Warriors to reach the level of play that it will take to win a title, they need Klay to space the floor and hit key shots, which he does. There's also the subtle benefits of chemistry that he has with the rest of the core.

Telling him to stop shooting when he's off is counterproductive to that goal. To be good Klay, he needs the mindset that he can make anything, which means you have to put up with stretches of bad shot selection Klay.

Yeah, in no way I tried to suggest that Klay should stop shooting. I also think that he's important for Warriors offense, because of shooting threat he brings on the court and off-ball movement.

I just don't find him that dangerous anymore. His solid, though forever overrated defense gets considerably worse as well. I just don't think he can play on all-star level anymore. It doesn't make him useless though.

He probably hasn't reached his post-injury ceiling, though. After being off for so long, he's only been playing since January and missed 10 games after he came back (back-to-backs, load mgmt stuff). His 2022 PS numbers are pretty good.

45.3 FG%
38.8 3PT%
3.4 3PA
84.4 FT%
56.8 TS%
19.5 Pts
4.6 Reb
2.4 Ast
1.4 TO (tied for career PS low)

His defense is spotty but serviceable and will hopefully improve with time, as will his overall play.

As far as ranking him among GS players, that's tough, because after Steph, you'd normally pick Draymond, but not far behind is Wiggins who has been great this PS, then there's Looney and Poole who have had their great games and overall good play. It's probably best to say that so far this PS, Klay fits in with Looney and Poole after Steph, Dray, and Wiggins.

[Doctor MJ]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

With the Warriors in particular I think there's total confusion on the part of many established basketball people.

Are the Warriors pace & space? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the SSOL Suns.
Are the Warriors motion offense? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the Triangle.

To me the core principles at work within the Warriors have been less about the specific talents they have on their roster, and more about a commitment to playing in a style where each player is expected to learn how to make good decisions as the play develops, and to communicate to teammates what the good decision is if you see it before your teammate does.

As I've said before, this isn't a new approach to team basketball, but it is an approach that feels like it got lost over time as teams focused more on building out around a particular star from year-to-year without relying on continuity.

When I look at the teams who emerged as great in the years before the NBA, what I see is not genius coaching, but rather teams of players that played together with great continuity who just figured out more and more how best to play with each other, and then how to on-board younger players into the mix to continue the dominance after the original stars fade into old age. So this is the Original Celtics, the New York Rens, the Harlem Globetrotters, and others in the '20s-40s, as well as the 2 original juggernauts of the NBA - Minneapolis Lakers & Rochester Royals - refined themselves into greatness. (Granted, the Laker example fits a bit less well because of what an outlier Mikan was at that time.)

From that point onward, we get less of these teams. The great NBA example is the Auerbach Celtics, the best of the 21st century is the Pop Spurs. But less and less franchises seem like they are even hoping they can do this.

Anyway, not saying any of this to say there hasn't been a rapid arms race of strategy on the defensive end in the past decade plus, but that the Warriors are unique here in that they have a way to tinker with their approach that could be said to be bottom-up rather than top-down. Players figure certain things out - with Draymond being the poster boy for this, sometimes with the help of the coaching staff but sometimes without, and then they propagate these ideas to their teammates.

[GSP]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

Well naturally defense is gonna have to change to adjust to how much different offense is played now

[RCM88x]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

This is where the game commentary really lets us down I think, so much has changed in the last few years as a result of the spacing of the game that just gets lost to the average viewer. TNT guys usually do a little better job I guess but I don't really like how either team approaches stuff like this.

[tsherkin]

This is where the game commentary really lets us down I think, so much has changed in the last few years as a result of the spacing of the game that just gets lost to the average viewer. TNT guys usually do a little better job I guess but I don't really like how either team approaches stuff like this.

They can't really get away with it. The average fan doesn't really care. It's an entertainment product, not a school session, you know what I mean? More hardcore fans like to get into the nitty gritty, but most people don't want to dive into it much further than that they enjoy what the game looks like and that their team is winning, and screw the other team and all that. That obviously isn't true for everyone, but that's where the internet fills the space with podcasts and blogs and the like. Some color commentators do as good a job as you'll get mixing things up, for sure, but there's a limit to how much they can do that and still be interesting, particularly since they are often also being radio broadcast as well for people not watching.

[parsnips33]

This is where the game commentary really lets us down I think, so much has changed in the last few years as a result of the spacing of the game that just gets lost to the average viewer. TNT guys usually do a little better job I guess but I don't really like how either team approaches stuff like this.

They can't really get away with it. The average fan doesn't really care. It's an entertainment product, not a school session, you know what I mean? More hardcore fans like to get into the nitty gritty, but most people don't want to dive into it much further than that they enjoy what the game looks like and that their team is winning, and screw the other team and all that. That obviously isn't true for everyone, but that's where the internet fills the space with podcasts and blogs and the like. Some color commentators do as good a job as you'll get mixing things up, for sure, but there's a limit to how much they can do that and still be interesting, particularly since they are often also being radio broadcast as well for people not watching.

I don't watch nearly as much football as I do basketball, but their broadcasts usually seem to be better about this. I think you can talk specifically about the game in terms of strategies and actions without being dry necessarily. Not that it's easy to do per se, but I think it's far from impossible

[tsherkin]

I don't watch nearly as much football as I do basketball, but their broadcasts usually seem to be better about this. I think you can talk specifically about the game in terms of strategies and actions without being dry necessarily. Not that it's easy to do per se, but I think it's far from impossible

Yeah, to a point, for sure. And some do, but there's a limit. But there's also a difference with something like football and basketball in terms of discrete actions and the culture of coaching relevance and strategy and such in the sport, you know what I mean? It would represent a remarkable shift in HOW the sport is discussed for basketball.

[70sFan]

When I look at the teams who emerged as great in the years before the NBA, what I see is not genius coaching, but rather teams of players that played together with great continuity who just figured out more and more how best to play with each other, and then how to on-board younger players into the mix to continue the dominance after the original stars fade into old age. So this is the Original Celtics, the New York Rens, the Harlem Globetrotters, and others in the '20s-40s, as well as the 2 original juggernauts of the NBA - Minneapolis Lakers & Rochester Royals - refined themselves into greatness. (Granted, the Laker example fits a bit less well because of what an outlier Mikan was at that time.)

From that point onward, we get less of these teams. The great NBA example is the Auerbach Celtics, the best of the 21st century is the Pop Spurs. But less and less franchises seem like they are even hoping they can do this.

I'd add Holzman Knicks, Bird Celtics and Showtime Lakers to that. Not sure about any other great dynasties that worked that way. Some may argue that Jackson Bulls were a bit like that, but they were heavily reliant on Jordan/Pippen combo, not so much about the continuity of full rosters.

Do you have any other good candidates?

[falcolombardi]

football lends itself much more easily to in depth broadcasts

the game is one play at a time, with even more pauses than basketball and plays are harder to understand for a casual fan

[Doctor MJ]

football lends itself much more easily to in depth broadcasts

the game is one play at a time, with even more pauses than basketball and plays are harder to understand for a casual fan

This is a great point. The sheer amount of "nothing happening" in sports like baseball and football in theory makes it easier to educate the audience.

Also, baseball is the king of fans who know their stuff. By far the nerdiest of the traditional fanbases.

With that said, football fans are notorious for their ignorance of their sport, so to me the success of the Romo-ization of NFL announcing says that football fans didn't actually like being coddled in ignorance so much as they didn't know any better.

I actually think basketball fans have shown to be more curious in general than football fans, and there's a lot of room to do stuff there...though you might argue that that niche is going to continue to be filled by guys like Ben with post-game videos.

[CKRT]

Will be interesting to see how the Warriors bring Wiseman back into the fold, especially if they win a championship.

[parsnips33]

Will be interesting to see how the Warriors bring Wiseman back into the fold, especially if they win a championship.

It's been a journey with him, but I've talked myself into being pretty excited to see what he can do. 2 years being around the team, even without being able to play a whole lot, should do wonders for his understanding of the game. At least that's the hope

[Outside]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

With the Warriors in particular I think there's total confusion on the part of many established basketball people.

Are the Warriors pace & space? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the SSOL Suns.
Are the Warriors motion offense? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the Triangle.

To me the core principles at work within the Warriors have been less about the specific talents they have on their roster, and more about a commitment to playing in a style where each player is expected to learn how to make good decisions as the play develops, and to communicate to teammates what the good decision is if you see it before your teammate does.

As I've said before, this isn't a new approach to team basketball, but it is an approach that feels like it got lost over time as teams focused more on building out around a particular star from year-to-year without relying on continuity.

When I look at the teams who emerged as great in the years before the NBA, what I see is not genius coaching, but rather teams of players that played together with great continuity who just figured out more and more how best to play with each other, and then how to on-board younger players into the mix to continue the dominance after the original stars fade into old age. So this is the Original Celtics, the New York Rens, the Harlem Globetrotters, and others in the '20s-40s, as well as the 2 original juggernauts of the NBA - Minneapolis Lakers & Rochester Royals - refined themselves into greatness. (Granted, the Laker example fits a bit less well because of what an outlier Mikan was at that time.)

From that point onward, we get less of these teams. The great NBA example is the Auerbach Celtics, the best of the 21st century is the Pop Spurs. But less and less franchises seem like they are even hoping they can do this.

Anyway, not saying any of this to say there hasn't been a rapid arms race of strategy on the defensive end in the past decade plus, but that the Warriors are unique here in that they have a way to tinker with their approach that could be said to be bottom-up rather than top-down. Players figure certain things out - with Draymond being the poster boy for this, sometimes with the help of the coaching staff but sometimes without, and then they propagate these ideas to their teammates.

Regarding the part in bold above, I don't think the first part is quite true. On offense, they are designed to leverage Curry's unique skills as a foundation, with the motion used to maximize both Curry's effectiveness -- getting him open for threes and then drives for layups or midrange shots if the defense overcommits -- and everyone else's effectiveness -- taking advantage of the defensive attention Curry draws both with the ball and when he's off-ball to create open shots.

Could all that work without the singular talents of Curry? I think so, and the 2014 Spurs are perhaps the best example of that. But the combination of Curry's individual production and the spacing he creates by drawing so much defensive attention, with his relentless off-ball activity being a force multiplier -- it takes the offense to another level. Curry's absurd range to stretch the defense, GOAT-level off-ball effectiveness, and his willingness to give up individual production to make his teammates and the team more successful -- that combination is singular in an elite player.

Of course, the offense doesn't shut down when Curry sits. They can still be very good in non-Curry minutes, which shows that the offense is not entirely Curry-dependent. But it is next level with Curry.

Defensively, they are likewise built on a foundation of Draymond. While they can be very good defensively in non-Draymond minutes, what Draymond does can't be replicated and, like Curry on offense, takes the defense to another level. They aren't built defensively around one guy to quite the extent that the Russell Celtics were, but it's closer to that than, say, the more defensively egalitarian current Celtics or Heat.

You could argue that Curry is just maximizing the opportunities created by the offense rather than the offense being built around Curry, but Kerr has said on many occasions that he specifically designed the offense around Curry. It's the same sort of chicken-egg conundrum regarding Draymond and the defense, especially considering that Bob Myers for years built a roster with long, like-sized players so that they could employ a switching defense (which most teams didn't do prior to 2015), but once they saw what they had in Draymond, they tailored the defense around his talents.

Doctor MJ, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and please don't construe my arguments here as disagreeing with your post, because I do agree with the points you made. I'm just adding my take to one aspect of what you wrote.

[Doctor MJ]

One interesting thing I was thinking about last night is just how much defense has changed in the past 10 years. Lot of talk about how much offense has changed with 3 point volume, etc. but the change in defense is just as stark.

Warriors had an elite defense in 2015 and an elite defense this year, but the defenses are so different. The amount of zone concepts now getting used is just staggering

With the Warriors in particular I think there's total confusion on the part of many established basketball people.

Are the Warriors pace & space? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the SSOL Suns.
Are the Warriors motion offense? Absolutely, but they really don't play much like the Triangle.

To me the core principles at work within the Warriors have been less about the specific talents they have on their roster, and more about a commitment to playing in a style where each player is expected to learn how to make good decisions as the play develops, and to communicate to teammates what the good decision is if you see it before your teammate does.

As I've said before, this isn't a new approach to team basketball, but it is an approach that feels like it got lost over time as teams focused more on building out around a particular star from year-to-year without relying on continuity.

When I look at the teams who emerged as great in the years before the NBA, what I see is not genius coaching, but rather teams of players that played together with great continuity who just figured out more and more how best to play with each other, and then how to on-board younger players into the mix to continue the dominance after the original stars fade into old age. So this is the Original Celtics, the New York Rens, the Harlem Globetrotters, and others in the '20s-40s, as well as the 2 original juggernauts of the NBA - Minneapolis Lakers & Rochester Royals - refined themselves into greatness. (Granted, the Laker example fits a bit less well because of what an outlier Mikan was at that time.)

From that point onward, we get less of these teams. The great NBA example is the Auerbach Celtics, the best of the 21st century is the Pop Spurs. But less and less franchises seem like they are even hoping they can do this.

Anyway, not saying any of this to say there hasn't been a rapid arms race of strategy on the defensive end in the past decade plus, but that the Warriors are unique here in that they have a way to tinker with their approach that could be said to be bottom-up rather than top-down. Players figure certain things out - with Draymond being the poster boy for this, sometimes with the help of the coaching staff but sometimes without, and then they propagate these ideas to their teammates.

Regarding the part in bold above, I don't think the first part is quite true. On offense, they are designed to leverage Curry's unique skills as a foundation, with the motion used to maximize both Curry's effectiveness -- getting him open for threes and then drives for layups or midrange shots if the defense overcommits -- and everyone else's effectiveness -- taking advantage of the defensive attention Curry draws both with the ball and when he's off-ball to create open shots.

Could all that work without the singular talents of Curry? I think so, and the 2014 Spurs are perhaps the best example of that. But the combination of Curry's individual production and the spacing he creates by drawing so much defensive attention, with his relentless off-ball activity being a force multiplier -- it takes the offense to another level. Curry's absurd range to stretch the defense, GOAT-level off-ball effectiveness, and his willingness to give up individual production to make his teammates and the team more successful -- that combination is singular in an elite player.

Of course, the offense doesn't shut down when Curry sits. They can still be very good in non-Curry minutes, which shows that the offense is not entirely Curry-dependent. But it is next level with Curry.

Defensively, they are likewise built on a foundation of Draymond. While they can be very good defensively in non-Draymond minutes, what Draymond does can't be replicated and, like Curry on offense, takes the defense to another level. They aren't built defensively around one guy to quite the extent that the Russell Celtics were, but it's closer to that than, say, the more defensively egalitarian current Celtics or Heat.

You could argue that Curry is just maximizing the opportunities created by the offense rather than the offense being built around Curry, but Kerr has said on many occasions that he specifically designed the offense around Curry. It's the same sort of chicken-egg conundrum regarding Draymond and the defense, especially considering that Bob Myers for years built a roster with long, like-sized players so that they could employ a switching defense (which most teams didn't do prior to 2015), but once they saw what they had in Draymond, they tailored the defense around his talents.

Doctor MJ, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and please don't construe my arguments here as disagreeing with your post, because I do agree with the points you made. I'm just adding my take to one aspect of what you wrote.

Makes sense, and I think you know that I'm generally higher on Curry & Green than most folks are so I definitely don't want to make a post that seems to belittle the significance of Curry & Green.

I think what I'm trying to say is that there's an overarching philosophy here that's bigger than just max-ing out Curry's offense and max-ing out Green's defense, and that this philosophy is something that is succeeding because Curry & Green were converted to it compared to what they were used to.

This is another way of saying: They listened, gave things an earnest try, bought in, tasted the team's success, and now propagate that knowledge every year and every day with the kind of ethos that cannot be matched by a non-active player. And I'd say this only adds to their value.

[sp6r=underrated]

football lends itself much more easily to in depth broadcasts

the game is one play at a time, with even more pauses than basketball and plays are harder to understand for a casual fan

Yup, games that involve regular resets lend themselves to either strategy discussions (football) or statistical discussions (baseball). Continual actions sports will always have a harder time than this.

The poster child for this problem is hockey which moves very fast, has regular substitutions that needs to be called out to fans, small playing field in comparison to soccer, lack of free throws in comparison to basketball and the difficulty in following the action. Their play by play guys have very limited opportunity to discuss the strategy of the sport even though it is quite complex.