iggymcfrack wrote:MyUniBroDavis wrote:1# Jokic
2-6
AD/Embiid/Tatum/Curry/Jimmy in some order
For me, Jimmy had the best single round and that kind of was the key round for them to do anything but outside of that he wasn’t that good, since he got hurt at least (and he did fully say he wasn’t at 100% pre finals), but yeah gotta evaluate based on how he did.
AD is tough because he threw up such a stinker in the WCF, but his first two rounds, decisively outplayed Curry in round 2 and had one of the best defensive rounds I’ve ever seen in round 1
Tatum was great, slowed down a bit at the end of the Miami series though, and did kinda throw away one of the first two ones iirc, but availability is the best ability lol
Embiids playoffs drop him a lot
I get bron being here I think level of play his RS was up there for sure, and his playoffs was fine but man his halfcourt game suffered a lot with the injury. Don’t know if I’d put him there though
A stinker in the WCF? He averaged 27/14 on .605 TS% with 3 BPG. He couldn't keep up with the Joker, but no one could do that this year. Embiid, Butler, and Tatum all had "stinker" series when they got eliminated, but AD actually played quite well throughout the entire playoffs.
Averages don’t really tell the story with AD, because how inconsistent he was and what his value is offensively
Offensively his value comes from creating high value opportunities with his movement and athleticism and finishing those high value opportunities at an insane rate
Not really what happened, Game 1 bumps his averages but game 2 was a stinker, Game 3 was good, and Game 4 was a stinker especially since half of his misses (where to be fair he got fouled for sure) he ended up on the floor and they’d kill us in transition
The thing is though, he got good opportunities, didn’t finish them at an elite rate, and he’s had an issue setting hard screens and rolling hard to the basket all year post injury since he wants that pocket pass and doesn’t wanna get into the packed paint even though it opens up for the ball handler in pick and rolls for us
Beyond that, the biggest issue is his self creation all playoffs and post injury fell off a cliff from pre injury because he was both just not really the same athletically with his foot + looked like he wanted to avoid contact because the foot is a step away from a season ending injury, iirc he was the second best post player pre injury considering volume and effeciency (and in post tracking the stretch after he said his back felt good to injury he shot the same percentage in the post as Jokic!) and he was like the worst high volume post scorer in effeciency after the injury
Defensively he did a good job once he got switched off of Jokic for sure, in terms of the gameplan against Jokic, but wasn’t like the other series was
Game 1 was great offensively but defensively was poor because of how we utilized him, Game 2 and 4 were bad in general and he wasn’t really good on D in game 4 because of the types of misses he had killing us in transition. Game 3 was better statistically but there was an issue with his shot creation that had been an issue post injury, and while he got offensive boards and made a bunch of easy ones, he again couldn’t create anything for himself which killed us and the game in the few minutes lebron sat
I would say defensively he was a key part of the gameplan that was pretty effective against Jokic after game 1, but I’d also say it’s partially why I don’t rate defense as high necessarily, it wasn’t his fault but we couldn’t stop the jamal aspect of their offense at all, and while it’s not really his responsibility or fault there it does mean that, that defense was kind of for naught lol
