2024-25 NBA Season Discussion

[RCM88x]

Suns, Mavs and Nuggets overrated
Pels, Kings and Rockets underrated

[Texas Chuck]

I have a newfound respect for the Lob City Clippers

Sometimes you're not supposed to take "I'm leaving in free agency" as an answer

I just want my 30 for 30 on that whole thing. Still the best off-season moment I can ever recall. So much hilarity ensued.

[sp6r=underrated]

Damn Denver getting gutted is great to see as a Celtics fan. They are the only team in the west that scares me.

Read on Twitter

this is INSANE if Denver declined Imo.........Murray, Pg, Gordon, Jokic instantly becomes the best top 4 in the Nba BY FAR even tho their depth would be ass its prolly still gonna be ass regardless w/ new Cba

I don't know why people talk about Jokic being in this great situation. I like Malone as a coach but otherwise his situation is pretty bad. He's playing for a cheap owner, in a city other players don't like and his best teammate has been Jamal freaking Murray. That isn't KG bad but Jamal Murray is much, much closer to Wally Z than the # 2 man on most contenders.

[The-Power]

The top teams in the East (BOS, NYK, PHI, MIL) can field impressive line-ups but they are all quite reliant on injury prone players to stay healthy (some more than others, though). I love parity at the top but luck when it comes to injuries and their timing may very well end up being the deciding factor as to who ultimately advances in the playoffs and that would suck.

[AEnigma]

They have a more athletic Wally Szczerbiak as their fourth best player.

Not sure what you intend to be the insight in highlighting that teams get worse when they lose starter level players for nothing, without any real replacement. They lost their sixth and seventh men last season — no real replacement, just giving more minutes to their eighth and ninth men — and have now lost their fifth best player, again with seemingly no real replacement. So now on top of having worse rotations and a worse bench, your excellent starting group is taking a hit too.

But that is what happens when you start have four support guys who are all valued in excess of $20 million annual on the open market; unless you go deep into the luxury tax, which is both more difficult now and not something Kroenke cares to do generally, you will be downgrading your roster. Okay, the cap changes were not known/expected after the 2023 crowning of a new dynasty, but generally legitimate dynasties are not a couple of bench pieces away from second round irrelevance.

While you guys can whine about the MPJ contract, evidently it seems the alternative would have been to let him go with no replacement. So now the dream is to parlay him into a pair who can both provide team value in excess of $20 million — for example, Deandre Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic off the Hawks — but if you are unwilling to part with picks, then teams are not going to help you out.

Time to adapt to the new reality: there will be no Warriors equivalent of teams keeping together four near maximum contracts for the bulk of a decade. The Thunder have three years before their current rosters will be broken up. The Celtics and Wolves have a year. And if you are too scared to trade picks to supplement a thin roster, then you will be stuck with what you have.

[Doctor MJ]

That MPJ contract continues to be all-time bad. That and the fact that Murray got a max deal before he even made an all-star team tells you how terribly Denver managed their roster.

They’re done for at least the next two years. The West should be the who can beat OKC show now. They have the best player(IMO) and the most depth.

I wanna see Holmgren improve on top of it.

So I'll start with a quibble on what you said before ending on a similar pessimistic note for their future.

The idea that it's unusual a player got a max deal before they were an all-star is misguided. I mean Cade Cunningham just got a max extension and he's yet to prove he even has a place on a competent team. Perfectly fine to think this is unwise, but it is generally the norm in the modern NBA to largely make up your mind after 3 years when it comes to young players as to whether you see them as an all-star level talent you want as part of your core, and if you do, you give them the baby max.

And so this to say that I basically have no issue with the baby maxes they gave to the 3 guys they decided were their core - Jokic, Murray & Porter. It would have been great to have to pay them less, but these were all-star talents with pretty good fundamental fit and years learning to play together.

And yet, at this point, that Porter contract is functioning as a horrendous albatross that at this time seems likely to drag the Nuggets down below top tier contention. What the hell happened?

Well, I think the thing that most forget about Porter's contract is that it wasn't given on the basis that he could some day be an all-star level player: He was playing like an all-star after Murray went down to injury. Here are his scoring splits for that season:

Pre-AS: 14.6 PPG, 62.7% TS, +6.3 per100
Post-AS: 22.3 PPG, 68.2% TS, +11.4 per100

Had Porter continued like this without any further statistical leap the next year, dude's an all-star.
Instead, he had more back issues, and while he's gotten part of the way back, nowadays he often seems like a 3&D role player without earning that capital D. The type of guy who, for example, can be the 5th starter on a title team if everything breaks right.

It goes without saying that as is, Porter isn't worth anything like his contract. But the thing is, if I were to quibble about Porter's contract at the time it was being drawn up, my concern would be about him missing time, and I'd be thinking about stuff like partial guarantees based on games played. And that's just not protection against what we see now where Porter almost played all of last year's games.

What do you when you sign a guy based on how good he is already, and instead of getting better, he gets worse? You suffer. Simple as that.

You can argue that the Nuggets should have expected something like this to possibly happen - a kind of post-injury-Grant-Hill-ification - but I don't think it was realistic to expect the Nuggets to play their cards as if a Jack was about to turn into 5.

But now that suffering is worse than I expected. I didn't like when the Nuggets lost Bruce Brown, but I understood it. In the end, basketball is a 5 man sport, so if others offer too much for someone you don't see as being part of your core 5 - basically starter-level money - you expect to let him go.

But not only was KCP in that 5-man core lineup, he wasn't the worst of those 5. Porter was. So now you're letting a guy more valuable than Porter go rather than give him considerably less than what you're paying Porter, and it's just impossible not to think that Porter's contract had something to do with why they made that decision. To me whenever you're not signing your 4th best player because you overpaid your 5th best player, you're down the rabbit hole to crazy town. It's the type of situation where you'd hope a new GM (Booth) would have enough distance not to fall prey to sunk cost like this...

but of course that new GM drafted a guy in Braun who makes sense as a 5th starter if you substitute in for KCP. Sigh.

Nothing against Braun here, it's just that you clearly need more depth not less, and so you shouldn't be thinking about KCP vs Braun, you should be keeping both.

Yeah, so anyway. The Nuggets will still be good, but they'll be worse than before unless the guys on the roster take major leaps forward that management shouldn't be counting on.

[sp6r=underrated]

They have a more athletic Wally Szczerbiak as their fourth best player.

If Jokic's supporting cast was as good you think either their team point differential would be better or Jokic's plus/minus would be worse.

[Doctor MJ]

The top teams in the East (BOS, NYK, PHI, MIL) can field impressive line-ups but they are all quite reliant on injury prone players to stay healthy (some more than others, though). I love parity at the top but luck when it comes to injuries and their timing may very well end up being the deciding factor as to who ultimately advances in the playoffs and that would suck.

Well and, I'd say this has been the norm this era, which has everything to do with why we've had 6 different champs in the last 6 seasons.

[parsnips33]

Thank GOD it wasn't the Lakers Jesus that was a close call

[Doctor MJ]

So yeah, Philly getting PG is huge. While of course injuries might end up keeping them from being their best self in a playoff in their window, this makes a scary team even scarier.

It also I think makes clear that NBA superstars aren't actually looking to stand in solidarity with each other. Just hilarious that Harden & George basically end up traded for each others with the Harden-side of the equation being about him being willing to take a smaller contract for the Clippers after trying to salt the Earth in Philly when being offered something similar there.

Harden will probably always see Morey as a betrayer, but seems pretty clear that the rest of the players will just see Harden as a has-been who can't acknowledge his own drop off and its consequences.

[AEnigma]

They have a more athletic Wally Szczerbiak as their fourth best player.

If Jokic's supporting cast was as good you think either their team point differential would be better or Jokic's plus/minus would be worse.

No coherent logic to that statement. If they were as irrelevant or as bad as you think, or if Jokic were as good as you think, then losing a pair of bench pieces should not have plummeted them from an all-time championship run preceding a future dynasty, to an irrelevant second round exit. And if they do not replace KCP, they will be even worse this year — because contrary to 2023 portrayals, those were all players Jokic needed to compete.

[sp6r=underrated]

The top teams in the East (BOS, NYK, PHI, MIL) can field impressive line-ups but they are all quite reliant on injury prone players to stay healthy (some more than others, though). I love parity at the top but luck when it comes to injuries and their timing may very well end up being the deciding factor as to who ultimately advances in the playoffs and that would suck.

Well and, I'd say this has been the norm this era, which has everything to do with why we've had 6 different champs in the last 6 seasons.

I'm a bit skeptical we're in an era of top-end parity.

In Toronto, you had the weird situation where the best player left the title winner because he was hellbent on living in his hometown. As far I know that has never happened before. And his former team the next year went 53-19 before losing in G7 of the ECSF. That is a very similar outcome to the 94 bulls.

And Boston since 2019 has had a + 6 SRS while losing some really close series that could have gone the other way. I'll be candid I think if we replay the last 6 years over again 100 times I think the championship picture looks pretty similar to previous years.

Note, I don't think any team has played like the peak Warriors but outside of the 90s bulls no team went on an extended run like that before.

[jalengreen]

So yeah, Philly getting PG is huge. While of course injuries might end up keeping them from being their best self in a playoff in their window, this makes a scary team even scarier.

It also I think makes clear that NBA superstars aren't actually looking to stand in solidarity with each other. Just hilarious that Harden & George basically end up traded for each others with the Harden-side of the equation being about him being willing to take a smaller contract for the Clippers after trying to salt the Earth in Philly when being offered something similar there.

Harden will probably always see Morey as a betrayer, but seems pretty clear that the rest of the players will just see Harden as a has-been who can't acknowledge his own drop off and its consequences.

Why do you think the rest of the players view Harden like that? Because Daryl Morey decided to pay a 34-year-old Paul George a 4 yr, $213M deal, which he chose to accept? Seems like it'd be foolish for George to do anything but sign on the dotted line, and I don't think it says anything about Harden.

[Peregrine01]

The way the Nuggets FO build out its rosters tells me that they think that as long as they have Jokic, they can get a lot more value out of their cheaper younger guys. I think this is generally correct but what happens when Jokic is off the floor? Get ready for another season of silly Jokic on/off stats.

[Doctor MJ]

The top teams in the East (BOS, NYK, PHI, MIL) can field impressive line-ups but they are all quite reliant on injury prone players to stay healthy (some more than others, though). I love parity at the top but luck when it comes to injuries and their timing may very well end up being the deciding factor as to who ultimately advances in the playoffs and that would suck.

Well and, I'd say this has been the norm this era, which has everything to do with why we've had 6 different champs in the last 6 seasons.

I'm a bit skeptical we're in an era of top-end parity.

In Toronto, you had the weird situation where the best player left the title winner because he was hellbent on living in his hometown. As far I know that has never happened before. And his former team the next year went 53-19 before losing in G7 of the ECSF. That is a very similar outcome to the 94 bulls.

And Boston since 2019 has had a + 6 SRS while losing some really close series that could have gone the other way. I'll be candid I think if we replay the last 6 years over again 100 times I think the championship picture looks pretty similar to previous years.

Note, I don't think any team has played like the peak Warriors but outside of the 90s bulls no team went on an extended run like that before.

Ah well, the Parity Era name is a bit funny because it should start in '19-20 when there was a ton of guys changing teams to start new Big 2's, but '18-19 gets lumped in because the Raptors won...and the Raptors won because the Warriors were hurt.

So yeah, while it's possible that if Kawhi stays in Toronto the team becomes a dynasty due to the competition weakening, I don't see them as peaking that high in '18-19, and to piggy back on what you said - the Raptors also did great without Kawhi in '18-19, so this isn't a situation where we don't know the rough value add of Kawhi to that team. With that added value, and opponent injury luck, they won a title, but not in an utterly dominant fashion.

Re: Boston. I don't think the Celtics really had a prayer at winning the title in any previous years other than '21-22. They deserve a ton of credit for being a great team for an extended period of time, but this isn't the same thing as being a team with the dominance it takes to be dynastic.

(To be clear, that's not me being skeptical of their current roster which is just plain exceptional. I'm not saying it's any kind of a guarantee that they'll go dynastic now - I'd bet on the Field - only that I think they really are considerably better now than they were in earlier years.)

[Doctor MJ]

So yeah, Philly getting PG is huge. While of course injuries might end up keeping them from being their best self in a playoff in their window, this makes a scary team even scarier.

It also I think makes clear that NBA superstars aren't actually looking to stand in solidarity with each other. Just hilarious that Harden & George basically end up traded for each others with the Harden-side of the equation being about him being willing to take a smaller contract for the Clippers after trying to salt the Earth in Philly when being offered something similar there.

Harden will probably always see Morey as a betrayer, but seems pretty clear that the rest of the players will just see Harden as a has-been who can't acknowledge his own drop off and its consequences.

Why do you think the rest of the players view Harden like that? Because Daryl Morey decided to pay a 34-year-old Paul George a 4 yr, $213M deal, which he chose to accept? Seems like it'd be foolish for George to do anything but sign on the dotted line, and I don't think it says anything about Harden.

Ah, sounds like you've not been following all of the whispering that no star would sign with Philly after the treatment alleged by Harden.

It's of course possible for players to just not know anything about stuff that happened in the past...but George was literally Harden's teammate last season and talked on podcast as paying attention to how franchises treated their players. So yeah, George surely knew damn well what Harden said Morey did that led Harden to demand a trade away, and if it bothered him enough, he wouldn't have signed with Philly. He did sign with Philly, so here we are.

[sp6r=underrated]

Well and, I'd say this has been the norm this era, which has everything to do with why we've had 6 different champs in the last 6 seasons.

I'm a bit skeptical we're in an era of top-end parity.

In Toronto, you had the weird situation where the best player left the title winner because he was hellbent on living in his hometown. As far I know that has never happened before. And his former team the next year went 53-19 before losing in G7 of the ECSF. That is a very similar outcome to the 94 bulls.

And Boston since 2019 has had a + 6 SRS while losing some really close series that could have gone the other way. I'll be candid I think if we replay the last 6 years over again 100 times I think the championship picture looks pretty similar to previous years.

Note, I don't think any team has played like the peak Warriors but outside of the 90s bulls no team went on an extended run like that before.

Ah well, the Parity Era name is a bit funny because it should start in '19-20 when there was a ton of guys changing teams to start new Big 2's, but '18-19 gets lumped in because the Raptors won...and the Raptors won because the Warriors were hurt.

So yeah, while it's possible that if Kawhi stays in Toronto the team becomes a dynasty due to the competition weakening, I don't see them as peaking that high in '18-19, and to piggy back on what you said - the Raptors also did great without Kawhi in '18-19, so this isn't a situation where we don't know the rough value add of Kawhi to that team. With that added value, and opponent injury luck, they won a title, but not in an utterly dominant fashion.

Re: Boston. I don't think the Celtics really had a prayer at winning the title in any previous years other than '21-22. They deserve a ton of credit for being a great team for an extended period of time, but this isn't the same thing as being a team with the dominance it takes to be dynastic.

(To be clear, that's not me being skeptical of their current roster which is just plain exceptional. I'm not saying it's any kind of a guarantee that they'll go dynastic now - I'd bet on the Field - only that I think they really are considerably better now than they were in earlier years.)

I think we're not far apart but where I think we can disagree is the Warriors. I see them as historic outliers on par with the 90s Bulls and that most NBA dynasties never peaked as high or as long as they did. And by that standard yeah they aren't winning titles nor can they be a dynasty. But most multiple-NBA champions, who had long runs of contention aren't winning titles when the Warriors or Bulls were at their peak.

When I watched these Celtics I saw them as the best team in the NBA from 22-23 on par with the levels of clubs like the Kobe-Gasol lakers or Lebron Heat, 00s Spurs who I witnessed live. And I see them as similar to the Showtime lakers who I didn't witness live but I have made the effort to follow. And all those clubs won multiple titles.

And now they seem to have taken a big leap in 2024. I'm skeptical they can maintain this level of play in part due to Al's age but mainly because most team that hit the level we just saw see some regression back to the pack.

[Special_Puppy]

They have a more athletic Wally Szczerbiak as their fourth best player.

Not sure what you intend to be the insight in highlighting that teams get worse when they lose starter level players for nothing, without any real replacement. They lost their sixth and seventh men last season — no real replacement, just giving more minutes to their eighth and ninth men — and have now lost their fifth best player, again with seemingly no real replacement. So now on top of having worse rotations and a worse bench, your excellent starting group is taking a hit too.

But that is what happens when you start have four support guys who are all valued in excess of $20 million annual on the open market; unless you go deep into the luxury tax, which is both more difficult now and not something Kroenke cares to do generally, you will be downgrading your roster. Okay, the cap changes were not known/expected after the 2023 crowning of a new dynasty, but generally legitimate dynasties are not a couple of bench pieces away from second round irrelevance.

While you guys can whine about the MPJ contract, evidently it seems the alternative would have been to let him go with no replacement. So now the dream is to parlay him into a pair who can both provide team value in excess of $20 million — for example, Deandre Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic off the Hawks — but if you are unwilling to part with picks, then teams are not going to help you out.

Time to adapt to the new reality: there will be no Warriors equivalent of teams keeping together four near maximum contracts for the bulk of a decade. The Thunder have three years before their current rosters will be broken up. The Celtics and Wolves have a year. And if you are too scared to trade picks to supplement a thin roster, then you will be stuck with what you have.

It does seem pretty unusual that the front office has essentially surrounded their top 4 with the rotation of a tanking team. Maybe its just the new reality or is Denver's front office just unusually bad at finding good depth? I would also say that its now more important than ever to trade your overpaid players when the market still values their contracts highly

[Special_Puppy]

Where does the Kawhi Leonard Clippers rank among the best teams to never win a title?

[Doctor MJ]

I'm a bit skeptical we're in an era of top-end parity.

In Toronto, you had the weird situation where the best player left the title winner because he was hellbent on living in his hometown. As far I know that has never happened before. And his former team the next year went 53-19 before losing in G7 of the ECSF. That is a very similar outcome to the 94 bulls.

And Boston since 2019 has had a + 6 SRS while losing some really close series that could have gone the other way. I'll be candid I think if we replay the last 6 years over again 100 times I think the championship picture looks pretty similar to previous years.

Note, I don't think any team has played like the peak Warriors but outside of the 90s bulls no team went on an extended run like that before.

Ah well, the Parity Era name is a bit funny because it should start in '19-20 when there was a ton of guys changing teams to start new Big 2's, but '18-19 gets lumped in because the Raptors won...and the Raptors won because the Warriors were hurt.

So yeah, while it's possible that if Kawhi stays in Toronto the team becomes a dynasty due to the competition weakening, I don't see them as peaking that high in '18-19, and to piggy back on what you said - the Raptors also did great without Kawhi in '18-19, so this isn't a situation where we don't know the rough value add of Kawhi to that team. With that added value, and opponent injury luck, they won a title, but not in an utterly dominant fashion.

Re: Boston. I don't think the Celtics really had a prayer at winning the title in any previous years other than '21-22. They deserve a ton of credit for being a great team for an extended period of time, but this isn't the same thing as being a team with the dominance it takes to be dynastic.

(To be clear, that's not me being skeptical of their current roster which is just plain exceptional. I'm not saying it's any kind of a guarantee that they'll go dynastic now - I'd bet on the Field - only that I think they really are considerably better now than they were in earlier years.)

I think we're not far apart but where I think we can disagree is the Warriors. I see them as historic outliers on par with the 90s Bulls and that most NBA dynasties never peaked as high or as long as they did. And by that standard yeah they aren't winning titles nor can they be a dynasty. But most multiple-NBA champions, who had long runs of contention aren't winning titles when the Warriors or Bulls were at their peak.

When I watched these Celtics I saw them as the best team in the NBA from 22-23 on par with the levels of clubs like the Kobe-Gasol lakers or Lebron Heat, 00s Spurs who I witnessed live. And I see them as similar to the Showtime lakers who I didn't witness live but I have made the effort to follow. And all those clubs won multiple titles.

And now they seem to have taken a big leap in 2024. I'm skeptical they can maintain this level of play in part due to Al's age but mainly because most team that hit the level we just saw see some regression back to the pack.

Interesting so, I think our divergence is perhaps best focused on '22-23. Perfectly reasonable to argue they were the best team in the season given their league-best SRS in the regular season, but they didn't exactly blow everyone away in the playoffs. Sure they got some bad shooting luck against the Heat, but when you combine that with the relatively tight series against not just Philly but Atlanta, to me they really didn't look like that resilient of a team, and they definitely seemed less scary than '21-22.

I'll also say: If Stevens didn't see issues in the roster holding the team back from the potential of the team with the guys they kept, I don't know why he'd take the risks required in order to get KP & Jrue.

I should make clear that I don't want to talk as if it's impossible for the Celtics to win the title in '22-23 - I avoid talking about such certainties in general. Only that I don't look at that '22-23 team and see a group rises to the challenge of their playoff competition the way I see, say, the Showtime Lakers.

Could that team beat the Lakers? Of course, because 3>2, but those Celtics in today's league still prone seemed to stumble in a way that Showtime-level teams are less likely to do so.