lessthanjake wrote:hardenASG13 wrote:nate33 wrote:Right now, the binary brain thinking is that SGA > Jokic because OKC won the series. But if OKC goes on to dominate Minnesota and then their Eastern conference opponent, will we revisit the fact that Denver pushed OKC to 7 games with just Jokic and 3 other starting-quality players (Gordon, Murray and Braun)?
Denver might well be the second-best team in the league with just Jokic and 3 useful players.
Nah, OKC shot the ball terribly on open looks in that Denver series, which is why it went 7. They have been making those shots at much better (expected) rate vs Minnesota to this point. Jalen Williams in particular couldn't hit anything the first 6 games vs Denver. He was averaging 16ppg on like 33% shooting through 6 games.
I think it’s really important for people to realize that shooting variance exists but that a team’s shooting is also affected quite a bit by other things. For instance, if a team is harder to guard, then defending them will be more tiring, and if the team is more tired they’ll almost certainly shoot worse. It’s something anyone who has played basketball has experienced themselves, but we don’t always think about it with NBA players. The reality is that it is much more tiring to defend a Jokic team than the Wolves, so our baseline assumption should be that we’d expect the Thunder to shoot worse against the Nuggets than against the Wolves, even without variance coming into play.
Also, I seem to remember you saying before the Nuggets/Thunder series that the series needed to be competitive or Jokic would be due criticism. I’d pointed out that, over the course of NBA history, 90% of series with that big of an SRS gap ended 4-0 or 4-1. You used the 2008 Cavs vs. Celtics 7-game series as an example (and, to be clear, it’s basically the only one, so it had to be your example) where a team with that big of an SRS gap actually managed to make the series competitive, and argued that Jokic should be able to make the series competitive like LeBron did against the Celtics. I pointed out that LeBron actually did not play well in that series, but you didn’t really care because the existence of that series allowed you to set an expectation that you could criticize Jokic if the series wasn’t competitive. You didn’t actually expect the series to be competitive, so you were setting up a later argument you expected to be able to make against Jokic. But the series was competitive. So Jokic checked off the box you were asking him to check off. He got a competitive 7-game series in a matchup where the SRS gap was so big that the series’ are virtually never competitive. And he actually played better than LeBron did in the series you held up as the example of what Jokic should be able to do. So there’s really no better example in NBA history of a player making a series competitive when their team is this overmatched. That apparently hasn’t made you rethink your position at all—instead you’re here moving the goalposts again, acting like you’re not impressed by something that went beyond the basically-bad-faith bar you’d previously set for him.
Lol this SRS bull aged really well! The Pacers, with a worse SRS than Denver, just took the same Thunder team to 7 and actually showed up for game 7 instead of getting run out of the gym from the jump. Their star came out firing unlike Jokic, but unfortunately got hurt. So, in just a matter of a month, Jokics performance (with the SRS gap!!!) Doesn't look impressive at all. OKC simply wasn't amazing this playoffs, despite winning 68 games. They were the best team, but had plenty of bad games, as I was telling you, against competition that while good, wasn't a bunch of juggernaut.
The thing is, you started at your conclusion (praising Jokic). You thought since the SRS gaps were so big, that what Denver/Jokic did was special. You didn't think a team like Indiana, with a worse SRS, could do the same thing only better, so went on to say how much what Jokic did was special, the best in history considering the SRS! But Indiana just topped it. It's clear you had an agenda and didn't think anyone else would challenge this OKC team, despite the flaws they showed which were evident with the eye test, no stats needed.
