Around the NBA II

[Dynamix]

Could've been worse, Lance and a pick for JR Smith.

[esqtvd]

Could've been worse, Lance and a pick for JR Smith.

LOL

and you know certain people round here were watching Jeff Green last night instead of LeBron

I love it

[Quake Griffin]

Geoff Green was at Oracle last night?

[Ranma]

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[Quake Griffin]

Pat Bev cleared for basketball activities.


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[Ranma]

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[TucsonClip]

Could've been worse, Lance and a pick for JR Smith.

LOL

and you know certain people round here were watching Jeff Green last night instead of LeBron

I love it

Only one person here notices Jeff Green.

[esqtvd]

Could've been worse, Lance and a pick for JR Smith.

LOL

and you know certain people round here were watching Jeff Green last night instead of LeBron

I love it

Only one person here notices Jeff Green.

obviously not

[og15]

dumping on Jeff Green takes no particular courage or acumen

nothing to do with the discussion

Green did win his minutes somehow despite what some sportswriter thinks

and even if he were out of the league now, the discussion is whether the Clippers should have played that longshot 3 years ago, esp since it might only end up costing us a mid-2nd rounder

Lol, who did he win his minutes over? Cedi Osman? Rodney Hood who pushed himself out of the rotation because of behaviour? Have you seen Cleveland's roster? Jose Calderon has been in their rotation. JR Smith at his current stage is a starter for them. Getting into their rotation is not a special accomplishment. This is a team being carried by LeBron just like 2007.

LOL

and you know certain people round here were watching Jeff Green last night instead of LeBron

I love it

Only one person here notices Jeff Green.

obviously not

Oh come on, everyone else has already concluded the guy sucks. You were the one that went and stayed revisiting the trade and trying to justify him and the trade again, that was ALL you. The only person here that could be argued as invested in how Jeff Green produces is you. The other side of proving he is the player he is isn't necessary as it's been verified and concluded already, you were the only one trying to give a different narrative about him which you have seemingly toned down now after probably thinking about it a little and realizing that you also actually don't think he's a playoff perforner, lol

[esqtvd]

dumping on Jeff Green takes no particular courage or acumen

nothing to do with the discussion

Green did win his minutes somehow despite what some sportswriter thinks

and even if he were out of the league now, the discussion is whether the Clippers should have played that longshot 3 years ago, esp since it might only end up costing us a mid-2nd rounder

Lol, who did he win his minutes over? Cedi Osman? Rodney Hood who pushed himself out of the rotation because of behaviour? Have you seen Cleveland's roster? Jose Calderon has been in their rotation. JR Smith at his current stage is a starter for them. Getting into their rotation is not a special accomplishment. This is a team being carried by LeBron just like 2007.

Only one person here notices Jeff Green.

obviously not

Oh come on, everyone else has already concluded the guy sucks. You were the one that went and stayed revisiting the trade and trying to justify him and the trade again, that was ALL you. The only person here that could be argued as invested in how Jeff Green produces is you. The other side of proving he is the player he is isn't necessary as it's been verified and concluded already, you were the only one trying to give a different narrative about him which you have seemingly toned down now after probably thinking about it a little and realizing that you also actually don't think he's a playoff perforner, lol

I didn't mean to upset you again. Sorry.

You seem resistant to the fact that sometimes it's necessary to choose between bad options. Austin or Jamal or WeJo [or knucklehead Lance] were slated for those SF minutes. All are undersized. Green's job was to go out there and be 6'9" and stand more or less in the right place, which he did, and gave us 10 ppg in the process. For that, it will probably cost us no more than a pretty worthless 2nd-round pick.

Simply not the disaster it's made out to be.

[og15]

dumping on Jeff Green takes no particular courage or acumen

nothing to do with the discussion

Green did win his minutes somehow despite what some sportswriter thinks

and even if he were out of the league now, the discussion is whether the Clippers should have played that longshot 3 years ago, esp since it might only end up costing us a mid-2nd rounder

Lol, who did he win his minutes over? Cedi Osman? Rodney Hood who pushed himself out of the rotation because of behaviour? Have you seen Cleveland's roster? Jose Calderon has been in their rotation. JR Smith at his current stage is a starter for them. Getting into their rotation is not a special accomplishment. This is a team being carried by LeBron just like 2007.

obviously not

Oh come on, everyone else has already concluded the guy sucks. You were the one that went and stayed revisiting the trade and trying to justify him and the trade again, that was ALL you. The only person here that could be argued as invested in how Jeff Green produces is you. The other side of proving he is the player he is isn't necessary as it's been verified and concluded already, you were the only one trying to give a different narrative about him which you have seemingly toned down now after probably thinking about it a little and realizing that you also actually don't think he's a playoff perforner, lol

I didn't mean to upset you again. Sorry.

You seem resistant to the fact that sometimes it's necessary to choose between bad options. Austin or Jamal or WeJo [or knucklehead Lance] were slated for those SF minutes. All are undersized. Green's job was to go out there and be 6'9" and stand more or less in the right place, which he did, and gave us 10 ppg in the process. For that, it will probably cost us no more than a pretty worthless 2nd-round pick.

Simply not the disaster it's made out to be.

Why do you want me to be upset? There's nothing here that can be upsetting. I've never said it was a disaster, so you are obviously speaking to others, but that's not necessary for this discussion. Now, the only reason we're discussing this is because you went out of your way to bring up the Jeff Green trade and to call him a playoff player in an effort to support your ongoing justification of the move as absolutely necessary. I came to peace with the move that it was okay, but really one of those cases of if this player plays differently in every possible way then they will really help. Those don't usually work out (Josh Smith, Lance Stephenson, etc), but why not try one more, right?

The rest of us were just trying to appreciate the greatness of Lebron and note that Jeff Green made an appearance, but you had to go and start on making justifications for this or that trade of this or that decision again. Yes, he's average at best and in the end it might only cost a 2nd round pick, great, but trades don't happen in a vacuum and an asset such as a lottery protected pick can still be leveraged in another way.

Of course anyone can say that an unsuccessful [or only semi-successful] move shouldn't have been made, but that goes without saying about any move when no alternative is being offered in its place. Unknown x is always theoretically better than any known y.

One can call it a difference of opinion but without a tangible x vs. y, there's really no debate or discussion.

As it turned out--and I had forgotten that Blake was promptly injured after the trade--having 6'9" Jeff Green to fill in at PF instead of 6'5" Lance Stephenson is an ancillary argument in favor of the trade, which was made partly to get us some length, and it sure came in handy. Whatever he accomplished in the regular season often playing out of position is a plus; in the playoffs [also playing mostly out of position] he scored 10.3 ppg on 46% shooting. Not great, not a flop.

As for Doc speaking well of Lance, I think it's his history and his character to not go after anyone--not even Dudley, Big Baby, or Tatty Matty B, who have been downright nasty. I wouldn't call it lying, I'd call it class.

As for the market value of the pick we traded, Memphis has already traded it away for two 2nd-rounders. As for its theoretical value, it's either a late pick if we make the playoffs next year or a 2nd rounder in the 40s in 2020, which is pretty much completely worthless. Better picks than that can be bought for cash.

I would not want to argue that doing nothing, especially with the clock ticking on the CP/BG era, was the better decision. I wouldn't know where to start proving my case.

I agree, we should offer possible alternatives whenever we can, and I believe we should also be open the alternatives without just saying "well, how do we know that was offered, or how do we know that would have been accepted". The primary trade I would say the Clippers could have made and would be a better use of a protected lottery pick is this one I will mention. I will keep it on a player who was actually traded that season and is ironically now a current Clipper, Tobias Harris. Since he was actually traded, we can't say "how do we know they would trade him", and since we saw the return value we also can't argue "how do we know our package would have been better".

Here was the actual trade:

Tobias Harris 23 years old

for
Ersan Ilyasova 28 years old ($7.9M, $8.4M)
Brandon Jennings 26 years old ($8.3 M expiring)

Clippers possible offer:

Lance Stephenson 25 years old ($9.0M expiring)
Jamal Crawford 35 years old ($5.7M expiring)
CJ Wilcox 25 years old ($1.2M, 16-17 option)
Lottery Protected 1st Round Pick

Orlando wasn't acquiring either of those guys to be long term solutions, they had Gordon, and at the time still saw Elfrid as their guy at PG. Jennings was not re-signed and Ilyasova was traded in the Ibaka trade to get the contracts right. Clippers offer was better in terms of clearing salary for them, and they could get a possible future pick. They wanted to move Harris to make room for Gordon to get more minutes as they saw him as having better potential. Harris' averages at the time: 13.7 ppg / 7.0 rpg / 2.0 apg / 1.0 spg / 0.6 bpg, 1.6 tpg / 46.4% FG / 31.1% 3PT. Nothing wild, but the previous season he averaged 17/6/2 on 47/36/79 shooting, that's the perfect time to nab a player like that who is young, and the Clippers had the contracts and the extra asset to make it work.

The Jeff Green trade came two days after that trade, so it's not a case where the Clippers had already traded for Green and this was no longer an option. Now you can say "oh Orlando didn't want to deal with Stephenson", but as an expiring, they would be able to just waive him if that was the case, so that's not an issue, and they were supposedly willing to trade for him in a later Frye deal. So there's at least one trade that would have been better and wouldn't be doing nothing, but better balances current and future needs and isn't essentially a rental.

Of course now that the team has been disbanded and playoffs aren't likely it will become two seconds, still not insignificant though, hence the Clippers currently trying to get into the second round. The second round is a great round for throwing the dice at a prospect without much repercussion if you miss out, so I won't dismiss it, long shot second rounders is part of succeeding in the NBA, you can't keep out of that round as a team, especially the early 2nd round. Our own DJ is from that round, so is Thornwell who looks like he might be decent, so is the Warriors Green, etc. When the trade was made though, and based on the future plans the Clippers had as recently as last summer, this was a likely first round pick being given up.

[esqtvd]

As it turned out, Jeff Green didn't play that badly for us--and is doing for the Cavs pretty much all I expected of him as a Clipper--eat up minutes and just go out there and be tall. The kvetching and kvelling about the trade was mostly about the price, but when is a 1st round pick not a first round pick? When it's as heavily protected as this one was. That it becomes a 2nd-rounder if not conveyed in the 1st two years is key. And if it were conveyed in those first 2 years, it would mean we were still good, it would be at the back of the draft, and we wouldn't miss it so much.

Would Tobias have helped, even if Orlando would have bitten--which is highly questionable, since we were offering only crap plus a highly protected [and therefore likely crap] pick? Dunno. He was still green as hell--the whole point of picking up Jeff Green was that he already knew Doc's system and for all the rest of his underwhelmingness, tends to stand in the right place. In fact, the experiment was never completed, starting with the fact the Blake got injured and we never had the chance to work him in for a couple months alongside Blake as the 6'9" SF we needed so badly.

As for the value of 2nd rounders, we have already bought picks as high as what we stand to lose in 2020, making it a wash. And I'm still not all that thrilled about all the money we've paid DJ over the years as he slowly and finally became useful. He has always caught up with his contracts, but was overpaid at the beginning of each of them. This is the problem with projects.


BTW, it seems pretty clear to me now that the reason the Clippers' FO didn't convert CJ Williams and especially Ty Wallace's 2-way contracts was that they could well have given us that little push that got us into the playoffs and we'd have lost our first-rounder this year. There has been absolutely no other reasonable explanation offered that I've seen.

We did tank after all!

[Ranma]

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[Ranma]

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[Quake Griffin]

Congrats to Kevin Durant.

The league is a better place with your **** bitch made move.

[esqtvd]

Congrats to Kevin Durant.

The league is a better place with your **** bitch made move.

I hear you on this, Quake. I'm ready to pile on bigtime.

But I can't blame Kevin Durant the person, swapping Russell Westbrook for Steph Curry. KD got a chance to join the Beatles, and he takes less money to do it. In fact, although I thought the GSWs stood back and let KD win Finals MVP last year, I think he has a better claim to it this year.

[But surely LeBron will be one of the few losers (West, Nash) to win?]


This is all a bit like Bill Russell and even more like Larry Holmes, who never beat anyone in their prime. GSW have never beat a true rival, like Celts vs Lakers or even Celts vs Sixers. No Ali vs Frazier, not even Ali vs Norton.

GSW never beat the Clippers at full strength, or even this year's Chris Paul's Rockets either. I think GSW would have won both, mind you, but they were never really tested. Doc was right from the first. GSW is lucky.

God, I'd so love to beat those bastards and their smugass coach. They made me a LeBron fan and even a CP/Beard/D'Antoni fan. That took some doing!

And CP3 had them down 3-2 until he pulled up lame [again]. But if I'm LeBron, I want to take these pricks down so much I'm seriously looking at Houston next year. At a big discount.

Just because our Finals numbers are somewhat close, people are starting to think Durant's in my league. He's not. That's what's really biting my tits right now. Durant. I want his asss.

[og15]

I guess I could see LeBron doing a one year deal with Houston.

I've yet to watch a full game of the finals, just was expecting a sweep and wasn't interested, looks like that is going to be the case.

Durant didn't just swap Westbrook for Curry, he swapped him for a team that already won a championship with the same core and just won 73 games. He could have swapped Westbrook for a lot of other options that didn't make one team overpowered.

[QRich3]

I still don't understand how are the Rockets going to get it done if Lebron chooses them, you know the Cavs are gonna play hard ball, and even if they gut their depth and future picks, I don't see an attractive package coming to Cleveland.

Durant sucks, everything about him just sucks. First guy in NBA history whose legacy gets worse the more he wins.

I also haven't seen anything from the Finals but the end of game 1. First time ever I'm this uninterested.

[Quake Griffin]

I dont mind ditching Westbrick as I’ve made it clear I do not like his style of play.

I do mind signing with a 73-9 team..

Then on a side note I mind it being 4 on 1 in these last couple of finals and him acting fake tough like he’s so into facing LeBron 1 on 1 when he’s playing with house money. He’s gonna win the finals if he wins the matchup or not...whether he buries the big shot or not.



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[MartinToVaught]

I have no problem criticizing Durant for leaving "Westbrick." Russ is an MVP, a superstar and better than any player LeBron has ever played with in his career. Durant was equally as responsible as Russ for OKC's isoball - that's proven by the fact that Durant is still playing tons of isoball on the Warriors.

"Just" playing with one other MVP wasn't enough help for Durant, I guess. He needs another MVP, two more All-Stars and a Finals MVP sixth man to win anything. And even with all that help, he still needs Curry and Klay to bail him out when he chokes and give him a cushion to start frontrunning. Fakest "superstar" in league history.